The Leadership Japan Series By Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Allan Smith: Ex-CEO of RGA Japan   Generally speaking, compared to other nationalities, they are a bit more reluctant to state their opinions so you have to know that, and cater for that by asking for opinions and waiting. They do however speak amongst themselves, so another useful source of information is having fellow Japanese people who are willing to come and tell you the vibe of things going on. I have found in Japan there are two extremes. People who do not speak English well, but want to speak English, and people who speak English perfectly well but would rather speak Japanese. Employees always rate the company and their job satisfaction as very low in Japan, but that is a cultural bias, no matter whether you survey Japanese companies or foreign companies in Japan. I tried to go out once a month with my direct reports and I expected my managers to do the same with their direct reports. I always tried to hire people who were smarter than me, and then trusted their judgement. We tried to share best prac

Nikhil Gutpe   The standard dress code is much more formal in Japan than many other countries, even including other Asian countries. Casual Friday, for example, is not a thing here in Japan. I have had to make sure in meetings, as the boss, that I do not state my opinion first, because then there will just be silence and no one will be willing to speak up. While in other countries, you are free to question the boss, and even say to a certain extent that I do not agree with this, in Japan, it would be a disaster. One thing that is excellent about Japan is the network of expats. You just need to ask the questions. You hear a big noise about how different Japan is, about how tough it is, but once you get here, and you ask questions of expats, and you experience things with an open mind as to why and how they are occurring, you can pick up simple things and start connecting the dots. You have not come here to be comfortable. You have come here for the challenge, so throw yourself into it and learn and have fun.

Seiichiro Asakawa   As a leader, I learned to not compete on things I did not have expertise in. I had a financial background, not a technical background, so there was no use trying to convince technically strong employees on that front – I had to use financial data as facts in order to convince my employees to accept that things needed to change in order to grow on the global scale that I wanted. While I accept there are differences in practices between cultures, I think the basics of people are the same. People are motivated to learn, to grow, to advance. Young people particularly, regardless of culture, are willing to challenge themselves and are not afraid to try and even fail. We invested heavily in the company computer systems so that all staff can, at the touch of a button, contact any other member of our overseas team. So, apart from being conscious of time differences, there is no excuse for a lack of communication. We communicate, even at the Japanese headquarters, mainly in English and what I enco

Paul Hardisty Once you walk the talk over a given period of time as a leader, you gain trust, and then people will follow you, instead of just doing what you say. Then you start getting buy-in and ideas and you can work cross-functionally. On engagement surveys, if you are giving a very low score, then you should not be coming into the office. If you are not going to be part of the solution, then you should reconsider your career and job. Engagement scores however tend to coincide with big decisions, e.g. head count freezes has a negative impact on scores, but bonus time has a positive impact. It is also not helpful to compare countries against other countries. It is about trends and patterns and feedback. You are always going to get people who score low, but it is when you see big swings that you know there is an issue. I used to think that my job was to find a local leader to replace me once I moved on, but I have realized we are an international company and rotation is a better solution, so succession pla

The 2020 Leader   Are you a perfect leader?  If you are, bully for you.  For the rest of us we continue on the journey.  As the great American philosopher Yogi Berra once noted, leading is easy, the getting people to follow you bit, is the snag.  Leaders do make such a huge difference. This sounds like the great man ideology in history, where specific individuals are credited with making the difference, rather than socio-economic factors and the contribution of others, who didn’t get their names into the official histories.   Business is different though.   The same industry, the same market, the same firm, the same staff, the same technology, the same capital, the same competitors but the outcomes can be so different depending on who is leading the firm.  We see this phenomenon all the time in various turnarounds.  A new leader is sent in and things begin to improve.  They bring in their own trusted people to execute their decisions.  They break many eggs in order to make the new corporate omelette.  They dr

341: Want To Be A Great Leader - Then Be Yourself Masa Namiki   While you can be ready for a position from a capability or mindset perspective, it does not necessarily mean you are ready from an actually `doing the job` perspective. One of the biggest struggles is that I did not have a viable local leader reference point when I was not sure, because my managers were regional leaders but their advice inevitably did work in Japan because they were drawing from their own experiences in different countries, with different people and different cultures. I also was not resourceful enough back then to have an outside of company network to draw upon. The key in leadership for me has been understanding that I do not have to be some big CEO type, I need to be authentic to who I am, building personal connections and showing vulnerability helps me lead by being able to connect with staff as a real person. Change is also not effective if it is leader-driven because once the leader shifts their attention elsewhere, the ch

2020 Will Be Different   Let’s make IWWCW our motto for 2020.  Quite a mouthful as far as acronyms go, but the meaning is sensible, yet challenging.  In What Way Can We is a perfect foil for inspiring those who resist peaking out from deep inside their comfort zone.  By the way, we have now captured a big proportion of the Japan archipelago right there.  Problems arise but we should never be defeated by them. This country however is the risk aversion capital of the universe.  This is important - don’t be put off by other people’s limitations.  They may see no way forward because their thinking is too negative.  We need IWWCW thinking to overcome all of that negativity roiling around us.   We should use IWWCW thinking to focus on your own problems and conquer them.   The new calendar year is always a time for reflection and goal setting.  We get a few days off and can put some distance between ourselves and the everyday bustle and minutiae of the business.  This affords an opportunity to think more strategical

Reflecting On Your Leadership Journey   We all tend to live in the moment as leaders.  We swing from meeting to meeting like a great ape moving across the jungle canopy.  We descend to indulge in some mindless email time and then we are off again, up into the meeting morass.  We are constantly pushing, always vigilant for trouble and permanently insecure about making our KPIs.    We struggle through the year to get the results, month by month.  We collapse in a heap at the end and see if we made it or not.  Even if we did, the relief is short lived because now we have to chase this next year’s numbers.  We have to rally the troops, exhausted and beaten by the last year’s efforts, to poke their heads above the parapet and go over the top into battle again.   The time for reflection on our leadership journey is slight to nothing.  I have been interviewing CEOs here for a project called “Japan’s Top Business Interviews” and there is a significant similarity between the leaders so far. They have all grown as lead

Leading An Intentional Leader Life In 2020   Leaders are made not born.  Yes there are some bossy types and charismatic types who bubble to the top and assume the mantle of leader, as their rightful place.  For the rest of us, we have to learn about leadership in the angry fire of the real world of work, where the stakes are high, the competition fierce and the mood unforgiving.  In Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull’s 1969 book “The Peter Principle” we all rise in the hierarchy to our to our level of incompetence.  In other words, we get promoted to a point where the job requirements outstrip our capabilities.  Well that makes sense, but we don’t have to be relegated to supremely low level though in the process.  We can push ourselves to the highest height possible if we do a few things along the way.  Here are some ideas for 2020 on becoming a more skilful leader.   Understand the difference between being a leader and a manager.A manager makes sure all of the processes are working correctly.  Things get do

When Things Go Wrong Everyone Dives for Cover In Japan   Japan is a no mistake culture.  This breeds timidity, resistance to change, lower levels of innovation, avoiding accountability and an aversion to responsibility.  Fine, but what happens when mistakes actually occur?  As the boss, you face a conspiracy amongst the team to keep anything damaging, embarrassing or lethal from you.  If you discover one mistake, then you can probably guess that you never even heard about the other forty nine.  The biggest nightmare for the boss is to uncover an issue when it is too late to fix it.  As the boss, you have money and authority available to make things happen and resuscitate a catastrophe.  Usually that becomes too little too late, because the crew hid it until it ballooned out of control.   I remember an incident which occurred with a client.  It was a very small piece of business, but there was some dissatisfaction.  The account manager was requested to bring the problem to my attention by the client’s staff me

Six Staff Members To Be Careful Of In Japan   In most cases, as leaders we inherit the staff employed by our predecessors.  It is a rare chance to employ everyone yourself right from the start.  That means there have been varying degrees of thinking about who constitutes excellent staff.  Even if everyone preceding us had clear visions and great skills in selecting staff, times change and things happen in organisations which can disaffect staff.  Also, we are all consummate actors in the job interview, thrusting forth an image of ourselves most likely to win the affections of the interviewing panels.  The reality can be bitterly disappointing.   Organisations do their best, but sometimes get it wrong and some of these mistakes are now your responsibility.   You arrive bright eyed and bushy tailed ready for your new assignment and to meet your new team.  Here is the handy dandy guide to identifying trouble early.   Doom and Gloomers This is a hard sub-group to identify in Japan, because everyone here is so c

Luke Verwey has been running Nielsen Japan for a little over a year and I wanted to ask him about his experiences.  He has worked in a number of countries in South East Asia and has the capacity to compare and contrast with his experiences here. His three tips for new leaders, based on his new leader experiences are:   1.  Listen.  Feedback from within the team comes, but in subtle ways here, so it is easy to miss it.  Miss it twice and it stops coming, to your detriment.   2.  Be careful of sweeping statement about "Japan" and how things work here.  The culture of a team and the sub-cultures within teams, can vary tremendously.  Don't imagine they are all the same.   3.  Learning.  Learning about the culture and language helps immensely to understand how things work in Japan.  Get out of Tokyo and travel around Japan to gain deeper perspectives.  

330: Harry Hill- From Zero to $700 Million Today we have an interview with Harry Hill the ex-CEO of Shop Japan.  He went from being an English teacher in Gifu, to the founder of firms that grew into a $700 million business.  He has his own leadership mantra, using the acronym VICES.   V - Vision I - Integrity  C - Competency E - Efficiency S - Sustained Success   He also mentioned that although VICES can sound a bit negative, as an acronym, but it also reminds him that power can be a vice, pride can be a vice, inflated self-importance can be a vice and that you are always just a step away from crashing failure and oblivion in business. When I asked Harry for three pieces of advice for new leaders in Japan he nominated these points: 1. Trust and Check 2. Listen rather than want to be heard 3.  Identify who are the biggest obstacles and immediately and publically remove them  

The Leader Imposter Syndrome   In any field the people at the top can be plagued with self-doubt.  It is especially prominent in the artistic world where creativity is so important.  Am I creative enough, original enough, talented enough?  It happens in sports too.  The top players worry if they are past it, can they get out of this performance slump?  Will they be replaced by cheaper, younger teammates?  So it is no surprise that this crops up in business too.    The leader has a couple of key jobs.  One is setting the direction and vision forward.  What if they get this wrong, if the troops don’t support it, or if it proves to be their folly?  They have to run the processes.  This is not too taxing, because most companies processes have been well refined. All it takes is to be well organised, to make sure everything that is happening is at the quality, speed and cost level required.  The other tricky component is building the people.  How hard can that be? It sounds simple enough but is it?   The boss has t

The Five Drivers Of A Positive Workplace   As the leader you set the culture and tone of the form.  In Japan, up until a few years ago, you could get away with whatever you liked as the leader.  You could create a hellhole to work in and everyone caught up in the vortex had to put up with it.  There was shame attached to changing companies and mid-career hires were given the cold shoulder by the HR hiring teams.  The end of the Bubble economy in the late eighties, the IT industry meltdown at the turn of the century, the Lehman Shock in 2008 and the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in 2011 shaken things up here over the last forty years.  In particular, basic demographics of a declining population have moved the locus of power to the employment candidate away from the hiring firm.  Having a positive workplace becomes even more important to attracting and retaining good staff.   As leaders we need to work on our skills in five areas.   Self-Confidence This world of rapid change is throwing up new risks,

Leader First Impression Success     In our presentation training classes we ask the participants, “how long does it take for you to make a judgment about someone you are meeting for the first time?”.  How about you? How long do you take to make a judgment about someone you are meeting for the first time? People in our classes would say 30 seconds, others would say up to a couple of minutes.  Today, the answers are down to three to five seconds!  What does that mean for us in leadership?  People judge everyone who works in our company on the impression they form about us.    If we are impressive, then they think the rest of the troops are impressive too. It goes the other way of course.  If they meet someone from our firm who is a dill, then they think we are all dills down there.  Now as the leader we set the tone, the standards, the expected behavioral norms for our operation and this includes everyone’s personal presentation. Based on this new three second norm, we all have such a small window to make that