Nemawashi

Nemawashi is the informal process of building consensus with individual stakeholders before a formal proposal is circulated. The word derives from gardening — preparing the ground around a plant’s roots before transplanting. In Japanese enterprise decision-making, nemawashi precedes and determines the success of the formal ringi process. A proposal that has been through successful nemawashi arrives at the ringi stage with objections already addressed. A proposal that skips nemawashi encounters those objections in the formal process, where they halt circulation and are harder to resolve. For foreign vendors, enabling their internal champion to conduct nemawashi effectively is the most valuable contribution they can make to a procurement process.