Actually, we don’t want to lead imperfect people – we want the winners, A Players, the motivated and the capable. Fine and they cost a bomb, so I hope you have deep pockets. If you work for a major corporation then that is exactly what you can command, because you have the bucks to sustain that type of ecosystem. They are also attracted to work for your brand name firm, so it is a happy exchange. If you work for a small to medium enterprise then life is quite different. There is a constant trade...
Apr 05, 2023•12 min
Leadership requires discipline and accountability. We claim to know more than the team about the strategy and direction we need to take. Are we being honest with ourselves though? We probably made some New Year Resolutions in January and here we are one quarter into the new calendar year and how are we looking on those commitments? I see the influx of overweight executives booking up the personal trainers down at my private club gym every January. They clearly are okay to spend the money, becaus...
Mar 29, 2023•13 min
In Japan, we are in a zero sum game, death struggle for talent. Actually, we are in the same struggle for even the modesty talented. We had better get used to a lowering of standards going forward, as we struggle to get people, any people. They aren’t making Japanese in the numbers we are used to and each year the media reports how the number of new babies has declined to a new record low. The 15 to 34 year old population in Japan has halved over the last twenty years and it will just keep going...
Mar 22, 2023•14 min
Some may believe that it is better to have staff who will argue back, than have a room full of yes-men and yes-women. In Japan, in particular, it is hard to get anyone to dispute the boss’s opinion, so if we get counterpoints to what we think, we should be popping corks and celebrating. This is a fine line for staff to tread. How can they raise issues with the boss, without seeming to be in opposition with what the boss thinks or wants? We hear a lot of talk about the importance of creating a ps...
Mar 15, 2023•14 min
Leaders are time poor. There is too much to do and not enough time. We are constantly being challenged to get control of our time management and for most of us, that struggle is often one we are losing. Meeting and emails are time killers. Multi-tasking is a given, which means that we are constantly losing time, as we keep having to get back up to speed on something we were concentrating on, to do something we hadn’t expected or diarised for that day. The upshot of all of this is our communicati...
Mar 08, 2023•14 min
Business owners have a total stake in the enterprise and a commitment level that is always peaking at maximum. They have their wealth enveloped in the business and they take on debt, risk and the trials and tribulations of business cycles. Executives are rewarded with salaries, bonuses and profit share depending on the organisation. If you are an executive in America, the leader packages can get up to eight and nine figures. Your commitment is going to be massive with that amount of reward invol...
Mar 01, 2023•13 min
Over the last couple of years I have participated in numerous webinars and training provided by different organisations on gaining Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in Japan. The concentration has been on raising awareness about what DEI actually involves. When we first received enquiries about Diversity training, the request was to provide training for the women. For those outside Japan facing ethnic, racial and religious issues, as well as gender diversity, this may seem a bit strange. Div...
Feb 22, 2023•14 min
What would you do if a parcel delivery staff and three confederates suddenly pushed past you and overpowered you when you opened the door? What would you do if a lunatic neighbour broke into your house armed with a hammer and started attacking your whole family? The recent deaths of 90 year old Kinuyo Oshio during a home invasion by the Luffy Gang and hearing about long-time Tokyo resident and friend, Bill Bishop and his entire family being killed by a lunatic neighbour, make this a reality we h...
Feb 15, 2023•18 min
There are lots of secrets for leaders. They attend the executive meetings, the off-sites, the briefings from the big bosses and know what is going on before anyone else. Divulging top secret corporate moves will get you fired, so leaders are usually tight-lipped about coming transformations, changes, expansions, downsizing etc. This is fairly obvious and everyone knows where the boundaries are located regarding what you can and cannot say. What about more personal matters though? Japan is a plac...
Feb 08, 2023•13 min
I received a leave application request on a Saturday from one of my staff. It reminded me that we had missed our weekly meeting. In fact, now that I think about it, we have missed quite a few of them, because of various scheduling conflicts. My busyness has been a factor. This made me recall that fantastic Bill Oncken and Don Wass article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) back in 1974 titled, “Management Time: Who’s Got The Monkey”. In fact, HBR notes that this article is one of two of their ...
Feb 01, 2023•13 min
Western leadership is a meritocracy where the most driven, talented, hardest working and ambitious are given the responsibility for those cannot make it to the top. Everyone knows the rules and the system works pretty well. The American version is at one end where the degree of ruthlessness is more pronounced and accepted. Other Western nations have less stringent variations, but fundamentally follow the same basic ideas about who deserves to be a leader. What happens when you put these leaders ...
Jan 25, 2023•19 min
Getting change anywhere is a difficult process, but Japan is a special case. Often in business, we represent the change. We are the potential new supplier and that means a change. They have been doing business with someone else and we want them to stop doing that and do business with us instead. There are many currents underpinning Japanese culture and its resistance to change. I have been training in traditional Japanese karate for 52 years and part of that process is learning set sequences cal...
Jan 18, 2023•14 min
Society approves titles and status, especially in Japan. We rise through the ranks and following the Peter Principle, we peak at our upper level of incompetence. On the way up, we pick up titles and accrue status, respect and credence amplified through the power of our title. Our personal power though could be suddenly exposed as bogus, when we get up to open our mouths in public. This is one of those “The Emperor Has No Clothes” moments, when all is revealed, and we are found severely wanting. ...
Jan 11, 2023•16 min
The calendar year represents the start of a new year for many businesses. Others will be looking at April 1st for their financial year start. Nevertheless, everyone will be facing the change of year period and it is always a great time for reflection. The holidays should be fully occupied with family responsibilities or pure down time, to rest and recharge. Take some time when you get back to the office, to start reflecting on the coming year. Are we where we need to be in the business? Is this ...
Jan 04, 2023•16 min
Fads are a constant in business. Consultants have a field day. They rush around providing companies with ideas on how to ride the new fashion wave. They then have to milk it as hard as possible, because they know it will be soon supplanted by the next fad. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is right up there as the latest fad in Japan. I am not saying that DEI isn’t legitimate or important. What I am saying is that for many companies, this is a patina of legitimacy, a fig leaf, as they seek t...
Dec 28, 2022•13 min
Shaun Tomson was a famous South African world champion surfer and the recent guest on Tim Reid’s podcast Small Business Big Marketing, of which I am a fan. In the show, Shaun was talking about what he called his Code concept, based around 12 “I will” statements. In fifteen minutes, we have to come up with twelve statements, each starting with the words “I will…”. The idea is that we have to use our stream of consciousness to get down ideas about what we need to be doing. In Shaun’s case he is ge...
Dec 21, 2022•11 min
Every month, I check the leave balance for my staff and am always unhappy with the numbers. The team can accrue up to 20 days a year for a maximum of two years, so technically they can have 40 days available, if they don’t take any leave at all. Anything beyond that 40 days they lose. In my company we provide an additional 4 days of company paid holidays, plus a CSR day, which they can use anyway they like. There are 16 national holidays in Japan, so you would think the team would be able to use...
Dec 14, 2022•10 min
When we first start out in business we are ninja boss watchers, studying our leaders with a level of forensic detail which is remarkable. How is their mood today? Should I bring up that request or pick another day, etc.? We study how they lead, both the good, the bad and the ugly. We are rarely mentally putting ourselves in their place, taking their viewpoint but we are quick to discuss the boss’s failing with our colleagues. Then one day it happens and we are made someone else’s boss. The usual...
Dec 07, 2022•13 min
Bosses coaching employees is such a critical task, yet so few leaders get any training on how to be effective in this role. In Japan, the OJT On The Job Training is supposed to provide the guidance needed. That probably worked back in the 1960s when Japan was doubling the size of the GNP. Today though it is a poor cousin to what it used to be. Back then, the bosses didn’t ever touch a keyboard. They weren’t carrying around the internet armed with supreme connectivity in their hand like today. Th...
Nov 30, 2022•12 min
The Japanese idea of Shu-Ha-Ri is a combination of three characters – 守破離. Shu is to protect the traditional techniques, the basics, the fundamentals. Ha is to detach and break away from the tradition, to innovate and depart from our attachments to what we are doing. Ri is to transcend to a level where there is no self-consciousness of what we are doing, we make it our own, because we have absorbed it all and it is now part of us. This transition matches what we go through as leaders. When we st...
Nov 23, 2022•13 min
As a training company, we are the canary in the coal mine about commercial trends and corporate shortfalls. During a recent Sales Consultants Forum we were discussing client needs and the same theme kept coming up. Companies are asking about leadership skills around better communication between Middle Managers and subordinates. What is driving this, more than say sales training or presentation skills needs? One answer can be Covid-19. A lot of industries were hammered by Covid and companies had ...
Nov 16, 2022•12 min•Ep. 490
We work long, diligently and hard. We are recognised for our devotion and the quality of our output and get promoted. Instead of being solely responsible for our own results, we are now in charge of our colleagues and we are accountable for their results too. If we stride around like the boss and are bossy, we are likely to hit some turbulence from the led. If we are a cream puff, walking around on egg shells, we may be ignored and not taken seriously. Who knew this leadership gig was so tricky?...
Nov 09, 2022•12 min•Ep. 489
“Japanese are two faced”, is a common complaint you will hear from foreigners in Japan. The implication is you cannot trust someone who has two faces, so believing what you are told is a folly here and you need to really evaluate the messenger carefully. It is totally true that Japanese are two faced, in fact they are world champions at it. Living cheek by jowl for centuries in crowded cities breeds a lot of accommodations and a big one is with the truth. In the West the truth is absolute, but i...
Nov 02, 2022•13 min
There is a lot of focus on conscious and unconscious biases at the moment given the amount of attention being directed at Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. In Japan’s case, for the most part, this is a discussion about gender and to some extent age. The leader however faces other challenges, apart from addressing these topical subjects. We are all witnessing major changes in the workforce driven by Covid. Many companies have staff continually working from home or are executing a dual shift approa...
Oct 26, 2022•12 min
When things are humming along beautifully, leading is a snap. We can even indulge ourselves in some tangential activities because we have been able to remove our nose from the grindstone. We join a committee in a Chamber of Commerce or a non-profit. We have a spring in our step and effuse confidence and certainty. Our energy is electric and we infect everyone with our bonhomie. When the plan has been set and then things don’t go accordingly, we feel we are under assault from waves of challenge a...
Oct 19, 2022•13 min
Being fair to everyone in the team is one of the most basic elements of leadership. It builds leader trust, predictability and reliability. But are we actually always being fair? Sometimes our own team members try to draw us off the fairness straight and narrow path. There are those who want to play politics. No matter how large or small the organisation politics will raise its ugly head at some point. Obviously the bigger the company the more opportunity for political infighting. In my observat...
Oct 12, 2022•13 min
Some company polices toward remote work are let a hundred flowers bloom, a thousand schools contend. Others are saying get back in the office right now or leave. This issue is certainly contentious and there seems to be a preference for Japanese leaders to have their staff under their direct gaze. What is driving that desire? Is it that the bosses can’t manage a remote workforce? Is it that they don’t trust people to do their work under their own accountability? Is it because they have seen a dr...
Oct 05, 2022•13 min
I have talked before about the loneliness of the leader. This is often felt most strongly when facing difficulties. The entrepreneur, in particular, owns the company, has all of the responsibility on their shoulders and feels the weight of that burden. I am reminded of the ship’s captains in the age of sail. They bore the responsibility for the safe delivery of the cargo and passengers to the destination, dealing with bad weather and even worse pirates. The modern firm captain has the responsibi...
Sep 28, 2022•15 min
In Part One we looked at Dr. Emily Anhalt research with 100 leaders and 100 psychologists. She identified seven factors which measure how “fit” we are in this sphere of mental health and we covered the first three: Learn your emotional triggers and biases, understand the emotions of others and find comfort in discomfort. Today we will continue with the last four points. Foster a safe space of connection “Psychological safety” as a term has popped up over the last couple of years. We all need a s...
Sep 21, 2022•14 min
Dr. Emily Anhalt is an American psychologist who has created a gym for mental health, based on research she did with 100 leaders and 100 psychologists who were treating leaders. She identified seven factors which measure how “fit” we are in this sphere of mental health. Does any modern leader believe things are going to ease off and leading will become less stressful and more relaxed? I certainly don’t. The problem is many of us grew up in the era of harden up, “soldier on” with strife and troub...
Sep 14, 2022•12 min
