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Why you should practice Nemawashi — The Art of Obtaining Consensus
The secret of effective decision making
ARJUN RAO
May 23, 2024
Oftentimes people find it hard to convince others of their idea. There can be many reasons for this. Trying to convince someone is a tough ask. The person conveying the idea either doesn’t understand their audience, haven’t done the right amount of research to explain it, haven’t crafted a crisp enough message and so on. Consensus is hard — so many people, so many opinions.
As you get more senior in your organization, getting consensus is table stakes. You are expected to make suggestions and bring new ideas to the table across cross functional stakeholders. Unfortunately the moment your idea gets put on the table, it receives tremendous pushback and that prevents the idea from making any real headway. Sound familiar? You’re not alone.
In fact, there is plenty of research that suggests if one person in a group raises concerns, odds are that influences the others to question the sanctity of the idea — the idea of Information Cascade. This is precisely why it is critical to learn the technique of Nemawashi.
Photo by GreenForce Staffing on Unsplash
What is Nemawashi?
I think of Nemawashi as “hallway review” or as wikipedia (see below) refers to it as “laying the groundwork”. It is the act of voicing out your ideas to smaller groups of people before you put the idea in front of a larger group. You get individual buy-in into your idea and build on that to get momentum with the larger group. Any feedback you get from individuals, and incrementally bigger groups, can be baked into your proposal. Once you do this for all the important stakeholders of the idea, you have gotten all the critical feedback you need to ensure no one has any visceral reactions to your idea.
Now, when you put this in front of the whole group, you will basically get no major resistance because everyone has already given their most important feedback. At most you will receive requests for some cosmetic changes from other participants in your sessions.
Nemawashi is a crucial component of your leadership toolkit. It requires some work upfront but is so powerful at delivering results. Use it to be more effective at driving change and a fresh perspective.
Origins of Nemawashi for the curious
Per Wikipedia
Nemawashi (根回し) is a Japanese business informal process of laying the foundation for some proposed change or project by talking to the people concerned and gathering support and feedback before a formal announcement. It is considered an important element in any major change in the Japanese business environment before any formal steps are taken. Successful nemawashi enables changes to be carried out with the consent of all sides, avoiding embarrassment.
For the history of how this came to be, Wikipedia goes on to explain -
Nemawashi literally translates as “turning the roots”, from ne (根, “root”) and mawasu (回す, “to turn something, to put something around something else”). Its original meaning was literal: in preparation for transplanting a tree, one would carefully dig around a tree some time before transplanting, and trim the roots to encourage the growth of smaller roots that will help the tree become established in its new location.[1][2][3][4][5]
Nemawashi is often cited as an example of a Japanese word which is difficult to translate effectively, because it is tied so closely to Japanese culture itself, although it is often translated as “laying the groundwork.”
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