Delegation is a perfect tool. It is always in pristine condition because it stays on the shelf and gathers dust there, rather than getting dinged and banged around through robust application by leaders. Why is that? Fear is the biggest driver, followed by poor time management. The accountability sits with the boss, no matter what delegation has been taking place. If one of the team screw up the delegation, they don’t get hammered from above, because the boss is the target for not running the tea...
Oct 25, 2023•11 min
Japan is a country where accountability and responsibility are avoided at all costs. This is most often seen in staff engagement surveys where Japan usually comes last in the world. One of the key questions western survey designers use for these global questionnaires is, “would you recommend our firm as a place to work for your relatives and friends?”. Japanese staff will not give this question a positive score. They worry that if they introduce their relative and it doesn’t work out, it will cr...
Oct 18, 2023•11 min
There is no one way to lead, but there are different perspectives on how to lead. We might need a certain variety in one environment, but a different model in another ecosystem. Often the danger is dragging the same model around with us which worked well in one locale and trying to slam the square peg into the round hole at the new shop. I have tried that by the way and it didn’t go very well, so I don’t recommend it. Let’s look at five power varieties to stimulate our thinking about whether we ...
Oct 11, 2023•10 min
What are the starting points, the basic requirements of leadership? There are actually many, which is why books on leadership are both numerous and thick. Today, let’s look at four of the basics we need to be effective as a leader. 1. Self-Aware In this category, we are living an intentional life, where we decide what happens to us, rather than being buffeted by the winds of change. We are self-directed. We have clear goals and we revise them regularly to accommodate all of the changes in busine...
Oct 04, 2023•10 min
If one of our goals as a leader is to align our team members goals, aspiration, dreams and desires with those of the firm, it implies we know what they are aiming for. How would we know that information? We would gather that detail slowly over time and we would check back in occasionally to find out if things have changed or not. This cannot be an interrogation, like a job interview. We take our time and do these talks over coffee, lunches, dinners and in spare moments when chatting together. Th...
Sep 27, 2023•10 min
Japan is excellent at being two faced. In the West, this has a pejorative air, but in Japan this is how harmony can be maintained and everyone plays their part in keeping the public and private faces far apart. This means that a typical western approach of getting the two warring individuals into a room and thrashing out a solution usually doesn’t get very far. In that mediated meeting, no one talks and they certainly won’t publicly voice their opinion of the other person or flag the issue of th...
Sep 20, 2023•10 min
Once upon a time in Japan there would be a thick pile of resumes sitting on your desk for you to go through and select the new potential hires for interview. You would conduct rounds of meetings, put them to the test in certain skill sets and then make a studied decision to bring onboard the best person. They were nervous and you had all the power in the discussion. They were selling you on them and why they should be selected. Ah, those fond memories of days gone by. Today, unless you are some ...
Sep 13, 2023•12 min
Leaders are different from managers. Managers have to make sure everything is humming. The quality standards have to be met. The logistics have to flow smoothly, so that production is working well. The budget has to be met and there should be no over spending taking place. Leaders have to do all of this, plus two other key roles. One is setting the direction and the other is developing the people. This sounds fair enough, except that the roles described for the manager are a full time job and th...
Sep 06, 2023•10 min
The Ongoing Nightmare Of Small Business Recruiting There are more jobs than candidates in Japan and this situation will only worsen from the boss’s viewpoint. Those halcyon days of wading through a big pile of resumes and tossing most away, have well and truly gone. If you get any resumes these days, you think you should go and buy a takurakuji (lottery) ticket, because your luck is obviously in. Counterintuitively, in some of the high tech industries, whole teams of internal recruiters are bein...
Aug 30, 2023•10 min
The boss is the light on the hill, radiating positive energy, belief, confidence and possibility. The moody boss can destroy the atmosphere in the office very quickly. We all know that, so we have to become expert thespians, masking our true feelings and putting on a fun face to the outside world. When things get tough, there are no people the boss can talk to, so all of the pressure gets bottled up in one person. When things are not going well with the results and particularly when the profits ...
Aug 23, 2023•11 min
I am always amused by rather youngish “life coaches” or “executive coaches”. It seems incongruent, because their experience of business life seems so thin. They haven’t risen inside their organisations, have never had massive responsibilty or a major P&L to worry about. They seem to be everywhere and astoundingly they find people willing to give them money. The person best able to provide coaching should be the boss and not some external freelance coach. Bosses though often restrict their co...
Aug 16, 2023•10 min
The contrast was striking. I went from one boss, who was super demanding, scary even, to a very easy going leader. I thought, “this is good”, well, at least for a while. When I realised that he would agree with whoever was last in his office, I realised there was no core here. He was being nice to all and that meant he wasn’t taking any hard decisions, potentially upsetting some people. You would convince him on some course of action and then a colleague would waltz into his office and then next...
Aug 09, 2023•11 min
Japan has always been a country which has adapted to weather and seismic conditions. Traditional housing was built on the assumption that earthquakes would less easily destroy wooded houses with built in flex points. High-pitched roof angles allowed snow to fall more easily from the roof and prevent the snow’s weight from crushing those inside. Things have changed though and we now have typhoons going as far north as Hokkaido. When I arrive here in April 1979, that possibility would have been un...
Aug 02, 2023•12 min
Japan is a unique country where underperformance is not considered a legitimate reason to terminate someone’s employ. Leaders new to the country will often run into this issue. They arrive with a mandate from HQ to “fix” Japan and get it up to a required performance standard. As soon as the new broom brings in changes to achieve the HQ revenue targets, the trouble starts. Change is never an easy thing for Japan to deal with because the same old, same old is a known commodity and therefore a safe...
Jul 26, 2023•11 min
It is very frustrating at times, being a leader. Staff don’t hit their targets, forget things they need to do, complete tasks in a less than satisfactory manner and make stupid mistakes. Time poor leaders are the norm, so we are always operating on minimums to get it all done. We are usually in a rush, and this is when we get ourselves into trouble as the leader. We genuflect in the general direction of empathy, being a critical aspect of the leader’s people skills but often we forget to walk th...
Jul 19, 2023•10 min
Some problems are relatively difficult and can be fixed, ignored or coped with. Others are more substantial and can place the entire enterprise at risk. Covid certainly struck some industries harder than others and we have seen many venerable establishments disappear. The Japanese government wisely made low-interest loans available to many companies on the basis that keeping the doors open and the staff employed would be a better outcome for the economy. In 2008, during the Global Financial Cris...
Jul 12, 2023•11 min
Artificial intelligence is bringing a lot of speed to tasks and helping with mundane work. As we all become better at prompting the machine, we will uncover greater utility for it to propel our work. It will not be able to replace the human aspect of leadership though. One thing it won’t fix is watching 40% of new hires walk out the door within the first three or four years of employ. I was talking to an HR person from a very large international firm about this issue. Originally, there had been ...
Jul 05, 2023•12 min
Many of our clients have told us that Covid and especially remote working situations, revealed a lot about the leadership frailty of their organisations. When everyone was in the office, the inability of mid-level leaders to lead was effectively masked. However, once the big homeward bound migration took place, sizeable gaps suddenly became apparent. These gaps were around the communication of the firm’s strategy, direction, the alignment of the team and getting things done. Each of these aspect...
Jun 28, 2023•13 min
Three candidates in a row with mental health problems and recruiting fees in the tens of thousands of dollars. Am I just unlucky or is this a trend? Our first instinct as leaders will be to not recruit people who are broken and to avoid those who are suffering with mental health issues. We will worry they will just disappear into a prolonged medical leave absence and we will be footing the bills for the duration. The issue though is these candidates are often ninja level masters of illusion and ...
Jun 21, 2023•12 min
As a leader, try yelling “be inclusive, be inclusive, be inclusive” at your staff members. You are trying to move the organisation toward achieving greater creativity and innovation through the benefits of diversity. You know that becoming more inclusive is the catalyst for gaining diversity inside the firm. The President and the Executive Team have made the official pronouncements about using diversity to better prepare for a more creative and successful future. Whatever your own thoughts on th...
Jun 14, 2023•13 min
“Does this candidate have a pulse? Yes? Then we need to hire them”. Does this sound ridiculous, a fantasy and dystopian snippet from the future? The Japanese Government says that if we don’t see a turnaround in the population decline before 2030, then the country will get tipped over the edge and into a decline from which it cannot easily recover. Covid wiped out the tourism and hospitality industries and there are still difficulties in hiring people. A lot of workers decided these industries we...
Jun 07, 2023•12 min
The big chiefs in the organisation have embraced the idea of Diversity, Equity and inclusion (DEI). Even more, they expect Middle Management to get on board with this push and make it happen. That means people who probably haven’t spent one second thinking about DEI now have to be the role models for the new cause. I always tell people that the success or failure of DEI in Japan is decided at the kacho or section chief level. This is where the bulk of the people are being supervised and where th...
Jun 01, 2023•13 min
The organisation gets religion about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). The senior management team, led by the President, decide this is a key path for moving forward. The upside in achieving greater innovation and creativity by embracing a more inclusive workplace is seen as the Holy Grail. The Middle Managers are told to get behind the push on DEI. Brilliant that getting change in Japan is so easy. Japanese staff love change. They want their boss to change, their subordinates to change, th...
May 24, 2023•12 min
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are the end goal for companies today, because there is a recognition that the value derived warrants the effort. The WHY part is certainly well understood and female manager ratios are often being set as company targets. Key triggers to achieving a diverse workforce are through gaining inclusion within the work environment. The issues arise though, as to just how to make that goal a reality. Certainly, if there is an effective communication capability by the team,...
May 17, 2023•12 min
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made the following comment on diversity in Japan, “My mission is to create a society where anyone regardless of age, gender and position would be able to play an active role and for people with various experiences and backgrounds to inspire each other”. Today, most companies in Japan would agree with that statement and are working on improving the degree of diversity in their organisation. We know that to get to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in our organisations, t...
May 10, 2023•14 min
Internal conflict is like a cancer destroying our organisations. This is normally a massive headache for leaders, but when trying to improve the diversity within the team, it becomes a blocker. There is a pathway to diversity and that leads to gaining an acceptance of the necessity for inclusion first. Once achieved then diversity becomes a possibility. Being inclusive with someone you are arguing with or now don’t like, because of some point of conflict, makes that possibility quite remote Comp...
May 03, 2023•13 min
日本のビジネスパーソンの方々にストレスマネジメントやビジョン設定についておはなしする機会があります。その中でいつもトピックに上がることは、日本社会はとても生きづらい。仕事イコール自分のすべてになっている。忙しすぎ。文字どおり、心を無くしている状態。。。という共有を聴くことはとても多いです。 このポッドキャストをお聴きの方々にも同じようなお気持ちを持ちの方々は多いかもしれません。 最近は、沢山の方々が日本を訪問してくださるようになりました。 私がお会いした海外の方々が口をそろえておっしゃること。それは、「日本大好きです。定期的に日本に来たいです！願わくば日本に住みたい！」中には「今年中に日本に仕事を見つけたいので準備に来日しています。」と言う方もいらっしゃいます。その中には、「日本語をもっと上達したいです！」と、ありがたいことに、海外でこのポッドキャストを聴いてくださっている方々もいらっしゃいます。 さて、その方々とお話しをすると、彼らは口をそろえて、「日本の方々は日本に住めること自体がどれだけ恵まれているかに気づいていないのが歯がゆい。」という事をおっしゃいます。 四季があり、自然に恵...
May 01, 2023•15 min
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion has become an important topic in Japan and the trigger to getting to diversity is getting inclusion. When people feel included in the team, they are more motivated, hard working and committed to the firm. Retention is a nightmare problem which will unfold slowly and terrifyingly for all firms over the next few years. Getting people to join is one problem in a declining population reality and keeping the ones you managed to hire, will be the bigger problem. Trainin...
Apr 26, 2023•14 min
In Part One of Key Factors To Achieving Diversity, Equity & Inclusion In Japan, I covered Building Trust and Psychological Safety as well as looking at the issues around Cultural Awareness. In Part Two, let’s tackle Dealing With Unconscious Bias In Japan. Those living in Japan might be grimacing right now, because there is the view that the bias is quite conscious and out in the open. Some of our clients tell us that they have a good proportion of their male staff, who do not support the att...
Apr 19, 2023•17 min
It is always good to discover new ways of looking at how we humans get on with each other. As a new leader, inheriting an existing team, the first thing you discover is very few of the team are like you and that they are motivated individually, rather than as an amorphous group. Understanding people is certainly a key to successful leadership. I recently came across Ms. Shade Zahral in an interesting video, explaining a four quadrant intersection of courage and humanness. In this format, courage...
Apr 12, 2023•14 min
