Japan’s 3 No Ys Society   Sakaiya Taichi, well known author and futurist, made an interesting observation about the current trend of Japanese society. He referred to Japan’s current lack of yoku (desire), yume (dreams) and yaruki (guts). What does this mean for business and for our companies if we are staffed by young people without these three Ys? As leaders, how can we reverse this trend and produce more engaged teams? Is it too late already?   Diligence has a strong pedigree in japan. Retainers in samurai society were trained to be ready to die for their lord anywhere, anytime. In the pre-war period the majority of people lived in non-urban areas, where agriculture was the main pursuit. This required you to pull your own weight as part of a group effort. The harshest punishment was ostracism or murahachibu, which meant no cooperation from the group and possibly death the result.   In the post-war period, previous firebombing of cities and industrial centers meant Japan had to drag itself up from the ashes of defeat and a strong national unity formed around doing just that. As Japan’s GDP grew, salarymen would sacrifice their families for the company and proudly count off the leading economies Japan had surpassed, as collective notches on the belt of a resurgent Japan.   The 1985 Plaza Accord triggered the surge of the yen and the biggest global shopping spree possibly ever seen on this planet. Japan was coined Number One. The bubble burst, Japan went into decline and has been lurching along the bottom ever since. The Lehman Shock in 2008 and then the triple whammy of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear core meltdown in 2011 has underlined Japan’s continuing fragility. The social contract has been broken and companies now prefer to hire part-timers, to enjoy the greatest flexibility to respond to future downturns. Company profits are soaring but employee wages are not moving. Abenomics seems to have run out of gas. The roots of these three no Ys are not hard to find.   Demographics will create more pressure on companies to focus harder on recruiting and retaining their workers, as the supply of young workers steadily reduces. The stimulus to desire and dreaming of a better future will only arise because company leadership recognizes there is an issue in the first place. The expectation that this current generation will fit in like every preceding generation is Leadership Japan’s geriatric illusion.   The young will need a lot more conversations about their future prospects inside the company, than their current aging bosses ever received from their superiors. They want praise and feedback to give them the confidence to step up and take responsibility. The old style boss luxury of screaming at staff when they make a mistake will not long be available. The young will simply leave and get a job elsewhere.   Not delegating and thereby not enabling them to gain experience, so they can position themselves to step up into higher levels of authority, won’t cut it either. Disorganised, time mismanaging bosses who think it is “easier if I do it myself “ will find it is not easier, as they have to spend time and treasure to replace a more mobile workforce.   Coaching and mentoring skills are going to be going at a premium as leaders are sought out who can develop future leaders, retaining the best talent and leveraging the ideas, insights and innovations of those at the bottom – those closest to the action.   Apart from the obvious relationship with the immediate supervisor as a key driver of engagement in staff, the other two drivers are belief in the direction senior management are taking the company and pride in the organization. These last two are communication necessities. If current leaders think these are obvious truths, in no need of elucidation, then they are in for a sad business future, as the young depart in droves for competitors.   Take a good hard look at your middle managers and senior leaders – do they get it? Are they able to encourage the young to see a future with the firm and to not think they have to leave in order to advance in their career? Are they able to get across the key messages required? If they are not fully capable, we had better get busy re-training them for the brave new world just around the corner. Their Job One is to create a culture of yoku, yume and yaruki inside the organization.    

Delivering Presentations With Clarity     There are a number of common structures for giving presentations and one of the most popular is the opening-key points/evidence-closing variety. We consider the length of the presentation, the audience, the purpose of our talk and then we pour the contents into this structure. Generally, in a 30 minute speech we can only consider a few key points we can cover, so we select the most powerful and then look for the evidence which will persuade our audience. This is where a lot of presentations suddenly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.   The structure flow is a simple one. The analysis of the occasion is straightforward, but at this next stage we can get confused about what we are trying to achieve. We might become so engrossed in the evidence assembly component that we forget the crucial “WHY” aspect of this effort. We are not here to produce mounds of statistics, battalions of bar charts or proffer reams of text on a screen. Technically oriented presenters love to bludgeon their audience with detail, usually forcing the font or scale to be so small, it is barely visible on screen.   No, the WHY is all about persuading the audience to agree with our conclusion or way of thinking, This is communication skill rather than archeological or archival skill. Line charts, pie charts, comparison tables are trotted out to do battle with the perceptions and biases of the audience. The errors though include a presentation style where the actual detail is impenetrable and so is not fully accepted.   The tendency to imagine that this superb, high quality data will stand by itself and not require the presenter to do much, is another grave error. “I don’t have to be a good speaker, because the quality of my information is so valuable”, is a typical, if somewhat pathetic excuse.   Another common error is to invest the vast majority of the available time for the presentation preparation on the accompanying slides for the talk. Digging up the data, tweeking the detail, creating the charts, arranging the order etc., keeps us quite busy. So busy, in fact, that we forget to practice the delivery of the talk. We find ourselves peering down at our audience, presenting the content for the first time up while at the podium. We are in fact practicing on our audience and this is definitely not a best practice.   How should we fix this approach? Some examples of evidence are really powerful when they are numbers, but instead of drowning our audience with too many numbers, we can select a gripper and use a very big font to isolate out that one number. We then talk to that number and explain what it means. If we want to use line charts or trend analysis, then one chart per slide is a good rule. We don’t split the visual concentration of our audience. We speak to the significance of the trend, knowing that our audience can see the trend line for themselves.   To improve our communication effectiveness, we go one step further and we tell stories about these numbers. Who was involved, where, when and what happened. We recall stories more easily than masses of data, so the evidence and context are more easily transferred. This helps to get us around to the WHY of our talk, the key point we want the audience to absorb. And we practice the delivery over and over until we are comfortable we have the cadence right. We recall Professor Albert Mehrabian’s study about the importance of not just what we say, but how we say it. Emphasising particular words, adding gestures for strengthening key points, engaging our audience by using eye contact, allowing pauses so ideas can sink in and reducing distractions so our actual words are absorbed.   Structure, rehearsal, storytelling and congruent delivery combine to create a powerful success formula for presentations.   Action Steps   Don’t be consumed with the detail, keep the main message in mind Don’t be self-indulgent and think your supreme content excuses a poor delivery Allocate sufficient time for rehearsals Tell the stories behind the data Remember what you say is important but how you say it is more important

The course is amazing.  The kaizen on a 104 year old course is even more amazing.  This is taken from a live presentation I gave on the course, explaining what the course will do for your career.  There are 9 million graduates of this course and it is taught in nearly 100 countries in 30 languages.  I have included this audio, because people ask me: "what does Dale Carnegie training cover?".  In this programme, i go into a lot of depth about what the most famous training course in the world covers and how it achieves its results.  I hope this audio will inspire you, wherever you are located, to take the course and experience its immense power.  I wish I had taken it much earlier in my career - I know it would have helped me so much in learning how to deal with people - especially people who are not like me.

We Need Help   The changing role of Executive Assistants and Secretaries reflects the dominance of the keyboard and a DIY approach to work content creation by leaders. Once upon a time, the majority of boss content output was produced by others, a magical time of delegation ruling the world. The secretarial pool only lives in the memory of the few or has been briefly glimpsed in black and white movies. We replaced the system, but as leaders have we really fully adjusted to the change?   We are more “efficient” because brigades of women (and they were all women), have been liberated from the boredom of typing out the boss’s work. Today the boss is the one typing content into a computer keyboard, usually destined to appear in an email, a word document, a powerpoint slide or a spreadsheet. The modern normalisation of the sheer volume of communication ensures the secretarial function is only going to be there for the very upper echelons of large organisations.   The DIY outcome has had a negative knock-on effect, where leaders who should be delegating, have gotten out of the habit and do work they should be delegating to their staff. The delegation muscle has atrophied and become flabby.   Find some handy blunt object and apply it vigorously to your own head if you have ever said, “It will be faster if I do it myself”. We all do it, because we are lazy and disorganised. Lazy because we won’t make the effort to set ourselves up for long term success by developing our team members, so that they can step up and take on a higher role. Disorganised because our time management skills are poor and we are unable to schedule the necessary time for the delegation steps, which ultimately will make the process work so well. We are often too busy doing “today” to be able to consider ”future” efficiency   Worse than that, we have dangerous self-talk such as, “delegation doesn’t work”. Well, it does work but not if we do it in some half-baked fashion, missing vital inputs and steps. We have the “don’t delegate enough” leader disease, but we are no longer noticing the symptoms, because it has become the new normal to do it by yourself.   Let’s take a reality check here and see how we score on some simple questions:   Do you work out details others could handle? Do you keep your hands on too many projects? Do you find yourself rushing to meet deadlines? Do you work longer hours than other managers and do so on a regular basis? Do you spend your time doing tasks for others that they could do themselves? Do you become involved in working on projects you thought you had given to others?   If we answered “Yes” to all or a majority of those questions, it is time to think carefully about what type of work future we want? Would we be better placed to be spending our days concentrating on doing high value tasks that only we can do? Do we want to stay right where we are now because the organization can’t promote us? They can’t move us because there is no logical successor to replace us and we are invaluable in the current role.   When we sit back and evaluate what we actually do all day, everyday, how much of our work-life is being spent on quality time and how much on low value tasks? If the high quality tasks are an infinitesimally small portion of our total work day, what does that tell us about our actual productivity and the potential we have to do a lot better?   Forest and trees get confused when we are too busy just doing. We need time for thinking, for imagining, for getting above the foliage canopy and glimpsing into the future. Our inability to delegate is holding us down in our careers or damaging our businesses. Without realising it, we have become the blocker to progress because we are too busy and too DIY oriented. It is time to reach for that blunt object and knock some sense into our heads about the importance of being able to delegate successfully.   Action Steps   Take the survey questions and really evaluate the consequences of the answers carefully Ask yourself about your short-term versus long-term work balance Question why you are doing tasks that you shouldn’t be doing Look for delegation opportunities and make the time to do them properly Never forget time is life and carefully check how you are spending it

The Devil Is In The Detail   “The Devil Is In The Detail” saying, reflects ancient wisdom about taking careful notice of small things. The semi-amusing reflection on this saying is that it was created centuries ago, when we can imagine life was substantially less complex than it is today. E-mail surges, flat surfaces groaning under the weight of paper, meetings back to back from dawn to dusk, ring tones, beeps and assorted intrusions from digital devices we carry on our person 24 hours a day - this is the modern life. How easy it is for us to become overwhelmed by all the detail and in the process unknowingly unleash a number of Devils. The best answers to these types of dilemmas is to work on our time management, especially prioritisation and that other partner in crime – delegation. Surprisingly, many of the executives I train or coach do not sufficiently plan their days. They do not have written down lists of what should occupy their valuable time, in order of priority and executed starting with the task of highest importance. They are commencing their days hammering way on whatever random emails landed in their inbox overnight. They troop off to a barrage of meetings and then race back to attack the newer emails which slipped through during their absence or which could not be knocked over, surreptitiously, on their device during the meeting. Stop kidding yourself. “Your time is all you have and time is life”. Pause for a moment and let that one sink in slowly. Set goals, so you have a direction. Set a vision so that you have a philosophy about WHY you are doing it all. Boil both down to tasks to be completed on a daily basis, arranged in a pecking order from most to least important and only start with the number one priority. We can’t do everything each day, but we can do the most important thing. Be adaptable to change the order, as the day unfolds, but stick with the self-designated tasks. Move unfinished tasks to the next day’s list and start again with the application of priorities, as they will vary from day to day. Do this every day and life becomes a lot more productive and the feeling of being in control starts to enter your soul. The other bear trap for executives is delegation - usually poorly understood and even more poorly executed. Delegation is a misnomer for many executives, because the correct word is dumping, not delegation. This means shoveling the “whatever” off your desk on to some poor unsuspecting soul’s work pile. It means no supervision until the date of completion and then the teeth nashing, hand wringing and ear steam come into evidence, as you discover either it is not ready or even worse ready, but the wrong thing. Delegation needs two key steps to be actually worthy of being referred to as delegation. It needs a communication piece with the delegatee, where the purpose of the delegation is explained as being there to help that person’s career, by exposing them to the type of tasks they will need to do, to rise through the ranks. The other discipline is checking on progress. There is a delicate balance to ensure checking doesn’t slip into micro managing, but nevertheless there must be checking. The obvious A to B route for any project sometimes takes a detour in the hands of our subordinates, who decide that A to Q makes more sense to them. We need to pick that up early so we don’t see the task wander off piste.   This is all good in theory! Annoyingly, our busy life interferes with the checking component and we easily stray into dumping territory. Often, we later find projects or tasks have gone awry and serious amounts of effort are then need to be devoted to their recovery. Creating templates for follow up can help. Rather than relying on memory (an increasingly unreliable ally as we get busier) we have a series of templates for meetings. The template nominates what needs to be addressed in the conversation, so that nothing gets missed. Subordinates get consistency of management and realise the boss is not dropping the ball, so no shortcuts or deviations will be slipping though unnoticed. We usually only need to make the templates once. Keep them handy and life gets better very quickly.

The Negotiation Process     “Winning is not a sometime thing. You don’t do things right once in a while…you do them right all of the time”. This is a great quote from the famous American football coach Vince Lombardi and we can apply this idea directly to negotiations. Any business undertaking does better when there is a structure, a process that is capable of creating consistent outcomes. As negotiators, if we don’t manage the process, we risk becoming passive, reactive spectators to events as they unfold. Purposeful behavior is the key to influencing win-win outcomes.   There are four stages of the negotiation we should prepare for:   Analysis We need to identify possible alternatives available to us in reaching an agreement. There are many levers we can pull in negotiating an agreement and finding added value through those levers requires clarity around the full picture of what we are trying to achieve.   We need to see the negotiation from the point of view of our counterparty. For this we need information and perspective before we even get to the negotiating table. What position are they likely to take, what interests do they have, what forces are impacting them at the moment or will in the near future.?   We need to reframe the conversation to avoid confrontation. This means we are looking for words and deeds that speak to a win-win outcome.   Presentation We should rehearse the other side’s presentation, as well as our own. By actually doing a dry run of their presentation, as we imagine it, we throw up insights and ideas which are very helpful for ourselves.   For our presentation, we should frame it in the language of the interests and needs of the counterparty. Talking about what we want doesn’t move us toward an agreement. Speaking their language, contemplating solutions to their issues positions us all on the same side of the negotiating table and leads to better outcomes, much faster than otherwise.   When we present we should be looking for areas where we can provide added value to the other party, through our suggested solutions. This makes it much easier for them to agree, because the take out is better or larger than they had considered.   Bargaining We must clearly fix our BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) at the start. This is our fall back or even walk away position. It should be realistic and as close to the ideal outcome as we can manage. If we feel negotiating “tactics” are being used on us, we can just respond by suggesting an alternative solution rather than getting emotional and reacting. In our presentation we have tried to make it easy to agree to our proposal and hard to disagree. We shouldn’t make the other party work hard to reach an agreement. By being flexible we can smooth their path to acceptance.   Agreement We should make certain we specify all point that are agreed. Things which need to be fixed, should not be left floating around. This is the time to fix them. So that there are no disputes later, we need to get the detail down in writing. Each side needs to be comfortable with the document and clear about what is covered and not covered.   There will be milestones for execution of the agreement and these need to be specified. There will be a schedule for fulfillment of the agreement and this needs to be detailed in scope. The execution piece is usually when problems arise, as more parties who are affected by the agreement become aware of the ramifications of what was agreed and may resist the agreement being completed.   We do better when we have a framework to guide us and this simple four step process will assist us in preparing for the discussion with the counterparty. We don’t need to complicate things but we do need to have a structure to help us break down the complication into bite size pieces we can tackle when they arise.

Characteristics of Successful Negotiators     We can’t control the issues which arise during a negotiation or the attitude of the buyer, but we can control our own skill level and approach. The more we understand and manage our own behavior, the greater the influence we will have with others. To be successful we need to behave in a way which influences the interaction by moving it along a collaborative continuum.   Good reputation with good intentions People may forget the finer points of the negotiation but they will remember how we treat them. Burning people, being too sharp, too cunning creates a negative reputation for fair dealing. The aim is to win in business and one deal is only one deal. Winning the battle and losing the war is for short-term transactional types. We aim to be around a long time, so our approach will reflect that intention.   Respectful, trusting and trustworthy Getting to a mutually satisfactory and beneficial outcome is the goal. Along the way, we treat the counter party with respect and they feel it. This adds to our own commercial history as someone you can trust in business and that is worth a lot more than the contents of one transaction.   Confident and positive Having the right intentions gives us strength to find a solution that will be well regarded. We are constantly looking for a way through the difficulties, seeking to find a solution to the other party’s issues.   Well prepared Knowing the facts, the background, the individuals, the market situation are all elements we can and should prepare prior to having any discussions with the counterparty. Being able to quickly source key information, as negotiations get underway, is a tremendous booster to finding a successful outcome.   Composed Calm and considered is a good philosophical position to adopt in negotiations. Emotional control is a prerequisite for success.   Effective communicator This idea often suggests being a good talker when in actual fact being a good listener is often more important. Asking excellent questions and listening for what is not being said is an approach that will yield rewards. Tact and diplomacy are skills that go a long way to improve understanding and create agreement.   People skills Helping people to relax, finding common ground, getting on their wave length are all people skills. Being able to remove barriers and reduce inflammation points, through how we treat others, makes the negotiation discussion proceed in a smooth fashion. We like to do business with people who are like us and that is where the person with people skills really shines. They are able to operate on a level that the counterparty likes and respects.   Open-minded Flexibility is a source of strength in a fluid, shifting activity like negotiating. Rigidity can lock us in to a position which precludes a mutually beneficial agreement, usually because we have let our own ego get in the way.   Creative We are sometimes captives to our limited knowledge and experiences and so the world of possibilities seems small. Finding a tangential solution through a creative approach can produce surprising breakthroughs, when everything seems to be heading toward a train wreck in the negotiations. Thinking about a problem from various angles helps us to see options that may have been hidden or unclear.   A risk taker In finding agreement there is always an element of risk. Caution, timidity, fear drive us into corners from which it is sometimes difficult to emerge. Having a capacity to take a risk because you have thought through how to minimise that risk once taken, is a big advantage when it comes to finding creative solutions to end an impasse.   Business is not a one time thing, so how we treat others and especially the way we do business marks us out in the community. Bad news always traveled fast and far, but today with business social media being so prevalent, we are talking another level of transparency. Successful negotiators know this and never let their reputation become sullied for a small tricky gain. They play the long game and seek to permanently increase their influence.       Today’s Main Points   Good reputation with good intentions Respectful, trusting and trustworthy Confident and positive Well prepared Composed Effective communicator People skills Open-minded Creative A risk taker

Negotiation Fails   Former American President John F. Kennedy left us with a great quote: “Let’s never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate”. Actually, we do fear to negotiate though, don’t we. We worry about asking for too much or too little. We usually imagine a “negotiator” as someone totally unlike ourselves, a tough individual with ice coursing through their veins.   Ironically, we are all negotiating everyday within our families, circle of friends and companies. Decisions have to be taken, a direction has to be chosen and we need others to agree with our idea. This often requires compromise or even giving up our idea, in preference to competing suggestions. We are not taught how to negotiate though and so we are mainly unschooled amateurs flailing around.   This “negotiation” issue is a big topic, so let’s narrow the focus to common mistakes we may be making right now, which we should eliminate forthwith.   Negotiating price before details There are many elements usually involved in making a decision and price is just one of them. We need to garner the full spectrum of issues involved and check our assumptions about what will happen once a deal has been struck. Hidden fees, terms of payment, penalties, timing – we should create our own checklist of items before we even have any discussion with the other party.   Failing to keep the end in mind and leaving no room for negotiation Key details can occupy our complete attention to the detriment of what we are ultimately trying to achieve. There are micro and macro perspectives involved and we need to be able to keep reminding ourselves of the big picture, while we are mired in the mud and blood of the details.   Lack of confidence We undermine our mental attitude to the process of negotiating by talking ourselves down. Coming across as hesitant, unsure, nervous may embolden our negotiating partner and we achieve a diminished result as a consequence. In our lives the vast majority of people we will be negotiating with will be rank amateurs, just like us, so we shouldn’t be shy about what we are doing.   Failing to understand the needs of the customer Some things may not be negotiable, often for reasons which we could never even imagine. Once we understand clearly what the other side wants, we will be in a better position to find middle ground and strike a mutually satisfactory agreement.   Letting the customer dictate the process and outcomes The buyer may feel they are the dominant side in the negotiation and may try to force us to an agreement through the brute strength of their buying power. A bad agreement is a bad agreement, so we are reasonable in asking for input into the process and for deciding to walk away from the negotiating table.   Acting desperate We may in fact be desperate, but handing that key insight over to the negotiating partner is not necessary. We become all give and no take in the toing and froing of the negotiating process.   Using argumentative communications Emotional control is an asset we should develop and cherish. Verbal or written outbursts may make us feel important. Usually, however, they don’t help to find an agreement. It is rarely a good idea to set fire to the emotional wick inside the other person we are negotiating with.   Failing to recognize the walk away points We don’t have to agree if we don’t like the arrangements and we are better to flag those early, if they are deal breakers. Time is money, so let’s move on and find someone else more suitable to negotiate with.   Narrowing negotiations to one point, usually price Price is only one element of cost – there are other levers around financing, quality, timing, volume, contract length, etc., which can come into play.   Often, we get in our own way and make things unnecessarily hard for ourselves. If we stop making these basic mistakes we will do better in getting a preferred outcome.

Pummel Procrastination   We know we should do that project or piece of work but we resist. We may even be bold and get it into our To Do list, maybe even attach a high priority number to it, but still fail to start. Why? We are all pretty clever about avoiding pain and some projects have pain written all over them. Maybe we may have to think – gasp! Or maybe, it is going to require a lot of time and we feel too time poor to get into it. It could be it is complex and will require a lot of effort, sapping our strength for other competing easier projects. Hopefully, we are not just plain lazy, like Dilbert’s cartoon character “Wally” – a serial work avoider.   Our inner dialogue could also be an issue. We are talking ourselves out of doing the work because of what we are saying to ourselves about the prospect. Here are some ides on changing the inner conversation to slip the chains of procrastination and assist us to get the hard bits completed.   “I need to do it perfectly” This is a great one in japan, because Japanese culture really emphasizes doing things correctly and has low tolerance for mistakes. We can say instead, “I will get this project started and give myself sufficient time to work on it, so it is done correctly”.   “I have to” Our feelings of resistance increase whenever the words “have to” appear. We want to demonstrate our fierce independence by showing that project who is boss and reject that “have to” jive. Sadly we don’t start either, so all a bit self-defeating in the end. So let’s take back control and say instead “I choose to”.   “This project is overwhelming” This is the “eat the elephant” or “eat the live frog” metaphor – we are put off by the size or difficulty of the task at hand. Our mind is doing a quick calculation about all the other things we have to do and one project sucking up all the time is not computing. Let’s change our focus from contemplating the project in it’s entirety and say to ourselves “Where is the best place to start”.   “I have no time for lunch” Occasionally, this may happen, but if it is your regular excuse for not getting projects done, then we need to confront this head on. Change the language to yourself and say instead, “My work effectiveness will be much, much better after a break, so I will take lunch and then really get into it”.   “I’ll never get this finished” The prospect of completion is so daunting we run up the white flag immediately. We can see an ocean of pain spreading out before us and we want to delay the onset. Rather, let’s talk ourselves into it, by noting, “I know once I get started, I will be on a roll”.       “There is no way I can succeed” This is another one of those “all or nothing” choices we make. If I can’t do it perfectly, better not to do it at all. Better to avoid failure and having to confront my inner demons by not starting. Switch gears and use a kaizen thought process, “I will give it my best shot, get it going and work on improving it along the way”.   “No one else is working as hard as me” Being such a legend in the workplace, I deserve to be cut some slack around here. I can cruise for a bit, because I am more valuable than the rest of the crew. Hello - give me a break, pleeeeease! Look at it differently, “This is my chance to take a leadership role and encourage others to swallow their frog”.   “I don’t know where to begin” A solid rock face wall is confronting and looking straight up, it is a long way to the top. Switch thoughts and say, “Get the hard part done and then the rest will be easy”.   “I hate this part of the job” We know ourselves and we know our pain and pleasure points. Let’s combine them and think, “Once I finish this task, I will reward myself!”   Change our inner conversation and we change our productivity. Remember, time is limited and so we can’t do everything, but we can choose to do the most important thing every day. Let’s talk ourselves into it.

Getting More Done Faster   “The first thing is to make sure you are in the moment” says ten time tennis Grand Slam winner Novak Djokovic. “That is much easier to say than to do. You have to exclude all distractions and focus on what you are about to do. In order to get into that state of concentration, you need to have a lot of experience, and a lot of mental strength. You are not born with that. It is something you have to build by yourself”.   Leaders are busy people and it is difficult to find time during the day to be “in the moment”. Phones ring, email floods in without mercy, staff want a piece of you, meetings suck the life force out of your day, business social media beckons with its siren song of “look at me, look at me”, imminent deadlines loom. Consequently, you often look back on the day and are bewildered as to where the time went and become frustrated with how little actually got done.   Excluding distractions and focusing on what you need to be doing are learnt skills. It is astonishing to me how few leaders plan their day. When I am teaching leadership to senior leaders and we get to the time management bit, I ask who plans their day – written down and prioritised? On average I would be lucky to get 10% of the participants raising their hands. When I clarify that they are writing it down in some form of numbered order, a few sheepishly lower their hands.   Are they lacking the mental strength to be able to organize themselves? I don’t think that is the issue. It seems to be a general lack of ability to self-organise their day. The first barrier is philosophical – “I don’t want to be locked into a schedule, because mine changes so much throughout the day, there is no point setting priorities which will keep changing”.   There is a breakthrough technology for that called the pencil. If your priorities change, then change the order by re-writing to list. “I can’t be bothered doing that burdensome task”. Well if that erase and re-write construct is too much for you, then we have to wonder why you are being put in charge of people and budgets in the first place.   The reality is the basic order of priorities will only ever change a few times a day and not every day, so the alteration of the order is no big deal, so get over it. The power of setting priorities, in order, is that you can concentrate on the highest value components of your work. When I was at University, I remember one of the professors showing me a cartoon about the difficulties of sitting down and writing. The ironing, the cleaning, the lawn mowing all were given a higher priority, because the writer was afraid to start and looked for escape routes. We do that in leadership – we procrastinate on projects and tasks we should be doing.   The golden rule of leadership time management is “we can’t do everything, but we can do the most important things”. The most high value tasks are those that only we can do – they are not things we can delegate. The key is to concentrate our mental energy to be “in the moment” to complete those highest value tasks without being distracted or hindered. Therefore time must be allocated for the highest value tasks that we have nominated ahead of all the other many tasks. The latter are the lower value tasks, which is where those without a prioritised list, spend the majority of their working lives and are left wondering why they can’t get enough done.   To allocate the time required for the highest value tasks, we need to create block time. This is cordoned off time, no distractions time, no meetings time, no calls or emails time. We seize the highest priority work to be done and we throw everything we have at it, uninterrupted and unapologetically. Allocate time in our diaries for block time by diarising a meeting with ourselves that is set in stone. If we don’t do that we will never be able to marshal the time we need for the highest value projects we need to be working on.   Leaders, let’s stop kidding ourselves - all we have is time and how we spend it determines all.

Today We Need Persuasive Leadership   The tried and true leadership model of “do what I say or else” is a personal favourite of people who actually can’t lead. This is the military model, which works when the bullets fly and your death is a requirement to achieve the broader objective. This is a ridiculous model for business and yet it lingers on. Death is not imminent but following idiots probably does shorten our lives. Higher degrees, certification, specialisations, longevity, technical knowledge etc., are all relied on for authority, to convince others that we should be in charge. But should we be in charge?   Leaders and managers have different roles. Managers are there to manage the processes of the organization, to make sure what needs to be done is completed, in a timely fashion and correctly. Leaders do all of that too, but they have an additional role and that is to develop people. This is where the “my way or the highway” breaks down.   We respect knowledge and ability more than we respect position power, degrees or degrees of self-aggrandisement. The thing we respect most though is how much interest the boss has in helping me to grow in my career. How much sympathy and understanding has the boss for my personal situation at home, because of my aging parents requiring care or my marriage is hitting a rocky patch, or my kid is having problems, etc.   In the old days, there was a clear separation between the individual’s work life and private situation and the boss would never go there, as it was considered intrusive and none of their business. Times have changed and society seems more complex today. We want people to bring their whole selves to work. The need for staff input of ideas and creativity is greater than it has ever been in human history. Technological advances have plugged the entire advanced world into a 24/7 cycle of work.   Persuading people of the “why” is leading today, not just pointing out the “what” or the “how”. Apart from professional salespeople who move up into management, there are probably few leaders who are any good at persuading anyone of anything. They are usually poor presenters, especially the technically oriented types.   They are working off the old paradigm of “I am smarter than you, that is why I am the leader and so do what I say”. If we want our organisations to be powered by just the brains and experience of these few leaders that is fine. If we want to bring the entire power of our teams to the battle front line with our competitors, it is not sufficient.   We need as many engaged brains as possible assembled and working on the problems facing us. The spark of creativity is not solely located in the leader’s brain. The youngest, newest employee may have keen insights and openness to new possibilities that the leaders who have moved far from the frontline cannot even recognise any more.

Making It Happen     Beginnings are important in business. It might be the start of a new calendar year, a new financial year or the launch of a new project or initiative. Often we get straight into the launch and problems arise. Those we didn’t anticipate are particularly annoying. We may not be able to eliminate all the issues associated with initiatives, but we can always do a better job in the pre-launch phase.   Here are three handy questions to contemplate in the early planning stage, as you toss around some ideas for the next big thing:   Are your team members ready? Everyone is usually busy and many feel “I am busy enough already thank you very much!”. Their attitude to doing more may be negative and resistant. Just dropping another new project into their laps, may not garner the commitment we need to see the task completed, in the time frame and within the budget.   You personally may be highly motivated, mainly because it is your idea and you have a really strong grasp of the WHY behind the initiative. The rest of the team may just view this as more work, relegated to the same level of importance of all the other things they are already doing. Our communication skills become important at this point. We need to be persuasive around the vision we have of a better future for the team and the enterprise. We need to be clear what we are going to do and not going to do in this project – our mission needs to be defined and separated from the other work already underway.   There is a clear objective in your mind but does the team share the same clarity around what we are trying to achieve. Leader’s presumptions are often the killer of successful outcomes. The WHY and none of the when, where, what and how needs to be the starting point. “Of course they know the WHY”, are fatal words that can come back to haunt us when the project tanks and the outcomes are not achieved.   Are the team members willing to put in the time and effort? “They get paid to be willing and able, don’t they?”. True, but that assumption and expectation are not enough. We want self-motivation, ownership, self-accountability, delegation and self-leadership. Staff will not automatically exhibit the behaviours that show a willingness to go the extra mile to get this done or the fortitude to keep going when things get tough. We need to anticipate that competing priorities will cloud the issues.   Staff will only step up because they have been convinced of the urgency and priority of these tasks. The big picture has been boiled down to some micro tasks that are prerequisites for successful outcomes. That requires arousing enthusiasm in the team to embrace change. Few people want to change, mainly because we are dug deep into our foxhole of our Comfort Zone. Enticing people to step out into the world of the new and risky, needs extra effort to communicate the better future. So we must dedicate the time to explain and also to check for understanding, buy-in and enthusiasm.   Are the team able to succeed? Do they have the resources? Often, our busy time is the most valuable resource and we are miserly in providing it, because we are so overwhelmed by what we are trying to cover off. We mistake dumping for delegation and then wonder why things go wrong. We need to factor our leader time into the equation from the start and make staff access available.   Is there any special training to bolster skill sets to ensure the task gets completed correctly. Are the internal barriers to cooperation with other groups cleared in readiness? Are there any logistical elements like equipment or space that need to be proffered so the project glides along smoothly. Has decision-making power been pushed far enough down the line to make sure the team members are feeling empowered to run this themselves?   Picking apart failure is no fun and feels like a burden. Better to dedicate some time for hard thinking at the start, rather than hard thinking at the end about where everything went wrong.     Action Steps   Explain the WHY Don’t presume - tell them Communicate the better future Don’t confuse dumping with delegation

Do The Right Thing In Japan, Always   Reputation in business is critical. Being honest, law abiding and treating business partners in a fair manner is the best policy for enhancing our reputation. Japan is a hard place in which to get into trouble, but that doesn’t stop some from trying.   The obvious thing to avoid is crime. You are probably thinking this is not an issue, and hopefully you are correct. Surprising things happen though. I had met a fellow Aussie businessman socially when I was Consul General in Osaka and the next time I saw him, was in the pokey. As a word of caution, those unfamiliar with how Consulates work might imagine that their Government is somehow going to get the loved one out of jail. Sadly, the Consular vehicle won’t be backed up to the compound wall to spring their national. All Embassies will do is make sure you are treated equally under the law and inquire whether you would like them to let your family know you are now a jailbird in Japan.   In this case, my Aussie compatriot did not want his family informed that he had been nabbed by the store security for shoplifting a small value item from a major retailer. Nor that in his bag the police found a substantial wad of cash and a smorgasbord of illegal pharmaceuticals.   After conducting many prison visits to incarcerated Aussies, let me assure you, don’t wind up in jail in Japan. The sheer fear in the eyes of all those I visited was seriously scary. One drug mule, a hulking deckie on prawn trawlers, was so obviously terrified of his guard, it still lingers in my mind’s eye. I don’t know what the prison guards do to their charges inside the walls of the prison, but the terror it induced was palpable and unforgettable. Jail time in Japan is not aimed at redemption by the way - the purpose of the entire experience is punishment and that is a big difference from many Western countries.   No jail time for me, you say. Hopefully you are correct, but you might be juiced up having a big night on the town celebrating in Roppongi and a fight suddenly erupts with some fellow muscular revelers sporting crew cuts. You jump in to help your mate, things rapidly go south and the cops arrive to clean it up. If the fracas involves locals, then don’t imagine the cops to give any credence to your side of the story (“Hey, they started it!”) and expect the judicial system to take a similarly harsh view of your unseemly behavior. By the way, binge drinking Brits and alcohol and testosterone fueled Aussies with short tempers, in particular, be careful!   It might be social media that brings your reputation undone. Your good name can be trashed all over the internet very easily and quickly. Recently, I received a broadcast Facebook query looking for help in locating a bad debtor. “Amazed” didn’t even begin to describe my reaction, as I knew both small business parties. “Wow, this is going everywhere,” I thought and how damaging that was for the named business partner’s reputation. We are all so interconnected today, one simple posting can be shared and dispersed with speed and breadth. It may or may not be warranted but the damage is done all the same. Retribution for not paying your way and not having a meaningful conversation with your buyer can be very expensive. Tokyo is still a small village for foreign businesspeople and everyone knows everyone else, pretty much. Broadcast postings set off concerns about not getting paid which means future potential business evaporates as no or low risk reactions set in.   Another cautionary tale came about from a false Facebook address. If you have really upset someone and they decide to go after you, then the business social media environment is perfect for waging acts of revenge. The Facebook posting looked like it was real, had a really intriguing tag line and took me to the fake site, where the dirt was piled high. This site was bursting with this person’s alleged business skullduggery and their reputation was being shredded on the spot. It took me a moment to work out it was a fake posting, because it was so well done, but the damage to reputation must have been enormous. For a small amount of money, you can command Facebook to send out a promoted post to specific demographics. That provides a lot of scope for little investment. Again, dealing with people honestly and in a straightforward manner, saves a lot of time devoted to damage control and precludes reputation obliteration.   Paying your bills is always a critical thing in business but some people are too clever by half. They have worked out that when you owe a substantial sum of money the problem is now the other guy’s. Collecting the amount owed, if it is not mega, is costly and time consuming. Knowing it falls between too little to go to Court over and too much to ignore, they offer pennies on the dollar. In this circumstance getting something back seems better than getting nothing and you don’t want to waste a lot of management time on this bad debt from a bad guy. So, their trap is sprung and you get paid only a pittance of what you are owed. This is painful.   The perpetrator’s immediate issue around cash flow may be removed, but the long -term damage to reputation is not so easily unwound. Caveat emptor is always a popular policy in choosing business partners and due diligence is a compliance must these days. People check us out on Google and business social media, before they do business with us when the amounts are substantial. It may take years to recover from a blow to one’s reputation and the internet leaves a trail for all future business partners to see. A heavy price will be paid at some point and invariably at the worst possible time. Again, this is a small foreigner village in many ways, and word gets around.   Sticking smaller suppliers with 60 – 90 day payment terms is a favourite for some of the larger players. The irony is that the people who need free credit the least, extract it from those who need prompt payment the most. Why do listed companies worth billions stick it to small-medium businesses? Presumably, when you take all the creditors together and bundle up the total amount owed and push payment back another extra month, the additional interest on that total amount and the cash flow flexibility is worth it. In business and life, might may be right, but it does take the sheen off the brand and the firm’s reputation. As a small business owner, I find this “stiff the small guy” routine happens way too often. Basically when you are in my position, your choices are few if you want their business, but it does leave a bitter taste in your mouth and a negative view of these brand name companies’ ethics.   So what can we take away from this discussion? As we know, Japan is pretty amae (indulgent) with foreigners, however, let’s not get sucked into a false sense of security. Jailbird time here is no joke, so just don’t take the risk. Treat business partners with respect, pay your bills or come to a mutually acceptable arrangement. Don’t try and dud anyone, you will be generating enemies with powerful tools at their disposal. Social media is an instant killer of reputations, the stain is semi-permanent and very hard to erase. If you create an adversary on social media, hostilities could continue indefinitely and future business opportunities could close out   So let’s always do the right thing in Japan.   As the saying goes, “the radius of the circle of karma is shorter than you think”.

The Devil Is In The Detail   This “The Devil Is In The Detail” saying, reflects ancient wisdom about taking careful notice of small things. The semi-amusing reflection on this saying is that it was created centuries ago, when we can imagine life was substantially less complex than it is today. E-mail surges, flat surfaces groaning under the weight of paper, meetings back to back from dawn to dusk, ring tones, beeps and assorted intrusions from digital devices we carry on our person 24 hours a day - this is the modern life. How easy it is for us to become overwhelmed by all the detail and in the process unknowingly unleash a number of Devils. The usual answers to these types of dilemmas is to work on our time management, especially prioritisation and that other partner in crime – delegation. Surprisingly, many of the executives I train or coach do not sufficiently plan their days. They do not have written down lists of what should occupy their valuable time, in order of priority and executed starting with the task of highest importance. They are commencing their days hammering way on whatever random emails landed in their inbox overnight. They troop off to a barrage of meetings and then race back to attack the newer emails which slipped through during their absence or which could not be knocked over, surreptitiously, on their device during the meeting. Stop kidding yourself. “Your time is all you have and time is life”. Pause for a moment and let that one sink in slowly. Set goals, so you have a direction. Set a vision so that you have a philosophy about WHY you are doing it all. Boil both down to tasks to be completed on a daily basis, arranged in a pecking order from most to least important and only start with the number one priority. We can’t do everything each day, but we can do the most important thing. Be adaptable to change the order, as the day unfolds, but stick with the self-designated tasks. Move unfinished tasks to the next day’s list and start again with the application of priorities, as they will vary from day to day. Do this every day and life becomes a lot more productive and the feeling of being in control starts to enter your soul. The other bear trap for executives is delegation - usually poorly understood and even more poorly executed. Delegation is a misnomer for many executives, because the correct word is dumping, not delegation. This means shoveling the “whatever” off your desk on to some poor unsuspecting soul’s work pile. It means no supervision until the date of completion and then the teeth nashing, hand wringing and ear steam come into evidence, as you discover either it is not ready or even worse ready, but the wrong thing. Delegation needs two key steps to be actually worthy of being referred to as delegation. It needs a communication piece with the delegatee, where the purpose of the delegation is explained as being there to help that person’s career, by exposing them to the type of tasks they will need to do, to rise throught the ranks. The other discipline is checking on progress. There is a delicate balance to ensure checking doesn’t slip into micro managing, but nevertheless there must be checking. The obvious A to B route for any project sometimes takes a detour in the hands of our subordinates, who decide that A to Q makes more sense to them. We need to pick that up early so we don’t see the task wander off piste.   This is all good in theory! Annoyingly, our busy life interferes with the checking component and we easily stray into dumping territory. Often, we later find projects or tasks have gone awry and serious amounts of effort are then need to be devoted to their recovery. Creating templates for follow up can help. Rather than relying on memory (an increasingly unreliable ally as we get busier) we have a series of templates for meetings. The template nominates what needs to be addressed in the conversation, so that nothing gets missed. Subordinates get consistency of management and realise the boss is not dropping the ball, so no shortcuts or deviations will be slipping though unnoticed. We usually only need to make the templates once. Keep them handy and life gets better very quickly.

Hustle Baby Hustle   Smart people in sales are a problem. They have expansive brains, intellectual curiousity and strategic depth. They are quick to spot the big picture solutions for clients. Internally they are a system police, fantastic on urging the fixing of the sales structures and suggesting necessary improvements. With Excel macro skills to burn, they can transform a simple spreadsheet information capture into a formidable machine. They are not what we need in the sale’s team. We need “good hustle” from our salespeople. Not “hustle” in the sense of tricking clients into arrangements to secure a big commission or a fat bonus. “Good hustle” is about focus on getting commitments from buyers to proceed, that will benefit the buyer, because it will improve their business. This is usually not about long-term massive interventions but about the practical improvements that can be executed quickly, that produce an immediate outcome. Getting the client to that point of agreement requires energy, lots of energy. That energy is needed to make the phone calls to follow up on leads which come through to the website, from advertising, ad word campaigns, social media outreach etc. Also, contacting potential clients we have met at networking events, seeking referral clients and selecting prospective clients to be contacted through cold calling. This is not exciting work. It is less thrilling than working at the 30,000 foot level, overviewing vast swaths of client territory. What is needed is the exact opposite – meet, propose, meet, follow up, meet, gain commitment, follow up, follow up and further follow up. This is down and dirty in the trenches, just digging, digging, and more digging. Dull “grunts” in the sales army are not much help either. Clients need more consulting skills from salespeople than ever before and that requires intelligence, analytic ability and clarity. Smart people have these attributes in full, but they tend to become bored with the “grunt” aspect of sales. Digging the trench is not as exciting as planning the complete reworking of the client’s revenue producing systems. The reality though is we need smart people who can hustle. They are motivated to serve the client and are equally motivated to sift through a lot of potential clients, until they find a good match for the client need with their company’s services. As we say in sales, “you have to kiss a lot of toads before you find the handsome prince or beautiful princess”. Finding and developing motivated toad kissers is not that easy. Smart people love to work on complex problems. Companies have the same problems with their engineers. They have to give them a diet of complex problems to keep them mentally stimulated and engaged. Smart salespeople are the same. The issue though for leaders is that everyone is pretty busy already. Holding salespeople’s hands is usually outside the sales leader’s job description. Sales demands a huge amount of internal motivation and hustle energy. You cannot inject the latter into staff; they have to produce it themselves. Dilettante as a descriptor has come to have a pejorative nuance to it, but it does describe a lot of smart people in sales. They are cultivating an area of interest in sales without the real commitment. The real commitment includes doing all the dull digging and toad kissing required to find and satisfy clients. They often feel that is boring and below them. They typically seek the big transaction, the killer deal that breaks all the records. They want to start at the top and work their way up from there. This is why they are a problem for leaders and why they can burn up a lot of management time. Keeping them on track away from shiny objects, glitter and bright lights takes up time which could be better spent elsewhere. It is a dilemma – balancing the needs of smart people with the reality that unglamorous work is the core basis for sales success. If we get it wrong, we pay a double penalty – they don’t produce fast enough and when they leave in frustration, we have to start again and find their replacement. Time, money and stress are all required, which in fact are additional elements we shouldn’t have to be bothered with. So when selecting sales people for the team, it is absolutely necessary that we find that right balance between big strategic thinking and “good hustle”, between macro and micro skill sets and between textbook smart and street smart.   Action Steps Look for salespeople with a good dose of street smarts about them Ask questions about sales back office systems and see if their eyes light up Check that their work habits include lots of unexciting “grunt” activity

Five Success Steps for 2016    Calendar year endings and beginnings are often out of kilter with corporate Financial Years, however they are still a useful tool for us to use. In our busy lives, time for reflection seems limited and if we are not careful we can miss the chance to grow year by year. Do we want one year of experience twenty times or twenty years of experience? The answer to the latter is to make each step along the path a winner by maximizing the learning we gain each year. Here are five steps to take us forward for a great 2016.   Step One – Capture The Good Rather than beating yourself up and remonstrating with yourself, switch mental gears and capture the things which you did well in 2015. What wins, no matter how small, did you have? What projects did you complete? Which clients did you acquire, retain or grow? Create a list of the things that worked that were new developments or were established things done in a different, better way? Reflect and then write them down.   Step Two – Nominate the Better   The good thing about 2016 is you get to keep doing many of the things you did in 2015 but this time with the benefit of hindsight. We can apply the concept of kaizen or continuous improvement to all that we do and look for leveraging small gains over time. We may have found there is a better way of doing things through our experience, so 2016 is the time to try again.   Step Three – Make The Second Effort   We often have too big an appetite for projects or pieces of work and we can’t get them completed. We have made a start and we now need to marshal the resources – time, people and money - to get them done. Decide the new priority order of projects to be completed in 2016 and start working on getting them done this time around. In sports, coaches look for athletes who don’t give up, and make that second effort, after the first one failed. Choosing priorities, while hard, is necessary - we can’t do everything but we can do the most important things and we can do them in the order of priority.   Step Four – Set Goals   Perspectives do change and last year’s goals may not be as relevant this year. Time has a habit of overtaking us. Having reflected on what was working well, what would you do better this time and which projects need attention, it is time to get your goals down on paper. Writing them down has some weird magic about it and increases the clarity and commitment to getting them done. Trust me, you won’t remember them, so write them down.   Step Five – Commit Yourself   Goals once defined are not completed and need that final stage - execution. Set the timetable for the completion of the goals and align the team behind their achievement. Break the work down to bite-sized pieces and check progress regularly to keep things on track. Sounds easy, but often the reason we don’t get everything done is we lose our way through being overwhelmed by a bunch of stuff out of left field. We need to keep ourselves and our people moving forward regardless. Stuff happens, as they say, but we need to regroup and carry on anyway. The key is making a personal commitment to get it done, no excuses accepted.   These five steps are not difficult to do and the beauty of doing them is we can rearrange our workload in a way which brings mental freshness to our daily work routines. The start of a calendar year may be an illusory time trick we play on ourselves, but why not make it work for us? Our lives are so much more complex today, more interconnected every single minute of the day. We need bigger and bigger efforts just to keep up. We should use the start of the calendar year as a reinvigoration for a better business year – let’s make it a mental trick in our favour!             Action Steps   Capture the good Nominate the better Make the second effort Set goals Commit Yourself

Idea Generation Best Practice   How to best tap into the idea potential of our work teams? We know that the success of the organisation will be determined by the quality of the ideas we generate and the capacity to execute those excellent insights. Gathering folk around the white board and having a free form pitchfest of ideas is more often destructive than creative. Dominant personalities always hog the white board content. There is usually only one speed of idea creation being employed – fast, which is the easiest but most lightweight.   Researchers are questioning whether the group idea creation model actually works best at all, so how should we involve the team when producing ideas?   Here are the steps: ensure there is a facilitator to run the activity so the process is followed correctly. Use Green Light/Red Light thinking to maximise the opportunity to build up our idea bench strength. In the Green Light phase we promote idea free flow without impediment. This means no critiquing of ideas as they emerge.   Green Light thinking moves through seven stages.   Stage One - SILENCE. We ask that each person sit quietly and think. As they capture an idea, they write it clearly on a Post It note. The individuals in the team attach their Post It notes to the whiteboard, again in total silence. In this way, there is no pressure on anyone. Each person can think at their own pace, there are no power plays underway and there is no critique of what is being produced. We are seeking quantity not quality of ideas at this stage   Stage Two - the team go through the Post It notes on the white board together and rearrange them into columns of similar topics. Again, there is no evaluation or commentary on the content, just some clarification as to what was written down, if it is not clear to other members of the group. The column is given a topic name and this is written at the top of the column.   Stage Three - each of the teams share what they have come up with and present their columns and ideas. Clarification questions are allowed but no evaluation, just cross-pollination of ideas between the groups.   Stage Four - the groups go back to their seats and more time is given again for individual silent thoughts of potential ideas, based on the stimulation of other’s ideas and the fact of more time to go deeper. As ideas emerge these are added to the whiteboard.   Stage Five - the team members share their newest ideas with each other, place them into the existing columns or create new ones and then present them to the other groups, as before.   Stage Six - more time is given to work independently, again stimulated by the ideas generated by the other teams. The final group of Post Its are attached to the whiteboard, the ideas are explained and then categorized into the existing columns or new columns are created.   Stage Seven - the team members present their newest ideas to the other groups as before.   The power of these seven stages of Green Light thinking is that we are seeking the widest possible selection of ideas and at the same time allowing people the freedom to go deeply with their ideas. In Stage Four, few will be able to come with any new ideas and that is okay, some think faster than others and some think more deeply than others. In Stage Six, this is even more pronounced with most people coming up with zero new ideas. There will be a few though who will have ideas and often these are the most valuable ideas.   Now is time to start Red Light thinking. Stage One - the ideas that have been arranged in columns are evaluated and reset into priority order. There will be debate and discussion at this point and choices will be made. Stage Two - the top 10 ideas are presented to the other groups. Stage Three - the individual groups take another look at their priority list and re-evaluate based on what they have heard from the other groups. Stage Four - the top three ideas of each group are picked up for a group wide discussion, about which ideas will be actioned. Stage Five - the finalist ideas are put to the decision-maker for funding or adoption.   The keys to success are removing hierarchy and criticism from the idea generation process. Once generated, then the selection of highest priority items provides the final approver with the richest possible harvest of ideas from the total group.     Action Steps   Use a facilitator to run the event Follow the process of separating the idea generation stage from the evaluation phase Alternate individual work with group work Don’t panic if most people tap out early, keep going to reap the rewards of deeper thought processes from the few

Mr. Kurokawa’s Real Japanese Customer Service   I am sure you have you seen notices explaining that this location is going to close while the building is being reconstructed and that it will reopen at a specified day in the future? Given the increasingly stringent earthquake code here in Tokyo, we are seeing many businesses opting to re-build their premises. One notice however has become much talked about amongst Japanese retailers. Toraya are a famous traditional Japanese sweets manufacturer and retailer. Mr. Mitsuhiro Kurokawa is the 17th generation of his family to lead the business and his “we are rebuilding” notice is considered outstanding, even in a country where omotenashi is renowned.   Most such notices tell facts, supply relevant data and provide the obligatory greetings about serving us again when they reopen. Kurokawa san did all of that but much more. He put the current change in historical perspective, noting the business started in Kyoto in 1586 toward the end of the Muromachi (1338-1573) period, moving to Tokyo in 1869 and to this location in 1964. By doing this he is assuring us of their long traditions, longevity and capacity to change with the times when needed. He then started to tell some stories about the customers they have had at this shop on Aoyama Street in Akasaka, over the last 51 years.   He mentioned that every three days, a male customer visited the shop to enjoy oshiruko (bean paste sweet soup with grilled mochi). This is considered a bit unusual in Japan, because men don’t normally have such a sweet tooth, so this customer stood out from others.   Another customer, a kindergarten aged boy came with his mother to the shop every day and bought a bite sized yookan (sweet bean paste block). One day he came by himself to shop. The staff were worried about him and so they went out with him and found that the mother was secretly hiding and watching that he was OK.   A 100 year old lady regularly came by wheelchair to the shop. She later became hospitalized and her family came to buy namagashi (fresh Japanese sweets) and higashi (a dried sugar sweet), to take to the hospital for her. Even after she couldn't eat anything anymore, they found if they crushed the dried sugar sweet she could still enjoy it.   He mentioned that he couldn’t include all of the episodes they have shared over these 51 years with their customers, but he said he and the staff keep them, one by one, in their hearts forever.   Telling customer stories is powerful. Kurokawa san made the customers experiences come alive and he linked them to the products they enjoyed. Rather than just a cold statement of the facts, he crafted a statement of love for their customers. The feeling of the notice is that there is a special bond they feel with all of their customers and even though they won’t reopen on that site for another three years, they won’t have forgotten them and look forward to serving them forever. Are we communicating we feel a special bond with our customers? Often, corporate communications becomes machine like and wrapped up in what can sound like marketing department dross. Kurokawa san conveys a lot of heart felt feelings in this simple notice about the main store being rebuilt. Are we weaving enough customer stories into our communications? I don’t mean fake propaganda stories, but real episodes that the reader can visualise in their mind’s eye? Kurokawa san’s notice gets attention in Japan because of the sincerity in the message. He is regarded as really epitomising the spirit of a family that has served customers for 17 generations.   We may not be the 17th generation in our business, but we can bring more heart into the service we provide our customers. We can start right now with the service we provide and how we communicate that service.     Action Steps   Are we really thinking about creating an emotional connection with our clients Are we telling enough happy client stories in our communications Are we fully aware of the content of all the touch points we have with our buyers Are we serving from the heart or just the head Are we instilling the right frame of reference into our staff, regarding how to properly serve the client.  

Have The 3Es In Place Or Get Off The Stage     Not everyone should be a presenter. We don’t need higher levels of boredom or disinterest than we have already. A big “No thank you” to those conspiring to waste our precious time. This does not mean that only a few super talented individuals can be presenters. We can all learn to become competent and become better presenters. This is “nurture” not “nature” in action. The key point is your motivation, why are you doing this?   Dale Carnegie pioneered business public speaking when he launched his first course in 1912. He proffered the 3Es as a solid requirement before we contemplate being a speaker and it still applies today. Those Es are “earned the right”, “ excited” and “eager” to present.   We have earned the right to speak to others about our subject because we have studied the subject and we have relevant experience. It is not limited to our direct experience, because we could be drawing on the experience of others. We should be a subject matter expert with formidable knowledge on a particular topic. We have been reading expert opinion and doing research on this subject, absorbing the key points and making them relevant to the business community to whom we are speaking.   This means keeping up to date, because there are always new findings and new ideas emerging. For many of us, what we were taught in school is different to what our children are being taught today. The reason is specialties like biology, archaeology, astronomy, mathematics, physics etc., keep pushing the boundaries of our knowledge.   Today there are podcasts, advertorials, blogs, LinkedIn articles, YouTube videos, conferences, workshops, subscription information products, etc., all expanding our world. These are separate to the traditional sources of published academic works, journalistic offerings, thought pieces in print and mainstream broadcast media.   We must remain current because for sure, there will be members of our audience who are likely to be highly informed. As we know, everyone has instant access to everything today. While we are speaking, they can quickly go on-line and search for references we make to facts, situations and people. We do this ourselves don’t we!   We need to have reserve power – this is the additional knowledge of a subject, which we don’t have time to present during our allotted speaking time. To have reserve power requires we study our subject.   Experience is the other highly valuable arrow in our speaker quiver. Telling stories, based around our personal experience or observation is very powerful. Our audience may choose to disagree with our conclusion drawn from our experience, but they cannot argue with that experience.   We need to draw on more than our own individual experience and that is where the exploits of others, particularly famous individuals, lends credibility to the story we are telling and the points we are making. People remember stories but they don’t recall disjointed facts and data for very long. We all have great stories to relate, but we forget to tell them. Instead we dole out dry facts and data, thinking this is what our audience is wanting. This could not be further from the truth.   We are conditioned from babyhood to listen to stories and nothing beats a riveting account of a total meltdown you had in your business and how you fixed it. We love to listen to learn and relating our successes and failures is hungrily consumed by our audience, because it is real and relevant.   Being excited to present because we have positive feelings about our subject is a another vital prerequisite for success. Watching the global head of a huge resources company give a presentation on what they were doing, but conducted without the slightest sense of excitement for the topic, was a brutal experience. The slides were professional, the speaking speed was good, the flow was logical, he was handsome, expensively dressed, his shoes were glistening. It was horrible. It was awful because it was so bland, so devoid of passion for the subject. It was “painting by numbers” for someone thrust into the role of global representative for the company. He destroyed his brand on the spot.   We should never overlook the power of passion for our subject. We are the one creating this talk, so we can empty our heart into the topic without any reserve. We don’t have to pick a boring topic to speak on. Even a dull sounding topic can be brought alive in the hands of the person delivering the talk. When they feel and communicate their excitement for the topic, we pick that excitement up and it adds persuasive power to what it is they are saying.   He failed the other test, which is eager to project the value to his listeners. He was robotic, boring, passionless. There were no take-aways for our businesses, redemption tales, no hero’s journey – there was just an hour of time, dull and devoid of all life forms instead. Let’s do our analysis of our audience and understand what will be of value to them and then provide it.   What could he have done? He could have asked the organisers about his audience. He would have discovered a majority of small-medium enterprises and a couple of large firms. Knowing this, he could have thought about what lessons does his mega-company have for much smaller firms. What global market trends would be interesting to his audience. He could have offered some hints on what helped him to climb the greasy pole to the top of his field. He could have shared some anecdotes on the famous personalities he had met so far in his business role. None of this occurred because he was selfish. He was just focused on delivering what his company did and not much more.   The truly sad part is he has zero self-awareness. He will continue travelling the world killing his company and personal brands for a number of years into the future, totally oblivious to the damage he is doing. In those big organisations, the Emperor may have no clothes, but none of the “yes” men and women are ever going to let him know that.   He was speaking in Japan, so given how polite this society is, nobody in the audience is going to wander over and let him know he was a total fail. No doubt he left us for the next country to carry on the work of decimating his reputation with the next international audience. The presentation will have been totally identical, with no tailoring for the different culture or conditions.   Do us all a favour – bulk up on the 3Es before you speak. And if you do, then you will project a highly positive professional image to your audience for your brand, company and yourself.   Action Steps   Earn the right to speak to us by doing your homework Be excited about your subject, such that we feel your passion Be eager to share your insights, knowledge and experience with us

HQ Invariably Gets It Wrong About Japan   One of the dubious delights of running an international business in Japan is dealing with the Mother Ship or it’s Regional Hub spin off. Trying to explain Japan to those who don’t know Japan, has always proven tremendously character building for me. Having left the corporate treadmill to work for myself, I mistakenly thought I had kissed goodbye to all that pathetic nonsense. Alas, the long arm of Japan ignorance continues to reach out and challenge me. Today, I live the frustration vicariously through my clients here in Japan, who have to deal with their own version of hell - HQ or Regional Hub know nothings located outside Japan.   Joint ventures and partnerships are a fun feast. Japan is low on the detailed contractual side of the equation. The basic idea in Japan is we don’t need reams of lawyer speak, because the venture will be a success or won’t be a success, based on how well we can trust each other and work collaboratively. If it doesn't work out then we should walk away and not bother with courts, litigation, claims and compensation. We need to focus on the bigger picture of success and how to achieve that and so a handshake is all we need.   I was reminded of this recently when I was contemplating buying a marketing service from a US based company. They kindly sent over the agreement. Pages of lawyereese, barely penetrable, thick and dense to the point of physical pain wading through it. In Japan, we have very few written agreements with our clients. We agree on the training, deliver as agreed and we receive payment in a timely fashion – all off a handshake. We haven’t encountered any issues after 52 years operating here, but if we do, I am sure we will discuss and agree on a mutually suitable solution.   So a typical day in the life of the Japan rep is explaining to HQ why the Japan business is not tracking as expected when the agreement was concluded. In one client’s case, the original expectations proved to be a misalignment of skill sets and targets. The Japanese side had the sales force to cover the market but, it proved, not the expertise to cover it appropriately. Sales were uninspiring, compared to the original business plan expectations.   What was the Mother Ship solution? Fly in the Americans from HQ to berate the Japanese side at the board meetings about Japan’s poor sales performance. Shame them into action to sell something. The local representative was encouraged to keep the pressure on by using these same name and shame tactics in the interim between board meetings. The “verbal beatings will continue until morale improves” type of approach. The American HQ led strategy was going down a treat with the local Japanese partners, of course, as the trust and collaboration rapidly disintegrated.   Training delivered locally to those selected from within the existing sales force, was the better solution.   This sounds like a logical step, but convincing HQ to do so was painstaking. The HQ view was to send in trainers from the Regional Hub to do the training. Regional Hubs in APAC usually mean Singapore or Hong Kong. Who do they choose to send to Japan? The HR team is the preferred option, which excitingly, usually means a rapid fire, fast talking Chinese team member to come to Japan and conduct the training in English.   “Its okay, the team can speak English”, is how HQ types see it whenever the language and cultural issues are flagged locally. That English capability assumption would be extremely optimistic, in my experience. Just as a snarky side note, the people recommending these courses of action are often monolinguals, sometimes not even possessing a passport. Machine gun English combined with an unfamiliar Chinese accent and no cultural sensitivity, is just one of those genius solutions HQ unleashes on the innocent and blameless.   Even when native speakers of English are sent in from overseas, they tend to speak too quickly, use too many idioms, confuse with incomprehensible jokes and word play, apply content recalling acronyms that can’t actually be recalled and have zero idea what is really going in the class dynamic.   Doing role plays in English for teams whose clients are Japanese is one of the most brazen breakthrough HQ inspired ideas in a generation. The language of persuasion is brimming with semantic options, which unsurprisingly need to be in the buyer’s language. How we say it is much more important than what we say. Sales people practicing sentence construction in English, so that the instructor can understand, is dumb and pointless.   I was teaching a Relationship Selling class recently in English, with one very international Japanese salesman in the class. He correctly told me that there was no point in him doing the sentence formulation exercise in English because his clients are all Japanese firms. We switched over to Japanese and worked on helping improve his Unique Selling Proposition for his client base. If we are dealing with a mixed audience of English and Japanese speakers, then bilingual trainers are a must. The alternative is to waste the time of the Japanese staff, just to serve the English speakers. Sounds very 19th century Colonial in approach to me!   English comprehension between 50%-60% is the maximum we can probably expect up until about lunchtime, after which rates rapidly spiral down. This is not a very effective way of training local staff in Japan. Delivering the training in the mother tongue, with the required cultural understanding is at least the base line. On top of that, having trainers who are highly skilled is where the leverage can really be applied.   Headquarter’s whacky ideas are often amusing, at least for the first 15 seconds of hearing them, but the “global” training approach has proven fraught with failure. “The training was completed, checkmark the box”, is not an outcome. Taking the training and applying it to deliver higher productivity is the only acceptable outcome. A bit difficult though when you couldn’t understand most of it in the first place. Globally delivered training in English rarely produces any residual value for companies and you have to wonder why HQ keeps repeating the same mistake? It doesn't have to be like this. Time for the organisation to wise up and listen to their local rep’s advice on what works best in Japan.     Action Steps   Understand it is difficult to apply a heavily legalistic approach in Japan – it doesn’t work the same way here.   Publically berating the Japanese side over their performance is not going to improve anything   Deliver training in the local language whenever possible   Semantics matter in sales training so English won’t work for teams who sell in Japanese   Use highly talented trainers if you want to achieve leverage   HQ – listen to what your local rep is saying and follow their advice about Japan

Go Ahead, Motivate Me  “Motivate me” must be one of the saddest requests a leader can receive. The request may not be so bluntly articulated, but the underlying assumption that the boss is there to motivate the staff seems to linger. “If only I had a better boss, I would be better”. “If only this company got its act together, I could get mine together”. “If only these other staff weren’t so hopeless, I would do better here – these people are holding me back”. The search for salvation located in the responsibility of others is a big fail. Many religions offer salvation, but they all seem to require something from us to deserve that salvation. The world of mammon is no different.   Motivation, loyalty, accountability, effort, responsibility, engagement – probably every boss is expecting these from their staff. They are all outcomes from inputs. Inputs from both the boss side and the staff side. We know what level of staff motivation we want as leaders, but how do we achieve it?   Some favoured leader methodologies are yelling, threatening, instilling fear of loss, shaming and humiliating. Steve Jobs ticked the box on quite a few of these in his early days as a leader. He has become a halo encrusted, saint like figure nowadays because he took Apple away from the brink of self immolation and gave it a second life through his leadership. He was however a flawed leader who, at various times, resorted to these methods. His later success does not validate these bully boy tactics and favourites. “It was okay for Jobs, so it is acceptable for me to cascade the tough love down to my team”. Maybe not!   You and I are not Steve Jobs, so let’s not get carried away with the parallel logic extension. He had many other fine attributes driving his success and remember he was successful in his field, not ours. We also need to look at the opportunity cost of what he could have achieved, had he been a better people leader. Getting massive compliance will not get you enough creative innovation. It is difficult to be fearless about coming up with new ideas and possibilities, if the boss scares you to death.   Jobs could have done more, much, much more, if he had played to his people’s strengths rather than abusing them about their weaknesses. He was able to get brilliance from the brilliant, which is probably not all that hard because they are brilliant already. The trick is getting brilliance out of the average person. That requires a lot more effort and skill. This is also where most of us live, because brilliant people are expensive and usually we can’t afford too many of them.   By contrast, Craig Bellamy is a Rugby League coach in Australia leading the Melbourne Storm team. He is famous for taking 2nd and 3rd level athletes and turning them into 1st class talent. He didn’t have the financial capacity to pay for a team full of stars, so he took people with potential and developed them into stars. This is a better model for us because very few of us can afford to employ a team of stars, but we can create stars.   Another challenge for strong leaders is they often work off the assumption that what made them successful is the model for everyone else to follow. Oh if it were only that easy! This is why you hear so much whining when bosses get together. They are dissatisfied with the staff because they can’t operate at the level they require. We forget sometimes that we too had to learn things when we were at their age and stage, that we now know and take for granted as common sense.   I hope this isn’t new information but, unfortunately, few people are ever going to be like you. You realise this as you go though life, when trying to deal with various others, but mysteriously, we tend to forget this fact when at work. There is a reason for those differences. Personality styles are often broken out into four boxes and by definition we tend to suit one box over the others. Hence three quarters of the population are automatically not on our wave-length. Hmm!   So how can we motivate the people who are not like us – probably the majority of staff. By the way, if your staff are all the same personality style as you, because that is how you have stacked the recruiting system, settle back for disaster ahead. Your flagrant cult of your personality type and lack of diversity will bubble up so much group think, you will assure yourselves you are correct all the way along, as you speed lemming-like, straight off the cliff.   Let’s assume that is not the case and you have a typically diverse work group with people with various preferred personality styles. Do yourself a big favour and start communicating with the team, as they prefer. This is beyond the Golden Rule, on toward the Platinum Rule of “treating everyone, as they wish to be treated”. That means knowing what is self-motivating for each person and counter-intuitively, aligning that with the organisation’s goals, rather than the other way around. Think about what you have to do to achieve that powerful outcome.   Here is a hint. Communication skills, one of the most important soft skills, are a key to success here. What we say is important (technical expert content), but how we say it (expert communicator delivery) is more important. Many professionals are in complete denial about this. They firmly believe that their big brains and abundant knowledge will be sufficient. Not true!   We like to do business with people we like and trust. We might trust your professional skill, but if we don’t like you, we will only deal with you if we have no alternative. That would be a pretty rare case in these highly competitive times in crowded professional fields.   In Japan’s case, dentists and lawyers are a good examples. There are currently too many of both for the size of market demand, so the competition is fierce. In this situation, being able to communicate well with the client is critical. If they don’t feel you are on their wave length, they just head off to another practioner.   This will be the same for how Middle Management in Japan communicates with the younger generation. If the young don’t like it, they will leave. Given the constant demographic nightmare of fewer and fewer young University graduates, then they have many alternatives to working for you.     Be clear - we can’t motivate anyone but ourselves. However, as the leader, we can create an ecosystem where the team are encouraged to motivate themselves. Mirroring their preferred communication style when speaking (which is based on their personality style) leads to better understanding. Talking in terms of the other person’s interests, rather than our own, is more likely to be motivating for them.   The trick is you have to spend time with your team to know what their individual interests are. We loop back to the soft skills of good communication. The boss’s barked order generates docile compliance. The alignment of staff self-motivation with the direction of the organisation’s strategy, coupled with the right communications skills, get’s our people going the extra mile. That is a good goal - Platinum Rule turbo charged self-motivation.   Staff should motivate themselves and bosses should craft environments where staff motivation can be encouraged to flourish. This is a better distribution of responsibilities and has more opportunity for sustained success.     Action Steps   Build on people’s strengths rather than focusing on their weaknesses Remember you aren’t Steve Jobs and so don’t mimic his faults Your success model only works for you, so don’t expect it of others If you only hire people just like you prepare for disaster, you need diversity Use the Platinum Rule – treat everyone the way they want to be treated How you say it is more important than what you have to say Create the environment for self-motivation – that is your job as the leader Mirror the communication style of each of your people for the best communication outcomes

Atarashi San And The Big Japan Breakthrough Ever heard that a training course changed somebody's life? "It was good", "I enjoyed it", “I learnt something new”, maybe.  Warren Buffett, the famous American billionaire investor is a huge Dale Carnegie fan and often mentions in TV interviews how the Dale Carnegie course changed his life.  Being in Japan, it is great to hear a leading local businessman like Mr. Masami Atarashi say the very same thing. He is very well known in Japan and spends his time writing, adding to the 40 books he has already published and giving public speeches as well as training to executives.  Previously he headed up Johnson & Johnson, Philips, and Hallmark in Japan as President.  Last Thursday evening, he gave a brilliant talk at our graduate party on being successful in business in Japan. He also shared with me how the course impacted him, "The Dale Carnegie Course changed my life. When I was asked to make a speech to an audience or to a customer etc., I trembled with fear and I was a lousy speaker, not so much technically but mentally. Half way through the Dale Carnegie Course I found myself beginning to enjoy talking, that's one significant visible change which occurred to me. And overall I began to look at things in a positive way. Instead of saying we can't do it, I start looking at how we can do it. The whole mind set changed and that happened when I was 32." Like many senior Japanese businessmen who took the Dale Carnegie course in their younger days, he rose to the top ranks in Japan because of how he applied these ageless and universal principles of how to get on with people and how to get their active cooperation. Buffett and Atarashi share a common passion for a system of training that has been so carefully refined over the last 100 years.  It changes with the times but never dates, because the person to person relationship is always the centrepiece of any successful business partnership.  We may believe that technology has completely changed how we communicate and how we interact in the business world, now that we are together on email, LinkedIn , Facebook, Twitter etc.  The reality is we don't do deals over business social media.  We want to look the business partner in the eye and confirm we can trust them. Especially in Japan and especially when dealing with foreigners. We determine trust through listening to what is said and how it is said.  Everyone puts their best face forward, but we are trying to get behind the superficial to the reality.  We are racing around in business, with our antennae on full throttle, trying to dodge the dodgy types and find some trustworthy keepers. Yet, people say the dumbest things to us, ruining their credibility.  Sometimes I am amazed by what I hear. I was in my gym gear recently, waiting to pick up my car after a workout and a long established businessman I have known socially for many years was also waiting for his car.  He looked me over and said disparagingly, "so what are you trying to prove?".  I was flummoxed by the question, and I am still not quite sure how to answer it, but more so because of his poor human relations skills on display.  I thought, "Wow, how has this guy lasted so long in business, if his communication skills are so poor". We see people who are quite clever, scoring "own goals" all of the time because they can't control what comes out of their mouth or because their self-awareness level is hovering somewhere around zero. The Japanese call it KY, an acronym using English to abbreviate “kuki wo yomenai” or can’t read the air or no sense of occasion, as possible translations. Trust me, these KY people will have a hard life in business getting others to cooperate with them or getting people to follow them.  They can pull position power on the team and force everyone's compliance.  This is a long way though from having the team really engaged, actively thinking how we can win against the competition or how can we have things run better around here. Business is too complex for us to do it all by ourselves anymore - the day of the hero is over.  Today we need the hero team.  To get things done requires more and more specialisation but with that often comes a poverty of skills in other key areas.  Persuading people rather than trying to order them.  Getting willing cooperation instead of whipping them into a frenzy of reluctance and resistance.  Having technical skills but little common sense. Being smart is good but it isn't enough.  We need to be better communicators, better with people, better with diversity, more capable with complexity. Buffett and Atarashi both discovered that the Dale Carnegie course was a source of answers to a lot of the business challenges they faced to be successful through other people.  There is a good reason this course is still around after 100 years.  It works. That is why it is paid the ultimate compliment of having changed their lives.

Buyers Behaving Badly   The customer is Kamisama (God) in sales. We hear this a lot in Japan across all industries and sectors. Sometimes however, the buyer can more like an Oni (Devil) when they deal with salespeople. Bad behavior is bad behavior regardless of the source, but when you are trying to sell a company on your product or service, do you just have to suck it up? Actually no!   Unless you are in a very small market segment, where there are only a limited number of buyers, then as salespeople we have choices. If the former is the case, then I suggest changing industries and getting out of that negative bad behavior environment. Life is short and good salespeople have highly transferable skills. If you know what you are doing, you can probably work in almost any business, as long as there is no requirement for highly technical knowledge.   The Japan winner of the worst sales environment is the pharmaceutical industry selling to doctors. Unlike the rest of the advanced world, where patients use the internet to educate themselves about medical conditions before they see the doctor, Japan is still stuck in the pre-1990s.   Japanese doctors consequently, still consider themselves vastly superior to everyone else, from patients on down. At the absolute bottom of the pile are drug salespeople. Being forced to wait around for hours, fawning over the doctor, being spoken to like dirt, cleaning their Mercedes, arranging all types of incentives to get them to buy, have been the fodder for legendary poor buyer behavior for decades.   Conflict of interest has emerged recently and there are many more restrictions now on entertaining doctors. The goodies are being restricted and so the salesperson doesn’t have much in the way of ame (sweets) to offer anymore. They still get plenty of muchi (whip) from the buyer though.   Japan has a powerful hierarchical system in place in society. When the company President tells one of the staff to get together with you the salesperson, then you might be thinking, this is looking good. Not necessarily. What often surprises me about HR people in Japan is how they run their own show, regardless of what the President may want.   Recently, I had lunch with a multi-national company President here running the Japan operation. The President is dynamic, articulate and a great presenter. After the lunch, as promised, the President sent an email to the HR person instructing them to get together with me to discuss training for their company. I follow up with the HR person many times, but never get an answer. It has become obvious they do not care what the President said, they have their own views on how to run the training and we are not going to fit into that plan.   Telling the President who introduced you that, in fact, they have no power within their own organization is a bit of a delicate conversation. Even if you raise it, you have just said that the Emperor has no clothes. They do not thank you for pointing out their HR person is in rebellion and they themselves are impotent.   Another annoying activity is being asked to spend time to quote on a product or service, but there is no intention to buy from you. This is often driven by internal compliance regulations that require three quotes. They have already secretly selected the provider and your job is to provide the paperwork to make sure that happens.   We were contacted by a large company recently asking for a quote on a particular piece of training. Efforts to meet the client to discuss the needs etc., were rebuffed because they said they were so busy – just send the quote, it will be fine (!). This is a tricky one, because you don’t know if you are the patsy here or if they are in fact so very busy that is why they need your help.   To test the system in these cases, I never follow up from my side after sending over the quote. Sounds like a bad sales effort and I should be fired, but it is a technique to reveal who we are dealing with here, time wasters or genuine buyers.   If they are really interested, then they will get back with either more questions or an order. If stony silence is all we get, we know we have been royally used to assist a competitor’s sales effort. That is a double ouch isn’t it!   It is not always black and white though. In another case the President was a graduate of our programme and told his HR Director to get us to quote on some training. This is exciting and you think “we are looking good”. The President knows the quality and the results from first hand experience and has the authority to make this happen. Or so it seems. In this example, I actually get to meet the HR people and their internal client. I followed up to present the proposal to them. “No, we are very busy, just send it”. Warning signal right there. I pushed back, “actually I need to explain it for you”. Further stalling, “No, just send it”. The pricing by the way, was very close to their indication.   Eventually you send it, but now you begin to suspect this is HR revenge on the President for daring to enter their world of authority. What looked like an inside track to a positive decision, gets derailed as the internal buying entity flexes muscle to show their independence. Applying my standard rule, I do not follow up further and just wait to see what happens. There was no response from their side, so again the patsy.   These things happen in business, but the key point is do not take it personally. Sales is a roller coaster ride of ups and downs and your emotions are always under attack. Accept that sometimes you will get played by the buyer, but keep a record of the incident. Every six months give that company a call to see if your nefarious counterpart is still working there. People are much more mobile in Japan, compared to many years ago and there is a good chance the puppeteer has moved on. We should not deal with that buyer again, but we can try to deal with the company. There are usually many buyers in your market and many who you have had no contact with as yet, so there is little need to deal with bad buyer behavior. As the old saying goes “fool me once it’s your fault, fool me twice it’s my fault”.   Action Steps   if you are in an industry where buyers habitually treat salespeople badly switch industries Just because the people at the top like you, don’t think that means anything in Japan. Keep working on those who execute the work. If the buyer just says “send it to me” get worried, you may be the patsy for unknowingly assisting a rival’s offer Keep in touch with the company, the “problem child” may have moved on Never forget “fool me once it’s your fault, fool me twice it’s my fault”

What Successful Women Presenters Do Well   I attend lot of events in Tokyo and probably the vast majority of business audiences that I see here have a 70/30 male female ratio. For any presenter understanding your audience is a key part of the preparation and delivery. I have noticed a few commonalities amongst the most successful women presenters in this male dominated environment here in Japan. Here is what I have seen work well for businesswomen when speaking in public.   Confidence is the overwhelming positive first impression. This is communicated in a number of ways. The voice is strong and clear. Even relatively soft female voices can become powerful enough, through using the microphone technology available today, so there is no excuse for letting a weak voice derail the presentation.   Funnily enough, many macho male businessmen seem clueless about how to use microphones. You see them actually wave off the offer of the microphone, because they have a fear or distaste of it. Now if your voice is strong and the venue not so cavernous, then that may be OK. If not or you have any concerns, spend some time with the microphone to understand how to use it properly, before the audience arrives. Tapping the microphone at the start of your presentation and asking your audience if they can hear you at the back is the mark of the amateur. Also, consider a lapel microphone or a hand microphone, as good options for mobility during your presentation.   Eye contact is another useful tool. Looking at the audience allows us to connect with them. This might sound obvious, but sometimes looking at the many faces in the crowd peering wistfully back at us may suddenly trigger nervousness and self-doubt. The successful women I have seen in action pick out members of the audience, look straight at them and speak directly to them. They are constantly doing this throughout their entire talk. They are only holding the gaze for about 6 seconds, so it is neither too short nor too intrusive. Good eye contact allows the speech to improve from being a one to many, to one to one. It is so powerful because when the speaker looks directly at us, we feel they are personally connecting with us.   Looking at our laptop screens , the big screens behind us or our notes, takes our eyes off the audience. We don’t want that. We need to see the audience to ascertain whether they are buying what we are selling or not. Studying their body language, their faces helps us to read how we are doing with our audience. Are they following us, are they bored, are they in rabid disagreement? We need to know so we can adjust our delivery accordingly. Absolutely do not let some helpful venue staffer turn off the lights, so the room becomes darker.   This happens all the time. In my own case, last week I was presenting to a visiting delegation of lubricant distributors from Vietnam and sure enough the Hotel staff member suggested to me that we turn off the lights to make the screen easier to read. No, no, no! We want the audience to see us and we want to see them. The projector technology today is very good, so we can leave the lights on and everyone can still read the screen. If someone suddenly turns the lights off, stop presenting and politely request they turn them back on again.   The successful presenters want to use all of their body language to assist their communication so they are not trapped behind the podium. Podiums can be a danger for shorter ladies. Trust me, having seen this a number of times, your carefully arranged coiffure bobbing just above the waterline of the top of the podium is not the best look. If the podium is too high, ask for small platform to stand on, to give yourself some air space. Don’t apply a vice like grip to the podium, this negates our ability to use gestures to emphasis key points we want to make. Standing apart from the podium, to the side or in front of it also works very well. You can turn the podium around ninety degrees, so that you can see the laptop screen and push any buttons, without having to stand behind it.   Freeing ourselves from the podium is good and powerful female presenters don’t then pace across the stage, backward and forward, showing possible nervousness. They usually stand to the left side of the screen, so that the audience will look at their face, listen to their voice and then read the screen left to right. They are communicating “look at me, now look at the screen”. In this way they dominate the screen, rather than the other way around.   What they put up on the screen follows the “less is more principle”. Think Zen garden here rather than Times Square. They see the value in having more images than text. They have one graph per screen not four and they don’t go crazy with more than two colours. They make themselves the centerpiece of the presentation, not what is put up on the screen. By contrast, Japanese male CEO screen presentations are usually totally horrible. Crowded, obtuse, ugly, impenetrable, gaudy – they may be Japanese samurai businessmen but clearly no Zen happening here.   Persuasive women demonstrate their confidence by NEVER EVER apologizing for their state of health, degree of nervousness, lack of preparation or any other excuses. I doubt very many men care about the speaker’s health status or any other excuses from any presenter. The successful women have worked this out and they keep their health issues etc., to themselves and want to be seen as true professionals. They don’t seek sympathy by telling us: “I am sorry, I have a cold today” or “I didn’t have enough time to put this together”. In my experience, men don’t care all that much for that type of detail and there is no particular empathy for these types of excuses.   If these women successful presenters are ever feeling anxious, they make sure not to show it. Consequently, they are taken at face value by the men in the audience and get full credit for being a business expert in their area of expertise.   I was at a presentation recently by a visiting speaker and everything was going fine until about 5 minutes into the presentation. She started to lose it, surprisingly, she announced she was losing it and that she needed a deep breath. After a couple of repeats of this routine, she finally pulled herself together. She had done quite well at the start, telling us about her rise to success and how she did it, but at the meltdown point, as she got into her key topic, her entire credibility flew straight out the window. She damaged her personal brand beyond repair and forever. The interesting thing is, unless she had told us, we probably would never have known she was so nervous. So no matter what, carry on as if it is all part of the plan. We men are not that smart or sensitive, we will never know unless you tell us.   There are plenty of professional, competent female speakers in Japan, so ladies, please take note of what is working for them and join their ranks.   Action Steps   Know who will be your audience and prepare accordingly Master the microphone technology before the audience arrives Speak to your audience while looking at them, make eye contact Free yourself from the podium trap Dominate the screen Apply “less is more” to the screen content Never make excuses Never show us you are nervous

The Death Valley of Sales   Sales cannot run like a manufacturing production line. We are not making industrial cheese here. This is more like an artisanal pursuit, closer to art than science. Yet, every sales force on the planet has targets which are usually uniform. Each month, the sales team has to deliver a specified amount of revenue, rolling up into a pre-determined annual target. The construct may be logical, but sales is far from logical, as it is steeped in emotion, luck and magic.   Having said that though, sales is also a numbers game and to some extent pseudo-scientific. There are accepted algorithms which apply. You call a certain number of people, speak to a lesser number, meet a few and from that residual group, you conclude an agreement. There are ratios, which when calculated over time, apply as averages linking activity with results. So we call 100 people, speak to 80, see 20, strike a deal with 5. In this construct, to make one sale, on average we need to call 20 people.   With this type of precision available, you would think that we could industrialise the sales process and confidently set annual targets, neatly divided into units of 12, to arrive at a consistent steam of revenue achievement. Sales managers would be multi-tasking, sipping their afternoon martinis, propping their cowboy boots on the desk and carefully calculating their next car upgrade, as the sales team obligingly track to the revenue plan.   Sadly, it doesn't work like this. Sales flow without rhyme or reason, some months exceeding the target and other months missing it completely. Some sales people are precociously consistent producers and others are annoyingly unpredictable and some are just annoying because they don’t seem to be doing much. Why is there this perplexing inability to automate the production of results? The valley of sales death is the problem.   This is the plunge between sales peaks. It is the lull in the fighting, the quiet before the storm, the brief interlude in the phony war of sales. Sales people work hard, usually because they are on commission structures which guarantee not very much if you don’t produce. Japan is a little different - basically there is either a base and commission or straight salary and bonuses system. Few sales people in Japan are on 100% commission. Why? Because they don’t have to and the Japanese preference for risk aversion means forget it! Nevertheless, they know they have to produce, so they tend to be diligent.   Commission structures vary but many “industrial structures” specify that you have to hit a monthly or quarterly target before your commission kicks in. If this is too industrial, it may fail to take into account seasonal downturns, because each target unit is the same throughout the year. This is hardly motivating and probably needs a bit more nuance around expectations and reality.   Sales people cannot be consistently successful unless they have two great professional skills. They must be machine-like time managers and they must also be highly disciplined. The two interlock. The ebb and flow of sales is based around customer activity. Networking, cold calling, following up with previous clients, chasing leads which come through marketing activities etc., takes time.   If we pump out enough client contact activity we will get appointments, sales and therefore generate follow up. Time starts to disappear from the mining activities that made us active in the first place. We can’t do the prospecting work, because we are too busy executing the follow up. Once the fog of being busy clears though, we suddenly see that we have a very pitiful pipeline ahead of us. So we work like a demon again to kick start generating new leads.   Downturns in activity lead to massive holes in revenue. This is the Death Valley of Sales. It is the messy counter point to industrial sales production, which is consistent, uniform, and when graphed for boss presentations, is beautifully shaped, balanced and ascetically pleasing to upper management.   To avoid this valley phenomenon, we need to make time to keep prospecting every week. Hence the requirement for excellent time management skills and the discipline to make sure we are doing it every week. Otherwise, we find our time for pipeline development is stolen away by client demands, emergencies, mistake correction, more detailed discussions and results follow up with the buyer.   Sales people who do not block out time in their diaries for prospecting everyday will be Death Valley dwellers in short order. They will be joined there by those who don’t plan their day in detail. That means planning the necessary activities with numbered action priorities. Winging it, being “spontaneous”, living in the moment unshackled from schedules are all delusional activities which cannot be part a successful sales life.   If we don’t wish to enter the Valley of Sales Death, we must block time for prospecting and craft a carefully prioritised daily To Do list. Failure here is permanent, because the consistency of production will elude us forever. We will get lost in the harsh environment of the valley and perish by the wayside.   Let’s commit to build the pipeline every day and avoid the Valley of Sales Death at all costs.   Action Steps   Adjust sales team targets to account for seasonality of sales to keep their motivation high Know your sales activity ratios required to produce sales revenues Become a maniac about good time management and self discipline Protect time in the schedule for doing prospecting each week

Unpacking Donald Trump’s Persuasion Power     Donald Trump breaks many of the rules of presenting but he gets the key stuff right. Love him or loath him as a contender for the Republican Party Presidential race nomination, he continues to perform strongly in the polls, against the expectations of the vast majority of American political experts. So, he must be doing something right, as he is proving to be very persuasive with the audiences who flock to hear him speak. Are there any lessons here for us, when we come to give our own presentations?   He is authentic when he speaks. There is no speech writer grinding away in the background polishing his prose to within an inch of its life. None of those semi-invisible prompters on the left and right to drip feed the polished input. He does have some notes to keep him on track, but he barely refers to them. He digresses, goes off on tangents, gets sidetracked, but the audience understands this is the price for the speaker being non-scripted. He keeps their attention because he concentrates on his audience. So let’s take the good bits of what is working for a guy who only recently started as a public speaker and drop the rest.   Here are a couple of fundamentals we can all safely adopt - be yourself, don’t ape anyone else. Yes, be you, but try to be the professional you. Focus on your audience, not on the technology, the laptop, the big screen behind you or your notes. Having one thing to focus on makes the public speaking task easier, so divest distractions.   One observation is that he has been getting a lot of practice lately. Prior to this run for the nomination, he rarely had to make such long public speeches. Like the rest of us, he had to learn by doing. Repetition is key to learning new skills and so seizing every chance to present is needed to improve our professional craft. Sounds terribly logical doesn’t it. However, many people shy away from presenting because they are lacking in confidence or are too nervous. Fortunately, there are various techniques for overcoming nervousness. These can be learnt and by increasing the frequency of presenting, we gradually become more comfortable with the process.   Trump’s messages can be quickly understood. Build a big wall; everyone is more cunning than we are; make America great again; read my Art of the Deal; it’s my own money so I don’t owe anybody; politicians are useless; I am rich and successful; I know how to get things done; I am not politically correct; etc. He is derided as a demagogue, but as a speaker he presents his ideas such that we can remember them. Isn’t this what we also want with our audience? Think back though, how many key messages can you recall from the many business presentations you have heard over the course of your business career? I would guess not many or none. Here is the key question - will people remember yours?   When we speak, we need to have clarity around the key points we want to get across, in the time we have available. Taking on too much content (“death by Powerpoint”), nullifies the key messages we want to have resonate with the audience. A major information dump is also a killer, especially when quoting lots of data. Overload just destroys the communication and the audience are lost.   Trump totally oozes self confidence. Confidence certainly sells and if he has any self-doubt (?) about this new public speaking role for himself, he is certainly not sharing it with his audiences. Now, we may not have his same degree of self-belief or his serious billions, but we must exude confidence when speaking with our audience. Some people say, “fake it, till you make it”. Remember, in the room there is only one person who knows you are not confident and that person is you. Unless you run around advertising it, nobody else will have a clue.   In Dale Carnegie we bolster confidence through embracing the 3 E’s: We have Earned the right to speak, because we know our subject; we are Excited because of our positive feelings for the content; and we are Eager to share with our audience, because we feel this will help them. There is a cross-over point as a speaker, where you stop concentrating on yourself and what is wrong with you and then you start concentrating on your audience. Employ the 3 E’s and you will become confident. Even if we are not super confident at first, never ever show that to the audience – they buy speaker self-belief and our job is to provide it.   Trump loves to tell stories. NBC begged me to do a new season of The Apprentice; Carl Icahn told me he is ready to be my negotiator with China; I saw all of these Japanese cars in LA coming out of the biggest ship I have ever seen, etc. He weaves these vignettes into his speech to highlight his key points. Storytelling works and as he demonstrates, they don’t have to be lengthy stories to be effective. Sprinkle some real life stories into your presentations to make you and the content come alive for your audience.   Talk about people, places and emotions that the audience can identify with. Don’t say, “we were having a meeting”. Talk about, ”It was winter in New York and we were in the wood paneled boardroom of the client, on the 36th floor of the Rockefeller Center, having a tough meeting with the CEO Jane Smith and I was becoming more nervous.” Now we have taken our audience to the place, added in the people, the season, the atmosphere etc., such that they can clearly visualise it in their mind’s eye. This is how we need to use stories in our talks.   Whether you agree with him or not, it is a simple fact that if a novice like Trump can learn to become persuasive as a public speaker, we can too. Take the advice offered today and study successful speakers, adapt what works, hone your skills and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. The latter, by the way, is the most common error of unsuccessful presenters – they forget to make time to rehearse the speech before they give it to their audience. Some good advice in business is don’t practice on the client and that includes public speaking!   Action Steps   Be authentic but be the professional you Focus on your audience the entire time you are presenting – never take your eyes off them   Take every chance to speak for the practice   Keep the key messages simple and easily accessible for the audience   Appear supremely confident, even if your knees are quivering   Embrace the 3 E’s - Earned, Excited and Eager   Use stories to bring your content to life

PM Abe Deletes Soft Skills Development   On June 8th this year Education Minister Hakubun Shimomura told Japanese universities to take “active steps to abolish (social science and humanities departments) or convert them to serve areas that better meet society’s needs”. There was no wiggle room on interpreting the message – he clearly said do what we say or we will cut your funding. So far 26 have gotten the message and have complied with the new policy position of the Japanese government.   The justification was that this was needed “in light of the decrease of the university age population, the demand for human resources and the function of national universities”. Abenomics declares that the role of national universities is to produce “human resources that match the needs of society by accurately grasping changes in industrial structure and employment needs”. Abe himself declared in May last year in his OECD speech that “rather than deepening academic research that is highly theoretical, we will conduct more practical vocational education that better anticipates the needs of society”.   This is pretty curious stuff coming from Abe’s Cabinet. About 18 months ago, for the first time, we started to hear from our clients about their interest in having more liberal arts aspects to their company in-house education programmes. They told us they need people who can think, can articulate their thoughts and they are looking to encourage more diversity of views. They wanted to encourage innovation as a direct result of this effort.   What are we witnessing here? Is this another part of the political thrust to the right under Abe? Is the objective to create a technocrat population of docile people who can toe the line and follow orders? The Japan Times noted, “Without exception, totalitarian states invariably reject knowledge in the humanities and states that reject such knowledge always become totalitarian”. Is this a Sputnik moment for Abe, when his answer to Japan falling behind is to ape the America of the 1950s and stress mathematics and science subjects, to produce more engineers to solve Japan’s problems?   The vocational relevancy of Abe’s attack on “soft skill” subjects is in serious doubt. Companies we deal with are stressing the development of people who can communicate, think, share ideas and be creative. The Japanese industry peak body, the Keidanren, is at complete odds with the Abe Cabinet over just what are relevant vocational skills. Keidanren Chairman Sadayuki Sakakibara, from Toray, made this point, “Some media reported that the business community is seeking work-ready human resources, not students in the humanities, but this is not the case”. He also noted that Japanese business people desire the “exact opposite”. They want students who can solve problems based on “ideas encompassing the different fields” of science and humanities.   The Science Council of Japan weighed in as well backing the importance of the humanities. In cooperation with the natural sciences they are there to solve “contemporary problems domestically as well as internationally.   Are we setting ourselves up for failure? The population of students is set to decline by one third over the next 15 years, from 650,000 students in 2018 to 480,000 in 2031. Abe is correct to identify the critical importance of a diminishing human resource for business, but his antidote seems completely at variance with what business needs in Japan.   As many companies make the move overseas, technical abilities are needed but dealing with diversity as a leader becomes even more critical for the success of the enterprise. It is well recognised that soft skills are the keys to successfully leading an international business. The supply of humanities graduates will disappear in line with government policy. Therefore, the pressure on companies to compensate becomes much greater. If you haven’t planned for this requirement, the time to start is now.   Action Steps   Plan for University graduates needing more company delivered basic education   Make internal company education a differentiator for recruiting and retaining a diminishing resource – young people   Promote more soft skill training, especially communication, problem solving and critical thinking   Educate Middle Managers to become more skillful at encouraging a more diverse range of views on solving problems

It is rare to see a presentation completed well, be it inside the organization, to the client or to a larger audience. The energy often drops away, the voice gradually fades out and there is no clear signal that this is the end. The narrative arc seems to go missing in action at the final stage and the subsequent silence becomes strained. It sometimes reminds me of classical music performances, when I am not sure if this is the time to applaud or not.   First and last impressions are critical in business and in life, so why leave these to random chance? We need to strategise how we will end, how we will ensure our key messages linger in the minds of the listeners and how we will have the audience firmly enthralled, as our permanent fan base.   Endings are critical pieces of the presentation puzzle and usually that means two endings not just one. These days, it is rare that we don’t go straight into some form of Q&A session, once the main body of the talk has been completed. So we need an ending for the presentation just given and we another ending after the Q&A. Why the second one, why not just let it end with the final question?   The pro never lets that happen. Even the most knee quivering, voice choking, collar drenching, meltdown of a speaker is in 100% control while they have the floor. The audience usually let’s them speak without denunciation or persistent interruption. Life changes though once we throw the floor open to take questions. At that point speaker control is out the window and the street fight begins.   The members of the audience are able to ask rude, indignant questions, challenging everything you hold to be true. They can denounce you as a charlatan, scoundrel, dilettante and unabashed poseur. Sometimes, they even launch forth into their own mini-speech, usually unrelated to whatever it was you were talking about. Or they move the conversation off to a new place, which has nothing to do with your key content.   The topic of your talk is now a distant memory. That is why the pros ensure they bring it all back together with a final close to the proceedings. The last word is now with the speaker, not some provocateur who happened to turn up.   There are a number of ways of bringing the speech home. In the first close, before the Q&A, we might harken back to something we said in our opening, to neatly tie the beginning and end together. Or we might restate the key message we wish to get across. Another alternative is a summary of the key points to refresh everyone’s recollection of what we were saying.   When we do this, we should be picking out key words to emphasise, either by ramping our vocal power up or down, to differentiate from the rest of what we are saying. Speaking with the same vocal power throughout just equates the messages together and makes it hard for the audience to buy what we are selling, because it is not clear enough.   At the end of the final sentence we need to hit the power button and finish with a rising crescendo to really put the passion behind our position. Many speakers allow their voice to trail off into oblivion. Instead, we need to bring energy to our final words. We then add a small pause and move smoothly into inviting audience Q&A.   Don’t miss this key point: always specify the time available for Q&A at the start – never, ever leave it open ended. Why not? If you are facing a rabid gathering of foes and you want to get out of there, mentioning the time is up allows you to depart with your dignity intact, as opposed to looking like an wimp scurrying out the door, because you can’t take the heat.   The second close can be very similar to the first. This is also the point to use a pertinent quotation to leave a rousing call to action in the minds of your audience. Again, the voice rises in strength at the end of the final sentence.   When you get the ending right, you can thank your audience, relax and bask in their warm applause.   Action Steps   Strategise the ending rather than leave it to random chance   Loop back to the beginning, hit the key message again or summarise some key points   Always nominate a time limit for Q&A   Prepare two closes – one each for before and after Q&A

That Vital Two Second Window    How long does it take on average to form a first impression?  My students tell me two seconds.  Wow.  What does this mean for the speaker?  It could be in the boardroom, at the networking event or at the pitch to the client. Regardless of the location, one thing is sure – everyone is a critic.      Think back to the last time you saw someone present – be it an update, a project submission, an overview or a fully fledged speech.  Were you indulging in a little mental aside, “I hope this is good”, as you swiveled around in your chair to view the speaker?  Did the speaker get right into it or was there some logistical finessing of the laptop, the lapel mike or the notes sitting on the rostrum?  Was the speaker looking at the audience, up at the huge screen behind or down at the laptop?  Did we have some good old hand mike thumping to see if it was working properly?  If there were any such diversions, then our two seconds have come and gone completely.   What would help us to maximize the two second window?  Getting straight into the content without any distractions, allows us to set the tone for the occasion.  Traditionally we could thank the organisers for the opportunity to present.  Doing this with a huge smile would be a good use of the two seconds.  Even if nature has not blessed you with a killer smile, give us the best you can do.    We could start telling an episode, an incident, a story.  We love listening to interesting stories involving real life and real people, because we can easily identify with the content.  We could refer to a member of the audience, immediately shattering the mental barrier between speaker and audience.  “Anne Smith from XYZ and I were chatting earlier and she made a very good observation about….”   After having launched into proceedings we can now backtrack and use the laptop, our notes, the spreadsheets or whatever we need to explain the content.  Rather than wasting our initial two second window on these adjustments, we instead capture the attention of our audience from the very start.  Once captured keep them so.   Japan has a few set pieces.  I am sure you will have seen some of these: have trouble with the technology, not be conversant with the content because one of the underlings prepared it, kick off with a perfunctory apology for being a poor speaker.  To really set the tone, now look down and read every single word on the screen or on the notes page.  Non-Japanese speakers though are often guilty of the same things, especially jet setting big shots winging in from afar for a cameo appearance.   Another powerful tool, left in pristine condition through underuse is voice quality.  Again nature may not have blessed you with a deep throated baritone or mellifluous instrument that harkens the angels, but no matter, do the best with what you have.  That means speak clearly, with sufficient volume, so that you can easily be heard.  Use the microphone properly by holding it just under your chin and speaking across the mesh.   Have some variation in the delivery so it is not totally predictable. Hit key words with a roar or a whisper to highlight them.  At the start, go for the roar rather than the whisper.  Show confidence through voice power.  Slowing the words down for emphasis is equally powerful.  For example, “This--is--the--moment” and delivered slowly with a dramatic pause after each word.  Our attention is all yours and we are bursting to know where you are going with this talk. Eye power is a must.  Pick a single person about half way down the middle of the venue and start by speaking directly to them.  Look them in the eye.  We have now personalised our interaction in that first few seconds and created a connection with the audience.    I recommend holding the gaze for six seconds, as this allows for engagement without generating fear of radiation burn.  Spend the entire talk selecting one person after another, randomly selected and speak to them without allowing your sight lines to stray to the floor, ceiling or the back wall.  Keep your eyes glued on your audience.  This means carefully instructing the venue organisers beforehand to not drop the lights on the audience or yourself.  You want to be able to read their faces for confirmation they are with you.  We also want them to be able to see us clearly rather than disappearing into the shadows on stage.   Own the first impression and enjoy the glide to the finish.     Action Steps   Realise you only have two seconds, so plan accordingly   Get straight into your talk with no interruption or delay   Start with an episode, incident or story   Highlight keys words by using vocal variation   Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Keep eye contact with your audience throughout

Chaos, Mistakes and Idea Popping   Doing more, better, faster with less, screams out for innovation.  This could be at the incremental level – a kaizen approach of continuous improvement or it could be breakthrough leaps that forge new businesses.  Either way, there is a dynamic in play here between processes and people that is critical for our success.  How much scope can we allow in the creative process?  At the practical level, this is really asking how many and how huge are the mistakes you will tolerate to achieve idea popping?   Managers manage processes. Leader also manage processes, but they also have an important role to build people with ideas.  In any workplace there will be some degree of compliance required around regulations, laws, safety concerns etc.  If these are overly tight, then there is usually not a great deal of tolerance for errors.  If it is a complete laissez-faire environment, with no controls, then we will wind up in court and possibly in jail.  Somewhere between compliance and chaos is the sweet spot of the environment most suitable for our people to be developed to become innovative idea popping machines.   By its very nature, any change requires us to step out of our Comfort Zone, because we are either doing something old in a new way or something completely new.  Getting people to step out of their Comfort Zones is fraught with difficulty.  It is even more so when we are requiring a more creative approach or when we are seeking to create something entirely new.  How do we encourage people to come up with new and creative ideas?  Standing in front of the whiteboard, felt pen at the ready and looking expectantly at the audience for their ideas is probably one of the most common and one of the worst methods.    To totally top it off, saving time by critiquing the idea flow as it emerges is a guaranteed innovation killer.  Take a good look around your own organization and check just how you encourage the pursuit of ideas, how do you do your brainstorming down at your shop?  Your actual technique may be harming the idea creation environment.  If this worries you, let me know, because we have a great system for producing ideas from the whole team and not just the usual noisy three.   In the messy process of innovation there will be mistakes.  Accepting this in theory is pretty easy, but what about confronting it in practice when you are responsible?  What is the environment for reporting mistakes or problems?  Usually, the boss finds out about trouble last – after everyone has done a sterling job to cover it up.  The truth only emerges when the issue can’t be hidden anymore.  Why is that?    A workplace recording many violations of procedure and one reporting few, will be looked at differently on paper back at headquarters.  The many incidents location will seem to indicate a poor compliance environment (and by extension your poor leadership).  In fact it may be the other way around.  The workplace reporting few may be magicians at hiding bad stuff and the other may be one where mistakes are encouraged as part of the learning process.  Constantly encouraging ideas and experimentation, but also faithfully recording errors for root cause analysis as part of the creative process, could be seen as failure when judged from the incident numbers.  We need to look past the numbers, to what type of environment the leader has created?   How we celebrate failure; ride the edge of the blade between compliance and crazy; and how we deal with mistakes is being very carefully observed by the whole team.  If there is a trust environment, where mistakes are accepted as part of the process of creative change and ideas are not critiqued as they emerge, then the team will feel safe to suggest their ideas.  Leaders who can build this type of environment are treasures.  If you look around you and all you see is a blame culture and rapid retribution for failure, start praying your competitors haven’t worked out the balance needed between mistakes and innovation.  If they have, over time, they will win and you will lose.   Action Steps   1.     Check whether the balance between compliance and creativity is at the right level?   2.     Is your brainstorming technique an idea killer not an idea creator?   3.     Are you encouraging people to come out of their Comfort Zones?   4.     Is reporting mistakes seen as formula for being punished?   Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} 5.     Are you developing an idea generation environment which is going to give you an edge over the opposition or are you losing the innovation war?

Market Yourself In Under One Minute     Meeting new business contacts, expanding personal networks, promoting a reliable, trustworthy “Brand You” are the basics of business.  By the way, even if our job title doesn’t explicitly mention “sales and marketing” we are all in sales and marketing.  In modern commerce, even professionals in non-traditional sales roles like accountants, lawyers, dentists, engineers, architects, analysts, consultants all need to pitch their expertise to get new clients.  This may not have been the case in the past, but this is the “new black” of the professions.  When we try to influence a decision – buy my widget, use my service, fund this project, open a new market or even where shall we go for lunch - these are all sales and marketing efforts to get others to follow our ideas.  Don’t miss this change and instead master the process, such that you get the business and not your competition.   By the way, first impressions are so critical.  When I ask my class participants during sales training, how long does it take to form an impression of someone, the range of answers is usually between 2 and 5 seconds.  Think about that.   We are all so quick to judgment, we are shockers!  An opinion is formed immediately and it takes quite a bit of effort to unwind a negative first impression.  We would have to be crazy to leave that first impressions to random luck or happenstance.   Now given our first interactions with strangers are so important, are we getting the best result for ourselves and organisation?  When we are out there representing our company and someone asks us, can we succinctly explain what we do, in a clear, informative, impressive and memorable manner?  Based on my experience and observations from attendance at thousands of networking events, there is a lot of room for improvement.  Those from the so-called professions are usually the worst!   An excellent formula is called the Wow & How.   When we meet someone for the first time, after examining their business card, we should get the ball rolling and ask them about their business.  Why don’t we just seize the moment and jump in and start impressing them with information about us and what it is we do?  Well, you could do that but it is a hit and miss approach.  We know that people love to talk about themselves, so don’t deny the potential client that chance.  We also learn more by listening than speaking and so having them lead off is a win-win.   Hearing what they do also assists us in considering how best to explain what we do.  We can emphasise certain aspects that we believe would appeal to them, based on what they have just told us, about what they are doing.  If their industry has relevancy for something we have done, then we can mention that point and start building our credibility.  We may have a business contact who can assist them, making ourselves valuable in the process.  They may mention an issue and bingo, we are the solution, so we can zero in on learning more about the concrete problem.    By listening to them speak, we can also gauge their preferred personality type. We can then adjust our communication style to best suit their preference for interaction.  If we notice, for example, that they are a very detail oriented person, we might add in more concrete detail than normal to explain what it is we do.  If you are speaking with an accountant, three decimal places when quoting numbers is always appreciated!  The opposite tack is best applied to big picture people - don’t kill them with the micro detail.  If they are fast paced, then we need to speak faster and with more energy than normal.  If they are very calm and considered, drop your voice and lower your energy to mirror them.  Check you are not standing too close to them and give them some space.    Generally speaking, we all like people more who are like us.  By adjusting our own style to match them, we are more quickly able to enhance our communication and understanding.  Does this mean we have to be a schizophrenic with conflicting personality styles?  No, but it does require that we master the language styles of the four main personality styles – Expressive, Driver, Analtyical and Amiable.   When it is our turn to explain what we do, we can really get things moving by using a three step approach:   1.     We start with a proposition that they can easily agree with.  For example, in the case of my business: “You know how companies often really struggle with training their staff.  They get really frustrated that the training doesn’t produce the results they require” . The listener by this time is nodding and silently voicing their agreement, because they can mentally picture the problem.    2.     We embed a pregnant pause, then add the mega attention grabber, almost as a throw away line - “Well, we fix that completely”.  At this point, we become as silent as the tomb and do not utter any follow up to our bold statement.   3.     Their immediate internal mental reaction is “Wow, that sounds amazing” .  Then their buyer supreme skepticism kicks in and they ask, “Oh yeah, so How do you do that?”.   They have asked the question from their side now, so this allows us to subtly lead with our differentiable advantage in the marketplace.  This is brilliant, because we are responding to their request for more information and unlike everyone else, we are not pushing our unique selling points down their throats.    Importantly, our answer is more about the What we do, rather than the How we do it.  We do this on purpose, because we want to explain the precise How in detail later, in the comfort of their office, rather than in short form at a noisy, distracting and crowded networking event.    So our answer would go like this:  “Dale Carnegie has been around for a long time, so we have proven methods which trigger the behavior change needed to get the staff to produce outperformance”.   The explanation should be succinct and only take about thirty seconds, so each word is vital.  The delivery must be practised and perfected beforehand.  The delivery must be relaxed, purposeful and voiced with confidence.  Simple things which appear effortless are often complex to perfect.  There may be a lot of re-writing, before you can find the economy of words needed to get across the concept in such a way, the listener is drawn in to want to hear more on the How.   At the next business soirée you attend, roll out the Wow & How formula, delivered in the potential client’s preferred communication style and see the results.  Study their reaction very carefully and keep adjusting the content, until you find the “all killer, no filler” combination that works best.    Every single person you meet judges your entire organisation and business on you.  That is a heavy burden and one we have to master.  Remember you only get one shot at a positive first impression, so let’s not leave that creation process to random chance.         Action Steps   1.     Understand that we are all in sales and marketing   2.     When meeting someone at a networking event, have them tell you what they do, before you introduce your business   3.     Listen for their preferred communication style   4.     Tell them how you are the one to fix the business problem   Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} 5.     Create the opportunity to meet again for a business discussion

Negotiating With Mr. and Ms. Huge Pain   Sadly, not everyone is like us – wonderful, charming, amusing, attractive.  Despite our best efforts to be a role model of perfection, setting them a good example, others persist in being a major pain.  Here are 12 selective tips on negotiating with the difficult amongst us.   1. Have a positive attitude Sounds like a motherhood statement but deciding to see the negotiation as a learning experience in the real laboratory of life, as a means to enhance our win-win negotiating skills, changes the starting point of the discussion in our favour.   2. Meet on mutual ground Try to meet, rather than engage in a protracted email war or discuss complex issues over the phone.  Face to face is best and preferably on neutral ground for both of you.  Away from the workspace is often best, such as over coffee or lunch, away from the office.   3. Clearly define and agree on the issue Sometimes we are arguing about different things under the same banner.  By defining the issue in commonly understood words, we are a long way toward achieving better clarity about what is at stake.  If the issue is a biggy, then break it down into bits that can be dealt with one by one, in concrete detail.   4. Do your homework Start by taking the other person’s case and building the argument from their perspective.  This often opens up gaps in our information or assumptions we are drawing, based on no particular facts.  Decide what is our BATNA – the best alternative to a negotiated agreement or our walk away position.  Also determine what we can accept, what we can live with and what would be an ideal outcome.   5. Take an honest inventory of yourself Be more self-aware of aspects of your personality  and style which may help or hinder the negotiations.  Nominate your “hot buttons”, which if they get pushed, triggers an explosion inside you and decide not to allow yourself to react that way.  Watch your language and tone, as these usually go straight to the default mode in arguing and you probably don’t want to go there.   6. Look for shared interests Conflict has a way of magnifying perceived differences and minimizing similarities, so look for common goals and desired outcomes.  There may be a common objective but the disagreement is often around the best path toward achieving it. Focusing on the common goal and the desired future, keeps the conversation moving forward.   7. Deal with facts, not emotions In sport we say play the ball not the opponent.  So we should focus on the issue not the messenger.  Maintaining a goal oriented rational approach may be difficult, especially when the ego gets in play, but try and de-personalize the conflict and separate the issues from the personalities involved.  Instead of being defensive, ask clarifying questions that get them talking and you listening.   8. Be honest Be honest and transparent about what is important to you and why.  Clearly state your goals, issues and objectives so the other side can grasp where you are coming from.  Don’t assume it is obvious, because it probably isn’t.  If only common sense was more common!   9. Present alternatives and provide evidence Create options and alternatives demonstrating your willingness to compromise.  Frame options taking into consideration their interests and back up your plans with evidence.   10. Be an expert communicator Be clear, be clear, be clear.  Ask questions, paraphrase for understanding and always check for their understanding of what you are saying.  Miscommunication is often the major culprit in conflict.   11. End on a good note Shake on it, agree the actions steps and who is accountable for what, by when and how.   12. Enjoy the process Reflect and learn from every negotiation.  Have your own criteria to evaluate the process and solution then write it down as a record for future reference.  See your own growth being aided by understanding and learning from different points of view.     Tricky personalities and difficult people will never just conveniently go away.  Instead, we need to be better prepared in dealing with them.  We can keep repeating the same procedures and wonder why we never get a better result or we change our approach.  Einstein’s definition of being crazy by the way, was to keep doing the same things but expect a different result.  Don’t go crazy - these practical tips will help us on the journey to a less stressful and more rewarding future.     Action Steps   1. Have a positive attitude 2. Meet on mutual ground 3. Clearly define and agree on the issue 4. Do your homework 5. Take an honest inventory of yourself 6. Look for shared interests 7. Deal with facts, not emotions 8. Be honest 9. Present alternatives and provide evidence 10. Be an expert communicator 11. End on a good note Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} 12. Enjoy the process

Play Nice At Work     The New York Times recently carried an article about the growth at work of rudeness and bad behaviour over the last twenty years.  Christine Porath, the author, noted, “How we treat one another at work matters.  Insensitive interactions have a way of whittling away at people’s health, performance and soul”.  These interactions release hormones called glucocorticoids leading to potential health problems.   The more interesting part of the research on this topic looked at why we are uncivil and more than half said they felt overloaded with their work and 40% said they have no time to be nice.  Nearly half linked career progression to using their position power and being nice was seen as weak. Boss’s attitudes were enlightening.  Twenty-five percent believe they will be less leader-like if they are nice at work.  Nearly 40% feared they would be taken advantage of if they weren’t projecting a tough manner.    There seems to be no shortage of bosses who can only muster position power, know it about themselves and so exploit it to the full because they are so insecure.  Strip away their titles and they are nobodies.  The way people become the boss is part of the issue.  The individual who can succeed and be accountable in their own little world is promoted to be in charge of others who are nothing like them.  They find that the skills that got them selected as leader are not what they need to be a real leader.  Their fall back strategy is to use their position power and lord it over their underlings, whipping them forward through fear.   Ironically, the Center For Creative Leadership found the number one characteristic associated with senior executives failure was their insensitive, abrasive or bullying style.  So we are left with a bunch of wannabe Napoleons, bossing us around and going nowhere in their careers.   What are we looking for in business?  We want our people to come up with ideas, innovations and creative solutions.  Some mini-me Napoleon type is not going to command anything more than compliance and so the innovation capacity of the organisation is hamstrung.  In such a fast paced competitive world of doing more, faster with less, this is a big opportunity cost.  From our own research on what engages employees to make the discretionary effort to go above and beyond, we found that feeling valued by the boss was the critical trigger.    If the mentality is to beat people up to let them know who is the boss, then the “I feel valued” trigger never gets pulled.  Consequently, the ideas do not flow, the cooperation never eventuates and the information sharing doesn’t occur when you need it to happen.    We want leverage, a next generation of leaders to be developed who can move the organisation forward.  Youthful employee tolerance for bad boss behavior today is very low and they simply vote with their feet and go across to the competition.  This is often after we have poured a lot of time, effort and money into training them.  Ouch!   Bosses need to become better time managers, so they are in better control of their emotions.  They need more time to be able to be  “nice”. There is nothing more disconcerting though, than working for a disorganized boss.  Everything becomes a vicious cycle of panic and emergency, because they are always leaving it too late or have neglected to do some vital step.    Even those who are not terminally dysfunctional, are creating unnecessary issues because they have not learnt how to priortise their time and fail to dwell more often in preferred Quadrant Two of Time Management – the Not Urgent but Important box.    Further, bosses who have not mastered the proper methods for delegating tasks are usually time poor.  They are hoarders of tasks, because their pathetic mantra is: “it is quicker if I do it myself”.  This and other similar delusions, ensure they are run ragged doing too much and usually doing it in a mediocre fashion.  They are also denying their subordinates the opportunity to learn, to take responsibility and to prepare themselves for future bigger roles.    In one swoop, these bosses are overwhelming themselves and underwhelming the career progression of their team members.  The organisation pays a high price for this, especially when it comes to developing high potentials and securing proper succession planning.  When we are well organised, we are more likely to be more secure, more confident and not need to revert to crutches like position power to have authority.  There are no excuses for bosses to be bullies, to succeed in their work.  Their personal failure fails the company.   Leaders also need to be trained on how to smile when they interact with their staff.  Sounds simplistic, but there is whole raft of things going on in the background for that to happen and they are all good.  Think for a minute about what needs to happen in the boss’s mind, for them to remember to smile when talking with staff, rather than scowling.  There is a level of intention included which says, “I want to have a positive impact on my team”. Think also of what happens with the staff member from their side and how this impacts the morale of the workplace.  In my memory, boss scowls were never particularly invigorating or energising.  Scowling is unlikely to trigger the emotion “I feel valued by my boss”.  Smiles on the other hand create an entirely different dynamic.    We want the bosses to be better in communication.  Rattling off instructions and commands isn’t leading.  Explaining the why and not just the what or the how is a much more inclusive way of leading.  By the way, rather than pontificating, we want to use the Socratic method of asking questions which lead the staff members to their own discoveries of the why.  This is how we get their ownership of the ideas and the commitment to follow through with them.  Giving orders is the usual default position and that only gets you so far.  Achieving high levels of engagement is an entirely different ask.  If we want to tap the full power of the team we need their total engagement. Having some input into the organisation’s direction, the execution of the company’s policy and some ownership of the ideas are critical for that engagement emotion to be felt by the staff.   We want them to praise people in a smart way.  Typical boss vague comments like “good work” don’t really register much.  Tell the staff member what they specifically did well, link this to the bigger picture, reinforce that they should keep doing it and thank them.  We want coaching that is not critique based around past mistakes but forward looking – what they did that was good and how they could do it even better the next time.  This takes a change of attitude on the boss’s part.  It means stepping out of the comfy Comfort Zone and seeking higher levels of performance.   Building a positive, supportive workplace must be the boss’s focus if the organisation wants to succeed through its people.  We first start with boss attitudinal change leading to behaviour change, producing team performance change. We can play nice at work after all.   Action Steps   1.     Master your personal time management so you can manage people better 2.     Complete more tasks from Quadrant Two – Not Urgent but Important 3.     Practice proper delegation methods that work 4.     Smile 5.     Ask questions rather than giving orders 6.     Praise using specifics not generalities Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} 7.     Play nice at work

Become A Rockstar Coach   A consistent issue our clients raise with us concerns effective coaching. Becoming a leader is usually the result of demonstrating your own ability to get results.  We promote the performers in the hope some of the pixie dust will get sprinkled around. The outcomes are often underwhelming.  For the organization to grow, it needs talent to be fostered right throughout the whole organization.  The natural owners of that fostering effort are the leaders.   Coaching fails because of the poor quality of the process being applied.  In many cases there is no real process at all.  Here is a 7 step process which will vastly improve the coaching outcomes.   1.     Identify Opportunities The need may be obvious or circumstances may reveal a need. For busy leaders, selecting who to coach is a critical decision.  The staff with the most untapped potential are probably the most attractive candidates.  You can’t do everything at once, so start with the option that will create the most value.  We will get to everyone over time but we need to prioritise our efforts.   2.     Picture The Desired Outcome Coaching without a clear strategy often results in sporadic efforts which ultimately lead nowhere.  The Coach must work with the staff member to arrive at a clear vision of what the improved state will look like.  It is hard to hit a target you haven’t nominated.  Creating a word picture of the desired outcome helps to keep the efforts focused, especially when the chaos of everyday seems to conspire to ensure you get distracted.   3.     Establish The Right Attitude This sounds simple but it is not snapping your fingers and presto, brilliant attitude.  Improved performance requires change and everyone agrees in principle that change is necessary but as long as it is not expected of them in practice.  We need to know our people in order to understand how to communicate the change need in a way that resonates with them and they want to be part of it.  Learning to talk in terms of the individuals’s personal motivations is powerful.  Reality check for leaders – do you really know this level of detail about your team?   4.     Provide The Resources The most expensive and highest value resource is your time to devote to coaching.  It also requires a sincere personal commitment to see the person being coached succeed.  A lot of successful people climbed over the bodies to get to the top and expect that is how everyone else should do it.  Their attitude to coaching is usually negative.  People develop in different ways and at different times, so making ourselves the only metric of success is folly.   5.     Practice And Skill Development Make the time, identify the correct skill set needed, explain it, demonstrate it, then let them practice it.  There is a balancing act going on here, where we need to let go, but keep monitoring without micromanaging them. We all learn by making mistakes and this is a fact we need to embrace.   Encourage them to fail faster.   6.     Reinforce Progress Knowing and doing are sometimes related. Don’t expect because they have learnt it, they are automatically doing it.  Check that there is no slipping back into the cuddly Comfort Zone, as people revert to their old, better established habits.  Habit is stronger than knowledge.  Keep them accountable to continue to progress.   7.     Reward What we reward gets repeated and what gets repeated becomes a new habit. Give praise which is specific, explaining exactly what they are doing that is good, rather than obtuse general statements of  approbation.   None of this is complicated.  Common sense though is not always common practice.  Executing these steps takes commitment but the rewards are enormous.  If your leadership team is coaching your key people using a solid process and your rival leaders are not, expect to win the war.     Action Steps   1. Identify Opportunities 2.     Picture The Desired Outcome 3.     Establish The Right Attitude 4.     Provide The Resources 5.     Practice And Skill Development 6.     Reinforce Progress Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} 7.     Reward

Our Habits Define Our Success   We are all the product of our habits.  What we do regularly defines our level of success.  Bad habits, good habits are all the same, in terms of the production of results, so the input point not the process, becomes very interesting for those wanting to succeed.  How do we ensure that we are adding good habits and eliminating bad habits?    Part of the input process is selection of priorities.  Going to the gym rather than the sports bar is a choice.  Eating that donut rather than an apple is a choice.  Discipline is a famed part of military life and various slacker generations are recommended compulsory military service as a way to fly straight.  Where does this military discipline come from?  Regular habits are a big part.  Doing specific things at the precise same time, in the same way without variation instills habits.  Doing things that must be done, regardless of how you feel about wanting to do them, instills disciplines, which become habits.  You don’t have to join the military to garner good habits but becoming more disciplined is necessary.   Our biggest successes come from our ability to work with other people.  There are very few professions where you can do everything on your own and don’t need the input, cooperation or contribution of others.  We pick up bad habits that damage our ability to garner that input, cooperation and collaboration. Here are some good habits to cultivate if we want a smoother path to success.   1. Don’t make it your habit to complain to or about others.   When others complain about us to others and we hear about it, what is the usual reaction?  Generally not good and animosities arise and can linger for many years, as the result of what is considered an unwarranted assault on our good name.  So if you want to create a blood feud, then start publically whining about your colleagues.  If you have a beef with someone and you heroically decide to confront them with their failings, then expect either the silent assassin who won’t say much, but will be seeking revenge at the first opportunity or the combustible who will explode right there and then and counter attack ferociously.  Very few individuals will look deep inside their heart, saint like, and admit their errors and bow to your superior judgment.  You have more likely just made an enemy for life.   If the chances of success in complaining are so low, then why do people persist in thinking they can right the world by drawing other’s attention to their failings?  Habit and a major lack of self-awareness are culprits.  Find a more subtle way to draw attention to problems which will allow that person to save face.  Call out the error indirectly.  The issue will be raised but not the animosity.  Make this your habit rather than a preemptive first strike.   2.  Help others to want what you want and make that style of communication your habit   When we are direct and assertive, it comes across like giving orders and few people like being told what to do.  Yes, you can gain compliance and they will do it, if you are higher in the power structure, but you won’t win the hearts and minds to the cause.  Be a more skilled communicator and look for ways to stimulate self-discovery on their part, that leads them to see the wisdom of the solution, that we have identified as the best way forward. Questions are our friends here and statements our enemies.  A statement will trigger resistance, whereas a well crafted question will lead to self-enlightenment.  Make asking well thought out questions your habit, rather than firing off statements in salvoes.   3. Make it a habit to be a good listener, you will become more persuasive as a result   It sounds counter-intuitive doesn’t it, listening rather than telling your way to success.  Hollywood has glorified the riveting, moving oratory that rouses the masses and points them in the same direction.  In the real world of business, this is a useful skill known only to a miniscule minority.    The vast majority will not be able to inspire their colleagues to man the barricades anytime soon, but they can persuade them to do more mundane tasks like ensure the organisation goes forward and prospers.  When we shut up and allow other to speak we learn a lot more.    We uncover their desires, thoughts, attitudes, hot buttons, beliefs, fears, interests etc.  By knowing each other better, we can become closer through improved communication around points of agreement and shared interests.  It is hard to disagree with someone you like.  The reason you like them is because of those shared interest and ideas etc.  The reason you know those things is because you weren’t hogging the airwaves and doing all the talking.   The caveat here is that you are genuinely interested in them.  A predatory listener, hoping to scoop up enough material to manipulate the other person into doing their bidding, is not a creating a success habit.  People are not stupid and we can all spot fake interest pretty quickly.  The wielder of the fake interest weapon will cut themselves, as others realize they cannot be trusted.   4.  Craft the appreciation habit   Self-centered people are always on about themselves and what they did and how great they are.  They can linger long on their superior qualities and accomplishments but are rather parsimonious about recognizing the achievements of others.  These people wonder why no one wants to help them and they get so little cooperation.  Flattery is not appreciation.  It is a lie that is revealed pretty quickly.  The fake praise alarm goes off inside our heads almost immediately we hear it, so it has zero impact, except to never trust the perpetrator.  Honest and sincere appreciation is what resonates with us.    The reason we know it is genuine is because of the way it is communicated to us.  General statements like “good job”, “well done” are in danger of setting off that mental alarm.  When we select the action or behavior that was “good”, we now begin to make it real rather than doubtful.  Concrete examples add truth to our words and resonate with the listener.  Tell them exactly what they did that was good and it will be real.  Appreciate people as a habit and do it in some detail that makes it credible.   We are the sum of our habits and that sum determines our success with others.  Habits can be learnt and cultivated at any stage in life.  We will definitely have habits one way or another so why not make a conscious choice to use good habits to be better with others for a smoother path and a happier life.   Some actions items going forward for good habit cultivation:   1.     Don’t complain to or about others 2.     Help others to want what you want 3.     Become persuasive by being a good listener Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} 4.     Give honest, sincere appreciation

Hip Hop Rapper Advice for PM Abe     Vince Staples, American Hip Hop Rapper, was recently quoted in a Financial Times interview, “You have to paint the picture because everyone doesn’t come from the same background”.  Having just attended the Japan Summit 2015 at the Okura Hotel Ball Room run by the Economist and sitting there listening to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Minister for National Strategic Zones Shigeru Ishiba and Minister for Economic and Fiscal Policy Akira Amari, I was struck by the lack of picture painting and storytelling in their presentations.   By the way, Abe has improved since I last saw him live.  Whether it was some coaching before the Olympic bid or thereafter, the man is much better.  More animated, using bigger gestures, more eye contact, using those see through glass prompters to help engage the audience rather than looking down at a page of notes. He had humour, pauses for clarity and some voice modulation.  Hey Japan, take note, it is possible to be better at public speaking!   I can’t give a similar praiseworthy account for his arch rival Shigeru ishiba.  Sprawled in his seat, eyes looking up and away in the distance at some obscure spot of the venue wall, he spoke in a voice dripping in disinterest, leavened with lethargy and boredom.  He absolutely proved Professor Albert Meharabian’s rule that when what you say (content) is incongruent with the way you say it (delivery), then 93% of the message is missed.    I closed my eyes and tried to just concentrate on the words and actually the content was pretty good and considered.  If we took the transcript and showed it to people, I am sure they would be impressed.  But he totally murdered his message.  I doubt anyone in the room got many of the points he was making.   Minister Amari was polite, nice but boring.  He was boring because like Abe and Ishiba, he was dancing the two step data dump of information.  This is a problem in corporates as well, as the leader gets up kills the audience with detail, detail and more detail.  The idea that the purity or the quality of my information is superior and sufficient, is so grossly outdated and incorrect, you wonder how it could survive in this 24/7, totally connected, information overloaded world.  CFOs and other technical types, please take note – don’t bore us with your data.   Tell us a story, pleeease!  Bring the points being made to life by connecting them to some people and events you have encountered.  Our minds are well trained to absorb stories, because they are the first educational structure we encounter as young children.  The story should start with taking us to the place of the story, the location, the room, nominate the day, month or the season and introduce the people there, preferably people we already know, to make it real for us.    By getting straight into the story we can draw our audience in.  We can now intertwine the context behind the point we want our audience to agree with.  By providing the background logic, cloaked in a story which is vivid, we can see it in our mind’s eye. We will have more success convincing others to follow us.  Having set the scene, we finish by outlining our proposition or proposal and tie the ribbon on top, by pin pointing the major benefit of doing what we suggest.  This is elegant and powerful.   Storytelling does suffer from misuse.  American politicians lead the world in this regard.  Like many things in America there is exaggeration.  If a story is good, then ten stories must be better.  That is why we hear politicians referencing various Joe Public individuals in their speeches, trying to connect with their audience.  Usually it comes cross as fake, duplicitous, over cooked and shady.  In business, we don’t want any of that inference, so we should use storytelling sparingly yet powerfully.  Less is more but none is bad.  Unite our disparate audience from multiple backgrounds by wrapping our key message in a story and if you do, what you say will be remembered, unlike Abe, ishiba and Amari.   Action Steps   Stop believing the quality or quantity of your information is enough   Don’t try and pack too many stories into your presentation   Start the story by creating a vivid mind picture of the scene   Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Let the story create your context, evidence and sizzle for your key message

Romancing Japan   Japan’s ignominious end is being triggered by a lack of romance.  This retarded romantic environment is whittling away vital procreation efforts, which in turn is creating shortages of corporate fodder for the captains of industry.  The end of the world is nigh.  Well that is what is being served up to us, following the Cabinet Office’s June release of statistics, which show nearly 40% of 20s and 30s singles, the prime marriage target group, are not wanting a romantic partner.  Relationships are bothersome, according to 46.2% of those singles surveyed.  Who knew?   Drivers for this end of epoch trend are long work hours for the young, insufficient leisure time, 70% of women quitting work to have babies and not returning to the workforce and less face time because we have screen time instead.  The surge in part-time workers, means young guys not in the mainstream are the working poor.  As young women say they will only marry someone with income of over JPY5 million a year, that is a bit of a downer for a big chunk of the youth population.   In Japan, it is sometimes hard to connect the dots.  Porno seems pretty big here, from the hard core commute manga to the free graphic internet video, there is a lot aimed at men.  Watching thousands of young blokes enthusiastically waving light sticks at a big eyed, long legged, micro mini-skirted, fulsomely endowered Hatsune Miku hologram concert is at one level tremendously disconcerting, but it does show there is a need there somewhere.  Where is the baby boom?   The nakodo system is not as dominant as it was many years ago and so how to get the heavens to coalesce and bring sweethearts together?  Modern alternate services are attempting to link young people but it would appear to be difficult, if the fundamental interest is not there.   Modesty and shyness are characteristics making it difficult for fostering romance.  Part of the problem seems to be the inability to initiate a conversation with people we don’t know.  At networking events in business it is rare to see Japanese business people walking up to strangers and striking up a conversation.  They tend to talk to their colleagues and to the contacts of their contacts.   Being shy is not a Japanese monopoly.  I was painfully shy when I was younger.  In our communication training courses we often hear the same comments.  I don’t know what to say to people I meet for the first time; I don’t know how to engage someone in conversation; or what do I say after hello?  Engaging others is a skill and it can be learnt.  I am an introvert who has learnt to become extroverted in public situations.  Dale Carnegie pioneered training in communication and here are some Principles we can all apply.   Principle number 7: “Be a good listener.  Encourage others to talk about themselves”.  By asking questions, we can engage people we don’t know and through their answers discover points of commonality, agreement or likeability.  “What brought you here tonight?” is a simple starter to get things rolling.  “How long have you been at your company?”; “What do you do at your company”; “Is Tokyo your home town?”.  The list is endless.  We can use Principle number 4 at the same time: “Become genuinely interested in other people”. The key word there is “genuinely”, that means not engaging in fake interactions. Also Principle number 8: “Talk in terms of the other person’s interests”.  Take the focus off us, inviting them to talk.    The art of conversation is being lost thanks to our sordid device fixation.  The ubiquity of distractions thanks to apps and social media has isolated us all to an extent civilisation has not experienced before.  Look at how separated we are becoming from each other, as we all brazenly whip out our screens at every chance.  Japanese singles and many businesspeople, could benefit from improving abilities to strike up conversations with new people.  It is trainable after all.   Action Steps   Don’t be afraid to talk to new people   Be a good listener.  Encourage others to talk about themselves   Become genuinely interested in other people   Talk in terms of the other person’s interests   Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Stop being controlled by your device fixation

SMILE !     Grumpy, angry looking, unfriendly customer facing staff  - welcome to America!  Dale Carnegie's Human Relation's Principle Number Five is "SMILE".  It may sound a bit simplistic but actually the idea is very profound and has a lot of depth.  You would never guess that this idea to smile when you meet people, especially when in a customer facing roles, had been around since "How To Win Friends And Influence People" was first published in 1936.   I was in the US attending  our Owner's Meeting in Chicago, but had also spent time in New York and Washington DC, so my observations were not influenced by one location.     The idea of smiling when you answer the phone, hasn't made it to some of the staff working in major hotels yet either.  Very angry voices would pick up the phone and repeat the name of the Hotel.  I asked one lady if she was angry? That threw her and she said "no", so I asked her why she answered the phone with such an abrupt, unfriendly, angry voice?  Her self-awareness factor was trending into negative numbers, as she was baffled by my line of questioning.  Maybe I have been in Japan too long, but I don’t think that is it.   Buying food, checking in for your flight, or entering the airport lounge, unsmiling, unfriendly staff assault your senses.  No smiling, not even one of those pathetic fake jobs.  To top it off, they then produce a section from the manual and say "have a nice day/flight/whatever”.  The incongruency of greeting you with a "I don't care" attitude and their final words, has obviously not been explored yet.   Giving your instructions to the cabbie or the serving staff and being greeted with total silence is a bit disconcerting.  Do they know what I want, are we clear about what needs to happen next?  Why is there no acknowledgement of what you want?   Excuses such as, "it’s America" or “it’s New York" or "it's Chicago" or “ it's the minimum wage syndrome" don't cut it.  These abysmal service interactions are a simple failure of leadership.  The companies employing these staff have poor leadership, because the people destroying their brand are not being trained properly.  There are obvious conceptual barriers here about what is important.  The message is pretty clear, you the customer are just not important. That fundamental idea comes from the leadership.   What a fantastic opportunity for companies to win in the marketplace.  The cost of a genuine smile is obviously too expensive for these failing companies.  Imagine though, that properly led staff were being trained on just one thing - smile when you meet your customer.  Behind that idea is a whole gamut of attitudes and concepts about the task at hand.  These untrained, unskilled people are totally focused on processes.  Check in the passenger, issue boarding passes, hand over the hotdog, head on to the road system to get to the destination.  No!  No! No!  The experience is the key, not the process.   Teaching our teams to smile at the first interaction with the customer, sets up a chemical reaction that will create the right momentum, to create an experience that adds to the value of the brand and to the revenues of the organization.   To do this we need to properly train our leaders to make sure their staff get it.  The lack of congruency is costing firms money.  The up-sell, the cross-sell missed opportunities are frankly scary, pathetic and unnecessary.   So, do an audit of your own shop.  Call your own organization at different times of the day, especially around lunchtime, when the chances are high of someone not normally picking up the phone is now your “brand ambassador”.  That can be a scary experience and you quickly realize why we need to train everyone to represent the brand.  Remember, if we come across someone from your organization and they are impressive, we think everyone is impressive.  However, if we come across someone from your organization who is a dud, we think everyone must be a dud.   Listen to how your staff answer the phone.  Do they say the name of the organization, their own name and do it with a smile in their voice.  Observe the customer facing interactions and see if the genuine smile is there or not.  Here is a trick - can you train your staff to smile?  It is not impossible, but let's get the right people on the right bus and in the right seat, so that the first impression is a big happy smile, because it is their natural reaction.  If that is not possible, then work on getting their minds around the idea that a smile is shorthand for what the brand represents and what the organization stands for and explain where their role fits into the whole picture.  We forget that all of us are in sales.  We are selling our organisations to potential clients at every single point of contact.   I am often critical of the polite but robotic service we get in Japan, but it beats the genuine disinterest of a lot of service staff I met in America.  As company leaders,  I don't think we should be satisfied with anything less than excellent smiles as the first point of contact. Yes, it requires effort, leadership and training, but the majority of our competitors are doing a pretty miserable job, so let's differentiate ourselves and win.  If we can get a smile going at the outset a lot of good things will follow and Principle Number Five “SMILE” can be the catalyst to success.  On the other hand, if we can't manage this much, then we had better start asking some pretty harsh questions of ourselves.   Action Steps   Call your own organization at different times of the day to check how clients are being handled. Ensure leaders are explaining to staff that they represent the brand and how they interact with clients makes all the difference to how the brand is regarded.   Select customer facing staff who smile naturally.   Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Practice Dale Carnegie’s Principle Number Five - Smile

How To Retain Your Millennials (Part 2)   In Part One, we looked at what were the drivers for retaining and engaging Millennials, based on The Dale Carnegie MSWOARS research.  Personal life issues we have already covered, so now let’s look at the issues around the work environment and organizational leadership.    Being recognized by their immediate supervisor was important to Millennials.  This sounds simple, but in the real world how many supervisors give meaningful positive feedback to their staff? Being told “good job” is basically useless, unless what we did is actually specified.  In Japan, the older generation of leaders do not have a habit of handing out anything other than “tough love”.  Are your middle managers recognizing the work of your Millennials – if not it might be a good time to do some more leadership training in this area.   Millennials are also looking for support and help in their work.  The amount of free time bosses have is limited and though honoured in principle, in practice not a lot of active coaching takes place.  Co-workers are also busy people too, so they are limited in how much time they can invest in teaching Millennials anything.    Looking for leverage opportunities, are bosses coaching the co-workers on why it is important to help the Millennials, and are these activities being noted when it comes to performance review time?  If they are not, then everyone moves along briskly, because there is a lot to do, and Millennials can be left to their own devices to work it out for themselves.  This is not going to increase their engagement and they may just decide to leave for greener pastures.   Millennials like to be trusted that they can do their job and to be given greater responsibility.  They know this is how they grow in their careers.  Bosses who can’t delegate are blockers of Millennial progress.  The “it will be quicker if I do it myself” mantra ensures not much gets delegated.  The learning opportunity is denied and the bosses work burden is constantly at bursting point.  This means no coaching time being invested as well, so it becomes a vicious circle of neglect.   The Millennial view of the organisation’s leadership can be a critical factor in keeping them.  Having confidence in the leadership ability of one’s immediate supervisor is ranked high in importance in the survey.  This can be a bit of a problem though, because often people are promoted into positions of leadership, but are not given any training for the new role.  Being a good practioner and being a good leader of others is not the same thing. The elements that made you great may be missing in the team under your care.  The ability to organize yourself is different to organising a team and areas like communication become a challenge for a lot of new leaders.  The upshot may be that the Millennials quickly realize their boss is a hopeless leader, absent coach, poor communicator and totally stressed out by the responsibility, because they can’t delegate.   Millennials like to have input into decisions that impact their work, but if the boss is a “my way or the highway” type then there is not a lot of scope for input.  The classic top down approach is not one to build the Millennial’s sense of worth by valuing their opinion.   Millennials expect their boss to communicate openly and honestly.  One of the issues with middle management is they are like sponges in absorbing information that drifts down from on high, but they are parsimonious in passing it down any further.  The consequence is that they know what is going on, but few others in their team have a clue and are unpleasantly surprised by the turn of events in the company.  When this happens, the trust is quickly broken.   Millennials demand good leaders. So like the canary in the mine, these young people may be giving us a good warning of hidden leadership failings in our midst.  If we don’t take note and take the required action, they may not wait around for us to fix it.  This will be costly and painful in the long term.     Action Steps   Train new middle managers well   See delegation as a development tool   The newest person often sees things that the old hands no longer see, so make sure to include their ideas   Middle managers must be the glue connecting senior leaders with the masses and vice versa   Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}  

How To Retain Your Millennials (Part 1)   Kids today! Each generation struggles to understand why their successors are so different (and usually, by definition, “useless”).  The Millennial cohort are those born between 1982 and 2000.  This is a key group, especially in Japan, because they are not making enough of them any more.    Over the last 20 years, the population of 15-24 years olds has halved.   Recruiting and retaining young staff has become a big pain for all of us.  The war for talent means we have to learn quickly how to understand them and what they want.  To those firms who just don’t get it, a big Arigatoo!  Please keep training these Millennials so we can poach them.    Dale Carnegie and MSWOARS have been doing major research on engaging employees and recently focused specifically on Millennials.  The overall results show that 30% of Millennials are fully engaged, another 56% are partially engaged and 14% are disengaged.  So what? Well, engaged staff are more likely to stay and so let’s dig down into what Millennials want.   The study threw up three areas where we need to focus.  Their personal life, the work environment and attitudes to organization leadership.  These are big topics, so today we will focus on the “me” factor.  The survey showed that in their personal life, Millennials wanted a good work/life balance.  In particular, having flexible hours, so they can pursue personal responsibilities, ranked highest.    This sounds fairly mundane and flexi-time has been a feature of many western work environments for a long time.  However, when companies emerge from major incidents like the Lehman Shock or the 3/11 triple whammy of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear core meltdown, flexibility sometimes goes missing, as the screws get tightened.  For example, the huge corporate cash reserves in Japan today are a direct response to bankers previously demanding loans be paid early and to the sudden disruption of business through natural disasters.  A “hands on the table, no rapid movements” conservative mentality reigns at the moment.   In Japan, one in six of workers never take any annual leave and of those working over 60 hours a week, over one quarter take no holidays.  Not a lot of work/life balance going on there.  Japanese staff are generally apologetic about asking for leave.  Yes, this is cultural and that is why the majority of Japanese staff finish the year with excess leave days.  This means the workplace culture is one where work, work, work is good and seeking flexibility about work hours is stepping out from the norm.  Not a trait welcomed here.   In Japan, 92% of workers start after 8.00am (compared to Germany at 47%), explaining why your train is so packed everyday.  Not a lot of flexibility there either.  Wanting to start early and finish early is a struggle in a late start/late finish work culture.  The pressure to stay at your desk until the seniors leave is strong and the idea of leaving before your boss, would be a novel one here in Japan.  So, how flexible is it down at your shop?  Would your Millennials be met with frowns if they took off at 5.30pm every night?   Millennials want their immediate supervisor to care about their personal life and the effects it has on their job.  For Boomers this is sheer gobbledegook.  There has always been a clear separation of private and work life for this generation. How much do your supervisors actually know or care about the private lives of your Millennial staff?  This requires a substantial mind shift toward a more holistic approach to dealing with the younger generation.  It may feel it is a bit like prying into their private lives, but they don’t see it that way, if the intention is to be 360 degree supportive.   Millennials are in short supply, so we better get clued in fast on how to engage and retain them.  This is a zero sum game we don’t want to lose.     Action Steps   Study the demographics driving the talent war   Prepare to compete for recruiting and retaining the young   Understand why work/life balance is important to your Millennials   Take a more holistic approach to leading Millennials       Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} +

Today's podcast was recorded at a live session in Nagoya for the American Chamber Chubu Branch.     Whether we realise it or not we are all in sales.  Remarkably, the vast majority of people in sales are untrained and certainly very few understand the importance of asking questions.   Even amongst those who get it and do try to understand the client's needs, probably very few understand that they need to vary the language they are using, depending on who they are talking to.   In this podcast, we explore these issues and explain how we need to ask good questions and also how to vary the way we ask them, to ensure we are having the maximum impact possible with our clients.

Japan Is A Marathon Not A Sprint   There are specific work rhythms for Japan.  Spring is hopeless because of kafunsho (allergies) killing our concentration.  May is no good because of gogatusbyo (May miasma). Everyone is adjusting to the start of the new financial year in April and many are struggling with their new environments and situations.    Also, after the Golden Week break, people are exhausted from the crowded travel and from all the family activities which take place during that time. Summer is also bad because the heat makes us feel drowsy (natsubate).    Of course we also have tsuyubyo or summer sickness thanks to the endless rain, high humidity and associated joint pain. The Obon season is no better because you have to travel back to your hometown to worship at the ancestor’s grave and the roads are clogged and the railways packed.  Recently, we have added a new one - akibate or Autumn drowsiness - to our woes.  Those long dark days of winter are seriously depressing and the bitter cold seeps into your bones, tiring you out every day.   There are also the rhythms of the day.  We need to stay up really late watching mindless television or fixated on our device’s screen.  We have to get insufficient sleep, drag ourselves out of bed at the last moment, rush around in a panic to make the last possible train to get us to work on time.  In Japan, 92% of people start work after 8.00am,  so peak hour trains are incredibly packed, hence the torturous and exhausting commute.   We should also stay really late, either waiting for the boss to leave or go out drinking with work colleagues. In the latter case, stagger home and add to the excitement of re-enacting yesterday but now with a hangover.  The afternoon is hard slog because we are so sleepy after lunch.  Japanese do work long hours and 16% of workers here never take a day off.  Of those working more than 60 hour weeks, 27% never take any days off.    It is hard to be an idea genius when you are tired every single day of your work life.  Innovation rarely surfaces amongst the exhausted. Yet we expect results, innovation, creativity, high work productivity and happy staff.    How many foreign bosses adjust their high powered expectations and allow for the different rhythms here?  Probably zero.  In a globally connected 24/7 world, there is no tolerance for differences in rhythms.  So like our predecessors over the last two hundred years, we try and “hustle the East”.   We meet with pretty much the same degree of success too – basically none!   Rather than hustle the East, why don’t we just make some simple alterations to our work style and introduce a different work culture.  Do you have strict policies on working overtime?  In many companies it is just worked, whether it is needed or not, because that is how you improve your monthly take-home pay situation.  Pre-approval systems for working overtime, control long hours pretty effectively.    What about having more flexible work hours so that more can start earlier or later and miss the crush during peak times.  Typical Japanese company rulebooks say everyone has to take lunch between 12.00pm and 1.00pm.  Why? Change that and we can all get into our favourite restaurants more easily.   Get the company seniors to take some ownership of the culture change and have them leave work much earlier.  The mantra must be productivity is valued above blunt loyalty, simply demonstrated through working long hours.  Encourage the team to take (shock, horror), two or three weeks leave in a row, so they can get some well deserved rest and refresh themselves.   Counsel the team about the importance of getting enough sleep, to rest before they get tired and to take breaks at work, so that they are fresher and therefore less likely to make mistakes though tiredness.  Remind them that the fresher team will beat the tired team, and so let’s change the dynamic at work and win.     Action Steps   Check the company work rules for outdated content   Introduce flexitime and restrict overtime   Encourage the team to take their holidays   Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Promote the importance of rest in order to beat the competition

Hey Boss, Your Nightmare Begins Now!   Here is a collection of indicators that should send a shiver down the spine of all employers in Japan.  The average job securement rate of graduating University students in April 2015 was 97%.  Also keep in mind that this is already a relatively small pool of higher education talent, from which we want to recruit.  In 2013, figures showed that only 50% of High School Graduates went to University compared to an OECD average of 62%. There is no major change in the offing though, because currently 99% of High school graduates found a job upon graduation.    Official numbers also tell us that over the last 20 years, the number of 15 to 24 year olds has halved.  From another angle, the number of Japanese turning 20 was 2.76 million in 1976 and in 2015 it is 1.26 million.  So youth recruitment demand is likely to outstrip supply, forever!   They are just not making enough future workers here.  The required birthrate for stopping population decline is 2.1 but currently Japan is only at 1.43.  Much more effort needed here obviously, but the prospects for a baby boom do not look promising. A recent Japan Family Planning Association survey stated that 20% of men aged 25-29 had no interest in sex.  Also 49% of married couples had no sex in the last month of the survey and these numbers are climbing higher each year.  Couples are marrying later, having fewer children, having less sex and there are few prospects for resolution in sight.  In 2014 Japan accepted 14 refugees out of 5000 applications and the debate about immigration into Japan hasn’t even begun here yet.    There will be little talent recruitment brain drain from young people becoming self-employed entrepreneurs instead of joining companies.  In terms of ease of starting a business, the World Bank noted Japan was way down the list, ranked 120th globally. This is good and bad news for bosses though, because Japan needs more innovation and risk taking.  The female participation rate in the workforce is at 62% compared to 81% for men and so is catching up.  It will continue to improve, but how long will this process take? Support for working mothers is still underdeveloped in Japan.   In a bleak portent of our future hiring quandary, the latest job openings to job seeker ratio for Tokyo is now 1.65.  Fewer young people coming into the workforce is naturally going to make hiring youth talent so much harder.  If we also take into consideration the large decline in young Japanese studying overseas, then the future talent pool of fluent English speakers also shrinks.  Overall numbers of Japanese studying abroad are down over 30% since 2004.   A recent survey of High School seniors found 58% don’t like studying English. In 2013, Fast Retailing boss Tadashi Yanai picked up on this trend early when he commented that, “young people are comfortable with life in Japan.  We promote things they despise – going global and studying English”.  The pool of the most attractive educated youth talent in Japan is drying up.    Foreign companies here tell us that even getting job applications from graduating students is proving more and more difficult.  The students are getting multiple offers, so even at the job offer stage, the competition to actually get them on board is fierce.  Our troubles don’t end there though. We also know that 40% of new entrants are ditching their employer after three or four years and heading for greener pastures.  So getting them and keeping them is only going to grow in importance.   Young entrants into the world of work when surveyed by the Sanno Institute of Management showed that they 68% wanted to develop their skills and 52% wanted job security.  It also showed that 76% wanted to stay with their company until retirement.  Conversely, the Japan Productivity Center survey noted that 30% said they would switch jobs for better working conditions.  In that survey those preferring salary not tied to achievement and performance, rose from 28% to 44% between 2013 and 2014.  Uh oh!   Companies who invest in continually training these young people and their middle managers will do better in this talent war.  The young demand it and their supervisors need it.  How is your succession planning coming along?  If you haven’t confronted this issue yet, trust me, you soon will.   Action Steps   Prepare for the talent war right now   Provide quality training to the new entrants to keep them engaged with your organization   Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Train supervisors about their role in retaining their staff    

Hussle Hassle   Is speed expensive?  Pushing ourselves is getting crazier.  Constant hussling can lead to large and small errors of judgment.  We get so caught up in living 24/7 lifestyles that we start missing big pieces of the success puzzle.  People are the key to most businesses, but look at how we treat them.  We push past them to get into the subway car or we block the train exit corridor, because we are transfixed by a tiny screen.  We cut drivers off in traffic to get a 10 second edge.  We try to barge into elevators before the inhabitants have all moved out.  We hit the panic button on a piece of work and make everyone jump through hoops to make sure the deadline is met.  We either end the sentence for the person we are speaking with or we cut them off and lunge in with our own preferred words and ideas.   Doing more, faster with less, we are constantly hustling to gain time.  The process becomes addictive.  The unrelenting daily email tsunami pushes us to gain extra time - all the time.  You would never know that the subway trains arrive every two minutes in Tokyo, by the desperate way some people are scrambling to get into carriages.  This unquenchable thirst for saving seconds becomes our norm.  Our “contemplative self” is subsumed by the “mad rush us”, leaping around like a lunatic.  We start to lose awareness of the impact we are having on those around us.  Our words and actions become one-way traffic as we do unto others, as we dictate.  What do we all preach though?  Customer focus, good listening skills, sensitivity to the client’s needs, consultative sales, etc.   Decades ago I saw a Mr. Boo Chinese comedy, in which the hero Mr. Boo steps on the toe of another passenger in the subway car, doesn’t apologise and gets into an argument with the stranger.  In the next scene he is visiting the house of his new girlfriend and of course the father turns out to be the gentleman he was rude to in the train.  Very funny, as we watch his embarrassment.    Imagine if every interaction you have with others, where you are focused on hustling for your personal gain, came back to haunt you like Mr. Boo’s experience.  How would this change your behavior?  You would definitely take more care about the people around you, how you spoke with others and your general interactions with humanity.  You would start aligning a lot more of those heroic Vision, Mission and Value statements with your actions.  You would start to value the input of others, because for the first time in a long time, you would actually be paying full attention to what they are saying.  You would be more considerate of others.   The slow food movement was a reaction to the impersonalisation of the food service industry.  We need a slow business movement to do the same thing in the way we run our businesses.  Scrambling for extra seconds, so that we can spend more time glued to screens featuring Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, email etc is actually pretty pathetic, when you sit back and take in what we are all busily doing with our time.  Contemplation is vaporizing as we constantly hussle.  Who we really are and what we actually stand for in our value system is getting bent out of shape.  One of the things I really admire about Japanese society is how, with a massive population living cheek by jowl for centuries, they have managed to remain so considerate of others.    So if you find yourself hussling like mad, stop and ask yourself, what is the cost of all this speed? What am I actually doing with all of these contraband minutes?  Unleash the contemplative you instead and practice tuning yourself into other people.  This is the universal, timeless, key business success skill – our ability to do well in our engagement with others and we are in danger of losing it   Action Steps: Develop more self awareness Give people your 100% attention when you engage with them Prioritise contemplation Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Make haste slowly

Chinese Tourist Tsunami Stress   You know you have adjusted to Japan when you get totally annoyed by visiting Chinese tourist’s behavior.  This is the latest incarnation of the 1950s “Ugly American” and the bubble era “Ugly Japanese” phenomenon.  Remember all of those provincial Japanese tourists roaming the planet in the late 1980s? The nouveau riche Chinese are now spreading around the globe, busily devouring the sights, sounds and tastes of different worlds.  The OECD calculated there were 157 million middle class Chinese in 2009.  They expect this number will grow to over 1 billion in 15 years time.  Multiply the numbers of Chinese tourists visiting Japan by at least a factor of six and we will “live in interesting times”.    Shop entry points are favourite gathering spots for multitudes of wheeled luggage bearing continental tourists, especially when it is raining.  On nicer days, sprawling out on the sidewalk in front of gorgeous Ginza boutiques seems natural when you are so tired from all that vigorous shopping.  Get used to your calm conversation with the shop clerk being overridden by “34, 34, 34” as a determined shopper yells out the size they want in this item they are brandishing in front of your faces.  Speaking of yelling, get used to lots and lots of yelling.    Japan went through the same growth spurt as well, thanks to the 1985 Plaza Accord driving the yen to stratospheric strength and the rest of the world was one big tourist bargain.  The difference this time is probably the sheer volume of people coming from China.  In the depths of last winter, I was amazed to see so many Chinese tourists enjoying the deep snow in Shirakawago, way up in the backblocks of Mie Prefecture.  Any place you care to name, with the exception of the Senkakus, is on the trail now and we can all expect to be bumping into this tourist horde more often.    You will most likely get annoyed, because like me, you are used to dealing with considerate, reserved, polite, quietly spoken Japanese who are refinement personified.  Are we going to change this situation anytime soon?  No, money talks and Chinese tourists really spend up big.  They will just keep coming in waves, as more of the wealthy get out and see the world.   So we had better change.  Here is your handy stress management guide to dealing with the Middle Kingdom in your backyard.   Cooperate with the inevitable The Chinese government are educating their tourists to behave better when overseas.  This will take decades though, so just observe the phenomenon and don’t expect any relief any time soon.   Decide just how much anxiety a thing may be worth and refuse to give it more Yes there will be regular annoyances, but don’t let them pile up and keep bugging you.  Give yourself a time limit on how long you are going to allow these tourists to upset you, then just mentally move on.   Expect ingratitude Assume the product of such dense urban living, recently rediscovering capitalism, will be a bit flummoxed over universal values.  The moral compass has gone missing for many in modern China, so our own assumptions about how things are supposed to work are out the window.  The language factor will reduce subtleties to the most basic, which by the way, won’t include “please”, “after you” “thank you” or “I am sorry” in any language.   Count your blessings – not your troubles Yes, rude tourist behavior is annoying but remember, we have so much going for us here.  The focus should be on enjoying the great things about Japan and dealing with those few moments when we meet the upwardly mobile proletarian masses face to face.   Don’t fuss with trifles Yelling, hustling, breaking the rules, dressing like fashion victims etc., does draw attention to the interruption of harmony here, but we need to keep this in perspective.  We have more important things to occupy our thoughts than petty annoyances like these.   Use the law of averages to outlaw your worries How much time do you actually spend at tourists spots anyway?  There are many areas in Japan where you can go and not bump into bumpkins.  In a whole year, your total exposure to the tourist tsunami will be pretty small, even if it feels intense at the time.   If it all gets too much, Dale Carnegie’s classic “How To Stop Worrying and Start Living” is probably more useful reading than a Mandarin phrase book, so look for more stress management principles there.  Good luck!   Action Steps   1.     Cooperate with the inevitable 2.     Decide just how much anxiety a thing may be worth and refuse to give it more 3.     Expect ingratitude 4.     Count your blessings – not your troubles 5.     Don’t fuss with trifles Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0mm 5.4pt 0mm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0mm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} 6.     Use the law of averages to outlaw your worries