Welcome to ''Hell Camp''
A renowned Japanese management school opens a U.S. branch
Most of the Saturday shoppers at Janss mall in Thousand Oaks, Calif., guessed they were seeing some kind of initiation rite. Eight men and two women took turns standing at attention outside Vons supermarket and shouting a song to a stern-faced man 75 ft.away. They all seemed oblivious of the curious onlookers, who were licking ice cream cones and sipping soft drinks and beer on an unseasonably hot afternoon.
André Patenaude, 48, stepped forward, bowed deeply and began singing:
"You must sell goods with the sweat of your brow ..." When he finished, the
crowd burst into applause. One of the other singers screamed, "You passed!" and flung himself at Patenaude in a congratulatory embrace. The crowd applauded again. "I don't know what it is” said a young woman pushing her grocery cart toward the parking lot, "but they sure are serious about it."
The shoppers had witnessed one of the critical tests in the first U.S. class conducted by Kanrisha Yosei Gakko, a renowned Japanese management training school.Known as a "hell camp" for sales-people and managers, the school requires students to sing a "sales crow" song-so named because the singers are supposed to sound like cawing crows-in a public place to break down their inhibitions. The Curriculum includes memorizing rules of behavior, constant oral testing on class-room work, writing speeches and delivering them in stentorian tones, along with a 25-mile hike and other strenuous physical exercise.
Kanrisha Yoosei Gaicko was founded in 1979 by Ichiro Takarabe, a former educational-materials salesman. Takarabe's aim was to turn out more aggressive salesmen and managers, breaking down the traditional Japanese reserve. He started with six students in a small wooden shack on Tokyo Bay, but the school expanded rapidly and became an established part of Japan's corporate scene. Now located in Fujinomiya. a small city at the foot of Mount Fuji, the school boasts 100,000 graduates, most of whom were sent there by companies like Honda and Hitachi to be toughened up for the no-holds-barred competition of the Japanese marketplace and to be taught, as Instructor Naoyoshi Fujimori explains, "to work in harmony with their colleagues."
Success at home and attention from abroad made Takarabe wonder whether such a course would not succeed outside Japan. To help teach a U.S. version, he recruited two Americans. First, though, they had to pass the course themselves. Recalls Fred Delisle, 55, a retired U.S. Army colonel: "I told myself, 'Hell, I can't do this,' but pretty soon I was doing it." He and Classmate Dan Galitz, a former police training officer, finished ninth and seventh, respectively, in a class of 203.
Takarabe left the details of setting up the American operation to Fujimori, who last November began advertising the $2,400, 13-day course in the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. As a site for the training program, Fujimori chose the remote Calamigos Ranch conference center in California's scrub-covered Latigo Canyon near Malibu. Among the ten students who took the first class in mid-February were several self-employed salespeople, two advertising staffers from the U.S-Japan Business News weekly newspaper. a sales representative for Singapore Airlines, and Patenaude, a therapist who specializes in massage. The group also included a father-and-son team: Carl Craig, 49, an electronics sales-man, and Anthony Craig, 20, a rock musician (stage name: U.D. Quantum).
On the first day Instructor Galitz was blunt: "Our training methods will challenge you and make many demands upon you that you may initially consider too much." Forbidden was all nonschool material, including books, magazines, newspapers, TV and radio. The course, Galitz said, was aimed at encouraging concentration and deep thought. Each student pinned two rows of "ribbons of challenge" on the white tunic worn during the course, a ribbon to be shed only when a crucial test had been passed. When all the ribbons were gone, a student graduated. Out on the exercise field, the group looked like an awkward, overage bootcamp platoon, learning how to bow, count off rapidly and report in a loud voice. "Shouting," says Fujimori, "makes every person know his own force or weakness." Spare time was spent in pairs or small groups shouting recitations and learning the lessons, including the salesman's ten commandments. Among them: "No shilly-shallying. Always be punctual"; "Completing an action without reporting it is worse than not doing it"; and "Promise yourself you will achieve the best results in the shortest time."
The initial bewilderment of the students eventually gave way to satisfaction. Carl Craig got a "high five" from his son after passing the ten commandments test and shedding the first ribbon. After passing the "sales crow" test at Janss mall, the elder Craig was bubbling with pride: "When you turn that ribbon in, you feel like you have just climbed Mount Fuji."