Kodama The Diversity Promotion Office was launched in October 2007 to promote workforce and work style diversity. We're working on various initiatives, but still need to address many issues to enable a diversity of people to realize their full potential.

Chen I am a Taiwanese-born Canadian and joined this company 14 years ago. I am always impressed by how much time the Japanese put into planning, which is always meticulous, and how swiftly they translate each concrete plan into action. Their emphasis seems to be on eliminating the unexpected. In other cultures, while plans are less thorough, the emphasis is on flexibility. It is common to continuously redefine a plan and to expect the unexpected during the execution of the plan. While both work styles have their pros and cons, flexibility can be a valuable asset when it comes to radical reform, in which the potential problems are hard to foresee.

Ishikura Yes, we live in an age of increasingly diverse views and values regarding work and work styles. Since there's no single “right” answer anymore, learning by doing is probably the way to go now.

Harada I have a five-year-old kid and so I've been juggling childrearing with work now for about four years. Traditional ideas regarding work remain in some quarters, and new work styles have not yet been fully accepted, but I think we've come a long way, at least in my workplace. To produce results while enabling a diversity in work styles, I also think that we should definitely keep the best aspects of the traditional style with its emphasis on teamwork.

Chen Over the past years, I've seen a lot of non-Japanese employees make efforts to assimilate themselves into the Japanese workforce by changing their views, values, and characters. There are, of course, exceptions — those who take pride in being different. In order to promote cultural diversity and harness its full potential, I think it's important to adopt a new teamwork style that welcomes and integrates the uniqueness of each non-Japanese employee. It is also important for the non-Japanese to make extra efforts to convince others of their views and ideas.

Ishikura I suspect that NTT's diversity has yet to reach critical mass — the point at which it achieves sufficient momentum to become accepted as a matter of course. When the percentage of foreigners or women in a company reaches about 30%, their presence becomes normal and nothing special.

Kodama Professor Ishikura, I think you must be used to being introduced as the first woman to sit on the board of a major company and the first woman vice president of the Science Council of Japan, so I'd like to ask if you have any hints for airing opinions that differ from others around you.

Ishikura The best thing about diversity is the way it gives rise to different opinions and ideas, since this breeds discussion that results in innovation. The important thing is to keep on saying what you think.

Harada I'm involved at the moment in a project to provide new services that make use of smart home appliances, and I must say that differing ideas and opinions make a huge difference. You can't hope to come up with great ideas for consumers if you look at something just from a technological perspective.

Ishikura And you're unlikely to generate a stream of new ideas by getting a bunch of people with the same backgrounds together to think about something. That's why it's important to work with people from different backgrounds.

Kodama Harada-san said earlier that her workplace has come a long way where work-life balance is concerned, but how about diversity? Have any of you noticed any changes recently?

Chen It is very encouraging to see increasing expectations and efforts to synergize the cultural differences among the workforce. As a non-Japanese, I would like to leverage my uniqueness to the maximum extent and use it as a rare advantage to contribute to the globalization of NTT.

Harada As a result of the Great East Japan Earthquake, all of a sudden we're trying all sorts of work patterns to reduce electricity consumption — working on weekends, coming in early, working from home for part of each day, and so forth. Before we started, people voiced all sorts of worries, but things are actually going pretty well in practice, and I'm hoping that this will have served as an opportunity for establishing greater work style diversity.

Kodama I'd like to ask you, Professor Ishikura, for a final comment on this theme.

Ishikura We're seeing a shift in business strengths from the ability to produce masses of goods to the ability to be unique. It's becoming important to identify or create one's uniqueness, and it's diversity that enables this. Dialogue between people with different perspectives produces new value. And enabling a diversity of work styles also attracts people with different values. Combining workforce and work style diversity will drive the generation of uniqueness, and a friendly corporate culture that encourages dialogue between people of different backgrounds will accelerate that process. In other words, creating uniqueness, promoting diversity, and building an open and friendly organization are all closely intertwined. As the leader of Japan's telecommunications industry, the NTT Group should be able to create more unique services and a more open organization by promoting diversity, and I'd like to see it setting an example by actively pursuing various initiatives.

Kodama We're now definitely in an age in which we need to do more and more to promote diversity. Thank you very much for your participation.

See the following website for the detailed dialogue

• http://www.ntt.co.jp/csr/portal/dialog/ (in Japanese only)

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