“It's more than just 'do it.' [It’s more like]”Don't be afraid to fail. Be persistent and face big challenges. Don't give up.”
Makiko Ono tries to describe the concept of yatte Minahare, a key part of the philosophy of Japanese beverage company Suntory Holdings. She explains that there is no accurate translation in English. If she's not too humble to make that connection, her four-decade career at Suntory might be a good example.
Last year, Ono became one of the few female executives in Japan when she was promoted to a top position at Suntory Beverage & Food, a listed unit of the beverage group.
She thought she had reached the end of the management road, having become Suntory's head of sustainability in January 2022, aged 61. This is a position that often represents a glass ceiling for women in Japanese companies. It was a “big surprise” to be promoted to CEO of Suntory Beverage & Food, which controls brands such as Orangina and Lucozade in Europe and a range of mineral waters, coffee, tea and health drinks in Japan and Asia, she says. . It operates a bottling joint venture with PepsiCo in the US.
Would she have been disappointed if someone else had been appointed to the top job?
“Very difficult question,” Ono answers, pausing before adding: “I never thought about becoming a CEO. . . . but if someone else were to be in that role. . . I might be disappointed.” frustrated? “Not discouraged. . . . not quite satisfied, but dissatisfied.”
Ono faced this disappointment early in her career and bounced back. In 1982, immediately after joining Suntory, she was appointed to the team that led the first successful bid by a Japanese company for a French winery, Chateau Lagrange in the Bordeaux region. This experience gave her a taste for fine wine and her goal of obtaining a full-time career in France.
“I told my boss that I had this ambition. The boss knew it. But at that time there were no female employees at Suntory Group [were] Work abroad. Of course, there were already some males [staff] In major countries. And [the] The HR department at that time, they were not willing to send a woman out of Japan. When a job came up at Suntory France, it went to a male colleague.
She admits that this setback was frustrating. Ono chose Suntory in part for the international opportunity. Based on her love of bossa nova dance music, she studied Portuguese at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. But it also felt more progressive than other Japanese companies. The company rose to prominence by having its female employees handle employment offers for female candidates, for example.
A day in the life of Makiko Ono
6.00 Wake up and have a typical Japanese breakfast – rice and miso soup – with fruit, yoghurt and tea, then check the newspaper.
8.00 Drive to work and review emails and documents while listening to the Rolling Stones.
At the office, I drink a dose of our popular health supplement, Chicken Extract, and some sesame barley tea. This is followed by meetings such as meetings with our DEI team on the occasion of International Women's Day, and discussion with financial institutions on mergers and acquisitions.
12.00 For lunch, I usually enjoy Kitsune Soba in our cafeteria or buy salmon rice balls and cod roe from a convenience store while I observe consumer behaviors and get ideas about them.
13.00-16.00 A typical day includes meetings with the company's planning team or a monthly meeting with the CEO of our group company.
18.00 Leaving the office to have dinner with female executives in other companies. I make it a rule to cook for myself at least once a week.
Even after a late night out, I always enjoy soaking in the tub and being in bed by midnight.
However, fundamentally, the group at that time was still a “very, very old generation.” Ono's reaction to France's decision was similar to what many Japanese women would do: “I didn't protest, but I think I took it for granted. This is a Japanese company. But of course, I continued to be ambitious.”
By 1991, she was working in Paris for Suntory France, the group's first female expatriate: yatte Minahare.
Ono's perseverance and determination seem to have set her apart from other women in Japanese companies in the 1980s, when female employees were expected to leave their jobs once they got married. Four more women joined Suntory's international division with Ono in 1982. “We were asked: How long do you want to work for this company?” My colleagues answered, three years. I replied: Five years.
In fact, Ono, who is single, has somehow outgrown this modest ambition, and is now in her fifth decade with Suntory.
In France, she added opera to her passion before returning to her homeland in 1997. “After returning to Japan, I realized that the experience of working in the real business, I mean inside the field, was missing,” she says. She lobbied her boss to give her a job, and in 2001 she became marketing director for the ice cream brand Häagen-Dazs Japan, where Suntory had a 40 percent stake, and managed about 40 employees.
“They knew a lot more about Häagen-Dazs than I did,” Ono says. The challenge called for a “servant leader” management style that is uncommon in Japan's top-down, male-dominated leadership culture. Instead of imposing her ideas, she “started thinking about empowering or empowering” the Häagen-Dazs team to expand the brand.
As CEO, Ono still applies the same approach, setting direction but delegating to expert team members where it makes sense: “I can't do everything. Each member has their strengths, and sometimes they are more experienced than me in one sector or field.” …What I can do is create the ideal situation, the right environment for them [achieve] 100 percent or 150 percent [of what they are capable of]”.
Ono is uncomfortable with some of the attention resulting from her promotion to CEO. Within months of her appointment, Fortune and Forbes included her on lists of powerful women leaders. The Financial Times featured her in its showcase of the world's most influential women, alongside longer-serving CEOs such as GM's Mary Barra. At the time, Ono had not even reported a full year of sales under her leadership, and the trajectory of her stock price in the months immediately following her appointment was, by her own admission, “not great.”
“I appreciate them [the media] “They chose me, but I think they didn't actually know much about me,” Ono says.
She's set herself some really tough challenges. Drawing on her previous experience managing the human resources department at Suntory Beverage & Food, she wants to internationalize the group further. In particular, while non-Japanese colleagues have absorbed some of Japanese corporate culture, she wants to tear down the “mental wall” that she says still hinders Japan-based teams from learning from their international colleagues.
Japan, which suffers from weak domestic consumption, has to fight a deflationary mentality among customers. Suntory Beverage & Food pushed for price increases ahead of the competition last year and Ono does not rule out raising prices again, as overheads remain high. To achieve a level of sustainable growth in Japanese business, “we need to change or we need to improve the entire profit structure,” she says.
Since joining Suntory, the old family business in which every face was familiar has evolved into a multinational corporation, although it is still under family control. Ono says she never imagined that non-Japanese directors would sit on the company's board, as they do at Suntory Beverages and Foods, or that its international business would become larger than its domestic operations.
But she insists there is more to go. She says India has its own attractions, although that market is difficult to break into. Ono also sees the potential to do more than just the bottle for PepsiCo in the United States. “Otherwise we wouldn't have any footprint in the US, which is the biggest market. Since we have very unique and heritage brands, we want to [take] Any possibility to place our brands. . . “In the United States,” Ono says.
How about getting the names of American drinks? The woman who began her career by helping close a groundbreaking acquisition of a French vineyard and set her sights on becoming a globe-trotting Japanese CEO still follows Suntory's “don't give up” philosophy. “That could be an option,” she replies.
