High Performer Coaching   Coaching high performers is tricky.  They have talent, ability and are already highly motivated.  They usually have a pretty healthy ego as well and have probably been mentally trying out your chair, to see how it fits them.  Interestingly enough, this is the group the boss pays the least attention to.  The under performer gets all the time, because the leader is trying to fix something that is broken.  The issue here is even if you get a 100% lift, it hardly registers, because it is coming from so far down at the bottom.  The high performers however are where the big results reside, but they are thought not to need any coaching.  Ask yourself, “How much time do I invest every week coaching my top performers?”.   If we look however into the world of sports all the top performers get tonnes of coaching.  The elite level of performance demands it and demands an elite coach.  Why aren’t we applying the same logic to business?  The first problem is we have mentally ruled them out from “needing” coaching, because they are usually highly self sufficient and self contained. This is good but top level athletes are the same and yet they get taken care of by their coaches to take them to the maximum of performance.  We should be looking at how we can take out high performers in business to their maximum level of performance too.   Here is a coaching model for high performers.   Listen, observe, evaluate If we think about it, a high performer challenges us to come up with interventions that will raise their performance even further.  A low performer’s situation is easy, but not so with the best of the best.  We have to be an intuitive observer and make lightening fast assessments about actions and behaviors that are inconsistent with or not moving this person closer to achieving the organization’s goals. Stretching a top performer will raise the performance level of the entire group.  We have to coach them directly in their experience, competence and confidence levels.   Identify An Opportunity We must choose our battles wisely when dealing with talented people.  We don’t dwell on negatives, instead we look for quickly identifying the critical factor, that specific behavior, that must change before anything else can change.  When we see an opportunity to coach we must trust our judgment and instincts.   Cushion A cushion is a verbal or non-verbal message that softens the environment and creates more receptivity to the coaching.  When you have established trust with the person, something as simple as using their name while smiling, in a soft tone of voice works well.  It is always good to start with praise.  Don’t be general with the praise though.  “You are doing a great job” is in fact pretty lousy praise. We need to be referring to something specific.  Their jobs have multiple facets and so which particular part of their job are we referring to?  What precisely did they do, that was good? When we make the intervention, we do it very softly.  We could ask, “May I make a suggestion?”; “How about this angle…”;“What would happen if…”.  Or try a statement such as, “Try this…” or  Let’s test this…”.   Provide Context, Action, Benefit As soon as we specify an action we want them to take, we run into trouble.  They are smart individuals, who have analysed situations, found the best path forward and risen to the top.  As soon as they hear our suggestion they go into critic mode. They start thinking about why that won’t work, why that is wrong, etc.  We need to start by explaining the why, but deliver that in the form of the background to our thinking, producing the context for them, that got us to this way of thinking in the first place.   The best way to explain the context is in the form of a story.  This should be chock full of people, places, situations they know, so they can mentally go into the story.  The context itself has their minds racing toward a conclusion or a solution. It will probably be the same one we have reached, based on everyone’s shared knowledge of the background.    At this point we bring forward our recommendation for them and then bridge straight into the benefits to them of taking that course of action.  Then we shut up and let them tell us what they think.  We don’t finish their sentences, cut them off, contradict them. We hear them out in full.  This may be killing you, but please persevere. Feeling that you are being fully listened to, is an important relationship builder.   Reinforce Now we go into detective mode, looking for clues of them doing well with the new suggestion.  Reinforced behavior becomes repeated behavior.  It could be as simple as a big smile and an enthusiastic, “Excellent” , followed by a pin point summary of just what was in fact excellent.  A strong strength recognition response will often be just the encouragement the person needs to keep moving forward.  It might be a lunch or a dinner.  These things are about the boss giving their most valuable resource – their time.   High performers are not used to being coached.  They however have latent and still untapped potential that the leader can help unleash.  Ego and pride are barriers and makes the methodology chosen critical to success.  Try these five steps to high performer coaching to get the best results with the least amount of friction.

How To End A Project Team   There are no shortage of projects and project teams inside companies.  Often, for big projects, various people are brought together to create a specialist team for that particular project.  The projects eventually come to an end and most commonly, start with a bang and go out with a whimper.  Are we gaining all that we can from these non-permanent team formations? What are we doing about the people part of ending the project team?  Are we leaving on a high or low note?   Teams have their own cycle. There is the Formation Stage where a team is chosen, and clear goals and direction are defined.  The next element is the Stabilisation Stage where everyone settles into their roles.  Following that we have the Integration Stage where the big goals are being broken down to smaller bits and being worked on.  People are starting to get used to working with each other in  cooperative way.  Actualisation comes after that stage and the team is really starting to gel well together.  Things are humming like a well oiled machine, everyone is engaged and progress is being made. The Maturation Stage is next, greater progress is being made and the teamwork is showing outcomes and rewards. The final stage is the Termination Stage when the team’s job is finished or the team is dispersed into other roles.   This final stage is critical because it means the project was successfully completed and there is no more rationale to have a team working on this project.  Alternatively, the project may have failed and resources now must be dispersed to other projects and teams.   We know that we will always have projects and project teams.  Yet, we treat them all as one offs.  We are losing a lot of insight when we do it this way.  In order to retain the successes and learned lessons of a team, that is in the Termination Stage, it is important to arrange an organised, detailed closure to the team cycle.  Teams at this stage typically have developed a wide range of influence in the organisation,  often they are more willing that ever at this stage to be honest about their observations and recommendations to the organisation.  Are we sufficiently adding to our stock of knowledge, creating templates of successful processes, highlighting ideas for broader distribution and passing this on throughout the organisation?  What is the flow of this processs?   There are four elements of establishing closure to the team cycle.    Completion of any deliverables or any remaining team efforts The original planning will have had timelines attached to various stages of the project and these need to be checked for completion.  If there is anything left over, then this has to be finished immediately.   Evaluation of the team’s process and product Did we finish late, on time or early? What worked and didn’t work during the team cycle?  Did we chronicle the journey? If we are going to be doing a similar project is this a point of failure we need to prepare ahead of time? What went well process wise to bring the team together and why?   Identification of lessons learned and passing these on to future teams Inevitably teams learn hard lessons during their team cycle, sometimes captured as “mistakes we have made”. Success or failure, there are lessons aplenty but are we well enough organised to capture them?  Often the learnings are picked up along the way, but everyone is too busy to note what works well or what innovations they introduced. Getting these down on the record is the way to pass these on to other teams or future teams.  Global consulting companies are totally project focused and they are very disciplined about capturing what they have found, in order to speed up completion of other projects of a similar nature.  Are we doing that or are we constantly too busy to capture critical data points, reflections, breakthroughs, innovations?   Creating a closing celebration that acknowledges the contributions of individuals and the accomplishment of the team and that formally ends this team’s existence These events are sometimes hard emotionally for the dissolving team and any departing members and also for individuals and teams left behind.  The whole aim of creating a successful team is to get the people working as a single unit, really invested in pulling together as a team and being recognised as a distinguishable unit within the broader organisation.  And then we break it all up.    If it were ever only one team, that would be okay, but people are designated to participate in other teams and at different stages of their career.  After a painful experience attached to the ending of a team, they may be gun shy about getting too emotionally attached to their fellow team members on the next go around.  This creates a new problem in the next team being created.   As professionals, many of us tend to avoid emotional work situations that might make us feel uncomfortable.  For departing team members, there might be a strong desire to move on to the next adventure and depending on the circumstances of the team termination, there might be some hard feelings toward individuals and the organization.  As a result teams often fade out.   This is where the leaving on a high feeling must be created.  It happened to all of us after High School, after University graduation, when people went their different ways.  This is similar and it can be sad or disheartening.  It doesn’t have to leave a bitter taste in everyone’s mouth, if we design the ending properly.  Leaving in triumph should be the theme and everything geared up to celebrate the people and their joint achievements.  This should be baked into the leader’s plan at the start.  Create a project team, capture the team’s learnings all the way through and then go out with a bang.  We know it intellectually but often we don’t do it.  On the next project, plan the party first!          

Leaders Who Fail To Follow Up, Fail Their Business   Companies spend considerable time and treasure to improve the business.  Ideas are generated and projects initiated.  New hires are brought in to expand the business. Training is delivered to raise skill and ability levels.  All of these types of activities need leadership.  Why then are leaders so poor at doing the follow up?  Everyone is busy, but the leader’s job is to translate all of that busyness into results and outputs.  In Japan, a big part of this problem is the incomplete self-awareness about the true role of the leader.   I have seen this same scenario so many times over the years.  We gather for the offsite or a similar innovation session.  We break into groups and start brainstorming ideas to drive the business forward.  We spend hours digging out creative ideas, debating the priorities, getting them down on to large sheets of paper and sticking these sheets up on the wall.  We take our colleagues through the findings and then listen to their summation.  Then we wrap it all up with some stirring words from the boss and we all go home or to the pub.  Nothing ever comes of the ideas.  Why? The leadership are unable to take all that genius and implement it into the business.  The paper fades over time, along with our memories of the effort we put in.   Being able to find new staff in Japan is like finding hen’s teeth at the moment. The new entrants are brought into the company, but the on-boarding process and mindsets have not been updated from the days when staff were many and jobs were few.  It is a different world today.  The proper care and attention to get people into the warm bosom of the firm hasn’t been carefully thought through.  Within three years they have moved on to greener pastures somewhere else.  The leader left the process to others and didn’t inject themselves sufficiently into the fray.  Why? They didn’t see that part of the role as central to their job and by the way, they have been busy, busy, busy working on many other projects.   The team are sent off for training, they return after some time and resume hostilities just as before. But without maximising the learnings. The team members were only told that “the details of the training are with HR”. That was the extent of the leader download about the training.  The staff have no clear idea about why they are going, what they are expected to do during the training and thereafter.  The consequence is the uptake of the new methods is poor to zero.   This is unthinkable really, but it is very common.  The difficulty with training is that it rests on the premise that we can get people to come out of their comfort zone and adopt new ways of doing things.  Instead, they emerge from the training room initially fired up, but return to their desk and go back to the tried and true methodologies of the past.  Time and treasure are lost yet here was a supreme engine fully available to drive the business forward.   The leaders need to set up for the changes they want to see.  That means a full briefing to the staff on how great they are doing already, how we can all do better, together identifying some areas to work on in the training and specifying what they will do with the training when they get back, in order to make the most of the opportunity.  Are these types of briefings standard operating procedure in your firm?  If not, the best time to do this was yesterday, and the second best time is today. Let’s stitch this into the fabric of how people are managed at your shop.   The other bit of stitching needed is for after the training.  We revert to our old habits quickly and we also have to do battle with the forgetting curve.  People forget 50% of what they learnt in an hour, 70% in a day and 90% in a week.  We have to create new habits and that means immediately using what was taught.  This requires some leader help because, when left to their own devices, our staff will drift and lose the necessary change momentum.    So the boss needs to get busy and inject themselves into the follow up.  Check that they are doing what they learnt, by interviewing them immediately after the training session about how they are going to using the training. We had told them before the training that we would want to hear this from them, so they should be prepared for this question.   At regular intervals, we need to get feedback on how their application of the new information is being incorporated into their new habits and ways of working.  This is critical to build the new habit.  Keep checking because it is easier to keep doing the old than to adopt the new and people get distracted so quickly.   Leaders have follow up duties, which must be high priority items in their daily To Do lists.  If they are not included in the scheduling, then the chance of these vital tasks being completed plummets and they move across to the realms of delusion and fantasy.    Somehow we think all of these things are being done automatically without any intervention from us, the boss.  Wrong. They only happen because the boss makes the time to see them happen.  When we understand these facts, then we can change our behaviour as well to do our real job of leading.  What gets checked gets done.    

Coaching Team Members   Coaching has been wildly misinterpreted in Japan.  It should be there to motivate and encourage people in their work but these current generations of Middle Managers have corrupted the idea.  Mistakenly they imagine that blasting out orders like a mad pirate captain is coaching.  Or that telling their people they are wrong is helping to correct them to fly straight. They are fault finders extraordinaire, never giving any praise.  Or if they do manage to break the mould and give some praise, it falls on stony ground and is totally ineffective, never believed.   When we criticise, condemn or complain about others, what are their reactions?  Do they dive deep into contemplation and self reflection? No, they go straight into justification of their position and become dogged and ideological or they spiral down into depression.  When we tell our staff that their idea is wrong or their opinion is wrong, do they bow before the boss’s greater experience, knowledge and capability? No. They whine to their colleagues over lunch or drinks about what an ass they have to work for.  Someone who has no interest in other’s ideas and who is a demotivating leader.  Often, in short order they leave.   If the boss is proven to be wrong on some issue, does the boss admit it quickly and emphatically? No, they try to justify it or are mealy mouthed around their contrition.  They have hitched their self worth and self regard to their status and so can’t retreat. How do staff see this?  They recognise the boss is weak, stubborn, overly proud, arrogant and they don’t like working for that type of person.  In short order, they will leave.   When mistakes occur does the boss start balling the offender out, telling them they are an idiot and useless? Or does the boss, tell them that they too have made mistakes in the past and then work with them to fix the issue?  The yelling at them alternative is usually the tool of choice in Japan. What does this do to the motivation and confidence of the individual?  They both plummet.  It is very hard to get people in this frame of mind to come up with innovative ideas to share with the boss.  Actually, they are hell bent on keeping their interactions with the boss to an absolute minimum.   What should bosses be doing. The first thing they need to do is follow the news.  Yes, that’s right follow the news.  If they did so they would understand that there are 1.62 jobs available for every person looking for a job.  That is a national figure and I would guess that the ratio is much higher here in Tokyo. Try recruiting a salesperson these days – hen’s teeth are easier to find.  Do we want idiots in Middle Management driving people out of our organisations into the waiting and welcoming arms of our competitors?  Especially as we have spent years training them already?   Currently one in three young people notching up their third or fourth year with the company, are leaving for greener pastures. That number will only grow as the demographic pain of not enough young Japanese coming into the pipeline starts to register.  The young will realize this is a seller’s market and that there are plenty of jobs and employers willing to hire them.  This wasn’t the case back in their parent’s  day, but is it certainly the reality now.  We need to keep these young people with us and the managers job must be focused on their retention.   Some ways to do that have been mentioned.  Take off the eye patch, put down the cutlass and don’t give orders.  Instead ask questions which lead the staff to self discovery and therefore ownership of the solution.  Stop criticising people.  Instead find ways to indirectly raise issues around jobs not properly executed. Explain how a job mistake is not fatal through introducing your own mistakes when you were at their stage and encourage them to believe they can recover from this and have a future at the company.   When you see people performing their jobs stop looking for problems and faults.  Rather start looking for strengths and job aspects done well.  When you praise them don’t use some vague generality like “good job” because it is not powerful enough.  They are doing tonnes of things everyday in their jobs, so which one are you talking about?    Look them in the eye, use their name, tell them the strength you have noticed, provide evidence, explain how this fits into the company’s bigger aims, thank them and encourage them to keep doing that.  You might say, “Tanaka san, I really admire the way you are so conscientious about keeping in touch with our clients.  I received feedback from Ms. Suzuki at XYZ company that they really appreciated the way you always follow up so promptly and thoroughly.  This helps to cement our customer loyalty and builds the company’s brand.  Thank you for doing that and please keep doing it with all of your customers, they certainly recognize your efforts and so do I”.   Managers who cannot adjust to this staff seller’s market of their services will simply become the free training ground for the rest of us, as their disgruntled staff jump ship and come to us instead.  I am fine with you doing that and by the way, please keep doing it, because I know we can keep our staff.   We will have a net benefit in play here from getting your nicely fully trained people to add to our team to use against you in the future.  If that prospect worries you, then start training your Middle Managers now, because this is the reality we are all going to be facing into the future and possible forever, here in Japan.

What Is Your Tone As A Leader?   We understand tone very easily when we think about voice tone.  A soft, gentle tone when speaking contrasts with a harsh, strident tone.  What about the tone we set for the workplace and for the team, in our role as leader?  Have we decided what the tone will be or is it just what it is naturally?  Why would we set a tone and what would it be?  Tone in this regard relates to the dynamic between the team members themselves and what type of behavior is required.  It imprints on to the team an attitude about how we regard and how we treat our clients.   As the boss, this is all going on in the background, because you are super busy.  When you are juggling so many balls in the air at once, you need everyone to get on with what they are doing, because you have no additional bandwidth to be running around after others. Often we don’t set a tone, because we are so very busy ourselves and we just expect everyone to be an adult and behave accordingly. The issue here is your version of adult and their adult may be two different people.  Common sense is not as common as we bosses would wish.    When you become a leader for the first time, one of the big discoveries is that others are not like you. You were fully focused on yourself and your own results and just observed others in passing, as you drove yourself to get to the top.  You find the team members don’t think how you think and don’t want what you want.  If we leave the tone of the organisation to become the sum of the people in it, then there may be no commonly agreed behavior displayed.  As the leader, our job is to set the tone.   Excellent!  How do we do that?  Well, our own behavior is a principal guide for everyone.  If we are running around like a lunatic, never on time, then don’t expect others to arrive at meetings at the appointed start time. Also, don’t expect that they will never miss their deadlines either.  They see you are constantly missing deadlines, so they assume that is okay around here for them as well.  If it is okay for the boss, then it is okay for me.   If you are taking long lunches, skiving off early, arriving late, then you have set the tone for how others should think about their work commitment to the organisation.  Losing your temper, yelling at people, throwing inanimate objects around, all now come under the mantle of acceptable workplace behavior by others.  Being a childish bore is now mainstream.   How we think about the client also has a tone of its own.  Are we talking about milking clients for as much revenue as possible, pushing them into bad deals because we make more money that way, as well as over promising and under delivering?  Are we okay with a high turnover of clients, as we burn and churn them?  As the boss, what we say and what we do gets noticed.    We have to be aware that everyone in the organisation is a card carrying, certified, life time member of the Great Fraternal Brotherhood and Sisterhood of Boss Watchers.  The team are studying us and reading information into what they see.  They share this information over coffees, lunches and drinks together, comparing notes, exchanging stories, analysing everything in great detail.   Never forget that we say and how we say it matters.  What we do consistently matters.  Rather than this happening in some random, day to day fashion, we need to consciously set the tone and communicate it.  When we are in the office we have to be dealing with people and problems in a very considered, controlled manner.  We have to be positive and upbeat, no matter how we feel personally on that day.    Our research into leadership says staff want to follow bosses who can admit they are wrong, rather than trying to defend the indefensible, through mealy-mouthed excuses and justifications.  They want honesty and transparency.   They also want bosses who can praise them in a way that is real.  What does “real” look like? Real praise means recognising specifically the exact thing the staff member did well, relating it to the bigger picture of the organisation’s mission and encouraging them to keep doing it.  That little list is a long way from a simplistic throw away line like “good job”.  That comment is confusing for the receiver. Which one of the many things that they do was good. There was no detail, so they are left wondering, unconvinced about the praise and unmoved.   When we talk about the client, we don’t bitch, moan and complain about them.  We are the one setting the tone about how we regard our clients and how we work with them as a team.  Instead we talk about how appreciative we are, that they are trusting us enough to give us their business.  We are noting we are not after a solitary sale, but we want reorders.  We mention that in a highly competitive market, getting and keeping customers is the path to victory.  We talk about our true intention being to see the customer’s business succeed and grow, knowing that inside their success, lies our own success.    This is backed up by the tough decisions where we forego doing business with a potential client, because we are not the best fit for them.  It means handing back the money, if there was a problem, and not engaging in any to and fro debate with the client about who is right and who is wrong. Money talks and our own people realise what our tone is, by how we partner with our clients, in addition to what we say about how we should treat clients.  They believe what they see, before they accept what they hear as the truth. Handing back money hurts but we are building a platform for dealing with clients that everyone can understand and conform to.   So tone could be a random act of delineation or it could be a carefully crafted, internally consistent approach to our people and to clients.  It should be something that shows we live all that high sounding palaver behind the beautifully framed glass on the wall, that sprukes the company Vision, Mission and Values.  If we don’t set the tone, then someone else will and that may not be the right tone we need, for the organisation to prosper.  If we understand that every second of the day we are sending out our take on the tone, to all the boss watchers out there, then we will make sure that we are communicating the key messages.   They need to get supreme clarity about who we are, how we work, what we do and how we do it.  This is the boss’s main job – set the tone for everyone on how to work together, how to work with clients and then live up to those standards ourselves.

Banish Personal Negativity   The boss is the fountain of positivity for the team, like a fountain of youth of lore and legend.  We have to stand tall, no matter what is going on, because people rely on us to lead.   That means reassuring them that the company will be okay or the section will be okay and that we will all get through this current difficulty.  When things look grim, who are the people first out the door?  The low or average performer? No, it is always the best people who jump ship, because they always have options.  The first sign of top performer overboard has everyone else worrying about what did that person know that they don’t?  The feeling of insecurity triggers people searching for exits, before it is too late. The boss is the bulwark standing firm against the tide of panic and confusion. What happens however when the boss becomes negative?   We all know what we are supposed to do, what type of role model we should be. But we have human frailties.  We are not robots, devoid of feelings, who can toil around the clock, with perfect consistency. We have our personal health, financial and family issues bubbling along at home, as we belt the crocodiles with our oars from our work canoe.  Once we go dark and negative, we can spiral into depression.  Even such a famous and successful person as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill struggled with what he called the “black dog” of depression.   If we do feel negative and worried, how do we lift ourselves out of the bog, out of the morass sucking us down?  Here are two ideas to form a positive energy force to counteract the oily, rising, roiling, black tide tsunami about to come down upon our heads.   We often use the Value Tower exercise with sales teams to reacquaint them with the strength and value of their offering for buyers.  You can do it individually both for yourself and your business.  The methodology is the same.  For fifteen minutes in serene silence, write down on post it notes, all the value you personally bring to the work.  Write one idea per note.  Once you have done that, place the notes on a white board and start arranging them into columns of like ideas.  Give each column a name.  Have a look at what you have come up with.    Repeat this process for another fifteen minutes. The second time the ideas won’t come as quickly, but don’t be alarmed, because they will come, as we are now accessing our deeper levels thought process.  Again, take the post it notes and now place them into the appropriate column or create new columns.  You may think you are done, but now we go a third time.  This time we spend just ten minutes going through the same brainstorming method.  Ideas will be fewer but probably a lot deeper this last time.  Attach them to their column.   Having gotten all the ideas out, now start making some judgments about the priorities of ideas in each column.  Start moving notes around, until you can get a hierarchy of value in each column, with the best at the top.  Do this from the point of view of an outside observer, who was making an objective calculation of the value that you bring to the team and the work.  Finally, arrange the top group of items from each column into a single priority list, mimicking a tower and running from top to bottom.   Having done all of that for yourself, do it again for the business.  This time you elevate the scope from you individually to the whole firm point of view. Look at what value the firm provides for the buyers.  Go through the three rounds as before.  When making judgments about priority value provided, arrange the items judged from the point of view of the buyer. Look at it this way, rather than what your company may think is more important.  You will wind up with two magnificent lists of value that you personally bring to the table and where your company is strongly regarded in the market.   Emphasise the company’s strengths in your briefings to the team.  Make a point of dwelling on the positives with them.  Reinforce their belief in the righteousness of what you are all doing.  Hammer hard the WHY of what you are all doing.  Re-explain the Vision, the Mission, the Values of the organization. Talk in terms of specifics from your list rather than vague generalities.   This lends more credence to the points you are expressing. Keep repeating this at regular intervals, because people need to hear it constantly for it to register with them.   Also, take your own personal list of your value and re-read it everyday.  Make the time for it, because this is your engine we are talking about and these points are the fuel.  Fill your mind with the positive to counter all the negativity flying around inside your head, the firm and in the market.    Stop watching the daily news cycle, don’t read newspapers or allow any negativity into your brain. Spend the saved time reading things which will help your work on leadership, persuasion skills, sales techniques, etc.  Don’t spend any more time than necessary around negative people.  Look for the positive people and hang out with them. If you do this, you will right the ship. You will become the beacon of light and hope on the hill.  You are their leader, so lead!

Dealing With Really Toxic Staff   Be it big organisations or small organisations, the things nobody wants are rust or termites.  Rust in your car rots out the floorboards, the metal fabric, but it does so unseen.  Termites in your house silently eat out the boards, leaving a paint covered, paper thin illusion of a wall, that when you touch it totally collapses. The rust and termites in organisations are toxic people, equally quietly going about destroying the business from within.   Here are some types of toxic people to be careful of:   Negatives They are down on everything and everyone.  No one is good enough in their view, the world is bad and the future looks dismal. They are angry, depressed, frustrated people and want to enlist others to be like them.  They can list long and hard all the things that are wrong with the organization.  However, ask them what to do about any of it and they will quickly tell you that it is not their job to fix it.  If you are the boss, you need to sort them out.  Tell them to cut out the crap or leave.  Don’t poison the well with these people.  Before you know it their negative influence will be infecting everyone. Find out if you can help them reduce their negativity but if you find it is baked in, then they have to go and don’t hesitate.  If you are a colleague then reduce your exposure to them to an absolute minimum. Imagine they have the ebola virus and you don’t want to contract it from them.   Bad Fudosans Fudosanis a Buddhist deity who symbolises solidity and immovable determination.  This can be a great thing in the face of challenges.  The negative version of this phenomenon are staff who refuse to adjust to change.  They resist it publically and create a headache for the leader trying to rally the troops to get behind the changes.  Or they are silent anarchists within the collective, convincing people to resist and to deny the need for any change.    We need to find out why they are opposed to the change.  If it contradicts their stance, philosophy, morals, ideology etc., then they can leave right now.  We wouldn’t want them working in an environment that is diametrically opposed to what they stand for and believe.  If they have concerns, then we need to make them part of the solution.  Often people who are true believers are the ones who resist change the most.  We need to get them involved in being part of the change assimilation.  Rather than being outside the change, they can be tasked with sheparding the change, to make sure it doesn’t negatively impact the organisation or the people.  “Join the revolution and control it or jump out” is the message they need to hear.   Teishiseitypes Teishiseiin Japanese means taking a low profile. Keeping below the radar, staying out of the spotlight.  You do your job, no more, and you head home. You don’t make trouble, but you don’t add much value either.  These people have reduced their job description down to a size which can comfortably be written on the back of postage stamp.  Everything outside of that micro world is not their responsibility, so don’t ask them to get involved sunshine.   These people need educating about the bigger picture here and what their full responsibilities really are.  We should try and align what they want to achieve with what the firm wants to achieve. If we can’t do that, then we need to raise their temperature.  We need to get them working a lot faster, harder and more vigorously.  We make it clear we don’t brook any nonsense about “not my job” around here.  If they don’t like that arrangement, then we need to acquaint them with the door.   Rumour Millers Japan is a country where one of the hardest things to keep is a secret.  Everyone knows a surprising amount about everyone else, (including you!). That is okay, but some people can’t be satisfied with just gossiping about others, they want to show a bit more creative flair and start manufacturing trouble.  The rumour mill always flourishes in a vacuum and there are people who can’t wait to weight in with what they think is really going on.   Keeping everyone informed of changes, having transparency and communicating as much as possible will put rumours to the sword.  As for the rumour millers, they need to be given a stiff talking to on the downside of destabilizing the firm.  “Learn to shut up about speculations or speculate somewhere else” is the message they need to get.   Toxic people can kill your business.  Like rust or termites they destroy from within.  They are also the most difficult people to get out, because they worry they are unemployable.  That is changing though in Japan. Nevertheless, the cost of keeping them inside is very high. If you can’t eject them, then neutralise them.  Don’t hesitate to go hard because they are destroying your company.  You have a duty to save the jobs of everyone else.    I know Japan is a difficult place to eject people, but you either get them into line or you go through the pain of getting them out.  The pain and cost of keeping them is much greater.  Given the shortage of workers in Japan, people who leave have a much greater chance of being gainfully employed than in the past.  The barriers to leaving are coming down, as we get great job mobility in Japan.  This is good thing for everyone.          

This Year It Will Be Different   The new calendar year is always a time for reflection and goal setting.  We get a few days off and can put some distance between ourselves and the everyday bustle and minutiae of the business.  This affords an opportunity to think more strategically about where we want to be over the next few years and how to get there.  We look at our waist line and think we should strike a blow for freedom and do something about removing that fatty liver build up.  We also know this is not our first rodeo and we have done and said all this before. We have notes scattered amongst bits of paper or maybe even collected diligently in one place.  If you want a good laugh, go back and look at what you said you would do in the business or personally, a few years ago.   But this year it will be different.  Well, the Einstein take on insanity was repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  We were crazy kids in the past, but now we have seen the light.  So far so good.  Where do we start though?   Start small.  Sounds a bit defeatist doesn’t it.  “No, I can do it…!”.  Well going by track record so far, why would that idea be true?  Let’s try a different approach this year, aim lower to start off with and build up the tempo.  We know that to change our results, we need to change what we are currently doing.  We also know we are creatures of habit and the current crop of habits is delivering what we are currently getting.  Ergo, we need to create some fresh habits.  New habits will generate new behaviour and that in turn will create better ways of working and living.   For some people this gradual approach goes against their nature.  They want to crash through or crash.  Great.  How has that “crash through” bit been working out so far?  This is the obese crowd, crowding the gym in January but who evaporate by March.  This is the mad boss making massive changes all at once in the first quarter and seeing them fritter away by the third quarter.  Behaviour change is tough and needs a sustained programme to achieve results.   The new thinking is don’t plan for massive changes back at the office for the new year.  Go for the 4/64 dance card.  This is the next level of the Pareto Principle.  This Principle says that 20% of our efforts produce 80% of our results.  If we push it even harder, then 4% of our efforts yields 64% of our results.  Let’s consider what that 4% might consist of? Also compared to achieving nothing in particular, getting 64% seems pretty good.   Don’t try and eat the elephant in one gulp.  Find a 4% bite size piece that gets a 64% return in the business.  What might that be?  Is it some change to the systems being used now?  Is it shaving off some item that reduces scale by 4% but delivers a 64% cost saving? Is it a pin point investment in training the people to sharpen up their productivity?  Is it allocating 4% more of your time to supervise the very key functions of the team?   For your personal development, aim for reading five pages a day at first.  Find a category area that will stimulate your mind and give you fresh ideas on how to drive the business forward.  Take a good look.  There are many books sitting on your bookshelves as yet unread.  Pick up a four percenter and start with that one.  As you find yourself achieving some daily reading consistency, crank it up to ten pages a day.  At that rate you will finish a reasonably sized book in a month.  Twelve a year is probably a lot better than what you did over the last decade!  If you tried to read the book quickly, you may have been too ambitious and find, just like before, that book that got started, didn’t get completed.   If you are going after your health improvement again this year, declaring war on your waistline, be strategic.  What would be the 4% intake reduction of alcohol and food, or specific choice of content, that will get your weight down by 64%.  After having made selection number one, add selection number two, for the items which will be next four percenters.    If you are taking up walking or running, start modestly.  Maybe don’t head off too far at first, but look for a nice, close big hill to make you work intensively, over a short period of time.  As powering up the hill gets easier, extend the distance you can cover.  Keep track of the time taken to see if you can improve the work rate.   If you are down at the gym or pool, which are the four percenter exercises which will give you the best results.  Pick a few and then look at increasing the number of sets and reps.  As you improve, add in more exercises - the next group of four percenters.  Keep a written record that you can refer to, so you can see your progress and track it easily.   We know all of this stuff, by the way, but we just don’t do it.  This year will be different because we are going after the 4/64 sweetspot. We are seeking to change our behavior, rather than trying to get short term results.  Water on rock is our mantra - we will wear the problems down over time.     Action Steps Start small and scale up. Look for the four percenters and start there. Don’t try and crash or crash through Measure and track progress  

“Never Forget A Customer; Never Let A Customer Forget You”   This is an old saying in sales and one we forget at our cost.  We might have made the sale and then we keep moving forward.  We get wrapped up in the intricacies of the getting other customers to commit and in the logistical details of delivering our previously sold service or product.  Our schedule fills up quickly and we have filled it with the present and future, not the past.  That customer we sold to gets forgotten in this busy life and they return the compliment and forget about us too.  We know that creating new customers is more expensive on an acquisition cost basis and that selling again or selling more to our existing customers is easier than making a new sale.  Why then don’t we do a better job of developing further business with our existing customers?   We usually do a good job in the immediate post sales service period, but the key word there is “immediate”.  We don’t schedule in the “just checking in “ contact, because we are too busy chasing down the new contacts.  Now that the customer has had the benefit of our product or service, we don’t call back and ask, “How has it been going? Are there any subsequent issues that have arisen that we can help with or fix?”.  A good rule to apply is always make the time to connect with the buyer.  They will either be happy and we can see if they know others, who would also benefit. If they are unhappy, we can fix the issue for them. Silent, unhappy customers are not what we want, because we are killing our brand and our reputation without even knowing it.   Clients may have cyclical needs when there is a certain cadence to their buying.  Upgrades or replacements require follow up.  When these are scheduled into our diaries, we can make sure to re-contact the client.  It may be that there is no sequence logic and so we have to create a schedule, so that they don’t forget us.  There are few things more disheartening then contacting an existing client to find they did have a need and they filled that need with our competitor’s solution. I really hate having that conversation.    We can add the client to our email mailing lists and they get updates.  The problem is that they don’t read them or even notice them, so a “set and forget” idea is a bad idea.  We have to be able to cut through all the clutter and noise of daily life to reach out to them, so that we stay top of mind.  This is harder today, more so than it has ever been.  There are so many emails, so much social media, so many meetings, no wonder our buyers get swamped.  Trying to get anyone on the phone these days is mind numbingly hard and it is like a miracle if you succeed.  No one calls you back anymore either.   Japan has a set pattern of seasonal gifts which are sent to clients for the express purpose of reminding them that they have not been forgotten.  Depending on how many clients you have, this can become expensive and is probably easier for larger firms.  A hand written thank you note on the anniversary of the business conducted with the client is not expensive and because hardly anyone gets postal mail anymore, it will stand out.  Even though you can’t get people on the phone so easily, don’t just hang up.  Don’t expect to get called back either but always leave a voice message, so they hear your voice and understand you have been thinking of them.  Some of my business contacts here tell me that their millennial employees avoid the phone like the plague, much preferring to text.  It doesn’t matter, young or old, leave them a voice mail anyway.   Sending relevant White Papers, books, reports, media clippings are always good ideas, but you can’t leave this to chance. It is a good discipline to be looking for these items, with specific customers in mind.  When you see something that will resonate with them, this is when you have to be disciplined to send it.  This doesn’t have to be every month of course, but probably twice a year is a good practice, on top of the email blasts and newsletters that existing clients receive anyway.    Making appointments with yourself, is one of the best ways to make sure we actually do the immediate and the sustained follow up.  Good intentions are terrific, but planned, disciplined contacts are better. Choosing electronic or analogue systems is not the issue, the real key is having a system that delivers the updating, reminding process to the buyer.  If we don’t have a system then we need to create one and the best time to start was yesterday.          

I’m Not Negative, I’m Realistic. Really?   Japan is a highly risk averse culture, so it is also a workplace with a lot of negativity built into it.  The best way to avoid mistakes is to make sure there are no unforeseen problems. That means being negative about ideas and propositions, until it is proven that the risk factor is super low or even better, non-existent.  We all have negative ideas floating around in our heads.  Our poisonous self talk can be based on ancient humiliations from things that failed in the past, concern for the future and recent poundings by the boss for screwing up.  In japan, when we lump a whole bunch of people together in an enterprise or a project, the tone can easily turn negative, unless we make sure it doesn’t. That is the boss’s job – turn back the tide of negativity and get the whole contraption moving forward.    There are five drivers we can use in this process.   Self-confidence In our modern world, where risk, challenge, change and competition are in engaged in mortal hand-to-hand combat with us, self-confidence is the competitive edge.  The lack of self-confidence is what lets negativity in the door.  As the boss, we have to be designing tasks for our team members, that enable them to grow in their work and expand their comfort zones in the process.  We  may think we can’t do something, until we can.  That is how we grow our appetite for doing new and better ways of working. It is an iterative process and the build is slow, that is why the boss has to be focused on this all the time, in order to grow the bench strength of the team.   People Skills Some people respond to challenge and pressure and others collapse.  The boss needs to know the team members very well, in order to know what type of conversation to have with each person.  The old style, mass, locker room “storm the barricades” uplifting speech is a dusty relic, replaced with a laser focus on each individual personality, one at a time.  Weaker people need support and encouragement, while the bold and the brave are totally self-powered and independent.  Totally different conversations are in order for each.   Communication Knowing what is the driver for each person, allows us to shape our communication in a way that is most appealing to them.  We also need to know their preferred communication style.  Are they detail or big picture focused.  Personally driven, take no prisoners types or considered, consensus oriented.  When we know that, we alter our speech patterns in ways that hits the bulls-eye with them.  We need to know who is prone to be dragged down by self-doubt and fear, disguising themselves in more socially acceptable terms as “realists”, when they are actually negative people.  This negative group needs encouragement and close direction, to help them expand their comfort zone.   Leadership Having negative people in the team is a given and you won’t be sprucing them upinto glass half full types anytime soon.  We need to work with what we have and corral their negativity, so it doesn’t effect everyone else and drag them down.  They can be a great source of divergent views on an opportunity or innovation.  They will tell you what is wrong with it in great detail. That is handy because then the more positive types can get to work on work-arounds for all the issues raised.  We have to get the team to understand that failure is a part and parcel of the messy innovation process.  As the boss, we must tolerate it when it arises and get everyone to see it as an instruction manual, on getting things right next time. Telling people to step up, step out and be accountable, then whacking them across the ear when they make a mistake is stupid.  Yet this is often how it works in many companies.   By giving negative people the permission to fail, this allows them to take a few small steps out of their comfort zone.  Over time they will become more positive than before,  but will always need close supervision to keep them bobbing along on the path to progress.   Worry and Stress The ability to face challenging situations with a constructive attitude is a determining factor for all of us.  Winston Churchill said it well, “success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”.  A great weight can be lifted off our shoulders through our self-talk and also through how we work.  If we are carrying the heavy burdens of what happened in the past on our shoulders, we can feel trapped in a stupor, where we lack enthusiasm for today’s fight.  If we are consumed with fear about what might happen in the future, then we are diminished in our energy to be applied to the task in front of us.  We need to fully focus on doing the most effective thing at every given moment, regardless of what happened in the past or what might happen in the future.  We learn from the past, prepare for the future and get on with today.    

Team Success Is No Accident   What are some things we can do to make sure our teams are operating at a high level.  We see plenty of dysfunctional teams in operation and the opportunity costs of this are prohibitive, in today’s super competitive environment.  Quite simply if our team is better than the competition, then we will win.  It is a team against team equation here.  How well we work together, the degree of engagement, motivation, commitment and innovation is what wins the day.  Getting this equation to work is no given and there are best practices which do work.   Define and agree on a collective vision Often the senior executives come up with the vision and then cascade it down throughout the firm.  The troops were usually not involved, so it is received from on high. Well even if they were involved, as new troops arrive they were not part of the creation process, so involvement is only a piece of the puzzle.    What is more important is creating a culture where decisions and work are executed, based around delivering the vision for the firm.  In departments and sections, those in the front line can have sub-visions around how they will execute the greater vision.  The people are the bottom of the hierarchy can have a say in this version of the vision and feel ownership.   Develop strong rapport among all individual members Teams are a random collection of individual personalities, communication styles, levels of knowledge, sophistication, education and family upbringing.  If we were not working together, we wouldn’t necessary hang out together.  But we are working together, so we need the team to get on well with each other. Open communication is a key and so is team building.  This is not just something done once at the start, after the team formation.  It has to be scheduled in to make it happen because usually everyone is too busy with their individual work for it to happen naturally.  There also needs to be established norms around behaviour and language within the team. The boss has to police this strenuously so that corrosive activities are eliminated entirely.   Generate personal and collective enthusiasm Enthusiasm is contagious. The boss must be the chief enthusiast in the team.  “The fish rots from the head” is ancient wisdom and the boss has to set the tone. No matter how tired, how sick, how depressed, how much home life drama there is in the boss’s world, at the workplace, the boss has to be all cheerfulness and light.  The team talk has to be divided into discussions of what is going well and how can we make it better, rather than critique and struggle sessions about who is to blame for problems.    Communicate ideas clearly and persuasively Sounds obvious, but I recall problems at NASA when some parts were delivered in Imperial sizes and others in Metric and Airbus, when the wiring systems being installed weren’t compatible.  Where was the clear communication in these major organisations, doing tremendously sophisticated work.  We can’t be too cocky about what we are doing.  Investing in communication skill training makes a lot of sense when you look at the downside of getting things wrong.  Are there the systems in place to keep everyone informed of what is happening? As projects move, is everyone brought up to speed on the progress?  “They should know” is pure folly and instead we need, “everyone must be kept informed” to be the dominant culture.   The Japanese acronym ho-ren-sois a good basic practice that is taught to young graduate entrants to their firms.  It is a bit of a play on words because horensomeans spinach, but what we are talking about here is hokuku-report, renraku-get in touch and sodan-discuss.  Basic but a good grounding for young and old to recall when thinking about making sure everyone is one the same page.   Have a strong conviction about the value of the outcome Engagement of staff requires three things to be happening.  The relationship with the immediate boss is obviously critical but also important is the belief by those at the bottom of the hierarchy, that those at the top know what they are doing with where they are taking the company. The third one is pride in the company. The value of what we are trying to achieve has to be constantly reinforced, to support the direction and the differentiation of the firm amongst the many rivals we face.    We can get caught up in shareholder value, quarterly earnings and a host of things which divert us from focusing on the value we bring to the market.  This is where we need communication and leadership.  Bringing the team back to focus on the core value proposition of the business and the rationale for us to be in business in the first place is very important.  So often though we can get stuck on what we are doing everyday and forget to focus on the value of what we are doing.   Where we can, we should be invoking a higher purpose in what we are doing, because it is easy for all of us to get stuck in the weeds of the details and detritus of modern business life. Is there an affirmation methodology in place around the value of what we are doing and is this regularly being driven within every section?  If not, then let’s install it immediately, because there is no time to lose.  

Japanese Young Grads: “I Want To Start At The Top Thank You”   One great thing about those fresh out of University in Japan joining the workforce is they are fully primed to start at the top and work their way up.  Grinding it out to gain experience and insight is boring.  “Hey Boss, whisper the magic formula in my ear, so I can skip all that tedium” is their most attractive career plan.  How do we manage young people who do not want to be like their sempai or seniors?   In the past, such unrealistic expectations would have been knocked out of them pretty quickly. Their bosses would have straightened them out about what they are supposed to do – work like a dog for forty years, so you can retire on a company pension.  They would have been given them the worst, most boring jobs to teach them the ropes from the very start.  Progress would have been glacial and the mindlessness of the some of the tasks, asphyxiating.  “That is how we roll around here in Japan work world”, was the culture.  Well that used to be it but not anymore.   This youth cohort are the luckiest bunch of Japanese young in history.  The country is at peace, health care is phenomenal and cheap, the economy is doing well, there is rule of law, no guns and political stability.  The youth population is in decline and will keep declining.  There are 1.64 jobs out there for every candidate looking for a job.  The traditional 3 K jobs (kitanai-dirty, kikken-dangerous, kitsui-difficult) will done by Asian foreigners, freeing Japanese up to do more sophisticated, better paying work.    By the way, anyone reading the press reports about how these foreigners will only be here for five years and then will have to go home, just watch this space.  Does anyone seriously believe that after having spent five years here, learning the language and culture and mastering their jobs with Japanese firms, that their employers will want to see them shipped out to be replaced by a bunch of newbies, who don’t know anything?  Once these foreign workers arrive, we can expect they will be staying forever, despite what the Abe Cabinet may be saying at the moment.   My soap box moment is over and so back to the young grads and their career planning.  The beauty of this current situation for the young graduates is that they are in deep demand.  Companies will quickly learn to adjust to their requirements, if they want to keep them. Recruiting is one dimension of difficulty, but so is retaining.  The retain part is key, because so much will have been invested in them and they are needed to fill the succession funnel within the firm.  Bosses balling them out will find they will just leave and go to the competitor. There is already an army of recruiters sweating on this churn to make their businesses flourish.   So how do bosses align this youth fantasy of how their careers will work, with the reality?  One thing companies can do is to give them training to show they are supporting their development.  The usual formula is you get formal training when you join and then again when you step up into management positions.  The time lag can be five years plus before this happens. In the interim you are supposed to be get trained on the job.  This would be fine if your bosses were actually doing it and even better if they knew how to do it.   We have to look at retraining the bosses.  They need to understand their job is to retain these young people, not toughen them up. Bosses have to be better communicators, encouragers and mentors.  As the boss, this is definitely not how you were treated on the way up, so the obvious thing to do is mete out what you got and pass that parcel down the line.  This is a really bad idea because the world has changed and bosses have to get with the programme.   One very simple, but tough to implement change on the bosses part, would be to ask more questions, instead of firing out orders.  Instead of telling them the task and then letting them do it, present the outcome desired and then ask them about their ideas on how we could deliver it.  We may have to ask a series of questions that helps them guide and gel their thinking, but that is part of the responsibility devolution process.  This is not appropriate in every case, but by engaging the young person to come up with their ideas, we get greater buy-in to the delivery of the solution.  We are not necessarily expecting genius breakthrough ideas, but we want them to feel they have a say in how things are being done around here. They feel more empowered and in control of their work.    Another good idea is offering intelligent praise.  Dumb praise is “Suzuki – good job”.  Intelligent praise is “Suzuki – your report was on time, clear and well thought through. We can move forward now because your ideas are going to save us time and money.  Thank you for your excellent contribution and please keep up the good work”.  This technique is in four parts: We recognize specific aspects of the task which were done well We connect their contribution to the bigger picture of the firm We thank them We urge them to keep doing excellent work   Now maybe this type of praise was not part of the boss’s own upbringing at work, but they have to switch gears and learn how to praise their young staff, if they want to motivate them to stay.  Handing out dumb praise is dumb, so bosses need to be educated on how to handle the development of these young people in a way that prepares them for future responsibility earlier, than in the past.  The soft skills are going to be key to keeping young staff.  The sooner companies and bosses realize that, the more effective they will be in their recruit and retain strategies.  The penalty for failure is high – you can’t grow your business without the right people.  If your competitor is doing better in this regard then over the long term, they will win and you will wonder why.

How To Become A Team Builder Extraordinaire   In our organization, we may be asked to create a new division, new section, create a new team around a new piece of business or create a project team.  Well then, where should we start?  What is the best practice around doing this?  Is there a handy road map we can follow, to make this a bit more friction free?  Fortunately, we don’t have to work this out for ourselves or use any expensive  trial and error construct.  There are six stages for establishing an effective team.   Stage One: Formation The team leader’s job in the “forming” stage is to create a team bristling with trust, establish a clear structure, set the goals and direction and assign roles according to experience, fit, potential and capability.  In the first days, a lot of energy will be spent defining the team and its responses.  This is especially the case around determining what we are not going to do, just as much as what we will do.  The planning work is in Quadrant Two of time management – not urgent but important. The better job we do at this point, the more time and money we will save later.  So investing the time to plan pays dividends later.   Stage Two: Stabilisation By working together, the members learn about each other and how to work well as a unit.  They are delving deep into mastering the tasks they have been assigned.  They have clear roles now and are able to get on with it.  There is also a culture being formed about the way we work together and how we communicate within and outside the team.  If this is not marshaled well by the team leader, the team may never stabilize.    Japan throws up some challenges when teams are formed from joint venture partners, where the initial loyalties are to their own entities, rather than to the joint venture.  Even sourcing people from other divisions within the same company can have its challenges with how much they identify with the new construct.  The leader has to sort this out early and without any hesitation eject any non-believers. Life is too short to put up with that type of confused loyalty nonsense.  If you are going to be here, be here.   Stage Three: Integration As the work progresses the team starts to stake out its claim within the company.   The team itself realises where the strengths of the team are to be found.  The diversity amongst the team, which perhaps was a challenge at the beginning, becomes an advantage through sourcing better and richer ideas to solve issues.  The cohesion, the focusing on the goals and targets becomes easier.  Large objectives have been filleted down to bite size pieces now.  There will be a realisation of skill and knowledge gaps within the team and strategies created to fill those gaps with either additional training or by sourcing speciality experts in certain areas.  As expertise grows, so do the potential conflicts, so the leader is called upon more often to sort out the people issues within the group.   Stage Four: Actualisation With experience established now, the team members are more confortable to express their opinions and offer up ideas.  The leader must encourage this and use a good/better structure for giving feedback to suggestions.  There will always be strong personalities and firm opinions within the group but the leader has to embrace counter ideas, without an outbreak of hostilities within the group.  Easier said than done though!   Stage Five: Maturation Presuming we are making good progress, pride in what the team has achieved begins to shine within the group.  The team members are cooperative and have good awareness about what they are good at and not good at, seeking assistance in weaker areas and offering assistance in their stronger suits. The processes have been refined, knowledge has been captured, good results are emerging regularly and everyone feels they are providing value to the organisation.  They feel this because the leader makes sure they feel that through their communication and people skills.   If things are not going well, the team leader has to get the team to regroup and figure out what needs to change in order for the team to be successful.  The ability to plot a way forward and get everyone behind it is the leader’s key job now.  The potential death of the business is also a great galvaniser to pull together to survive and the leader uses that in communication to instill fight rather than flight in the team.   Stage Six: Termination (ending the team) In some cases the team will have been formed for a project and the project will have been completed so the team is disbanded.  Everyone knew this at the start, so it has been factored in.  Even so, as the team gets to closure, people may start to worry about where they will go next and may lose focus on the work.  The leader has to make sure that everyone’s next job is secured, so they don’t have to expend energy stressing about going into corporate oblivion after the project finishes.    On the other hand, if the project fails or the organisation’s direction changes and the team’s raison d’etre disappears, then the leader has a big job keeping people focused up until the end.  The sense of worry and concern is directly proportional to how much information is available.  Rumours spread like wildfire.  The leader has to be as transparent as possible and share information proactively with the team, if the trust is to be maintained to the end.  Not everything goes according to plan in business and we have to be ready for failure too.  This is rarely a quick death, more likely a lingering one, so the light goes out slowly.  This allows for adjustments along the way and for the leader to prepare appropriately for the end of the team.   Hopefully the new team will be successful and it will be a career builder for everyone.  The leader’s job is to manage processes and build people.  The build people part is 100% soft skills and this means excellence in people and communication skills.  If you are the leader and find you are lacking in these skill areas, then get the training and get it right now.  There is not a moment to lose because the demands for those skills will just keep coming.

Leader Roles We Must Play   LinkedIn posts can throw up some valuable insights and contributions.  I am posting everyday, so I aim to be in that category.  I also look for interesting things that other people are posting that will help me.  Someone called Tamray Vora created an infographic called Nine Roles For GREAT Leadership.  Whether these role designations were Tamray’s original contribution or the infographic medium is the contribution I don’t know, but anyway, great work Tamray and thank you for sharing.   I liked this infographic because it does draw out our roles very well.  Architect refers to the leader setting the vision, mission, values and clarity in the business.We all know this but do our people know it. Does the most newly joined, most junior person know what the Vision of the organization is?  When we do leadership training in companies we take the nicely framed Vision, Mission, Values statement off the wall and turn it around so no one can read it. When we ask for these key drivers of the business, the answer is usually embarrassed silence.  What does this tell you?  As the leader, you have to keep repeating these things over and over, well beyond the point where you are sick and tired of hearing about it.   Planner refers to our looking at both short term and long term objectives for the business.Sometimes we are so focused on the immediate daily nightmares, that we lose track of the long range planning.  If we excel in the long term planning and neglect the short term day to day realities, we may find ourselves out of business pretty smartly.  How do we ensure we can strike the right balance, year in and year out?   Executor talks about doing stuff and making things happen.Yes, we can delegate tasks but the fundamental driving force of the business is always going to come from senior management.  The team has to keep pushing to get things completed. The staff love that Comfort Zone where all they have to do is repeat the same tasks everyday and never have to grapple with the new or more complicated.  All leader’s middles names are spelt “c-o-m-p-l-i-c-a-t-e-d”.  That is what we do.  We push the whole organisation upward and forward, whether the team likes it or not.   Conductor is a great role because we are just like that. We are trying to get every person to not only exceed in their personal roles, but also to play in harmony with the whole team, so that we are a 1 + 1 = 5 type of organisation.   Teacher means we are the mentor to our people and their coach.Managers manage processes and leaders manage processes and build their people. The way they do that is by teaching them about the business and about themselves and the possibilities lying within them, to help them be the best they can be.   Steward comes from the servant leader idea of the leader serving others before self.Often though the leaders are the most driven, ambitions few, who stop at nothing to get to the top.  This includes using people to their own ends and crawling over the bodies of rivals to climb the greasy pole.  The only serving going on here is self serving.  That leadership model is falling out of favour as modern business requires more involvement from everyone to succeed. Engagement and motivation levels determine how successsful that exercise is going to be.   Innovator ideates and enables motivation.The best ideas, the most valuable ideas, the coolest ideas don’t all emanate from the boss.  If they do, then there is something wrong with the way that organisation is being run.  We want the people with the best feel for the front line to be innovating.  They don’t do this as a necessary function of getting paid.  They do it because they are committed and signed on for the journey.  The leader will have ideas of course, but the best leader will have all the ideas from everyone at their disposal.   Expert who understands people, business, context and can weave these into a strong culture that gets results.We must become an expert in dealing with people. In the old model, we were the functional expert.  We had the most experience and knowledge. Then this thing called the internet came along and now we can all access global experts in seconds. The boss monopoly on being the the source of all wisdom and knowledge has been broken forever.  The boss role nowadays is to be an expert in the business and additionally be an expert on getting the most success for the people working there.   Thinker who can assess, analyse and think critically.The boss has the luxury of thinking big. The workers below the boss all have their clearly defined roles and responsibilities to take care of and don’t need to consider the whole.  This is the boss’s function and therefore the opportunity to think holistically about the operation is there for the leader.  Leaders who can’t delegate well or can’t manage their time effectively, won’t have much chance to do any real thinking about the business. That is a big cost to the organisation.     So we already know we have all of these roles, but it is a nice exercise to pull them apart and separate them out to apply more of a spotlight to what we should be doing, as opposed to what we actually are doing.  “We know but we don’t do” is the dilemma.  By looking at these nine roles in isolation from each other, we can see the gaps and see where we have been neglecting our responsibilities.   This infographic I saw on LinkedIn reminded me of what I should be doing and I hope it is a reminder for other bosses out there in leaderland.  We can always do better, can’t we.

Do You Have To Be A Saint When Leading In Japan?   Leadership can be broken up into two main activities.  One is making sure that the processes of the operation are all delivering what they should, when they should and where they should.  This is relatively straightforward, because usually all the processes are known and the people doing them have done them before and know what to do.  There are clear measurements around quantity, quality, and timeliness, so we can keep track of how we are doing.    The other aspect of leadership is building our people.  This means constantly skilling up to meet the changing demands of business, to make sure they are highly engaged and producing both effectively and efficiently. We need innovation in business to move forward and the people reporting to us are usually great sources of innovative ideas - if we are able to get them to care.   How we make the operation run smoothly is a choice.  We can be a tyrant and brutalise our people, using fear, retribution, punishment and potential banishment to oblivion, as tools to get conformity to our will. This can even be physical.  I saw a snippet on Japanese television recently of a Korean company, K-Technology’s CEO Mr. Yang Jin Ho, beating his male ex-staff member by slapping him across the face, making him kneel on the floor and then belting him on the top of his head. Mr. Yang recorded the beating as a souvenir, which has now gotten out and gone viral on social media.  This is extreme and when you see the video, it seems incredible that this could be happening in this day and age.  Yet there are still versions of this floating around in Leadership Land, where the attacks may be more verbal, rather than physical.   In this type of environment where the fear factor is the main leadership card being played, you can guess that the “building the people” part has gone completely missing from any consideration.  The same for getting innovative ideas from the troops.  Everyone will have their head down, trying to be as small a target as possible and just doing their job and no more.   Now we may not be a tyrant or a demon like Mr. Yang, in the workplace, but we could be clinical, cold, outcome driven, extremely “business like” in the sense of no warmth for and no interest in our people.  We may be highly efficient, fully focused on getting the results and the people are just there to make sure that happens.  We are not there to mollycoddle them.  We are not there to be their friend.  If we want a friend, we will get a dog.    Everyone is an adult and they know what they need to do to make the numbers.  If they want to get ahead, they should take full responsibility for developing themselves and that has nothing to do with the boss.  We pay them, so we expect results type of philosophy. Is this bad?  Do we have to be a saint, to be indulging our people, rather than rigorously holding them accountable?   Yes, we have to be a saint or as close as we can get to it.  There are 1.64 jobs for every candidate looking for a position in Japan and it will only get worse from a boss’s difficulty of hiring perspective. Recruiting people is becoming more expensive in terms of the costs of finding a replacement and the disruption of someone leaving.  There are lots of hidden opportunity costs we must pay, when there is a break in the work production process.  Keeping our people becomes only more important, so the people and communication skills of bosses are paramount in a way they have not been in the past.  Hard skills aren’t enough and are not an excuse anymore for not doing what is needed in the 21stCentury workplace.   We need to take a greater interest in them as people.  This may be hard when you yourself are extremely independent, self-reliant, driven, mentally tough and need no positive feedback or support from anyone. You tend to see the world the way you are, as opposed to how your people are and how they see the world.  This gap can be pretty big.  If you want to keep your people, then you need to change.  If you can’t be bothered to change in this market, then you will see recruiters lifting your people out of your organization at a rate of knots.    Communication and people skills are the two areas usually requiring the most reengineering.  Is this easy?  No!  But understanding the “build people” role makes the difference.  Your role is defined, it is part of what a modern leader needs to do, so you can’t just squib it.  Disengaged people do no contribute anything to the innovation process.  They don’t care about the company, so they don’t care about making it more productive, through their creativity contributions.  This usually means there is a lot of untapped potential inside organisations waiting to be released.  Our job is to create a greater sense of engagement and identification with the company’s competitive advantages through innovation.   There is no shortcut here either.  Each person has their own agenda, motivation, desires, dreams, goals and the better the boss understands that, the easier it is to know how to align the firm’s agenda with the individuals.  It is not manipulation, but getting a good overlap between what the individual wants and what the company wants.  When we get the staff member’s WHY and the company’s WHY to line up, then the leading bit gets a lot easier.   How would we know all of this?  We need to want to talk to our team members, to want to help them, to want to be saint like. This is the starting point.  Put their interests first and work from there. If you can’t do that, no problem, you won’t be around for long, so it will all become a theoretical exercise anyway. Your replacement will pick up the torch and carry the organisation forward in your stead.  It will be out with the old and in with the new.  Which one do you choose?   Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected]   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.enjapan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

 AI Armageddon   Software development went down two paths. One was as a means to better control the employees and the other was to empower them.  China’s ubiquitous face recognition technology is way beyond anything predicted in George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984”.  This is the software control function on steroids.  On the other side, technology has freed up our time, has made complex processes incredibly fast and economical.  The technology itself is just a tool, so managers need to make the decision to harness it as a shackle or as a springboard.  AI will just take this whole decision making process further and faster.    We fear AI will take away jobs and that fear is predicated on our historical understanding of the advances in technology to date.  Luddites saw their textile making craft decimated by steam powered machines.  Horse drawn carriages were replaced by cars.  Those carriage building craftsmen lost their jobs.  Salespeople working for newspapers sold job ad space to companies and it was a river that flowed with gold.  That employ is no more.  Travel agencies were everywhere once upon a time, but not so much anymore, as we have all moved on line and we do the bookings ourselves.     There is a lot of hope and hype about the brave new world of the intelligent machine age.  However, make no mistake amongst all these rosy predictions there will be substantial pain. Some jobs and skill sets will become totally marginalised.  The idea that displaced workers will gracefully glide into another new line of tech created work is probably wishful thinking.  Think of Tokyo taxi drivers, when autonomous driving eliminates their work.  They won’t become programmers, coders or software engineers.  They will be scrambling around for any work they can get, that doesn’t require any particularly developed skill base.   There will be winners and losers and for some of the latter painfully few choices. In every society, some just won’t make it. They won’t have the brainpower, education, experience, bankrolls or skills to make an easy transition and they will become victims of modernity, in the same way that there has always been victims with technology breakthroughs.   The good news is that it won’t happen overnight, so most of us can plan for a new work era.  For example, if you are young and driving a taxi or a truck, now would be a good time to get out and re-skill. Yes, thanks to Amazon we have a temporary shortage of delivery drivers, but technology is not on your side and neither is time.  They must either re-educate, reskill or face a very uncertain future.  The winners won’t care much, as they just get on with their lives.   The task for managers is going to be how to make the technology a springboard to innovation, efficiency, prosperity and success.  Idea generation will still be needed. Machines are good for structured problem solving and less good at unstructured problem solving.  This is where we come into the picture, because we humans are good at the unstructured bit.  We need to be really ramping up our problem solving teamwork skills.   The problem is that the managers are not good at this new area of demand.  In fact, we need to get rid of managers altogether and replace them with leaders.  Well what is the difference between what a manager does and what a leader does? Managers are there to manage processes and make sure the whole enterprise is humming along correctly, consistently, efficiently and smoothly.  Leaders are there to do all of that too, and this is the important piece, to also build the people.    Japan has stopped building leaders for the last thirty years.  Middle management has failed each generation since the Bubble Economy blew up in the late 1980s.  When I got to Japan forty years ago, Japan’s management processes were a source of great interest to Western journalists and academics.  This country had so many layers inside companies, it really stood out as an outlier.    One of the great advantages of lifetime employment and all of these multiple layers was that OJT or On The Job Training worked very, very well.  This was a good model for building talent and experience inside companies. After the Bubble burst what did they cut?  Training and marketing were put to the sword.  OJT remained and over time it became the only substantial methodology for many firms to build their people.    The many layers were slimmed down or cut and so this collapsing of layers meant managers jobs got much bigger. They were also sideswiped by the introduction of keyboards for managers.  With the advent of the internet and email, managers now did their own typing and secretaries were out, except for the very, very top people.  Time poor managers just got more time poor.   The upshot of these changes was that coaching went right out the window compared to in the original OJT structure.  Busy bosses just didn’t have the bandwidth to continue the old system. The new formula became cosmetic.  The boss takes you along to a couple of client meetings and then you are basically on your own.  This repeated cycle has been it in many companies for decades.   Times are changing, so the leaders need to relook at their own job specification.  Machines will remove a lot of the grunt work, so leaders need to be doing more coaching, more team brainstorming, more innovation discovery, more experimenting than they are today.  They should be looking at AI as a way to release their own time and their subordinate’s time, so they can do the things that only they can do.  One of those things is building the people by coaching the next generation of leaders.   Soft skills will only increase in importance in a more intelligent machine dominated world.  Our human interactions will become more focused on teamwork to solve unstructured problems in companies.  Many will fall by the wayside and be forgotten.  It will be a game of winners and losers and little in between.  If you think you job is going to make you road kill to some robot, then now is the time to start to retooling your skill set. You have been warned Pilgrim.  

Modern Leaders Fear Talent In The Ranks   Business today has become vicious.  Having a long career in a company is not something that is highly probable anymore. Firms have no compunction about throwing people on the scrapheap, despite the years of loyal service they have put in.  We have all become part of the gig economy, only some of us haven’t worked that one out yet.  Just look at banking.  Having a long career in banking was once a thing.  Not today.  People are forced to move, divisions are expunged and the people are shed as easily as cats shed their fur.  Bin liners are handed out and low paid, burly security guards see you off the premises. Industry after industry, tenure has become a tenuous construct.   Politics in big organizations, patronage, new brooms, new boards, new shareholders – you name it, there are multiple launching pads in companies now ready and able to blast you out of the organization.  In this mix isn’t it natural for leaders to look for places to get a fingernail hold? If there are no people below you capable enough to replace you, isn’t that a little bit of protection from the fickle, wild winds of fate?   It well may be for a while, but it is not a long-term solution.  Politicking subordinates are encouraged from above or from the side to undermine you.  Other aspirant escapees from their own hell are looking at your patch with envy and seek a chance to take your job to avoid their own painful elimination.    Realise that the only protection you have is employability.  Employment per se is no longer a guarantee of anything, because within a month, you are standing in the street wondering what happened to your job. Employability keeps  reproducing opportunities.   What does employability look like?  Leaders have two jobs.  One is to run the processes, so that everything works.  The other is to build people.  There seems to be a contradiction here doesn’t there.  If I build my people, that will only make it easier for my evil bosses to deep six me.  Aren’t I better off protecting myself by not building my people?  The self protection part won’t last, because your people won’t be matching the increasing demands for results and you will be road kill anyway.   We need to take a longer term look at this.  If we are to become expert in building people, then we need to become equally expert in communication, people skills, coaching and leading.  The problem is when we feel threatened by the system, we tend to hunker down and try to become as small a target as possible, hoping the bullet will miss us.  We often get caught up in running the business, as opposed to working on the business.  The hours are torturous, the stress is enormous and we are drained everyday as a result.  It is very hard to even think straight in this situation, let alone come up with genius ideas on how to better run the machine.   Nevertheless, the lifesaver is study and the application of our newfound knowledge.  Learning, experimenting, spreading expertise within the team through really coaching the people is our future salvation.  We get our mind into a positive groove.  We cast off the shackles of worry about our uncertainty over the future.  Rather than worrying about “what will I do if I lose my job?”, we switch across to how can I make myself more employable?    Think like this: “I have this live laboratory here at my disposal to try the things I have been learning, to see how well they can work, to refine my art of leadership”.    Yes, your current boss is probably a dork.  The organisation itself may be corrupt and staffed with vicious senior executives, who have reptile brains, sharp claws and big fangs.  You can’t change them, but you can work on changing you.    Feeding your brain with positive, motivating information and rich technical content is a great way to build mental muscle.  These are like the brain building equivalent to those drink supplements body builders are consuming everyday to bulk up.   Your current role in your organization may be a looming disaster and the wheels may be ready to fall off into the muddy, deep ditch and take you with them.  However, what you are doing around daily study, consistent coaching of subordinates and applying the power of your positive mindset will be attractive to other companies.  Or you will have the confidence to start your own firm.   Don’t worry by the way. All those horrible, petty, small minded, nobody people you are working for now will get theirs in the end.  The radius of the circle of karma is much shorter than they can understand.  The office politicians who are your present nightmare will be like Icarus and eventually fly too close to the sun to be smashed when they fall.    Your job is to keep moving forward with developing skills, gaining experience, and pushing innovation.  We need to follow Winston Churchill’s famous advice about going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.  In the end we will prevail.    

Leaders Who Don’t Know What They Don’t Know And Why It Matters   In 1955, psychologists Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham, in a burst of errant egotism, foisted the words Johari Window on the world.  It is a clever idea, with a dog of a name (Joe + Harry).  A bit like those hokey Mum and Pop company names, formed by combining the spouses two personal names.  Anyway, they came up with a cognitive psychological tool to analyse our behavior. They created four quadrants named Arena, Facade, Blind Spot and Unknown.  Arena referred to things about yourself which were known to you and others. Façade were things known to you, but not others.  Blind Spot was not known to you, but known to others and Unknown was not known to you or others.   We were recently doing some leadership training and looking at the Blind Spot leader areas in Japan. What were some things that leaders were doing in Japan that they were unaware of, but which were obvious to their followers.  The group nominated being self-centered as one of them.  The leader is focused on their own good rather than the good of their troops.  The team are seen as tools to be used to allow the leader to climb up the corporate ladder.  Glory is kept for the boss alone and blame is spread far and wide below.  They are so focused on promoting themselves, that they fail to see that this self-centered behavior is completely obvious to the team and consequently the trust is not there and neither is the team motivation.    It is a bit like that joke where the boss says to the team member, “If you work really hard, come in early, stay late, work weekends, really punch out the results then I will get a big bonus”.  Nothing in any of this for the team member, so why would you bother and that is the point, they don’t bother.   Another complaint was around not respecting the time of the staff.  “I am the boss and I want it now” is a common mentality.  Others have work to do too, but boss prerogative overrides what everyone else is doing.  Staff can put up with this occasionally, but if this is standard operating procedure, then no one in the team is going to be happy about it.  We are all time poor and have our own KPIs to which we are working, so things that derail that effort create unhappiness.  We have to do it, because this person is the boss, but we don’t like it and we are becoming more and more disengaged in the process.   Bosses can lack sensitivity when speaking.  This usually falls into two buckets.  The totally failed effort at humour, which is actually insulting people or making fun of them.  This is especially a problem in Japan, with foreign bosses who come from a different background, when considering what passes for humour at work.  Apart from the raw language used, which can often just leave people feeling puzzled, it can be contextually puzzling.  Satire, sadornic humour, irony, double irony, one-upmanship all fail in translation into Japanese culture contexts.  The other cases are remarks made with no understanding of their inappropriateness.  Sexism, ageism, religious beliefs, race tinged comments, etc., the list is long and well called upon by tone deaf bosses.  No one thinks the boss is so witty and clever. They just think the boss is a dork.   Words and action have to be aligned in business, especially by bosses.  When we are saying one thing and doing another, our hypocrisy is not lost on the troops.  People want surety, because this is how trust is built.  We want people to say what they mean, when they are the boss, because we have to follow their direction.  If we get confused about what the boss really means, then we become immobile, unable to advance or retreat.  This applies to all aspects of life.  We don’t like it when the words and actions don’t line up.  We feel the person is being self-indulgent.  They have one rule for themselves and a different rule for everyone else.  They say we are cutting costs, but continue to fly seated at the most expensive pointy end of the plane.  Everyone knows this and no one respects it.   Being self-centered, insensitive to the time demands on the team, inappropriate in one’s language and comments and not matching words with actions are all own goals.  So how can bosses doing all or some of these things which as Blind Spots, by definition, are not known to them, fix the issues? Staff satisfaction surveys, engagement surveys, 360 reviews, anonymous staff feedback, annual performance  reviews are all tools available to help us gain some broader perspective.  If there are confident people in the team who are unafraid to speak truth to power, then that is also a very useful source of information.   When I was at the Shinsei Retail Bank we had an issue with the hierarchy of age and stage limiting upward communication.  The Middle Managers would make sure those at the bottom never got the ear of those at the top.  To overcome this issue, I introduced a system where an external vendor hosted a website, where the staff could post comments on anyone and anything.  It was all raw data and the bank could not know who posted which comments.    After a few testing posts, to see what would happen and whether the bank really couldn't know who was posting what, we found we had opened up a Pandora’s Box of issues. This was very helpful in addressing things bosses were doing, which they were not aware of.  Yes, we got some slanderous comments and some people tried to use it to undermine colleagues, but for the most part it was very successful in finding out what we didn’t know.   Being more aware of what we are doing, how we are doing it and when we are doing it is difficult because we are all so busy.  We are constantly moving forward, rather than looking back to review where we have come from. It is useful though to be aware that we are doing things which may be unhelpful and which may be demotivating our team members.  We need to make an effort to search those out and work on them.    

What Type of Leaders Do Followers Want In Japan?   Leaders want many things from followers.  Results, top line, bottom line, efficiency, cost  cutting, loyalty, engagement, consistency, honesty, skills, etc.  Great, but so what?  I love that Yogi Berra quote about leading is easy, getting people to follow you is the hard bit. As you might expect from a professional baseball player, that is pretty straight to the point, and what we would expect from someone who did well in one of the most fierce meritocracies on the planet.  So what do followers want from their leaders?     They want effective leaders.  Fine, but what does that mean in practice?  We recently held some leadership training and the participants were asked about what they meant by effective leaders. They want leaders to praise their people.  This sounds pretty straightforward doesn’t it, except that few leaders make the time to do it or do it regularly enough.  I am one of them!!!    I do appreciate how hard my team works, but my own busy, busy high output daily work sidetracks me. Being perpetually time poor, I am rushing through the days pumping out work like a demon on speed.  Somewhere along the line, the actual physical act of “speaking the words” gets lost. Instead out comes the pirate captain, barking orders and taking down names. How about you? Are you wearing a patch, flying the Jolly Roger and brandishing a cutlass at work?  We need to slow down don’t we and remember to make the time to praise and to do it correctly?     What does correct look like?  “Good job” is not actually praise, although many bosses may mistake it for such. The team have many facets to their work and when we say “good job” we are not providing any insight into precisely which part of their job they are doing well. We need to name it, to call out the exact thing they are doing well.  We need to give some detail and describe why this was important, to nominate what difference it makes for the business and to encourage them to keep doing it.   Another point nominated was listening to the staff.  We are doing that aren’t we? Or are we doing pretend or maybe selective listening?  Busy bosses need to be sure they are giving their full attention to their staff.  I had a colleague at Shinsei Bank, who was a shocker in this regard.  He always had two screens going at the same time and would hold all his conversations with you, while looking at the screens and typing into his computer.  This was taking multitasking to a new high, but I never felt good about the way he interacted with me.  I didn’t feel I was important or that anything I had to say was important to him. Our staff are the same.  I have taught myself to put the keyboard away entirely when I speak to my team. This is to make sure there is a full opportunity for me to have eye contact with them, stop looking at the screen and to fully concentrate on what they are saying, without being in any way distracted   Reasonable requests is something staff appreciate from bosses, but I am not sure too many bosses agree with this idea. The sticking point is your view on what is reasonable?  My boss reasonable is seen by the staff as ridiculous.  This is the high energy boss inflicted death of a thousand cuts technique.  We keep getting great ideas and we want them implemented yesterday, so we keep peppering the staff with things for them to do.  These new requests are in addition to all the other current things they already have on their plate.  We forget what we gave them last week, because we have moved forward to this week.  They are still stuck with the pile of work already accumulated and now we add yet another piece.  We should be asking them to prioritise the task, if it is indeed time sensitive, or we should be giving them some guidance on expected and required completion times, so that they know where to place it in the queue.   Clear direction is valued by staff.  This is the classic WHY of what we are doing.  Senior executives craft enormously well thought through Vision, Mission, Value statements at the ExCom offsite and then cascade them down throughout the organisation.  Middle management tends to be the blockage point.  They are two sided.  The side which is facing up, has this massive sponge soaking up information from the senior executives. The bottom side is concrete, so that nothing gets passed down to those below.  This means staff are busy doing things for which there has been no explanation as to why this is important.    The boss’s role is to explain the Vision, Mission, Values, the strategy of the organisation, the tactics being used, the direction forward and their staff’s part in all of that.  They want to know and when they do, their work will make a lot more sense, once these gaps are filled in.  The key point too is you have to keep explaining all of these things.  Never assume that telling staff once is enough. Just ask them what is the Vision or the Mission or what are the Values?  What is the strategy etc., and you will rapidly realise that they don’t know, because they have not internalised any of that weighty stuff from above.   Followers want effective leaders, as they define them. The boss may have a view, but if the boss wants people to put their shoulder to the wheel, then the boss needs to understand how to keep the team motivated.  Praise, listening, reasonable requests and clear direction were some of the things put forward during the leadership training.  As usual, we the instructors also learn a lot from the participants and the session made me reflect again upon my own leadership shortcomings.

What Type of Leaders Don’t Followers Want In Japan?   During a leadership training session here we looked at what the group thought were the traits of ineffective leaders.  Followers are pristine boss watchers.  They scrutinise the boss every day for a safety readout.  Is today the time to raise my idea about that project.  Is the coast clear to ask for money for this project. How is the mood for granting my leave approval?  Every nuance of facial, body and voice expression are minutely dissected to see if this is a fight or flight moment of interaction with the boss.  Miraculously bosses forget this and don’t recall how skilled they were at studying their own bosses, when they were on their way up through the ranks.  There were things we didn’t like about our bosses, but have we cleverly overlooked them in our own regard?   Staff don’t like bosses who give very little or no feedback.  Often the traits that self select bosses work against this.  They can be ippiki okamior lone wolf types.  They are independent, self contained, self reliant, require no recognition and are self acualising.  This is me by the way!  When this is your world, you don’t require praise from anyone about doing your job professionally, so you don’t entertain the idea that anyone else would require it either.  Well staff are not like you.  This is the first breakthrough. We know it, but we forget it.   They want to know that what they are doing is important, that it is valued and that they are valued.  When we did a study on the emotional drivers of engagement in Japan, we found that the sense of being valued by your boss was a key trigger to feelings of engagement. The “I am an island” boss doesn’t need to feel valued, so they forget to provide that feeling for their staff. One way to help people feel valued is by giving regular feedback on their work.  Some major firms have ditched the annual performance review in favour of ongoing reviews throughout the year. The idea is to institutionalise feedback throughout the organisation.  We need to be doing the same – always looking for opportunities to do so. We have to become “good finders” rather than “mistake finders”.   Bosses who were poor listeners were felt to be ineffective.  What can so hard about listening?  We are doing it all the time and have been doing to for years.  The problems is not actually with listening itself, the act of listening, but the variety of listening we employ.  “The lights are on but you’re not home” is a lyric from the song “Addicted To Love” by Robert Palmer that describes talking to someone whose eyes are open, but they are not hearing you, because they are so distracted.  This can be the boss.  They are so preoccupied with their own worries, issues, concerns and thoughts that they are not really taking in what their staff member is telling them, so they are effectively ignoring everything.   Or they might be smarter than that and employ pretend listening, where they are faking it, but are equally distracted.  This is really insulting for staff because they feel the boss thinks they are so dumb, they can be so easily snowed.  What staff really want is empathetic listening, where the boss not only gets the words, but has their one feelings resonate with the plight or aspirations of the staff member.   Bosses who are self centered don’t attract staff loyalty.  Feeling you are cog in the wheel of the bosses ever upwardly mobile brilliant career is not motivating.  These bosses are always focused on how they look to those above.  They steal ideas, initiatives, innovations as their own genius ideas from their staff.  If things go well, they claim all the credit for themselves. If things go badly, they become like Teflon and push all the blame down the ranks, to those “dolts” at the bottom.  Engagement levels are bound to be abysmal and turnover a problem, if this is the boss’s modus operandi.  Bosses who realise that they can’t move up without competent, credible successors to replace them, are going to be sharing the glory.  They will send complimentary emails about a staff member’s work, copied to their own boss.  They will mention the name of excellent workers in the boss level meetings.  They will become a leadership factory because every organization needs leaders and really values people who can produce the next generation of leaders.   “Not invented here” is a common problem within organisations.  Another smarty pants division comes up with a new whiz bang and the other divisions have to follow the lead.  They actually resist.  The same thing can happen with bosses who are not open to ideas from below.  We want innovation to drive the business, to outmaneuver rivals, but usually we don’t see many great ideas percolating to the surface.  One of the reasons is that bosses act as stoppers in the top of the idea flask. They believe they are more intelligent, knowledgeable, experienced, capable and visionary than the troops, so they don’t value the latter’s contributions.   The troops feel frustrated that they cannot have a voice and that their ideas are summarily dismissed out of hand.  As we move up through the echelons of the organization, we get further and further away from the front line, which is where all the best market knowledge is located. We don’t spend time with the clients anymore, we miss the latest changes in the sector.  By ignoring the ideas of their followers, leaders are closing off valuable hints on market changes, competitor tactics, nascent consumer trends and where the puck is going so we can skate there.   Bosses need to give regular and valuable feedback.  They need to listen carefully to the team and to take their ideas seriously. They have to have big mind and promote their subordinates reputations to the senior management in the company if they ever want to climb higher up the greasy pole to the top. Knowledge is pointless unless it is applied.  So knowing all of this means nothing unless behaviors are altered and changes in behavior are incorporated into daily work.  If your leaders are not able to do this, then don’t expect teamwork to be as strong or as effective as it needs to be, for the enterprise to win in the marketplace.  

Managing Up   Why do we want to manage up? All the brains and good ideas in an organization don’t exclusively aggregate to the top of the hierarchy. In fact, one of the depressing aspects of becoming a leader, with responsibilty for others, is that you are taken away from the front line.  This is especially the case if you have been enjoying working with clients and in your new vice-regal role, you can only do that osmotically, through others in your team. You rapidly find yourself out of date with what is happening in the market and the nitty gritty of what is going on in the front line.    You see the macro numbers and can see trends, but you don’t see what is fully behind those numbers. This means that the people at the bottom will always have a perspective on the business that is denied to the boss. This is okay, as long as the boss is tapping into the knowledge and viewpoint of those in the field, those on the front line.  In a perfect word that would be the case, but in this time poor world, that is not always how it pans out.   People down the chain of command may want to communicate their ideas and insights to those at the top. They have the firm’s best interests to their bosum but they are not nominated as a “leader” in the org chart, so they have little influence on the future direction of the business.   I was speaking with an HR leader in a mid-sized construction company and he told me how one of the employees had come up with a breakthrough piece of technology and no one had ever heard of this person. He was a engineer down the bottom of the pile somewhere, doing genius work but none of the geniuses running the show, even knew he existed.  They have realised they need to change their culture because the current system is not maximizing the opportunity of the business through the creativity of their staff.   If we want to play a role in the company, beyond our current status and then we need to be strategic about it.  There are four things we need to be working on.   Planning the way we communicate This has to do with things like appropriate timing.  This sounds so basic but sometimes my staff will want a decision from me, as I am heading to the door to an event or a meeting.  I have been in the office for hours, but they leave it to this last moment to grab me. Of course they fail completely, because I am already half way to the elevator and I have no time to stop for anyone, because I am already running late.   Another key point is mutual respect.  This relates to our listening skills, not interrupting, not finishing off their sentences and not getting defensive if the boss puts up a counter argument. There is also the aspect of personality styles and the related communication preferences.  If the boss is direct, we can be direct, if they are analytical types we better come armed with oodles of data, if they are big picture, we had better be the same and if they are reserved, we should expect this will take time and require more than one meeting.    I am a Driver type and nothing annoys me more than when some of my staff go on and on and never get to the point.  They digress, go off on tangents, talk about things which are unrelated and take up a lot of my valuable time.  Just tell me what you want, why it is a good idea and I will make a decision right on the spot.  Each of us has our preferences and pet peeves and if we are going to do a good job of managing up, then we need to know how to best communicate in the style they prefer.   Managing Priorities and Expectations   Try to understand what pressures your boss is under and see where you can help.  Make sure your goals are in alignment with their goals and they will be all ears to listen to you.  We all want to be leaders but the requisite skill prior to that lofty achievement is to be a good follower.  Many people forget this bit and just want to elbow their way to the top.  If you are suggesting something be done then manage their expectations on completion times and what it will deliver.  If you don’t deliver what or when you said you would, then the trust gets eroded and the project can backfire on you.   Receiving Suggestions and Feedback We have our preferences and ideals of what we want to see happen.  I remember my boss at Shinsei Retail Bank would edit what I wrote for him to go out each week to all of the staff.  We were trying to build a different culture in the bank.  So we were using this weekly note as a way of aligning us all together around our values and how we felt about servicing the customer.  I would write the draft, he would correct it and then we would send it out in both Japanese and English.   To my annoyance he would change things I wrote slightly.  I felt it was already perfect and ready to go but he would always make a small change here and there.  Well I wrote that note in my voice and he wanted to make it in his voice. I had to accept that feedback and make the changes, no matter how I felt about it. We won’t always get things to go just as we think, but the point is to be happy that you are getting most of what you want, when you don’t have any real authority or power at this point.   Selling An Idea Up Choose your timing carefully.  With bosses you can ask them for the same thing on two different days and get a different answer depending on what is going on in their mind, at any one time. As we say in sales, “try to join the conversation going on in the mind of the buyer”.    Refer to their personality style to find the best communication method that will work best with them.  Give them some context first, before you make your recommendation.  Even with Drivers who get bored very quickly and want to get to the point so they can move on, you need to provide some brief context to the decision required to be made.  Business schools tell you to state your idea up front in brief and then explain it – this is extremely bad advice.  This triggers the boss to start thinking of the thousand good reasons why this won’t work. Instead use this order – context first – recommendation – benefit of the recommendation.  This will get you listened to, with some context, against which the boss can draw a conclusion about what comes next.   Managing up is an opportunity, but also an explosive if we get it wrong.  Don’t get hoisted on your own petard.  Make the relationship work and inject your ideas into the mix of organization direction and strategy.  Also when you become the boss, remember that the people below you want to be heard, have ideas and want to play a bigger role, so make time for them to do so.

Mentor Others To Help Yourself   The title sounds terrible doesn’t it.  So selfish and self-serving.  The truth is we don’t mentor others because we are too busy and we can’t justify the distraction from concentrating on our own business.  That may be true, but we all know that great aphorism about “work on your business, not just in your business”.  This idea invites us to climb out of the mud, blood and chaos of daily battle in business, to check we have our ladder up against the right wall. When we look at the situation of others, we become geniuses, but somehow we are too close to our own micro world, to apply the same level of insight.  Mentoring gives us a chance to think without the internally induced pressure and therefore to see things which we are often blind to.   Finding people to mentor isn’t hard.  Within your company or business circles there will be no shortage of people who can use some additional help and will be open to learning from someone more senior and a lot more experienced.  “You can’t put an old head on young shoulders” is another old saw, that is too true.  When we are young we think we know everything and are invincible.  We add more years to our stay here on earth and we learn things are more complicated than we thought.  Getting insight into those future complexities in a timely fashion, to be able to prepare for them, is why having experienced people as mentors is so valuable to the mentee.   The logistics are fairly simple – when and how often should you meet, what will be best to focus on and what do we expect from each other.  An excellent rule for both parties is to define how feedback is to be communicated.  Everyone knows how to critique ideas, suggestions and opinions.  It takes a bit more brainpower to not do that.  Instead, try to always focus on moving forward rather than doing retrospective analysis of what went wrong.  Look at what is being done, that is being done well. What are their strengths and see if they can build on them.  Following on from that, look for suggestions on how to make the performance even better. There is a degree of critique in the latter, but it is explained in a way which is unlikely to have people take offense and then dig their heals in, to justify and defend their position on the matter.   When we are mentoring others, we are reaching back into our own past experiences but also looking ahead, to what we see coming around the corner.  We should be doing this in our own business, shouldn’t we.   Often we are just stuck in the sticky bog and can’t lift our feet out of the mud.  We are stuck where we are, fighting the good fight, day in day out, year after year. When we go back into our memory banks and then project forward, to what we seeing heading our way, we get reminded of things that worked well previously.  We reacquaint ourselves with the possibilities for potential disasters over the horizon, that we haven’t gotten around to properly preparing for.   Providing feedback is one of those activities where we become laser sharp in our own understanding of the problem.  Somehow contemplating other people’s problems allows us to relax and let the fog clear. When it is our own problem, we are distracted, confused, unclear about what to do.  So grappling with other people issues often gives us those light bulb moments, where we realize what we need to be doing.  That is one reason why we should always be taking notes, when we have discussions with mentees.  When great ideas and insights pop up, don’t miss the gold you uncover in the process of fixing someone else’s problem.   We can also coach the mentee for skill development. What is often funny is when we do this, we quickly realise we are not doing enough coaching of our own troops.  It is a good reminder of how powerful this process can be to raise the stakes and get the organization doing a better job from inside out.  We also realise not only are we not doing enough in this regard, neither are our middle managers.  We need to lead them more closely too about their efforts to keep coaching their own teams.   Mentoring holds the mirror up to our own faces about what we are doing everyday, what we are planning or not planning for and where we need to concentrate the focus of the organization. In this selfish process though, we do genuinely help younger people to progress in their careers.  So it will be a win-win.  However, here is the snapper - we will never bother doing it in the first place, unless we better understand that it is a real win-win for both parties, rather than a win-lose of our time.        

Five Phase Practical Creative Thinking   More, faster, better with less sounds ideal, but if you are continuing to do the same things, in the same way, then the sadly, results will be the same.  That means we need to be introducing changes. The creative quotient in change has the capacity to really lift our game.  Are we maximizing the total power of the group to come up with creative interventions, which will impact our performance?  Usually the boss is barking out orders like a mad pirate or is shredding ideas from the group, as they begin to hatch.  This destroys any individual motivation to put up any further ideas and plunges the future of the organisation into idea darkness.  Not ideal.   We all know that the ability to think creatively, analyse problems and opportunities in new innovative ways are critical organisational skills, which are still underdeveloped here in most companies in Japan.  We want new discoveries, better ways of doing things, reduced costs and improved performance, but we often defeat ourselves in trying to achieve these things through our poor methodologies.  Here are five phases to get creative results.   Problem Identification We need to have some mental picture of what we want, what is the outcome that will help drive the business? This needs to be as clear as possible, otherwise we will be spinning our wheels and getting nowhere, as we thrash around in contemplating various splintered directions.  We need to define where do we want to be and where are we now, so we can encapsulate the scope of the gap.  To understand where we are now, we need to take an inventory of what are the current facts of our situation.   For example, what is the problem, what are some possible causes, who is involved, who is not involved, what is wrong, what is not wrong, when did it happen, when did it not happen, where did it occur, where did it not occur, etc.  The classic questions need to be focused upon- who, what, when, where and why.  We are not making judgments at this point.  We are just collecting valuable data points.  We are looking at going beyond the symptoms, to the underlying causes.   Creative Thinking The key is to begin the process with no evaluation of ideas.  Sounds counterintuitive, but we want volume of ideas rather than quality of ideas in the initial stage.  Most people get this wrong.   They can’t help themselves and start to edit ideas on the fly, as they emerge.  If you want to completely shut down all but the noisiest three members of your staff, keep filleting everyone’s ideas as they emerge.  Alternatively, if you want to get diverse and rich ideas from everyone, don’t judge what you hear, as the ideas are put up in the first phase.  Park your judgment phase for later.   Logical Analysis This is where we judge the quality of the idea capture.  We focus on recognising assumptions, drawing conclusions and thoroughly evaluating options. We apply practical thought processes, running the ruler over the raw ideas to see which makes sense and which look like they won’t work.   Decisions-Making This is the tricky bit. We have filtered out what we think are the best ideas for execution, but we don’t have unlimited resources, so we have to make some choices and decisions, about where we need to place our emphasis. We could do it by consensus, after appreciating everyone’s views and opinions and come to a group decision. We could leave it to the boss to make the choice and then give us the budget to make the ideas a reality.   We could be less dictatorial and allow the team to vote of ideas.  We could apply a criteria methodology by determining what criteria the ideas have to fit in with, in order to be adopted.  We could look at which criteria are counted as desirables and which are absolutes.  This makes the selection process of ideas more objective and less prone to personal preference of a few strong willed individuals.   Coordination Unless you are going to personally implement the solution, because you are such a big legend, you will probably need other people to help you. Involving other people means having to gain cooperation around timeframes, accountability, role clarification, expectations, reporting and responsibilities.  This is where your people skills come into play.  By the way, how good are your communication and people skills?   These five phases give you a road map to apply to the creative process in your workplace.  If you are using this well and your rivals are not using it or are screwing it up, then expect that you can win in the marketplace.           More, faster, better with less sounds ideal, but if you are continuing to do the same things, in the same way, then the sadly, results will be the same.  That means we need to be introducing changes. The creative quotient in change has the capacity to really lift our game.  Are we maximizing the total power of the group to come up with creative interventions, which will impact our performance?  Usually the boss is barking out orders like a mad pirate or is shredding ideas from the group, as they begin to hatch.  This destroys any individual motivation to put up any further ideas and plunges the future of the organisation into idea darkness.  Not ideal.   We all know that the ability to think creatively, analyse problems and opportunities in new innovative ways are critical organisational skills, which are still underdeveloped here in most companies in Japan.  We want new discoveries, better ways of doing things, reduced costs and improved performance, but we often defeat ourselves in trying to achieve these things through our poor methodologies.  Here are five phases to get creative results.   Problem Identification We need to have some mental picture of what we want, what is the outcome that will help drive the business? This needs to be as clear as possible, otherwise we will be spinning our wheels and getting nowhere, as we thrash around in contemplating various splintered directions.  We need to define where do we want to be and where are we now, so we can encapsulate the scope of the gap.  To understand where we are now, we need to take an inventory of what are the current facts of our situation.   For example, what is the problem, what are some possible causes, who is involved, who is not involved, what is wrong, what is not wrong, when did it happen, when did it not happen, where did it occur, where did it not occur, etc.  The classic questions need to be focused upon- who, what, when, where and why.  We are not making judgments at this point.  We are just collecting valuable data points.  We are looking at going beyond the symptoms, to the underlying causes.   Creative Thinking The key is to begin the process with no evaluation of ideas.  Sounds counterintuitive, but we want volume of ideas rather than quality of ideas in the initial stage.  Most people get this wrong.   They can’t help themselves and start to edit ideas on the fly, as they emerge.  If you want to completely shut down all but the noisiest three members of your staff, keep filleting everyone’s ideas as they emerge.  Alternatively, if you want to get diverse and rich ideas from everyone, don’t judge what you hear, as the ideas are put up in the first phase.  Park your judgment phase for later.   Logical Analysis This is where we judge the quality of the idea capture.  We focus on recognising assumptions, drawing conclusions and thoroughly evaluating options. We apply practical thought processes, running the ruler over the raw ideas to see which makes sense and which look like they won’t work.   Decisions-Making This is the tricky bit. We have filtered out what we think are the best ideas for execution, but we don’t have unlimited resources, so we have to make some choices and decisions, about where we need to place our emphasis. We could do it by consensus, after appreciating everyone’s views and opinions and come to a group decision. We could leave it to the boss to make the choice and then give us the budget to make the ideas a reality.   We could be less dictatorial and allow the team to vote of ideas.  We could apply a criteria methodology by determining what criteria the ideas have to fit in with, in order to be adopted.  We could look at which criteria are counted as desirables and which are absolutes.  This makes the selection process of ideas more objective and less prone to personal preference of a few strong willed individuals.   Coordination Unless you are going to personally implement the solution, because you are such a big legend, you will probably need other people to help you. Involving other people means having to gain cooperation around timeframes, accountability, role clarification, expectations, reporting and responsibilities.  This is where your people skills come into play.  By the way, how good are your communication and people skills?   These five phases give you a road map to apply to the creative process in your workplace.  If you are using this well and your rivals are not using it or are screwing it up, then expect that you can win in the marketplace.        

Coaching People Out Of Downward, Negative Spirals   You are resilient, sturdy, capable, independent, hardy, self-motivated, constantly pushing and challenging the organization to go forward.  You don’t need anything in terms of social recognition or internal worth validation from others.  You are the leader and you get the job done.  Bully for you. The issues arise with those working for you, who are not like you.  They may be younger, less experienced, less educated, less confident and less convinced they can change the world through working at your firm.   Leading a bunch of clones is easy, because everyone gets it and they will file into line on command. We never get this situation though, unless we are in the elite military units perhaps, where a fearsome pruning process has been applied to whittle the punters down to the right group of super high achievers.  What we get is what the person or people before us hired and which the company can afford.  We may be able to hire a few of our own selections while we are in the job, but with job promotions, and job hopping on our part, we may not be there long enough to rely on that fix.   We have to lead the team, as they are, with their many inconsistencies, diverse motivations and abilities.  Often we are trying to push the organization forward, yet we have to rely on our team to do the hard yards, to get the shoulder firmly up against the wheel rim and pushing with all their might.  Are they up for it?  Do they believe this is the right wheel to be pushing?  Are they convinced they can actually do it?   In Japan, we are leading a group of people who are often firmly ensconced in their comfort zones. In old Japan, families were grouped together in a system modeled on how the Chinese emperors ran their country. Broken into units of 100 families, if there was any crime or rebellion, the immediate family would be punished severely, but so would the remaining other families in the 100.  The pressure to conform, to be part of the group, to not challenge the existing order was complete.   You might be thinking, “yeah, yeah man, that was hundreds of years ago”.  True, except that if you have had your children in the Japanese school system here, you will immediately know that the pressure to be the same, to not stand out, to go with the group, to go along to get along, is still the tried and true social normalization method in play.  So we receive staff as adults who have been socialized to not make mistakes, to not be the “nail that sticks out” because it gets hammered back down. Here we are their leader: the iconoclast, the innovator, the fearless challenger of established norms wondering why we are not getting anywhere with the changes needed.   We need to be coaching people on whether their beliefs about this change are true.  Staff reach straight back into their tried and true play book, that says the best way to avoid a mistake is to do nothing, do nothing new and never do anything risky.  They are negative on change, fearful, scared.  We need to have a conversation around the drivers of their belief that this particular change is bad.  They may have never had that introspection moment, because a fish is the last thing to discover water.  We are the same.  We are surrounded by common sense, accepted dogma, established truths, so we never really challenge our views, we just look for ways to cement them.  In Japan, even more so.     Next, we have to get them to mentally rephrase their beliefs and challenge whether those negative beliefs are universal and necessarily applicable in this case.  This is an inside out process. Yelling orders and berating people doesn’t affect belief change. It just creates solid discontent, which then races like a fire throughout the group, who all fear their turn for being berated is coming.  We need them all to come to see it is worth trying. Barking orders is easier than coaching people to change, because that takes a lot more time and effort.  We often take the easy path and then wonder why we are failing.   The key point is to have them own the design and execution pieces, rather than you firing out specific game play orders.  You have probably done this before or are very comfortable with change.  You instinctively know what needs to be done, what, how, when, who, where etc.  Great, but shut up about it and let the team work it out themselves.  You can gently guide through questions and suggestions, but keep the direct orders in your back pocket.  If you can restrain your ego and or impatience, you will find they will come up with a good plan and then they will have the ownership necessary to deliver on the plan.  Let’s focus on the outcomes and be flexible on the means to achieve the goals.     Are you actually flexible by the way?  Often the crash through or crash types are inflexible, convinced of their immortality, their perfection and that their right is might. Good luck with that in Japan!            

Celebrating Wins When Doing Business In Japan   We imagine we are celebrating our wins, but are we really?  I think about myself and I realize, I am not doing it.  This is a good reminder for myself, that I should be doing it more often. Japan is a highly risk averse culture, so when we ask people to step out of their comfort zone, they are hesitant to do so.  Most people don’t like change, so there needs to be encouragement and recognition to do so. Avoiding risk, responsibility and accountability are gold medal winning traits on the part of most Japanese people. This is their risk averse nature coming through.   We are all looking for innovation and progress and that means doing things we aren’t automatically good at, it means mistakes and possible failures.  All of these things get penalized in Japan. No wonder people like doing the same and safe routines they are familiar with.  We have to think about how to reward people for stepping up and stepping out.    That means praise and recognition and celebrating wins, however small at the start.  This isn’t like Christmas time, where we only get our presents once a year.  We shouldn’t be saving up for just the end of the Financial Year celebration.  We need to be doing more of that on the way throughout the year.  Are you doing it?   Now I am a shocker in this regard.  I am the classic Protestant work ethic, go, go, go type of guy.  Sometimes I look at my diary and say “great”, no meetings tomorrow and then I realize that is because it is a public holiday.  I have been so totally focused on the work and have forgotten all about the holiday.  I am self contained, self motivated, independent, so I don’t need anyone to tell me anything.  Well, that might be fine for me, but that is not everyone else.  Other people want praise, recognition and the feeling of being appreciated.  I am certainly not the model.   As the leader, I have to keep telling myself others are different, they need motivation, they need that supportive environment, the praise, the conversations.  This is particularly the case when we are trying to grow people’s comfort zones. They need help to make the changes to grow their ability.  This means we recognize the smallest progress, because change is hard for everyone.    We have to make it easy for people to change and that means creating a smooth glide path to help them on the way through.  That means not waiting until the end of the year to have a big celebration.  We hit the target, so we celebrate or we missed the target and the party is cancelled. It doesn’t work like that because people need help all the way through the year, to get to the result we all want.   So, if you are a hopeless workaholic like me, then find someone else to be designated to set the party dates and organize them.  Make it happen around you or even in spite of you, rather than needing it to come from you. If you are like me, then in that case there will never be any parties or celebrations, just more work.  Make sure they are executing on this.  Our job should just be checking on the progress. Hard work is fine, but many people want the collegiate atmosphere, they want to have the camaraderie, they want to let some steam off together.    Actually, I have a confession.   This whole conversation and topic is for me, to remind me to celebrate the small wins, to get other people doing it on my behalf, so that in fact it gets done.  I hope you find this reminder of “do what I say, rather than what I am doing” helpful.  I promise to do better on the win celebration front!    

Handling Mistakes In Business In Japan   Mistakes happen.  The important thing though is how we handle mistakes in Japan?  How do you handle mistakes by your staff?  We want innovation , we want improvement, we want people stepping out to grow the business.  The problem in Japan is making a mistake is taken very seriously and bosses will berate staff for errors and colleagues will be less than supportive. Consequently, staff have learned to avoid all possibility of making a mistake by not taking any risks and by avoiding all additional responsibility and accountability.  We want the opposite, but the problem is people are reluctant to do that.  When mistakes happen everyone is watching to see how the boss will react and handle the problem.  They are all thinking what will happen to me, if I make a mistake.  When they see their colleagues being hauled over the coals, they judge that is something to avoid. The best way to avoid that, is keep doing the same old safe things and don’t try anything new.   So we need a philosophy and methodology on handling mistakes.  Do you have one or both? Here are some ideas. Firstly, we should check the facts of what happened and not be led by hearsay.  Once we have the details and are sure they are correct, we need to engage the person who was responsible for the mistake.  How do you habitually approach the mistake maker?  Do you confront them with the sordid details of their crime and rebuke them?   Another way which will work much better, is to refer to the mistake indirectly.  Keep the confrontational nature of the conversation to a minimum. By referring to the mistake indirectly, we allow people to keep face and to more easily volunteer the information about what happened.  The confrontational approach tends to breed denial.    Another way, might be to talk about our own mistakes.  We might refer to a stage in our career where we got it wrong and talk about what happened. We do this to show that we understand that we all make mistakes and it is a very human thing. It is also a subtle reminder that mistakes are not fatal and here you are the boss, despite having made mistakes in the past.   It is going to be very rare that a person won’t know they made a mistake.  They will know it and they will be feeling bad, guilty and shy about the fact they let the team down.  We need to keep that in mind and to approach the conversation very gently.    Their confidence will have gone right down and they will be locked away in their comfort zone, afraid to come out.  We need to counter that feeling and restore their confidence.  We should lure them out of the comfort zone, so that they can contribute to the firm’s future.  We can explain that the innovation process is a messy thing and mistakes will happen.  We mention we accept that part of the trade off with getting people to try new things is to allow for errors.  If it is a straight up error that has nothing to do with innovation, then we need to have a different conversation about precision and double checking.   When we get to the next stage, we ask them what we can do to recover from the mistake.  Now, would you normally start correcting them and telling them what to do?   You might try this approach instead of asking them for help in what to do, to engage their ideas and insights.  In this way, they are feeling in control and will have a strong sense of ownership of the solution.  People own the world they help to create, so we should let them do just that.  This also means that the execution piece is more likely to be done well by them, because it is their idea. Let them work out some possible solutions, select what are the best solutions and getting them busy on fixing the problem   On the other side, if they totally deny any responsibility, if they are not being cooperative, then we have a different type of problem.  Taken to the extreme, we will have to reconsider if we want people working with us who refuse to take responsibility and be accountable for their work.  Remember this denial approach is driven by their fear.    They are worried they will be fired for the mistake, rather than recruited to fix it.  This is the risk averse nature of the culture here at work. We need to assure them that this mistake is not a life sentence nor capital punishment.  They need to know they may suffer some penalties for the error and that they can recover and keep going with their career, but they have to take responsibility for what they have done.   If we are able to do it this way, others who are watching won’t be spooked by innovative ideas or change.   They will see that this is a culture of coming out of the comfort zone and trying things.  They will see that people are valued and not thrown on the wayside at the first sign of trouble.  The group expects them to take responsibility and also that people are treated humanely by management.  If we can get this right, we will build a stronger team, with more capability of producing creativity and extra value to the enterprise.      

  Time When Doing Business In Japan   Time is life, time is money and time is your business.  Business decisions are glacial here in Japan but buyer expectations of you regarding your response and follow times are exceedingly high.  Tokyo especially bustles along.  You see it in the mornings. I catch my subway train around 7.15am in the morning and to my astonishment I see people dressed for business, running through the subway station.  Why are they running at 7.15am in the morning? Who knows, but it just reinforces that things are moving fast here in this crazy capital.  The pace of life is fast so we have to be very well organised to keep up with buyer’s expectations.   It is so much harder to be well organised today.  Emails are hitting our inboxes like a tsunami, just wave upon wave of new emails, without remorse and without relent.  You cannot call any one anymore either because they are in meetings, everyone is in meetings.  You know your email will get drowned in their inbox and you cannot get them on the phone, so making contact with people in business is so much harder.  I thought all these cool tech thingees we have today would make business easier but that is not necessarily the case on all aspects. Our windows to people are getting more narrow and our time openings more compressed. So we have to become like demons on speed when it comes to better organizing ourselves.   One important aspect of that is planning our day.  Now for some people reading this they may be thinking, “forget that, I am a free spirit, I am going to do it my way.  I don’t want to be bound by rules and schedules. I need the muse to come out and I want to run my business that way”.  I very much doubt you are operating at maximum performance this way and the cold hard reality is we have to plan our days extremely efficiently, because we are all so time poor.  Other people may be thinking, “yeah, yeah, I know all that, I know I have to prioritse my day”.  It reminds me of my 17 year old son, who whenever I tell him to do something says “yeah, yeah Dad, I know” but then doesn't do it.  We all know what we should be doing but it doesn’t mean we actually get around to doing it.    What should we be doing? We should be seeing our time management in holistic, whole of life terms.  There is no point just planning for business because your life is multifaceted and there are many areas apart from work which need attention.  We play more than just a business role in our lives. I am a husband, a father, a colleague, a leader, a salesman, a writer, an investor, perpetual student, a friend, etc.    Every one of these roles had priorities which must not be sacrificed just for the business component. We need to work out what our respective roles are and plan our goals and priorities for each of these roles.  That old saw about “nobody on their deathbed wished they had spent more time down at the office” is true.  The way to make sure that doesn’t happen is to make sure you have specified goals organized in priority order for all aspects of your life. When it comes to daily planning, we draw on these and make sure that all priorities both business and otherwise are covered off.  The classic is you are too busy working in your business to get your taxes done in time or get your expenses claims completed.    This is when you know that you have a failed time management system in place.   Start with your goals and review the priorities you have set and then see if any of these need to be injected into today’s schedule?  That will capture both business and non-business objectives.  Calling your aged parents every week should be in there. Spending time to watch your kids play sports should be in there.  Reading about investment information should be in there.  Getting your tax submission documentation should be in there, especially in Japan, as they don’t allow late submissions or extensions.  The point is your life is multi-faceted and so should your goals and priorities be in your scheduling. This then gets boiled down to a daily “to do” list in order of greatest import.  Which one of these many things is the most urgent or will have the greatest impact?  Start with that one.   This is key you have to start with the highest priority order and stick with that one unless something happens and you have to rearrange the order.  Here is the key – you cannot do everything, but you can get the most important thing done everyday.  If you can do that you will be so far ahead of everyone else it will be ridiculous.  I sometimes fail in this regard and I lack the discipline to do things in the order of highest priority.  I don't think I said I was a saint?  Anyway, the key is to try.  I know myself that the days I do manage it, are so vastly more efficient than the days I don’t, the evidence is overwhelming for being better organised around goals and priorities and the discipline to compete tasks in order.   Another good idea is to organize project work into block time.  This means that time is set aside to work on a project without interruption. We make appointments with our clients and we defend that time allocation.  We need to do the same for ourselves so that we can get to work on items that need time or deep thinking or both.        

Delegation In Business In Japan   We know that delegating tasks is important but we have tried it in the past and found it didn’t work well, so we have given up on it.  Why didn’t it work well?  This usually because of the way we do the delegation.  We just dump the task on someone and tell them when we want it, as we gracefully slide off into the mist.  We turn up at the designated production point to find it hasn’t been done or has errors or has been taken off on a complete different direction to what we expected.  The timing means it is too late or panic stations to try and fix it by the deadline. We blame “delegation” the process rather than ourselves.   So we start saying dumb things to ourselves like “it would be faster if I do it myself”.  We do this because we don’t want to invest the time in teaching someone else how they should be doing it.  This is a big mistake because if we keep doing it this way we will never be able to delegate anything.  There is a big opportunity cost here, because we can’t free up the time we need to work on the high level things that only we can work on.   Just dumping work on others builds resentment.  Clever people have worked out that if they do a poor job they can’t be fired in Japan and the boss will buy back the delegation and they will never have to worry about a recurrence. If you ask Japanese people to write out their job description they will get in on to a postage stamp.  The reason is because they want to reduce their work responsibily down to the smallest possible scope.  They are highly risk averse and the less scope of responsibility the less chance of having any egg wind up on their faces.  Pretty smart really.   Then we turn up with our shin idea to give them more work.  They think they are too busy already and don't have any bandwidth for more tasks.  Also, you are expanding their risk circle rather than reducing it.  From their point of view there is nothing to like about doing tasks which are the bosses responsibility rather than theirs.   Okay, so how should we do delegation then?  We need to persuade people to do it willingly.  The first step is to match the task with the person rather than matching it with whoever doesn’t look that busy that day.  Next we need to sell the idea to them.  We have to speak in terms of what is the benefit tot hem.  It is hard to move up the ranks usually because we lack experience at the next level we are among for.  Delegation is an excellent way to get the notches in your belt through practical experience of doing tasks at the boss’s level.  When we get to the job interview stage we can talk about the fact hat we have been completely tasks at the boss level already, so we are sure we can do the job.   We need them to lead the planning on how to do the project.  We own the world we help to crate so let them create the plan of execution.  Of course we can help but it shouldn’t be our plan rammed down their throat.  They may actually have a better way of doing it than what we had thought of.   Let them run with it but check on the way through.  There is a fine line here with micro managing, but we have to be careful to keep the responsibility with them.  We need to check it is on track with what we agreed and that is all we should be doing. Let them do it.  Finally, we celebrate their successful completion of the project.    

Japan Can Be Brutal In Sports And Business We recently had a blatant example of poor sportsmanship here in an American Football game between two traditional University team rivals.  It gained massive media coverage because it was unusual.  I think it is pretty clear to everyone that Nihon University American Football coaches Inoue and Uchida told linebacker Miyagawa to injure the Kansei Gakujun University Quarterback. In their press conference they said he misunderstood their orders. Probably what they meant was injure the Quarterback, but not so blatantly that it has gone viral. Sports in Japan is still feudal in some areas and violence toward players is tolerated by the institutions because they want to win and gain prestige. Isolated incident you may be thinking?  Think again. Do you remember a few years ago when the Sakuranomiya High School basketball captain chose death by suicide, rather than face another demeaning day of 30 slaps in the face from his Coach Komura. The coach “got results” so his coaching methods were accepted for eighteen years at that school.  Eighteen years baby!!! The leadership of that school were quite okay with the coach slapping students in the face thirty times a day.  How could that be? That’s just high school right. No!    How about when Japanese Olympic Judo Coach Ryuji Sonoda was described as a “sadist” in the Japan Olympic Committee’s investigation of Judo coach violence.  This came to light only after the protest of elite female Olympic athletes complaining about his violent methods of instruction,“our dignity as humans was disgraced”.  Women’s volleyball here in Japan is legendary for the defending diving drills, that are repeated with a ferocity and frequency designed to break you mentally and physically to supposedly toughen you up. Recently we have had professional sumo athletes getting bashed with baseball bats, killing one.  In other cases, coaches and seniors used beer bottles and TV controllers to injure the junior athletes in their care.   Why?  Where is this coming from?   Military drill sergeants were sent into the school system from the 1920s to toughen up the younger generation, so they could become cannon fodder for the Empire.  This wasn’t one or two schools.  This was a coordinated effort to use violence on entire generations of the young.  Japanese officer violence towards new conscripts, entering the Imperial forces from the late 1930s, was designed to mould youth for death or glory for the Emperor. Brutalisation was at the core of the instruction.   I have been doing Japanese traditional karate for 46 years and have seen plenty of sempai using violence on kohai in Japan, under the pretense of strengthening their spirit.  It is all about power.  They call it tough love to confuse those on the receiving end. There is no love involved here, just tough beatings.   Of course there are plenty of cases of demonic coaches and brutalisation of juniors in education and sports in the West too.  Japan being Japan though, has codified it, institutionalized it, at scale.  Watch carefully.  The leaders of the organisations involved, always unite against the victims, until public pressure makes them go after the perpetrators. This is the 21stcentury. It would be good if educational and sports organizations here joined it.   In the postwar period, the sempai-kohai or senior-junior system kept these harsh realities going for students doing sports.  You must obey your coaches and your school seniors.  This is straight out of the feudal samurai code of total obedience. These are not samurai warrior philosophers though.  These are nobody ego maniac adults with power and younger spotty faced megalomaniacs, who have seized control of you, because they are higher up the hierarchy than you, by dint of age and stage.  A perfect training ground for the leadership realities you will face perhaps, when you enter a big Japanese company?   In Japan, bosses slapping subordinates who made errors has only gone out of style in the last five minutes by the way. Power harassment was a term you never heard of in Japan until very, very  recently. No wonder everyone in companies is so scared of doing anything new or different, if the penalty is a smack across the ear from the boss and a sharp tongue lashing.   Risk aversion is rampant in Japan because of these factors. That means if you want to get innovation here, you need to work hard on creating the environment for innovation to succeed. The key is how you see mistakes. If there are errors which warrant severe punishment, shaming and perhaps even personal violence, then don’t expect too much innovation to emerge.  If on the other hand you teat mistakes as part of the learning process and people are encouraged to learn from it and try again, then this old feudal style of running organizations here will change for the better.  Remember the leader determines the culture, so you need to define what is your attitude to mistakes and errors.  If it is zero tolerance then you will create a certainty of culture, but is that culture going to produce the creativity you need to succeed?    In some high risk environments, we want zero failure rates and we cannot tolerate mistakes, because the consequences are so terrible.  But there are few companies in this situation.  The majority are still killing innovation through their culture and mindset.  This is good. Well it is good, if your can outmaneuver these rivals because your culture is creating innovations that give you an edge in the marketplace.  Perhaps worth thinking about, next time something goes wrong at work!            

Stress In Business In Japan   We know that stress is a killer.  Stress is something that sits there under the surface and it effects our health and our performance.  It runs deep and can well up in us.  We are not fixing it or diminishing it, we are just suffering it.  Japan can be stressful place in business.  Decisions take a long time and the client is never on your timetable.  You expected that payment, but it didn’t turn up.  You discover that the invoice had to be in by the 15thof the month, but no one bothered to tell you that.  You are not getting paid and now cash flow issues arise.   Currency movements have now had a strong impact on your profitability and this wasn’t factored in fully, when you did the business plan.  Regulatory barriers are making it hard to supply the market.  The buyers prefer the devil they know, to the angel they don’t know, and that angel means you.  So how do you break into this market when nobody knows you? Then you have the problems of running your own team.  People are getting older and have all sorts of personal health issues or issues around taking care of their own parents.  You have recruit and retain issues with younger staff.  The list just goes on and on.   What do we do about these things?  There are many things blinding us to the real issues.  We are battling through a fog of confusion most of the time.  We have to cut through that and work out clearly just what is the problem.  Unless we can identify the problem, we have little hope in fixing it.  This isn’t as easy as it sounds, because there could be many factors at play, but which are the really key ones?   The key here is to write them down.  Somehow the act of writing helps us to refine what we are thinking.  We need to get them into priority order.  That also forces a higher level of thinking about what we are facing.  Are there any threads or similarities?   Having sorted that out, we now have to dig a bit deeper and look at what are the causes behind these problems.  We can identify the symptoms, but what are the root causes of the troubles we are suffering? This again needs some analysis and often we are not operating with a lot of numbers we can rely on, to pick out the threads of the root causes. We often have to go on instinct and this is an imperfect science.   Having ascertained what is causing the problem, well what can we do about it?  We start digging deep for solutions, for ideas, for innovations which will provide us with a way forward.  This is a brainstorming process and the object should be to throw up as many ideas as possible.  We do this on the basis that even a crazy, impractical idea might be the trigger for a really great idea.  The excellent idea may not have emerged with out the stimulus of the crazy idea in the first place.   Having drawn out a broad range of possibilities we now need to whittle these down to the best ideas. We start evaluating the consequences of taking possible actions on these ideas.  We will distill the best solution in this way and now we have created a roadmap for ourselves.  Through action comes clarity and the solutions flow forth.  We need to get the battle plan into priority order for the execution piece.  We are trained to execute and once we get a plan together, we can start to move forward and get out of the hole we have been lodged in for some time.   Dale Carnegie wrote a whole book on this subject, called How To Stop Worrying And Start Living.  He was thinking that we needed to find a way through the worry stage and get out of that hole we have dug for ourselves.  If we don’t do this we will see our stress mount up.  Once we find that way, we get on the front foot and we can exercise more control over our attitude and our circumstances.  This means we can start living in a full and complete way, because we have thrown off the yolk of stress and we are now tapping into our full potential.   If you find alcohol isn’t doing it for you or you find yourself worrying while at yoga, maybe get the book and read it.  Today we know the connection between stress and illness and we can’t take it lightly. The likelihood of our lives becoming less stressful in the future is slim, so we are better off finding ways to deal with it today. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected]   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Worry In Business In Japan   There are so many things we have to worry about in business. Do we have enough cash flow to pay the bills, will we have enough left over to get to the end of the next month.  Can we meet salary, do we have enough to pay our taxes, can we meet our supplier’s payment invoice requests.  The one thing that will bring a business down and eliminate it is not enough cash flow.  Once that becomes insufficient it is game over.  So we need to preserve cash and that means you need a really accurate tracking system.  You do not want any nasty surprises about cash flow.   We worry about our clients mix.  Do we have the right balance of those we are farming, that is to say the regular buyers of our products or services.  They may not grow much but they are regular and sound repeat business.  We also need new clients though to replace the ones we lose and to expand the business or we need existing clients to spend more with us. This is the gross revenue side of the business.  As we all know, you only need a couple of consecutive months of poor revenue flows to have cash flow problems, so the regular sources of business are very important.   Then there is expenditure side of things.  We need to keep our fixed costs conservative, although that is not so easy in Japan. We want to see our variable costs/fixed costs ratio moving in the right direction.   Another area of prominence at the moment is retaining staff.  We are seeing a drying up of hires in Japan, as the population decline makes it harder and harder to hire new people.  If someone leaves, you are looking down the barrel of 18 months before you can recruit and train the replacement to get up to the speed of the person who left.  This means the retain part of our companies activities becomes very important.   The younger generation are becoming more aware that they are in demand and they unlike their parents, can move from job to job, with no stigma attached.  The grass always looks greener on the other side to them and so they will up and be moving to your competitor, unless they are properly managed. They are the first free agent era of workers in Japan.  This has never happened before, this is all new and there is no road map on how to navigate our way through these societal changes.    Many of them have a very starry eye view of work and so when they start working for a firm they realise this isn't as glamorous as imagined, in fact a lot of what they have to do is boring and the boss isn’t all that great either.  If they walk out they have taken all your training with them to a competitor. You have just lost your investment in them, plus they are very hard to replace, so you could be short of staff for some time.   The experienced workers are getting older as people want to keep on working and because we want them to keep on working.  As they get older they have various health issues so they can’t make it to work some days as they are sick.  They also face the health issues of their parents.  They have to take them to hospital or they need to stay at home some days to take care of them.  All of this is dislocating the work flow, but this is the new reality and we have to be geared up for dealing with it.  This means we need to have a lot more flexibility than before about work hours, working from home, giving people enough sick leave and recreation time to recover.   So what do we do about dealing with all this worry. Here are a few ideas to adopt to get on top of all of this.  Firstly, get clarity about what is the real problem.  When are worried we have a lot of things flying around in our brain.  We tend to be unable to get focus.  We need to stop that.  So call it out.  What is the absolute worst thing that could happen?  Name it, isolate it, focus on it.  This gives us a clear target, gives us clarity around the problem.  Next accept that it will happen.  Don’t go into denial or delusion.  Expect this will hit and hit hard. Face it.  Having done that, now work on what you can do to minimize the damage.  This helps us to move to a positive mindset around the fix rather than the problem. All of that mental white out we were facing lifts and we see a way forward, this gives us hope and improves our spirit and motivation.   Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected]   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Longevity In Business In Japan   Longevity means a lot in Japan.  People who are risk averse like the fact your company has been around for a long time. They know there is a certain degree of track record there.  They sense you are stable, predictable, credible, reliable – all indicators that you are a low risk choice of business partner.  If you are a new entrant how does that work for you?  You have no track record, no credibility, nothing to reduce the risk of having you as a potential supplier.   Your firm may be new to Japan, but perhaps you have an established track record in your own country. I previously ran an Australian bank here in Japan and that company had been around for 150 plus years.  We leveraged that track record here in Japan to establish the levels of trust we needed.  That was our longevity to satisfy Japanese buyers.   In the case of Dale Carnegie Training, we always talk about the fact that we started 106 years ago in New York and 55 years ago in Japan.  We do this to show we are reliable and they can be confident about doing business with us, if we are a new supplier for them.  We are showing we have stood the test of time.   Also don’t forget about yourself.  If you have been with the same company for many years, don’t neglect to mention that because it will be appreciated.  It shows consistency, loyalty, stability to the Japanese buyer.  Japan is a not a country of job hopping to get to the top like in most Western countries.  We are bouncing around from job to job trying to step up our careers.  Here in Japan, they go up the escalator and over time they will get to the top.  Slow and steady wins the race here. So your steady career will look very familiar to them and it will correspond with what they think is a normal career progression.   In my case I have been with Dale Carnegie Japan for ten years and I don’t miss the chance to mention and highlight that.  It shows commitment and again stability.  Japanese companies want to have long term relationships with people they can trust. Being a known factor is a big help in getting business done here.  If I have been ten years with Dale Carnegie already, they know that I am not going anywhere and I will continue to be that known factor for them.   On the flip side of longevity is the fact that Japanese people love the new.  When a new shopping mall opens here in Tokyo, the place is rushed with consumers going to check it out.  They swarm there like bees.  After a few months another new location will open up and they will fly off and swarm there. This fascination with the new is a bit tricky and counterpoints longevity.  So here in Japan we have a dual task. Highlight our stability and longevity but also be seen to be coming out with something new as well.  That is very important if you want to be seen as relevant.  We are a 106 years old company, but we have to make a big effort to be innovating and releasing new Thought Leadership all the time.  There is no resting on your laurels in Japan.    That is why I release three podcasts a week – The Leadership Japan Series, The Sales Japan Series , The Presentations japan Series - why I have my own YouTube TV Show, The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, why I publish two daily blogs one in English and one in Japanese everyday on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  That is also why we have over 700 free videos on our Japan Dale Carnegie TV YouTube channel.  We have to show we are fresh, current, innovative as well as stable over time.  What can you do to show you have something new for the buyers?  There is a strong demand here for new things and if you don’t satisfy that demand, your competitor most likely will do so.   Another tricky part of longevity here is keeping your contacts going.  Large Japanese companies have a generalist model of executive development.  You are an employee for life and over your career, they will rotate you through all the sections of the company, so that you have a good appreciation of how the business works.  The issue with this system though is come April 1stevery year the staff moves take place.  The person you have been dealing with and with whom you have built a solid relationship of trust, gets moved to a new job.  Now there is a new person who may not know you and may want to do their own thing or use their own trusted suppliers instead of you.  You are now out.   This means that you have to keep in touch with companies.  You can anticipate the changes will be made in April, so well before that you need to check in on your contact and find out what is likely to happen. Are they going to stay or will they be moved.  If they are going to leave, then you want them to introduce you to their successor and try and weld the relationship firmly with the new person.  Even if they have already made the move to another division, still get them to introduce you to their successor where ever possible. This will considerably smooth the transition glide path.   We are juggling a lot of balls in the air here, aren’t we.  We have to have longevity but we also have to be constantly reinventing ourselves to have something new and then they move our champion and we have to start the whole process over again.  This is why you need to have a high degree of farming going on here rather than constantly hunting for new clients.  We establish a solid base of business and then we just top that up and expand that with new business.  What you don’t want is a lot of buyer turnover.  Having to replace existing clients all the time is very tough, expensive and time consuming.  That means we have to carefully manage our longevity in Japan.

Praise or Flattery: Doing Business In Japan   Japan is awash with praise but it is praise more on the flattery side of the equation.  When you get here and you speak a few words of Japanese they will quickly tell you how fluent in Japanese you are.  You use chopsticks at the restaurant and you get praised for mastering this tricky set of implements.  This is all flattery, so don’t believe a word of it.  Japan has been a high density living environment for thousands of years, so flattery is grease to smooth the wheels.  They have learnt that the way to increase harmony is to smooth out all the rough edges, so this is where praise and flattery come in.   It happens in our countries too.  I am fascinated by American culture.  Winston Churchill noted the US and the UK were two countries separated by a common language.  Australia and America look similar but we too are quite different culturally.  I was reminded of this recently when an American businessman I had just met for the first time at a networking event introduced me to another American businessmen by saying, “Come meet my good friend Dr. Greg Story”.  No Australian would ever dream of doing that, because we are far too cynical, but this is how they grease the wheels in America.   The difference with praise and flattery in Japan is that they have institutionalised it.  When you get praised in Japan, (a) don’t believe a word of it and (b) just politely accept the praise.  Don’t say, “no, no, no” when they say something complimentary about you.  Just politely say “thank you very much for saying that” and move on, both sides happy with the fiction of the flattery.    When I first arrived here on April 1st1979, I couldn’t speak any Japanese.  After a few months of studying Japanese, I could barely give the cab driver instructions on where I wanted to go.  The drivers reaction though was “Mr. Customer, your Japanese is so excellent”.  Four years later, after completing a Masters degree at Jochi University, when I was heading home and climbed into a cab, I got the exact same reaction “Oh Mr. Customer, your Japanese is so excellent”.  So if you receive praise here don’t believe a word of it, they are just being nice.   Interestingly though, because there is so much flattery going on here you can cut through with some praise of your own back to them.  They all know it is the flattery format so usually nothing really resonates. Everyone politely joins in the game of flattery and no one takes what is said at face value.  You can have what you say taken at face value however, if you know how to deliver the praise so it is believable.  You can actually get cut through and gain differentiation with the other person.   Be it the buyer, your team or anyone you meet in Japan, if you want to recognize something they did, then be very specific about it.  Don’t make general comments like “very good” or “good job” or ”good comment”.  All of this is too vague and just sits in the flattery basket to be mentally disappeared immediately.  Instead tell them something they did that was good, but then isolate out the thing that was good.   So with the case of staff, it might go like this: “Your comment in the meeting Suzuki san was really excellent.  When you said that we should go together to visit our buyers, that was really insightful.  I am sure the next level down never get visited and the chance for us to meet them and say thank you, is a great chance to build the relationship and increase future sales volumes.  Thank you for bringing that possibility up at the meeting”.    In this example, we have drawn out what was good, so that the praise is related to something specific which they did, which has value. When they are a staff member of your firm, tell them how what they did helps the firm’s big picture and encourage them to keep doing that and thank them once more.  If we just say “good job” they cannot relate to that comment, because they are very busy doing many tasks and just exactly which one is it you are referring to?  We need to tell them.    For example, “Suzuki san, thank you for that great comment in the meeting, that was great.  Your insight is very valuable. We are going to take that and change what we are currently doing to provide a better service for the client, as a result of your comment. This will help us win greater market share, thanks to you.  We really appreciate that input and please keep those insights coming, we really value you.”.  This will not be seen by the staff member as simple flattery that can be disposed of and forgotten immediately.  This style of giving praise will resonate and in a country drowning in fake flattery, you will stand out in the crowd.

Dealing With Crime In Business in Japan   Crime is going to be a feature of any society.  There are going to be different elements of crime – activities that affect your personal safety, fraud coming from outside your firm and fraud coming from within your company.  Organised crime the Yakuza are well established here.  They even have their offices with their own shingle, announcing which gang they are. They are not as strong as they once were, but they are still a force.  The chances of a foreign run business having trouble with the Yakuza is pretty low. For cultural and language reasons they find dealing with us too hard.  There are plenty of local Japanese they can exploit and that is a much easier to do.    They run prostitution, drugs and extortion.  There have been media reports at different times of a Japanese company President or employee being killed by Yakuza, because he wouldn’t pay them off or whatever. A new law introduced a few years ago that held the gang boss response for the crimes of his underlings, has had a strong negative impact on the Yakuza, but they are still operating and probably always will be.    You are more likely to run into Yakuza in a club or bar.  You are out on the town, you go for drinks, and are having a great time.  When you get the bill, it is the equivalent of the GNP of a medium sized African country.  You protest and that is when the Yakuza chinpiraor punks, appear to persuade you to shut up and pay.  And you better pay.    If you go to places like Roppongi or Kabukicho in Shinjuku in Tokyo, then you will be in Yakuza territory and they will be running clubs and bars.  If you get into any trouble with Yakuza on the street, the safest place for you is at the police Koban or police box.  Don’t try and sort it out yourself, get the cops involved.  Anyway, you will have to work pretty hard to get yourself into trouble with the Yakuza in Japan, it is very, very unlikely to ever happen.   Fraud is a different question.  There are plenty of cases here of Japanese being taken to the cleaners through fraud. They have their share of ponzi schemes here too.  Often they are pretty bad ponzi schemes, in the sense they collect the money and then rapidly disappear. They don’t even bother to string it out over a number of years like Bernard Madoff did in the US.  Here they grab your cash and then they are long gone.   You also hear anecdotal cases where family wealth has been stolen through business dealings with bad people.  My Japanese wife’s family and friends all know of cases where a solid family has lost wealth through fraud from supposedly reliable business partners. Fraud does happen here.  If the deal sounds too good to be true, it is probably not something you want to be part of.  There is no such thing as a free lunch in business and it is all hard work, hard work, hard work.   It is very difficult at the start to distinguish which business partners are the good ones guys and which ones are the crooks. Keep you wits about you.  Having said that, the chances of this happening are pretty slight.  Again all of those cultural and language issues make it hard for them to target you. And there are so many gullible Japanese kamo or targets anyway, why waste their time on the likes of you.  Counter intuitively, speaking Japanese can be a disadvantage in this regard. I was a kamoin a real estate deal here and did lose a considerable sum of dough as a result.  They had all the aces as it turned out and all I had was ignorance, but it was a strong lesson to do your due diligence here really well.    The other part of fraud is inside your own company.  There are no shortage of cases of people stealing from banks, from their companies, etc. It does happen.  In big companies, some staff are fabricating expense reports, to get the cash for themselves.  There was a case recently of a bank employee who was hiving off cash from some transactions he was involved in.  Often it is driven by bad gambling debts and they become desperate to pay the money back, especially if they are dealing with the Yakuza.  Stealing from you sounds a lot better than getting beaten up or killed by the gang.    In the past, some of the short term, high interest cash loan businesses would use Yakuza muscle to collect the money.  The usurious interest rates made it virtually impossible to ever clear the loan. That got cleaned up after a lot of scandals surfaced, but there is a lot of pressure to pay the loan back, so stealing from your employer starts to look like the only way out.  The other usual driver is the middle aged married guy, trying to fund his young girlfriend’s required lifestyle and he starts taking money from the company to make it all work.  This can be going on for years, before it is finally discovered.    Part of that reason is that Japan is such an honest culture that we all get lulled into a false sense of security.  We don’t have the checks and balances in place because we are so trusting.  The people involved have worked out the weaknesses in the system and they exploit that gap for their own financial benefit. Japan is a very honest country, so the chances of this happening are quite low, but they are not zero.  So we should make sure we have some mechanisms in place to just be on the safe side of the equation.      

Face Is Very Important In Business In Japan   If you enjoy a good debate, well Japan is not the place for you then. In Western culture debating is part of the education system.  You may have been on the debating team in High School or may have participated in debates during English class.  But what is a debate?  It is an argument, where one team tries to outsmart the other, one-up them, show they are intellectually superior, more intelligent and more persuasive. It is a smarty pants culture. Our love of oratory goes right back to the Greeks and continues today.  We admire people who are articulate, witty, clever and are amused when someone successfully one-ups the other party.    I was raised in Australia and it is a macho culture where boys are constantly trying to one up each other. We do this in sports, especially extreme sports or seeing who can jump off the highest riverbank into the muddy river with all the dangers there of submerged tree trunks and hidden rocks, etc.  We do this in banter.  Always trying to have the last word, the best comment, the cleverest comeback, the most cutting profanity.   This culture of being bigger, better, bolder, brassier than someone else is completely different to Japan. Japan will never fully embrace debating because it basically an argument. Some say that the world of science is different and there are fevered debates.  Not in Japan I would say.  Everyone will be tip toeing around on eggshells, not to have the other side embarrassed.  They will proffer counter views, but in the most opaque means possible.  This is a land of harmony, cohesion, calm - no arguments. The Japanese have been living on top of each other in highly dense societies for thousands of years.  They have learnt how to get on with one another and how to avoid arguments.   We know this, but in business we sometimes forget.  We may be very strong in a meeting, driving our point home to the audience be they buyers, suppliers or our staff.  We may be the smartest person in the room, the most experienced the most knowledgeable, the most technically adept. In a Western context, all good stuff.  When we hit unexpected barriers, we try and storm through.  We use the force of will and argument to blast a hole in the wall.  We become adamant in order to force a result or secure a direction we favour.   In Japan, this being strong or overpowering, however can be interpreted as bullying. They feel we are trying to put them down, that we are being arrogant toward them.  Being too strong shows no empathy to the Japanese buyer. They want people who will understand their needs, restrictions, difficulties, etc. If they are forced into a position they don’t favour, it is usually because they perceive it as risky. They know if they approve it and something goes wrong, they get the blame. Preserving face is very important, especially when it comes to dealing with mistakes.  Japan is a country of perfectionists, so a mistake is a big deal and represents a loss of face.  So how we handle mistakes including our own, becomes very, very important.    We have to remember that our buyers, suppliers and staff are very concerned with their face. The worst thing you can do is criticise someone publicly.  This is a big no, no.  They see this as an attack and affront.  You may be 100% correct, but bully for you.  They don't want to lose face in public, to be one-upped, to be argued with.  You might outsmart their logic in the meeting, but they won’t love you for it. You might win the battle, but you will lose the war in Japan.   We always have to consider the other person's face.  We had a case with a client, a multinational company whose team are all Japanese. They had a very strict and robust legal contract, which we had to sign.  It had all of these very detailed provisions and various penalties.  It also said that if they cancelled the training within a certain time frame we could invoice them for the full amount of the training.  Sure enough, that is exactly what happened.  According to the provisions of the  signed agreement, I could have sent them an invoice and they would have been legally bound to pay it.  After all it was their own robust contract we are talking about here. I gave up receiving the money and didn't send that invoice, because I knew this would cause a big loss of face for the HR team with whom we were working.    Someone inside the company would ask why this invoice has to be paid, when no training had been delivered. HR would have to admit their error and therefore lose face internally.  By not pursuing the matter, I saved them face.  This is where we have to think cleverly to how we can have a great relationship with our client.    It is the same in the case of my own staff.  I am a driver type personality style, which means I am a go, go, go person, with no patience, who wants everything yesterday.  I can be demanding, but I have to be careful not to allow this to result in a loss of face for my team.  I am not perfect at it by the way, but I am thinking like that all the time. I don't debate.  We have discussions, we trade ideas, but we don't argue.    Being persuasive yes, but don’t try to win the argument.  If I win, that means you lose - this is not the best way to approach Japan.  I win, I get what I want, but in the process you lose face is very bad idea here.  Make the buyer look good instead and be tremendously empathetic to how things are done in Japan. They had been managing fine before you turned up by the way. They might know something that you don’t, so study first, before firing off some salvos on how things should be around here.  Face it, face the reality, face counts in Japan.  

Getting Change In Business In Japan   Getting change anywhere is a difficult process, but Japan is a special case.  Often in business, we represent the change.  We are the potential new supplier and that means a change. They have been doing business with someone else and we want them to stop doing that and do business with us instead. There are many currents underpinning Japanese culture and its resistance to change. I have been training in traditional Japanese karate for 46 years and part of that process is learning set sequences called kata.  These are fixed moves that cannot be varied in any way.  There is one way to do the movement and our job is to replicate that same movement thousands of times until we have perfected it.  There is no possibility of doing it a different way - in other words no change is possible.    This is a powerful metaphor for many things in Japan where there is only one way of doing things and it cannot be varied.  This is prime change resistance in action.  I find this at home too.  My wife is Japanese and there are certain things which must be done a certain way. Being an Aussie I am pretty flexible on trying to do things in a different way, but she brooks no variation.  There is a certain way specific things must be done and that it is that.   This in the culture and here you are trying to break into the market.  By definition you are a change and there is a change resistance already here in the culture to start off with.  Anything that represents a change for a company has to get signed off by all of the stakeholders.  This is the famous ringi seidosystem of everyone applying their chop to the piece of paper to show they are in agreement.   There will more resistance to change, than enthusiasm for something better.  Part of this issue is no one wants to take responsibility if problems arise, so the safest path is to say "no".  Hence, a change in suppliers is not easy here. Risk aversion means they have worked out who is the most reliable and consistent partner in their supplier relationship.  They are the low risk option, they have track record, they have built credibility over a long time.    You however are new. Maybe you are reliable maybe you are not.  Who knows, so no change is a better path forward for people who don't want to be accountable. So we have to come up with ways to eliminate or mitigate the risk.  in our case as a training company we only ask one question - are you satisfied?  If the answer is no, then no debate, no haggling, the training is free and there is no cost to the company apart from the time they have invested.    We do this because we have to make it easy for the line manager or the HR managers to give us a chance to become a new supplier of training services to this company.  What about your case?  What can you do to take away the risk of doing business with you? Remember we are dealing with individuals who are super deep in their comfort zone.  They have reduced risk in all aspects of their life.  They are seeking the maximum efficiency, at the lowest cost and the fastest speed.    I am the same.  I get up at the same time, catch the same train to work, choose the same carriage because it will be the closest to the stairs or escalator at the other end.  I eat in the same twenty restaurants within a kilometer of the my office.  This comfort zone is a resister to change. It encourages us to keep doing the same things over and over.  We are doing the same thing in business - the fastest cheapest, safest way of doing things. That refinement makes it hard to break in when you are the Angel they don't know.  The opportunity cost of continuing with the same supplier, the Devil they know, and not gaining from a new supplier is not easily considered.    The individuals we are dealing with are worried about themselves and not getting any trouble. So the same things get done the same way with the same results.  This is just fine with them. Underperformance won’t get you fired here, mistakes can.  We are new, we are a comfort zone expander, a pattern disruptor and so we meet resistance.    To persuade the company that we are the better option, all risks considered means we have to be working on more than just our champion inside the company.  There are so many people who can say no, we need to make sure we are working on them too.    It is possible to have change here, because we do get new clients.  It just takes a long time and is difficult.  It is not uncommon to create a new client we met four years, three years, two years ago.  We have been in business for 106 years, 55 years in Japan, but potential new clients still want to test us with a small amount of training first.  Japan needs patience and extended time frames, if you want to overcome the inherent resistance to change. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected]   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Getting Staff Engagement When Doing Business In Japan   According to our global research, there are three critical issues that determine the level of engagement and one key trigger point to getting engagement.  This research was duplicated here and japan and showed the same trends. The relationship between the staff member and their supervisor or boss is an obvious make or break point for getting high levels of engagement. What is your relationship with the team?    Often we are promoted on the basis of our ability, our smarts and then we find we are leading people who are not like us.  We think that being smart is enough but actually our EQ or Emotional Quotient is much more important than our IQ when it comes to leading and engaging the team. When we start a new business there is so much pressure and we are so time poor, we often forget about the impact we have on the people around us.  We forget to thank them, to encourage them, to coach them.   As the old saying goes, we don't leave companies, we leave bosses.  Now in many cases they don't actually leave, they stay put but they are not fully engaged.  They are there to collect their pay and do the minimum possible to stay out of trouble.    The second key point is the level of trust on the part of the troops with the direction for the company being taken by senior management.  The degree to which the people at the bottom believe the people at the top, know what they are doing has a strong influence on engagement.  This sounds simple but often the internal communication mechanism from those at the top, to those at the bottom are not working well.    When people don't know the WHY it is hard for them to sign on for the journey.  We may think we have fully explained the vision and mission and the troops get it.  This is rarely the case.  We have to keep hammering those key messages over and over again because people do not get it from one telling.  Middle Management should be reinforcing the key messages from the top but often they are not doing that.    They are soaking up all the information but they are not passing it on.  The people at the bottom do not have a clear idea of the rationale for decisions or direction changes, because no one has sufficiently explained it to them. The other aspect was pride in the company.  When you work for a brand name or a big powerful company, it is easier to feel pride in what you are doing.  But for small medium enterprises, we have to work hard to create that pride.   Battles between internal silos is a factor of modern corporate life.  This is directing energy and focus away from the rivals out there in the market.  The silo leaders complain about other parts of the organisation and this doesn't help to build a strong sense of engagement within the organisation.  This is a weakness in the leadership because they don’t know how to engage the team from a holistic point of view.  I had a case of a client where their key opponent in the market had been disorganised and wasn't much of a rival, but they were changing, they were improving, they were on the way to becoming a strong rival. This is perfect.  You can unite the team against those rivals, galvanise people’s energy and attention. Have the offsite, the dinners, the after work drinks - anything that will help bond people on the inside against the enemy on the outside.   The trigger point to engagement was feeling valued.  Everyone is working away in their role but do they understand where they fit into the big picture.  Where their little job makes a difference, where they make a difference.  For a lot of admin jobs it is hard to feel anything you are doing means anything.  We have to have those conversations where we reassure everyone that what they are doing is important and that they are important.  One of the issues is we forget to tell them because we think either they know already or they don't need to know.  They should be able to work it out for themselves.   Well they can't and they need to have their importance, their value to the organisation constantly reinforced thru the communication skills of the leader.  In a time poor world we can find ourselves moving from one meeting to another and shooting out orders in the interval.  This is not going to engage anyone and where is the feeling valued part? You might think you are doing  this but you may be fooling yourself.  You can do a quick self audit and confirm how much of your time is spent communicating to the troops that they are valued in this organisation.

Recruiting Staff In Business In Japan Demographics are accentuating a talent shortage in Japan.  The supply of young people has halved over the last twenty years and is on track to halve again between now and 2060.  The number of young Japanese studying overseas peaked pre-Lehman Shock in the low 80,000s a year.  It dropped down to low 50,000s and has crawled back up to around 60,000 going overseas to study each year.   The flavor of their overseas experience has also changed.  Many more are going for short stays, so their level of English isn't as good and their cultural immersion isn't as deep.  This is a function of cost and also the greater concerns for personal safety in a world where terrorists roam major cities, killing innocents without warning.  This trend to go abroad less and for shorter periods is ironic because the minds of the corporate titans in Japan are now more focused globally.  Their companies  need young Japanese staff who can handle the world beyond the seas surrounding Japan. They know that they have to acquire businesses and expand in markets offshore to survive the consumer population decline.  They have to head outward. Matrix organisations have Japanese staff here leading foreign staff scattered around the world. The opposite is true too. Japanese staff here are reporting to foreign bosses located overseas.  This is new.  In the old days it was a simple model of the Japanese expat disappearing for five year to be forgotten by everyone and then HR wondering what to do with them, now they are back and pushing them into some nondescript job.  The levels of English being produced by the educational system in Japan is underwhelming.  You really have to wonder how long this is going to take to be fixed?  The system is failing young people and making sure they hate having to learn English, instead of helping them gain a facility with the language.  The Government is introducing English earlier into the system, now starting in elementary school and they are bringing in more foreign native speakers to work in the schools.  This is all good, but the benefits of this won’t be seen until we have all retired from business and are on the links playing golf everyday. This is a crazy world where English capability is needed right now at the precise point that the young are opting to stay in Japan and not study overseas.  It is hard to argue with their logic, the food is seriously excellent here, there are no guns, no terrorists and no major drug problem. Everything is pretty comfortable here.  I like it and so do all the youth of this country.  Why put yourself under the pressure of dealing with foreigners with your poor English?  Better to stay here in Nippon and relax. The recruiting companies are having a field day, charging 35% plus to locate new staff for you.  If you are a mega corporation then this is probably a fleabite.  If you are a small–medium operation this looms large.  For example, a $100,000 a year position will cost you $35,000 to place. That number will get your attention every time.  When you include the social insurance and other costs associated with employing staff you add another 15% to that first year cost, which will total not $100,000 but $150,000. There are job boards, and there are recruiter/job board combinations, but regardless, none of this is cheap. In Japan young people are encouraged by their families to join very large corporates.  This seems a safe and stable selection process.  Getting them to quit their current job and come and work for us runs into opposition from their parents and even the spouse’s parents as well.  If you are a major brand it might be acceptable.  If you are a small medium sized company they have never heard of, it seems risky. Foreign corporates might be angels, but in Japan everyone prefers the devil they know instead. So to encourage people to join us we must accentuate our flexibility.  Not requiring people to work overtime or stay until 11.00pm at night is well regarded. We can be more flexible than the big Japanese corporations.   Usually, there will be a base and bonus arrangement.  In the West the bonuses are performance based.  The bonuses in Japan are paid in summer and winter and are more a delayed salary payment than a true bonus.   Western companies can pay for performance though and this is a good differentiator.  In Japanese companies everyone gets paid the same and move up through the ranks together, regardless of individual performance.  It is more revolving around when you entered the company, how old you are, what rank you hold, etc.  It is very formulistic and everyone moves up together in lockstep.  So to get people to come on board you need to pay people more to compensate the risk of joining you.  And English speakers, the declining resource, come at an additional premium. One group which may become more important will be the Dai Ni Shin Sotsu group.   These are young people in their mid to late twenties who want to change their companies.  The percentage is running in the low thirties at the moment but it has been in the mid forties in the recent past. They have spent around 4 years with the company, have been trained by them and then they walk out the door.  They are hard and expensive to replace.  So we really need to work diligently at keeping the new recruits inside the company.  This is the skill of the leader and if they don’t have the skills, then you will see your good people walk out the door.  This means your middle managers are going to be critical to the equation, when it comes to retaining the people you have spent some much time and treasure recruiting. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected] If you enjoy these articles, then head over to dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules. About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan. A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.  

How To Brainstorm In Japan   Japan can only copy! This once upon a time was what we heard about Japanese innovation.  It was used disparagingly as a dismissal of Japanese capacity to innovate.  Well Japan is excellent at copying for sure.  There is a level of attention to detail here that is mindboggling.  Part of the issue was that over centuries of isolation Japan had become incredibly skilled in kaizen - small steps of improvement. The breakthrough ideas were happening somewhere else. This is an important observation, because when we are trying to come up with new ideas, we have to remember that we don't want just ideas that improve on what we did in the past, if possible, we want to leap past our competitors and go on to the next stage of development.   Japan is not the only place where we have seen this phenomenon.  Nokia was innovating by producing better and better phones.  Steve Jobs introduced an innovation, the smart phone, that killed Nokia off and let Apple dominate the global market.  The rental market for DVDs is getting killed by streaming services like Netflix.  Maybe we cannot come up with a game changer on a global scale, but we can certainly do better in pushing the innovation capacity within our firms.   There is no doubt that the way we do brainstorming does impact the success of the effort. The standard model is for the boss to wield the marker pen and write the ideas up on the whiteboard. The ideas are requested and here is where a fatal error is often made. The boss starts to comment on the ideas as they arrive: "we tried that before and it didn't work, next", "that is a silly idea, totally impractical, next", "no I don't like that idea much, next". All of these comments are crushing the perpetrators and they will retreat deep into themselves and take no further part in the brainstorming. They will be lost as part of the team generating ideas.     Japan doesn’t handle personal criticism very well, given the drive for harmony in this high density living environment.  Shredding someone’s ideas publically is the death warrant for further idea generation for that individual.  We will eliminate a lot of potential good ideas this way and have the noisy few, who agree with the boss, monopolise proceedings.  I hope they are really, really smart.   The key point here is to not do it this way. Instead let the ideas flow freely without any critique, judgment, evaluation or appraisal. The objective is to get as many ideas out as possible. Now of course some totally impractical and crazy ideas will pop up. Well they must pop up in these circumstances, where we have said anything goes. The joy of a crazy, unusable idea is when it gets changed slightly and is transformed into a genius idea. This wouldn't have happened though unless the first crazy idea had been proffered.   Also don't ignore the deep thinkers. They will be digesting an idea, not say anything and find the airwaves are dominated by those around them who can think fast on their feet.  This pushes them even further into the background because they consider it a crime to be putting up flakey, half thought through ideas. We are always time poor so we push the session forward unaware we are dropping ideas off the table at a rapid rate of knots.  The session is ended and these deeper thinkers are left sitting there with a bunch of quality ideas which are never captured.   Japan has plenty of great ideas and the key is to creating the right environment where these ideas can be nurtured. Fairly simple thing you would think but pen wielding, critiquing bosses still rule in Japan. Let's change that down at your shop!  We need to eliminate the instant idea critique, the hierarchy of who started at the company earlier than the others, who is older, who is more senior.  Japanese staff will always defer to others they consider their “betters”, because that is how you get on in Japan.  To get change in Japan you need enormous energy, discipline and patience.   If you want innovation, you have to give people the freedom to put forward their ideas.  To do that you need a system that allows ideas to be generated in silence to shut down the idea bullies, that go through multiple rounds until all the deep thinkers ideas have been captured and which separates generation from the judgment of ideas.  We have to keep telling everyone we are after idea volume in the first instance, not perfection.    Old habits die hard though, so you need the session facilitated by someone who can keep everyone in line.  When the critique comes too early that person needs to be told to hold that thought and remind everyone how this works.  Others can’t bear the silence, because they have gotten all their ideas out quite quickly and now they want to talk.  They need to be told to stay silent, no matter who they are, and allow the others to get their ideas out too. This is a new way of doing things, so expect resistance. If we want better ideas, then we need better idea generation technologies and this new methodology represents a change.  Expect detractors, but push on because this will be so much more powerful than what is currently masquerading as idea creation, you will never go back.   So get the ideas out first and then do the selection and judgment in the second phase. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected]   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected]   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.  

Execute On My Shiny Idea, Now!   A genius idea springs into your head and off you go to share it with your staff member.  Well share isn’t quite the right word.   Actually, delegate is the right word because you want them to do something for you.  The staff member is sitting there thinking , “I want no part of this” and the excuses start pouring forth.  This is a simple thing – you are the boss and you want something done and they get paid to do what you need them to be doing.  Or so it seems.  Japan is an interesting place.  It has quite a clear hierarchy established throughout the society in terms of wealth, position, rank, age and seniority.  So why do staff ignore what the boss wants?   Well they won’t outright refuse all that often, although that can happen. They are usually more subtle than that.  The societal reluctance to confront others, particularly those in positions of authority, run deep.  Instead they will put your passion project on the back burner and then conduct a war of attrition around not doing it.  You follow up and they haven’t done it yet.  This is repeated until , as they expect, you get super busy and fully occupied with other stuff and you forget about it.  Often the chances are good that the window for that project will have closed out if they can drag it out long enough.  Their experience tells them that this works like a treat.  The upside is very attractive and the downside is they have to do the project anyway.   So how can we get our staff to cooperate and do what we want.  Threatening them won’t work.  They know they can’t fired for a simple little thing like defying the boss.  No court in Japan will back the boss against the employee in this type of case.  The grounds for dismissal in Japan don’t include not doing the boss’s requested project.  We have to take another route.   The first thing is to not bring your passion for the project to the staff member until you have set it up. What often happens though is that we are brimming with enthusiasm and want to get this genius idea going straight away.  So without any word of warning we lob up at their workstation and start telling about our new shiny idea.  We have it in mind, we see the outcomes, the benefits, the advantages, the cleverness of this idea.   What do they see?  They see the piles of work they are struggling with already.  The other items which they have prioritised and for which they are already working very long and hard.  They need more work like a hole in the head and here you are, you eager beaver, all hot and ready to go.  They may agree with your idea or they may not, but they care more about how they are going to add this burden to all the other burdens you have already given them.   So what should we have done? Firstly, cast your mind across what they are currently working on.  If you are not sure then ask for an update on progress to apprise yourself of the lay of the land before you venture any further forth.  If they are telling you they are maxed out or are occupied with a current urgent project, this helps to understand how to frame the injection of your own shiny new idea into the fray. To get their involvement, reluctant or otherwise, we need to frame the idea in a way that they can see the necessity of putting this item higher up the priority list.  We should be looking for getting them to tell us how to do it, rather than us firing off orders like broadsides in a naval battle.    We need to paint the picture, fill out the background, place them in the context as to why this is a really good idea and how helpful it is going to be to the business.  Often our own personal enthusiasm for our idea trumps all of this and we just let all the detail spill out, unattended by any context, against which they can judge the importance of the project relative to all the other important projects they are working on at the moment.   There will also be the issue in Japan of their lack of knowledge, familiarity or experience with this issue. Being from Australia, this is no big deal because we Aussies figure we will work it out as we go along.  Japanese don’t operate on that basis.  They are perfectionism driven and they fear making mistakes.  These two ideas work against taking on anything unfamiliar, exotic or shiny.    That means we have to be ensuring they get the idea we are going to help them with the bits they don't know about, even if we don’t know about them either.  It is more a mental framework than a physical or logistical impossibility that we are facing.  By taking responsibility for failure off them, they become more empowered to have a go.    We want them to do the work but we are not dumping the work on them and then just turning up at completion date looking for the goodies.  We are going to be there, going along for the ride as well.   If we do all of these things, we can get the result we want.  And we can get it without damaging the engagement, loyalty and commitment levels of the staff member.  We just need to restrain our high engagement for the idea and get our brain working on how to sell this idea to the staff member.  

Ownership Versus Dictatorship In Leadership   Leading people can be easy, if you want to be a total dictator and just order everyone around. The way of doing everything has to be specified and the detail has to be scrutinised within an inch of its life, all the time.  All the ideas have to come from you and all you want is passive acceptance from the team. They are the arms and legs and you are the brain, in super command mode.  Actually there are plenty of leaders like that in Japan. The control part works just fine because you are in control of everything.  This means your entire day is broken up in firing out orders and then checking to make sure they were executed in the exact format you had specified. This uber control method has a lot of consistency and predictability to it.  Compliance heads love this environment, because it is all about controls. This is the Theory X leader that Douglas McGregor wrote about in his study of motivation.  The leader working on the basis of strict controls and severe penalties for non-compliance.   At a certain point of scale though, this breaks down because you just can’t manage enough time in the day to interact with each person individually or check up on their work directly.  This is where you need middle managers.  You can apply this same management technique to Middle Managers, but you personally are removed no from the front line.   You are also limited to how much innovation you can expect in the business.  This would be fine, if there were no competitors in the market and that they also were not innovating.  That never happens, so while we are gaining super control over our own business, we are handing the field over to our competitors who can out innovate us.   We also face succession planning problems.  Who can move yup through the ranks and lead, if all potential leaders have grown up on hand held spoon feeding by the bog boss?  We need capable people to take over.  The issue is capable people will quit that type of environment, because they have their own ideas and aspirations and they feel suffocated by all of this top down dictatorship.   We know that people will feel ownership of the world they help to create.  This invites us as leaders to involve our people in the business we are running.  We want their engagement.  If they are not engaged why would they care about doing things better.  To get innovation we need engagement, to get engagement we need to provide a sense of ownership.   What happens though when the person you look to for leadership, for innovation, for creating ideas doesn’t come to the party.  Japan is a country of following orders and many people are happy with that.  Tell me what to do and I will do it very well, but don’t ask me what to do. This isn’t all that helpful when we are trying to skate to where the puck is going to be in business. We have no clear road map of the future and we have to think about what our business will look like in five years time. What will the marketplace look like then, our competitors, our suppliers, etc.  The boss can’t tell you that.  We all have t work together to divine the future and then make our plans on that basis.   As a leader we can be making a big effort to give ownership of this process to our subordinates, but we notice that some grab the chance and others don’t.  People in Middle Management have been given the opportunity to come up with their vision for the department for the future and that have produced exactly nothing after many months.  What do we do?   We may instinctively feel that we need to give people ownership, so the dictator role model is ruled out.  But we notice they are not thriving in this “you own the business” environment.  The first thing to realise is that not everyone is like you or wants to be like you as a leader.  Some people need a dictator to tell them what to do here in japan. That would be you, so play that role.   You may decide that your leadership team cannot carry the weight of someone who can only do what they are told and who cannot take ownership.  Often, these people are functional experts who are deep, deep in heir craft and you cannot lose their expertise.  This is the classic case of people being promoted into leadership in Japan based on age, stage or speciality.  They were not raised above the crowd based on their leadership capability and were given no training in how to lead.   You may need to put someone above them, who can be the actual leader and keep them in their functional day to day supervisory role.  That way you don’t lose them, but you can also call on someone else for the ideas and participation at a more senior level.  Or you can become the brains of the outfit for their department and just tell them what needs to happen and then supervise the execution of the plan.   The key point is to play to the strengths of the team members.  We re going to do better by elevating their strengths than trying to eliminate their weaknesses.  Think about yourself - how many of your own weaknesses have you been able to successfully eliminate? You have 100% control over yourself, but you probably haven’t been able to eliminate the weaknesses of your direct reports.  Build on their strengths and get the right people on the right bus and sitting in the right seats. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected]   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.        

Leading Your External Partners In Japan   For many companies it makes no sense to fund their own sales force in Japan.  The money, expertise and time available within the organization is insufficient to the task, so a partner is required.  This could be an equity partner or a distribution alliance.  The penalties for getting this wrong though are high.    Poor partner selection can ensure your product or service never gets anywhere in Japan by design. The big player looks attractive as a distributor, but they are partnering with you to kill your business. They have a preferred product or service and the last thing they want is for you to disrupt the market.  The best way to do that is partner with you and then just idle the business.  They know it will take you years to figure it out, if you ever do.   When the agreement period for the partnership is set long, the pain is sustained and there is nothing you can do about it.  Desperate or ignorant company representatives sign long contracts with insufficient milestones.  Ideally what you want are clear performance targets in the agreement, which if they are not met, would allow the contract to be ended.  Expect strong resistance on this idea.   The poor levels of due diligence on these types of partner arrangement are astounding.  When talking to business people, I am always amazed at the number of supplier partnerships which occurred because the foreign seller happened to sit next to a Japanese businessman on the plane.    Even presuming you didn’t get stuck with an evil partner trying to kill your business, the case often occurs that they are killing your business anyway, through incompetence. They might be well minded but still incompetent.  The partner’s sales team’s interest in your offer can be an issue.  Basically, they aren’t interested.  Japanese sales people prefer to visit clients and collect orders for established products, rather than having to actually sell anything. Your product by definition is new. The preferred methodology is to get you to take a whack on the price, as an incentive to get clients to buy it. This is pure laziness on the part of the partner’s sales organization.   Selling from a value perspective is key, because Japan is a tough market to raise prices in, once you start low.  The buyers have fixed their mental temperature at a low level and resist your efforts to raise the temperature.  Often we may assume that the partner’s sales organisation can sell. That would be too generous. Usually, salespeople in Japan are either poorly trained or under trained when it comes to selling.   This is where you need to provide some training for their sales team on how to sell.  You might think that all you need is to train them on the product features etc., but that is too optimistic.  They won’t be much good in designing questions for the buyer to attract interest in your product.  They won’t go much beyond an introduction of the features.  They won’t sally forth into the sunny uplands of benefits of the features, the application of the benefits, the evidence of the application and chancing their arm with a trial close. They won’t know how to deal with objections when they come up and they won’t ask for the order.  Apart from those small details they will be fine.   Getting sales people who already handle a multitude of other products to become interested in yours is a struggle.  However by providing value, such as excellent training that benefits all of their job, they feel a sense of appreciation.  It needs to be set up though.  Don’t rely solely on the leaders of the partner organization to do this for you. You need to speak to the salespeople directly about how much you admire their work, how committed you are to seeing them succeed and explain why you have introduced this broad based training, beyond just the product specs.   You might be thinking that the partner’s sales managers can lead the team but again, you are being too generous.  Like many countries, sales leaders are selected based on a bunch of reason which having nothing to do with leadership potential.  In Japan, they may be the most senior or they might be the best sales person.  These leaders also need proper training, so make sure they get it.  Put them through the same training as the sales people, so that they know what they can expect from the salespeople in terms of knowledge and capacity.  Also give them better training on how to lead.  This will be a revelation for them, because they will have been thrashing around for decades unsure of what they are supposed to be doing as a professional in sale’s leadership.   Expect all of this will be resisted by the partner organization and ask yourself why that would be?  You are paying for it after all, so what is the problem?  Good question isn’t it.  Welcome to Japan!   Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected]   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

The Focused And Disciplined Boss   Intellectually, we all know what we should be doing and how we should be doing it, but that isn’t how things work in the real world is it! We have turned our email inboxes into giant parking lots for stranded emails, which get no attention, but are parked there ready for action. We know we are wasting a lot of time in meetings, but the meetings are always scheduled for an hour where everyone follows Parkinson’s Law and allows the work to expand to fit the time. We have papers, magazines we will never read but aspire to and reports piled high on all flat surfaces within arms reach. Another parking lot for the parentless paper trail.   So much time is spent on organising the logistics of leading today. Sorting through stuff to decide what to do about it, rather than actually doing it. We file emails or electronic documents and then can’t remember where we filed them so spend time hunting them down. We keep shunting paper around from one spot to another, because we can’t commit to knocking the work off and moving onto to the next task. Democratically, we all have 1440 minutes in a day, but we can’t actually manage time - we can’t flex it into 1441 minutes a day. We can only manage ourselves and the priorities we set.   Chaos for one is flexibility for another. Your workspace looks like a bomb went off, but magically and annoyingly, you can retrieve the exact piece of information needed from the rubble on command. Others have almost empty desks, where neatness shines like a beacon of hope for everyone else. Everything in its place and a place for everything. Smarty-pants types!   Which one are you: supreme order or supreme chaos? Is there a right answer? No, we all have our own ways of working. It is the amount of productivity our systems allow us, that makes all the difference.   What about where we spend our time relative to past, present and future activities. Again, there is no correct answer, we must however decide where to direct our energies. As another way of looking at our way of organising our work, we can break tasks up into past, present and future.   Past might coalesce calls to be returned, emails to be answered, reports to be written, etc. Present might encompass today’s meetings, urgent matters that pop up and require boss attention so that staff members can do their work or any deadlines due today. Future might be travel arrangements, project proposals to be approved, future deadlines coming nearer, people who need to be contacted.   We might take tasks from each group, list them up by group and give each a priority number of order of attention. We might rotate through each group, doing one from the past, then one from the present and next one from the future, before moving down to the next number on the list of priorities.   We can do it this way, just to bring a little variety to the way we normally work. Sometimes shining a light on tasks makes us realise we have forgotten to give a project sufficient time or we have not put enough effort into the Important but Not Urgent category of planning. Doing things the same way all the time is comfortable. It is good to put ourselves in places outside our Comfort Zone, if we want to drive greater productivity and clarity around task completion.   Here are a couple of productivity tips worth thinking about. Allow an extra 25% of time for completion of a task. Often we cut things too fine, so we never ever get around to completion or to a critical mass on a piece of work. That little bit of extra time may move the needle to see that work completed or almost completed, rather than being tossed into the bottomless pit of started, but not realised projects.   Before we head home, we should look at the next day’s schedule and priorities for that day. This gets our mind organised for the next day, so we are ready to go immediately when we get to work and we catch any preparation we need for the next day, which we may have forgotten about.   Where we can, we should confirm meetings ahead of time, especially clients we are visiting. If there is a change, it is good to know early, so that the day’s plan can be rejigged right then and there. Other people we work with can forget meetings and this is a sure way of reminding them what they need to do, especially for those more logistically challenged amongst us.   Try to organise time in large slabs of Block Time. It is similar to making an appointment with a client or a boss, which we usually honour very diligently. We are just making the appointment with ourselves in this case, so that we can get through some concentrated work without interruption.   Keep all the project parts together, so that you are not chasing after missing bits. Clutter builds up quickly, so be ruthless about tossing stuff out. Try to have your workspace cleared of all other papers, except the ones you are working on – this brings more clarity to what we are doing, by reducing distractions. Do one task at a time, rather than trying to multi-task – don’t split our concentration if possible.   Have a place we can note down important information. It might be on paper or done digitally, but we need a type of reminder list as we work on through the day to capture thoughts, data, information and inspiration.   Try to have our schedule planner with us, be it paper or in an electronic calendar form accessible through our phone. And try to have one planner to reduce the double inputting. This scheduling process helps keep us on time.   When we are going to events go early. Japan can be a challenge to find locations, so allow extra time to navigate the address. If it is an event, get there early and check through the name badges to remind yourself who will be there so you can put a face to a name. Also look for people you may want to meet at the event to expand your network. Always arrive early so you looking cool, calm and collected rather than panicked! Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected]   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Leader EQ In Short Supply   Intellectually we get it. We know that what we think influences what we feel about something in our business. We know that how we feel influences our behaviour in the workplace. Knowing this is great but acting within that knowledge is the hard bit. You see it all the time.   I have a friend, a leader, who gets very emotional and the gloves come off. The results go south one month or one quarter and the boss is savagely chewing everyone out. The pressure from above about the poor results is turning that nice boss into a monster. Something which was vital to a project has not been done, because someone else down the line decided they knew more about it than the boss and stopped it happening. An action was specifically requested to be done on a particular day and it wasn’t done. The boss publically explodes with anger and frustration.   This whole construct is selfish. It is all about me, me, me as the boss. The buck stops with the boss, so naturally the boss is self-interested in getting the results required. The problem is the human relations with the team members, the degree of motivation in the team and each individual’s level of engagement goes down every time there is a boss lava flow engulfing one of the crew.   We know we shouldn’t handle things this way but our anger wells up, our frustration peaks and BOOM, we unload. We have awareness after the fact. This is too late. We need to have better self-awareness at the start. If we find out someone decided for us to halt a time sensitive project and we are now going to be way behind schedule and this is costing money, the instant reaction is rage. “Who decided that?”, the boss states, but it is not actually a question so much as an accusation.   If we had better self-management, we would handle it a different way. We would know we are prone to outbursts of frustration when stupid things happen. Knowing this we would refrain from doing anything at that particular moment, knowing we need to leave the vicinity to go off and cool down a bit before we engage on this matter. Now knowing we should take a walk around the block to manage our anger and actually hitting the elevator button and leaving the building are two different things.   We need a breaker. Your lights go down at home because the breaker has cut off the electricity supply. The construction industry has found that overload levels of power consumption leads to electrical fires in homes so they have a breaker system to stop that overload from occurring. We need the same inside our heads.   We know what our hot buttons are – those things that trigger anger, rage, frustration etc. We need to insert a mental breaker in there before we go any further when one of these melt down events is triggered. It might be as simple as a mantra to ourself. “Whenever I feel anger with one of my team members because something I wanted didn’t happen, as it should have, and when I wanted it, I walk away and cool down”. We night shorten this concept down to “I’m angry now I walk away”, to make it more accessible under fire.   We need to approach the culprit in a way that doesn’t break the relationship of trust and mutual dependence that has been built up over time. Remember the team are all members of the Royal Boss Watchers Guild and everyone is looking at how we handle mistakes and problems. They want to see what will happen to them if they screw up.   If we are cooler now we will probably want to speak with the perpetrator of this dastardly deed alone, well out of public gaze. We will no doubt approach them in a non-hostile, calm, inquisitive manner trying to find out what transpired.   To our shock we may find we hadn’t communicated the urgency clearly enough. English comprehension may have been a problem, if they are not a good speaker. They may have assumed something about the cost of the project with a mind to save the company cash flow at this moment. They may have operated with the best of intentions.   We would probably discover all of this anyway, the difference being we didn’t explode, we didn’t break the relationship, we didn’t give the Guild members something to gossip about or whine about, to any and all who will listen.   We need self-awareness and self-management to be an effective leader. Not a leader who does so by pulling rank and using their status power. We want to be the boss people would vote for if they had the chance. The leader with willing followers, who are loyal and dedicated. When we get ourselves in order, we can get the company and the business in order. Anyone can be a sailor in calm conditions. When the storm hits we find out who really is the leader.