It is raining on a suburban parking lot, somewhere in Japan. Seven in the morning. A man in a grey suit cuts his engine at the far end of the lot, where the puddles are widest, then walks two hundred metres through the downpour to reach the entrance. The spots near the door are empty. He saw them. He did not take them.
Let me stop you right there: this man is neither a saint nor a fool. He just handed you, in one second and without a word, a management lesson that many executives would pay a fortune for at Harvard. This example is a metaphor used to illustrate the topic.
What this man does, and why it concerns you
In this metaphor, in Japan, those who arrive early on a parking lot often avoid the spots near the exit. They park further away, without being asked, to leave the best spots for the ones who will arrive later, tired, rushed, loaded. This gesture has a name: omoiyari, consideration for someone you will never meet.
The detail seems trivial. Yet in one second it reveals the difference between two ways of existing inside a shared system. A company is a shared system. So is a team. A customer service desk, a production line, an open space, an internal thread: so many parking lots in the rain where each person decides, every morning, where to park.
I spent my career inside the machine, at Apple during Steve Jobs’s return, at Sony, then as chief technology officer of a group of more than 1,100 engineers spread from Brisbane to Seattle. I watched beautiful projects die and mediocre ones survive. Every time, the gap did not come from the technology. It came from the human being, from fears, biases, and small daily trade-offs. The man who parks far from the exit settles one of those trade-offs in a way that, repeated a thousand times by a thousand strangers, changes the very nature of an organization.
The reflex that impoverishes an entire system
Most people reason with a single question in mind: what suits me, right now. That reflex looks logical in the short term. It ends up impoverishing the whole environment the person operates in.
Take the parking lot. If everyone grabs the closest spot, the early birds gain a few metres and the last arrivals, often the most loaded, inherit the far end in the rain. Nobody cheated. Nobody will be judged. And yet the whole system becomes a little harsher for everyone, a little less reliable, a little less pleasant. Multiply that micro-calculation by every gesture of a working day and you get either an organization where people trust each other, or one where each person plays defence.
The early arrivals would be perfectly entitled to take the best spot. That is exactly where the lesson hides. They choose a minimal discomfort for themselves against a real benefit for a stranger. No transaction, no expected return, no witness to applaud the gesture.
Omoiyari, or attention for a stranger
The word omoiyari translates poorly. It comes from omou, to think of others, to have consideration for them, and yaru, to do, to send. Literally: to send your thoughts toward another. The concept goes beyond simple reactive kindness: it means anticipating another person’s need before it even shows, expecting nothing in return (PsychologySpot). In Japan it is taught from childhood, and it runs through a large part of social and professional life (IkigaiTribe).
Hold on to this point: omoiyari is an act, not an emotion. You do not feel omoiyari, you do it. That is exactly what interests me in a leader. A value that stays in the head is worthless. A value that turns into a concrete gesture changes a system. As I put it in my book, in the chapter on the culture and psychological safety pillar, trust comes down to the alignment between what you say and what you do, measured by the people watching you. A poster on the wall changes nothing (Book).
What it changes, once transposed to your organization
Take that reflex out of the parking lot and drop it into a company: it immediately takes a thousand ordinary forms.
- A developer who writes a clear comment in the code for whoever picks it up two years from now.
- A manager who documents a procedure before leaving, so their successor isn’t stranded on day one.
- Someone who refills the shared printer tray before it hits zero on the next person.
- A driver who frees up the charging station the moment their battery is full, instead of camping on it.
- A team lead who writes a readable recap for the people who weren’t in the room.
None of these gestures show up on a dashboard. They cost a handful of minutes and, sometimes, a little swallowed pride. Yet added up, repeated by people who will never meet again, they build what no bonus can buy: collective trust.
The second example deserves a pause, because it touches directly the fear running through companies today. Training your replacement without fear, when everyone dreads being replaced, including by a machine. In the United States, the share of people who say they are more concerned than excited about artificial intelligence rose from 38% in 2022 to 52% (StanfordHAI). In that climate, the person who trains another performs an act of professional omoiyari. They send their thoughts toward a future colleague they do not yet know.
Trust is measured when no one is watching
A society, a company, an entire team is judged by how its members behave when no one is watching. The real reflex to correct is a habit: thinking only about the visible, immediate, personal transaction. A lack of kindness has nothing to do with it.
Amy Edmondson, a Harvard professor, has shown since 1999 that the best performing teams rest on psychological safety: the shared belief that you can speak up, ask a question, admit a mistake or take a risk without fear of reprisal (HarvardBusinessReview). That safety cannot be decreed. It is built gesture after gesture, exactly like the parking spot left to a stranger. Every time a leader chooses visible comfort over invisible consideration, they remove a brick from that structure. Every time an employee puts the tool back, leaves the honest review, trains their successor, they add one.
I see it in the organizations I work with. Where people park at the far end of the lot, they dare to tell the leader that the beloved project is on fire. Where each person guards their spot near the exit, no one dares, and the disaster arrives in silence.
Why it beats an MBA
Peter Drucker is often credited with the line “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” He probably never said it in those words; the paternity belongs more to a blend of ideas between Drucker and Edgar Schein (QuoteInvestigator). Whoever the exact author, the observation holds: you can line up the best strategy in the world, and it will be eaten at dawn by the real culture of your teams, the one that plays out on the parking lot at seven in the morning.
That is why a Japanese parking lot sometimes teaches more than a management degree. An MBA gives you frameworks, matrices, vocabulary. The parking lot gives you a test. Watch where people park when no one is grading them, and you will know the culture of the house, regardless of what appears on the values brochure.
This lesson fits in a simple image: a parking lot in the rain, a few extra metres to walk. It durably changes how you behave everywhere else, at work, in relationships, in business. A tiny gesture, repeated by strangers who will never thank each other, often says more about a culture than a long speech on values.
So next time you arrive early, somewhere, just ask yourself: do I take the best spot, or do I leave it. Your answer says more about your leadership than any diploma.
The essentials
Remember three things:
- Omoiyari is an act, not an emotion: consideration for a stranger turns into a concrete gesture, or it is worthless.
- The culture of an organization is read in the micro-decisions made when no one is watching, not in the values charter.
- Collective trust and psychological safety are built brick by brick, like the parking spot left for whoever arrives after you.
You do not change a culture by decree. You change it by parking, every morning, a little further from the exit.
References
- (Book) https://philippeboulanger.com/book/
- (PsychologySpot) https://psychology-spot.com/omoiyari-meaning-japanese-concept-compassion/
- (IkigaiTribe) https://ikigaitribe.com/blogpost/omoiyari/
- (HarvardBusinessReview) https://hbr.org/2023/02/what-is-psychological-safety
- (StanfordHAI) https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2026-ai-index-report/public-opinion
- (QuoteInvestigator) https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/05/23/culture-eats/
