Swedish Chamber of Commerce sets high targets

• Name: Martin Koos
• Title: General Manager of the Swedish Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Japan
• URL: https://www.sccj.org/
• Hometown: Hoganas, Sweden
• Years in Japan: 17

Growing up in Sweden, Martin Koos had never really contemplated a move to Japan. Now general manager of the Swedish Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Japan, New York had been his original goal. “I was young and considering what to do with my life, and luckily I was introduced to a scholarship that was being given out by the European Union, with two basic rules: One rule was that you must go abroad to a non-EU country, and the second was that you must have somewhere to stay and work,” explained the multilingual manager. “And for me, New York was always the cool place to be, and that’s where I wanted to go.” But he soon realized that satisfying the visa requirements was going to be a problem, so when someone at the scholarship agency suggested Japan, he changed direction. “I had absolutely no image of Japan back then, but I thought, ‘OK, why not.’”

Koos first arrived in Japan in 2001, and soon found himself enamored with the pace and vibe of Tokyo. “I still remember taking the escalator down from Shibuya Station and seeing Shibuya crossing for the first time — it was the strongest impression I’ve ever had going abroad,” he said. “I found a project called Swedish Style in Tokyo, which was run by Ewa Kumlin, the wife of the Swedish ambassador at the time. It was this superambitious project to bring across all aspects of Swedish culture to Japan, and I just felt that everything was coming together.” The project had a lofty goal of bringing over 200 people from Sweden to showcase everything from street art to cooking. “I went straight into that project, and it was a fun experience, and I got to meet a lot of great people, and that all came together in October 2001.”

After a short stint back in Sweden working in advertising and digital marketing, Koos felt drawn back to Japan: “I just had a feeling I was not done with this country.” He quickly got busy, and after setting up a meeting with Great Works, a Swedish advertising firm in Tokyo, he got the chance to return in 2007, even assuring the hiring manager that within a year he would be fluent in Japanese. “I guess I was pretty cocky back then, but oh, well.” That positive attitude yielded dividends, and with his background in advertising and entrepreneurship, he was soon recommended for an empty position at the SCCJ. “I was a bit hesitant at first, but I also saw great potential in reviving the chamber.”

Koos set about revamping the chamber’s website, updating its booking process and starting a lot of new types of events. This included bringing onboard a group of female CEOs and executives working in Swedish companies in Japan who really wanted to make a change in empowering women in the corporate workplace. “In 2018, we organized seven or eight events based on the women-empowerment movement alone,’’ he said. “We reached out to people who had never been to our events before — they had a very outdated image of a chamber, you know, just a lot of men in suits — and we showed that that just wasn’t us. It was actually quite different to what they expected.” While he can point to companies such as Ikea Japan, which has reached a target equilibrium in the numbers of male and female executives, there are still challenges to be dealt with.

“It’s really about creating an employment pipeline so that female executives are there when opportunities for promotion present themselves,” he said. He now believes that a key requirement to increase participation is to find ways to retain female employees. He also believes in the importance of having a mentor or someone to champion them within the organization, “It can be a man or a woman, but just to know that someone has your back — it’s a key ingredient,” he said. “So many times I’ve heard it said that ‘If this or that person wasn’t there, then I wouldn’t have taken the chance.’ So this was what these events were mainly about, sharing stories — ‘If I can do it, you can do it.’ It was a small group, but we felt like we were starting a revolution.”

Along with overseeing a huge calendar of networking events being organized by the SCCJ, such as midsummer festivals, CEO breakfast meetings and ski trips, Koos is also overseeing the chamber’s Climate Neutral Committee and its Talent, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, which run their own slate of events within the chamber and consist of 12 to 14 companies each. “We decided to go with climate neutrality because we wanted to nail it down to make it more precise, but climate neutrality is the most urgent task that many of the Swedish companies in Japan are facing.” Company targets are imposed on local Japanese management and are often more ambitious than the 2045 target set by Sweden. The committee has also recently begun a collaboration with Sophia University for companies to make presentations and hold panel discussions on their target ambitions at which they get input from students.