The Leadership Japan Series By Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Alan Mulally has had a very successful career at Ford and Boeing.  Over his 45 years as a leader, he developed an approach called “Working Together: Principles, Practices and Management System”.  His number one principles is “People first….Love them up”. This type of declaration is simple to make, but not that easy to live when you are facing quarterly reporting of results and the full glare of the stock market.   We see so many cases of CEOs firing people, the stock price getting a big boost and that axing of the people turning into many millions of dollars for the CEO personally, as part of their stock-based remuneration package. Mulally believes that “working together” must be based on a supportive culture propping up the headline.  Culture alone won’t do it, though.  His system has a governance aspect directing how the leadership team should work together and which maps out how to create value.  His review process is central to translating aspirations into realities.  The basis of all of this is the philo

Ideas are free and sometimes frivolous.  We can brainstorm anything we like and we will come up with a bunch of ideas. Often that is where things grind to a shuddering halt.  I have been in those rooms, where we covered all the walls with ideas great and mighty.  What happened thereafter?  Nothing. In Australia, in the 1990s, the government tightened up their regulations on company expenditures and particularly looked more carefully at “off-site” session expenditures. In many cases, these were boozy get away weekends for the Directors and they could put the tab on the government’s bill by claiming it as a tax expense.  One year, the Directors decided to have an actual offsite with intention.  They gathered a group of people christened “game changers” and called in a consulting company to run the weekend.  It was a phenomenal experience. We came back from that off-site ready to conquer the world.  Some seriously good and extremely practical ideas emerged.  They were all duly put into a canvas bag by the Direct

Effective leaders actively coach their staff and move them through four stages. In Phase One, they create a psychologically safe environment.  In Phase Two, they engage the team members. In Phase Three, they evaluate the response to those engagement activities and finally, in Phase Four, they empower their subordinates. Let’s choose some of the most appropriate Dale Carnegie Human Relations Principles to help us execute on these four phases as a coach. Phase One: Psychologically Safe Environment. Principle 10 recommends that the only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.  This makes sense because how often do those arguing with us become convinced we are right? Never.  Rather, they dig their heels in and argue the point with us.  If we want to keep the relationship with our staff and create a calm atmosphere, it is better to not go there. Principle 11 says to show respect for the other person’s opinion and to never say they are wrong.  Bosses often think they have to coach people who hold a diffe

Ideas are free and sometimes frivolous.  We can brainstorm anything we like and we will come up with a bunch of ideas. Often that is where things grind to a shuddering halt.  I have been in those rooms, where we covered all the walls with ideas great and mighty.  What happened thereafter?  Nothing. In Australia, in the 1990s, the government tightened up their regulations on company expenditures and particularly looked more carefully at “off-site” session expenditures. In many cases, these were boozy get away weekends for the Directors and they could put the tab on the government’s bill by claiming it as a tax expense.  One year, the Directors decided to have an actual offsite with intention.  They gathered a group of people christened “game changers” and called in a consulting company to run the weekend.  It was a phenomenal experience. We came back from that off-site ready to conquer the world.  Some seriously good and extremely practical ideas emerged.  They were all duly put into a canvas bag by the Direct

Japan has a lot of wisdom to share and one of my favourites is to not start with the solution to a problem.  In Japan, the idea is to start with making sure you have the right problem to solve.  This is not easy, because often we are super busy and moving at warp speed all the time, so just jumping in to fix a problem sounds like the best approach.  There is a follow-on metaphor of the scaling of the wall. We work hard and progress rung by rung up the ladder, getting us to the top - the solution – only to find our ladder is up against the wrong wall.  We don’t want that, do we? Problem definition is sometimes obscured by having a number of factors to confront and not enough insight into which are the priority items.  This might be for a lack of a data or from conflicting opinions. The issue remains a large one, though, which we must deal with at the very start of the process.  Here are some steps to consider in problem definition. Step One: Silence Is Our Super Power Once we get into an open discussion about

Founded in 2000, Baidu has 39,800 employees and is one of the largest global AI and internet companies.  Based in China, its major success has been its search engine business.  Its quarterly revenues ending June 2024 were $4.67 billion, so it is a substantial company.  The Head of Public Relations and Vice-President, Ms. Qu Jing, posted a video on social media demeaning Baidu staff, telling them she “can make you jobless in this industry”.  She told staff she demanded they must be dedicated enough to travel by her side for 50 days straight and she doesn’t care about the impact on their families and personal lives, noting, “I’m not your Mum”.  Her mantra to the staff was “I only care about results”. She was proud to say she was so devoted to Baidu, that she didn’t know what school year her son was in.  She publicly posted her video outlining her leadership philosophy as an example to her PR team of how to use social media to promote Baidu!  Her professional skills in PR seem dubious to me. Also, her EQ or “emo

The era of the boss who had done all the tasks in the section and was the main expert on the business has well and truly passed.  Today, it is more of a team effort and there are a lot more specialisations required than in the past.  Collaboration is the key to creativity by grouping all the brain power in one place and unleashing it to solve the problem. To my surprise, very few firms have any clear methodology on how to unleash the creative ideas of the team.  So far, I have done over 200 interviews with CEOs here in Japan for my podcast “Japan’s Top Business Interviews”. I ask them all about their house methodology to harvest the ideas of their teams, and I am struggling to recall anyone who could answer that question well.  Here are some things to think about to create your own house brand on idea development and creativity. Step One: Begin with the end in mind. What is it you want to achieve with this exercise?  We are going to tie up the valuable time of a lot of key people, so the end must justify the

The leader has a different role to that of the manager.  The manager makes the business run on time, to quality and on budget.  The leader does all of those things, plus sets the strategic direction for the business, crafts the culture and builds the people.  If we want to control every aspect of the firm, then we have to micro-manage everything.  Obviously, that is a choice, but as the leader we need to develop our people too and so we need to delegate work to them so that they can grow.  In fact, as the leader, the ideal situation would be that we are only working on the most high-level things that only we can do. If possible, we want to set the parameters of the business so that the team can self-manage themselves.  Those parameters come in the form of some very useful tools called Vision, Mission and Values.  Some people may think that Vision, Mission and Value are rather flowery, fluffy, flaky statements of little use, but they are denying themselves some important leverage points as the leader. The Visi

As the boss, we are always super busy.  We have the management of the team and the results to work on.  Everything has to be progressing on cost, on time and on quality.  At the same time, we are setting the strategy, the direction for the team, communicating that so that everyone understands, establishing the values, and we are coaching and building the team members. Phew, I get tired just thinking about all of those boss roles. It is rare though that we can take a breath and reflect on the effectiveness of the teamwork.  When problems arise, we tend to work on those in isolation and never have a moment to see the team as a unit, as a whole. Here are three things to look at in your team and reflect on if you are happy with the effectiveness of the team. 1.    Conflict In a Western context, we might think we need to have constructive conflict which will help us to make better choices?  In Japan, disagreements are more likely to be ignored because if we surface them, we have to publicly deal with it and discr

Managers manage.  That means they make sure everything runs on time, to cost and to quality.  The leader does all of that, plus some additional important things. These include setting the strategic direction for the team and building the people’s capabilities.  Part of the leader’s role is to unite everyone behind the direction they are setting for the team.  There can be a lot of detail at the micro level about how to make the strategy a reality. One key component which needs to be set at the start is to re-clarify the purpose of the team.  You would think that was pretty obvious. However, if the leader doesn’t work on defining it, there could be 10 people in the team and eleven different purposes. Here is a simple six-step guide to setting the purpose. 1.         What is meaningful about what your team does, from the perspective of the organisation as a whole (such as in relation to the stated purpose and vision)? The team operates within the framework of the firm, but the leader must break that down to the

There is a debate about whether Japan is any different from anywhere else when it comes to leading the team.  Intellectually, I can appreciate there are many similarities because people are people, but I always feel there are important differences.  One of the biggest differences is how people are trained to become leaders in Japan.  I should really clarify that statement and say how they are not trained to become leaders. The main methodology for creating leaders in Japan is through On The Job Training (OJT). I can see there is a crisp logic to the idea of OJT back in the day, however it is now a flawed system in the modern world of Japan.  In the West, leadership training is a given, because the value is recognised and so the investment is made to better educate the leadership cohorts through each generation. The first problem with Japan OJT is it presumes your boss knows about leading.  There is very little formal leadership training going on in Japan.  I don’t believe it just about investing the money.  T

Do leaders have to be perfect? It sounds ridiculous to expect that, because none of us are perfect. However, leaders often act like they are perfect. They assume the mantle of position power and shoot out orders and commands to those below them in the hierarchy. They derive the direction forward, make the tough calls and determine how things are to be done. There are always a number of alternative ways of doing things, but the leader says, “my way is correct, so get behind it”. Leaders start small with this idea and over the course of their career they keep adding more and more certainty to what they say is important, correct, valuable and needed to produce the best return on investment. With an army of sycophants in the workforce, the leader can begin to believe their own press. There is also the generational imperative of “this is correct because this was my experience”, even when the world has well and truly moved on beyond that experience. If you came back from World War Two as an officer, you saw a certa

Here is a handy success equation which is easy to remember: our mindset plus our skill set, will equal our results.  This is very straightforward and unremarkable, but we get so embroiled in our day to day world, we forget to helicopter above the melee and observe the lay of the land.  A great mindset coupled with lacklustre skills, won’t get us very far.  A poor mindset with great skills won’t do it either, so we need both. What is our mindset composed of?  How we think is critical.  Are we operating with a positive mindset?  If we are deep in depression about the circumstances of the business, we are stuck in a hole from which it can be hard to emerge.  We are what we think, so control over what we think becomes so important. That also means being strict about what we put into our minds.  Stay away for fluff, endless scrolling on social media and negativity.  Find the useful, positive and valuable and make that the diet for our mind. Our opinions influence how we see the world.  Where do these opinions come

It is very common to hear from expat leaders here about their frustrations with leading teams in Japan.  They get all of their direct reports together in a meeting room to work through some issues and reach some decisions.  All goes according to plan, just like at home.  Weeks roll by and then the penny drops that things that were agreed to in the meeting are not happening.  “Why is it so hard to get people who are being paid good money to do their job?”, they ask me. One reason is that some of the people in the meeting room looked like they were in agreement because they don’t want to single themselves out as disagreeing with the boss in a public forum.  They keep a low profile and choose not to execute on a piece of work they think is a bad idea.  The Japanese methodology is the exact opposite.  Before the meeting, the boss checks in with the key people about this idea they have and gets input and feedback.  Once these consultations have taken place and any necessary adjustments have been made, then the mee

I was reading an article by Anjli Raval in the Financial Times about the transition for CFOs to the CEO job. She quoted a survey by Heidrick & Struggles which showed a third of CFOs in the FTSE 100 firms became the CEO.  This is up from 21% in 2019.  Raval makes an interesting observation, “research shows that CEOs promoted from the CFO job do not drive top-line revenue growth as quickly as those from other backgrounds, particularly in the first few years”.  Why is that the case? The article offers a few reasons about these promoted CFOs having a “cash-preservation mindset over a drive to pursue new opportunities”. Also, as the CFO, they had been making tough budget allocation decisions which had not been popular with their division head colleagues. Now they are the boss, but not everyone is happy about it.  As Yogi Berra said, “Leading is easy. It is getting people to follow you, which is hard”. That skill set isn’t taught to people trained in finance and accounting.  Analytical people, in general, are n

It sounds very obvious, doesn’t it, to remind the team what we are trying to achieve, but are we doing it?  Yes, we had that team Town Hall a few months ago and as the leader we outlined where we need to be at the end of the financial year. After that session, we have all been head down and getting on with it. “They know right?  I told them everything they need to know, to get on with it” is what we have ringing in our internal conversation with ourselves.  Is this true, though? Yes, we know the number we have to achieve, but what about the strategy to get there?  Is that clear enough to everyone? Do they all remember the details or have they been consumed by the minutiae of “doing” and have been neglecting the big picture of what we need to do to deliver the result?  The daily grind makes us small.  We are worn down by the doing and the bigger picture gets shoved into the background.  The leader’s job is to brush the dust off the plan and keep reminding the team what we have to do and how we are doing it. Th

Japan has had a very low degree of mobility in employment.  Large companies hired staff straight out of school or university and expected they would spend their entire working life with their employer.  That has worked for a very long time, but we have hit an inflection point where this is less something we can expect.  Mid-career hires were frowned upon. If you bolted from your employer, you had almost zero chance of joining a competitor. You entered a dark forest and had to find your way through the brambles and undergrowth to meet out a living on the lower rungs of a netherworld of small firms willing to take you on. In 1997, the venerable Yamaichi Securities blew up and a lot of competent, hard working finance industry people suddenly found themselves in the street without a job.  Other firms in the same sector employed them, because they were skilled and this was the first tear in the fabric of the stigma of the mid-career hire.  The Lehman Shock on September 15, 2008 added another slash to lifetime empl

Leaders now face a pivotal moment in business in Japan.  Do they continue to cling to the past? Do they replay what they went through when they were younger and lead as they were taught by their seniors or do they change the angle of approach?  Japan rebuilt itself after the devastation of the war.  The workers slaved away, adding a notch to their collective belts as they slowly overtook the GNP levels of leading European countries. I remember how proud some Japanese company employees were when they overtook the UK. They were winning the post-war economic battle after having lost the wartime military struggle. Getting to global number two status was built on the 6 days a week working dedication of today’s retired great grandparents. Not only six days a week, but incredibly long hours and long commutes. Sundays were spent playing golf with clients.  Company holidays were shared with colleagues, as well as beers after hours.  In a nutshell, men worked at the same company until retirement and married women had t

 As leaders, we are busy bees.  We are buzzing around, going from meeting to meeting. We are getting together with clients over lunch, touching base with HQ, handling the media, talking to HR about our people and a host of other important activities. Usually poor time managers, we are constantly hemmed in by the demands on our schedules.  The upshot is we are constantly looking for corners to cut, minutes to be shaved off regular activities and feeling oppressed by the overwhelming workload we face. The common victim in all of this is our leader's communication with our team.  We have found we can save time if we get straight to the point and then we can move on.  We are packaging up orders to be given to get the team moving.  Orders are given and we move on to the next activity.  We commonly forget to talk about the big picture, the background, the context, the WHY of what we want done.  We give the staff the short headline version of what we want done. We expect them to fill in the detail themselves, as we

 There are many paths to the mountaintop in the leadership area.  Today, let’s go back to the practical realities of getting others to listen to you and, even more importantly, to follow you.  My favourite quote on leadership is from Yogi Berra, the American baseball coach rather infamous for murdering the English language. He said something profound though, when he noted: “Leading is easy.  It is getting people to follow you, which is hard”.  If nobody likes you, what are your chances of uniting the team behind you?  Pretty dismal would be the obvious conclusion.  How many bosses are likeable, though? Often, they are demons, autocrats, channelling Genghis Khan for ideas on how to lead the team.  They enforce compliance, but don’t foster engagement. Their influence on what is possible for the team is limited in scope. Understanding the members of the team and what each individual wants is a good place to start to reverse the lack of engagement.  When they scold staff, this creates barriers and subterranean re