Japan has a lot of wisdom to share and one of my favourites is to not start with the solution to a problem. In Japan, the idea is to start with making sure you have the right problem to solve. This is not easy, because often we are super busy and moving at warp speed all the time, so just jumping in to fix a problem sounds like the best approach. There is a follow-on metaphor of the scaling of the wall. We work hard and progress rung by rung up the ladder, getting us to the top - the solution – ...
May 29, 2024•11 min
Founded in 2000, Baidu has 39,800 employees and is one of the largest global AI and internet companies. Based in China, its major success has been its search engine business. Its quarterly revenues ending June 2024 were $4.67 billion, so it is a substantial company. The Head of Public Relations and Vice-President, Ms. Qu Jing, posted a video on social media demeaning Baidu staff, telling them she “can make you jobless in this industry”. She told staff she demanded they must be dedicated enough t...
May 22, 2024•12 min
The era of the boss who had done all the tasks in the section and was the main expert on the business has well and truly passed. Today, it is more of a team effort and there are a lot more specialisations required than in the past. Collaboration is the key to creativity by grouping all the brain power in one place and unleashing it to solve the problem. To my surprise, very few firms have any clear methodology on how to unleash the creative ideas of the team. So far, I have done over 200 intervi...
May 15, 2024•12 min
The leader has a different role to that of the manager. The manager makes the business run on time, to quality and on budget. The leader does all of those things, plus sets the strategic direction for the business, crafts the culture and builds the people. If we want to control every aspect of the firm, then we have to micro-manage everything. Obviously, that is a choice, but as the leader we need to develop our people too and so we need to delegate work to them so that they can grow. In fact, a...
May 08, 2024•10 min
As the boss, we are always super busy. We have the management of the team and the results to work on. Everything has to be progressing on cost, on time and on quality. At the same time, we are setting the strategy, the direction for the team, communicating that so that everyone understands, establishing the values, and we are coaching and building the team members. Phew, I get tired just thinking about all of those boss roles. It is rare though that we can take a breath and reflect on the effect...
May 01, 2024•11 min
Managers manage. That means they make sure everything runs on time, to cost and to quality. The leader does all of that, plus some additional important things. These include setting the strategic direction for the team and building the people’s capabilities. Part of the leader’s role is to unite everyone behind the direction they are setting for the team. There can be a lot of detail at the micro level about how to make the strategy a reality. One key component which needs to be set at the start...
Apr 24, 2024•11 min
There is a debate about whether Japan is any different from anywhere else when it comes to leading the team. Intellectually, I can appreciate there are many similarities because people are people, but I always feel there are important differences. One of the biggest differences is how people are trained to become leaders in Japan. I should really clarify that statement and say how they are not trained to become leaders. The main methodology for creating leaders in Japan is through On The Job Tra...
Apr 17, 2024•12 min
Do leaders have to be perfect? It sounds ridiculous to expect that, because none of us are perfect. However, leaders often act like they are perfect. They assume the mantle of position power and shoot out orders and commands to those below them in the hierarchy. They derive the direction forward, make the tough calls and determine how things are to be done. There are always a number of alternative ways of doing things, but the leader says, “my way is correct, so get behind it”. Leaders start sma...
Apr 10, 2024•13 min
Here is a handy success equation which is easy to remember: our mindset plus our skill set, will equal our results. This is very straightforward and unremarkable, but we get so embroiled in our day to day world, we forget to helicopter above the melee and observe the lay of the land. A great mindset coupled with lacklustre skills, won’t get us very far. A poor mindset with great skills won’t do it either, so we need both. What is our mindset composed of? How we think is critical. Are we operatin...
Apr 01, 2024•11 min
It is very common to hear from expat leaders here about their frustrations with leading teams in Japan. They get all of their direct reports together in a meeting room to work through some issues and reach some decisions. All goes according to plan, just like at home. Weeks roll by and then the penny drops that things that were agreed to in the meeting are not happening. “Why is it so hard to get people who are being paid good money to do their job?”, they ask me. One reason is that some of the ...
Mar 24, 2024•12 min
I was reading an article by Anjli Raval in the Financial Times about the transition for CFOs to the CEO job. She quoted a survey by Heidrick & Struggles which showed a third of CFOs in the FTSE 100 firms became the CEO. This is up from 21% in 2019. Raval makes an interesting observation, “research shows that CEOs promoted from the CFO job do not drive top-line revenue growth as quickly as those from other backgrounds, particularly in the first few years”. Why is that the case? The article of...
Mar 20, 2024•11 min
It sounds very obvious, doesn’t it, to remind the team what we are trying to achieve, but are we doing it? Yes, we had that team Town Hall a few months ago and as the leader we outlined where we need to be at the end of the financial year. After that session, we have all been head down and getting on with it. “They know right? I told them everything they need to know, to get on with it” is what we have ringing in our internal conversation with ourselves. Is this true, though? Yes, we know the nu...
Mar 13, 2024•10 min
Japan has had a very low degree of mobility in employment. Large companies hired staff straight out of school or university and expected they would spend their entire working life with their employer. That has worked for a very long time, but we have hit an inflection point where this is less something we can expect. Mid-career hires were frowned upon. If you bolted from your employer, you had almost zero chance of joining a competitor. You entered a dark forest and had to find your way through ...
Mar 06, 2024•11 min
Leaders now face a pivotal moment in business in Japan. Do they continue to cling to the past? Do they replay what they went through when they were younger and lead as they were taught by their seniors or do they change the angle of approach? Japan rebuilt itself after the devastation of the war. The workers slaved away, adding a notch to their collective belts as they slowly overtook the GNP levels of leading European countries. I remember how proud some Japanese company employees were when the...
Feb 28, 2024•12 min
As leaders, we are busy bees. We are buzzing around, going from meeting to meeting. We are getting together with clients over lunch, touching base with HQ, handling the media, talking to HR about our people and a host of other important activities. Usually poor time managers, we are constantly hemmed in by the demands on our schedules. The upshot is we are constantly looking for corners to cut, minutes to be shaved off regular activities and feeling oppressed by the overwhelming workload we face...
Feb 21, 2024•12 min
There are many paths to the mountaintop in the leadership area. Today, let’s go back to the practical realities of getting others to listen to you and, even more importantly, to follow you. My favourite quote on leadership is from Yogi Berra, the American baseball coach rather infamous for murdering the English language. He said something profound though, when he noted: “Leading is easy. It is getting people to follow you, which is hard”. If nobody likes you, what are your chances of uniting the...
Feb 14, 2024•12 min
You would think that organisations choose their leaders because they are skilled in communication. What is the job after all, but communicating with the team to make sure everyone is clear about what they have to do and to encourage them to do it? Well you would be wrong! Leaders are usually selected for promotion because they are very good, often the best, at their current job. It is assumed that they will be the best person to lead the team on that basis. Just as we know that the talented spor...
Feb 07, 2024•13 min
Leaders may not even be aware that they are poor listeners. They are very focused on telling others what to do. Being time poor, they are very focused on their own messaging, rather than the messaging efforts of others. In the war for talent in Japan, that could be a fatal move. One of the biggest factors driving engagement in Japan is the feeling that the boss values you. If the leader isn’t really listening to the team members, they are not stupid and they will pick up on this. Before you know...
Jan 31, 2024•13 min
The S-Curve is a very simple concept. Over time, a newly promoted employee goes through distinct stages in their performance achievement. Initially, their performance declines as they grapple with the new set of responsibilities. Gradually they get the swing of things and start to do well at their new accountabilities. After a period of becoming comfortable with their role, they start to stagnate as they stop growing. Within these stages are many nuances. We select people for promotion based on ...
Jan 24, 2024•13 min
As leaders are we all perfect? Are we perfect all the time? Obviously, the answer is “no” to both counts, but that doesn’t mean we always face up to our own shortcomings. An important part of growing and improving as a leader is to be honest about who we really are. Let’s go through some common areas where leaders can improve. 1. Uninspiring This uninspiring tag covers a vast majority of leaders. Ask yourself, “how many of my previous bosses would I describe as inspiring?” The answer for most pe...
Jan 18, 2024•12 min
Which is more important to us as the leader – what we choose to do or who we choose to be? Most of our careers on the way up will have been concentrated on doing, achieving, delivering results, making the numbers, getting projects delivered on time and on budget. Absolutely nothing wrong with any of that. When we get into a position of leadership there is always a lot to do. Previously we were responsible for ourselves and now we are responsible for a bunch of other people. It is always breathta...
Jan 10, 2024•11 min
Leadership is about creating environments that influence others to achieve group goals. This works because people support a world they help create. There are five success areas for leaders to focus on that make all the difference. Rate your performance by giving yourself a mark on a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high) for each area. Self-direction This is a must for leaders. If you can’t organise yourself, your ability to have others follow you is doubtful. Effective self-directed leaders have a perso...
Jan 03, 2024•8 min
We have probably all been on the receiving end of it or have been a witness to it. The presentation is completed, after which come the questions; some are fact finding, some seek clarification, while some are just plain nasty. Perhaps the questioner is not trying to be mean, but the result is the same. All eyes in the room burn a hole into you as everyone waits to see how you are going to handle this little Scud missile that is thinly disguised as a question. Some presenters splutter, nervousnes...
Dec 20, 2023•9 min
Doing more, and doing it better, faster and with less is driving global business. A cadre of professional managers running organisations is going the same way as the typing pool. Organisations can no longer afford managers who only manage; instead, they also need them to be leaders. This begs the question: what is the difference between a manager and a leader? Simply put, leaders build people and manage processes, while managers just manage processes. The organisation has various processes that ...
Dec 13, 2023•8 min
“Hey, it’s a jungle out there”. A brilliant meeting followed by a woeful meeting; the emotional roller-coaster world of sales.You’re up and down within minutes, depending on the client’s interest and reaction. You’re always too early or too late for the business chance. The client is never on your timetable, especially your schedule around meeting the month’s quota. So how do we keep salespeople motivated to push through and produce the needed results? Managing salespeople requires time-usage pe...
Dec 06, 2023•9 min
Success is usually thought to be built on a combination of personal attributes such as intelligence, technical knowledge, street smarts, hard won experience (built on failures from pushing too hard), guts and tenacity. Our varsity halls offer a vast array of academic knowledge, information, insights, concepts, theories, tomes, technology and debate. Company education is usually focused on producing detailed product knowledge and navigation clarity around the organizational labyrinth. Tick the bo...
Nov 29, 2023•8 min
Corporate learning isn’t working. Heroically, time and treasure are being spent by company leaders to improve staff performance. Inherent in that goal is that we as recipients learn something new or re-learn what we supposedly should know already. Talking to companies interested in increasing people performance, we have noted some common barriers to making learning work. Business conditions, markets, the competition are all in a state of flux and change is now "constant". Companies attempt to re...
Nov 22, 2023•5 min
"I don’t understand!". Well in Nippon, particularly, what a pandora’s box or treasure trove that statement is, depending on your point of view. Employees who respond in this way may have a number of subterranean issues bubbling away. As managers, our ability to plumb the depths of what they are saying is integral for success. Here are 5 hidden meanings behind that "I don’t understand" response. Gauging which one applies is the combined IQ and EQ test for managers. Here are few hints on passing t...
Nov 15, 2023•7 min
I am putting this content together for me to remind myself that psychosomatic illness is a real thing and there are plenty of graveyards with ambitious thrusting leaders pushing up daisies, because the stress killed them. Being an Aussie male is a health hazard. We are taught from a young age to harden up, soldier on, keep going no matter what. “She’ll be right” is our approach to health issues, which is why we don’t bother going to the doctor or taking good care of ourselves. Male leaders in ge...
Nov 08, 2023•11 min
I have a short fuse for idiocy. I know this about myself, so I have to work on me, to calm down and not just verbally unload both shotgun barrels into the idiot. Like everything, there is best practice about giving errant staff feedback. I find a useful ploy is to “time separate” my irritation with them from when I deliver the feedback. When I get hot and irritated, I can be too powerful, direct, strong and cutting. Just putting the conversation off for a day, can make a big difference to how I ...
Nov 01, 2023•10 min
