Putting together the slide deck for the presentation had become a never-ending ordeal for Dave. Every time he turned a draft in to his Japanese boss, it would come back with yet another set of things to correct.
"How many times do I have to go through this?" he asked me, adding that many of the changes his supervisor requested were minor formatting issues — in the larger scheme of things, why did it even matter whether the font size was 24 points or 28?
If Dave's experience sounds familiar to you, I'm not surprised. I've heard stories from many people — both non-Japanese and Japanese — who were frustrated by their Japanese boss's desire to micromanage every detail. Such extreme meticulousness can hit particularly hard when you're from a culture that values autonomy and believes that there is more than one way to skin a cat.