The Leadership Japan Series By Dale Carnegie Training Japan

The President of a company is a very powerful force.  They drive the direction, the strategy and the culture formation inside the enterprise.  In Western corporations, there are big salaries and big incentives tied to the leader’s performance, especially around profit achievement and share price gains for shareholders.  We project this idea on to Japanese companies and imagine they are basically built in the same way.  This idea seems fine, until you ever have to get a decision from a Japanese company.  This is when you enter the twilight zone of differences about how things are really done here.   Japan has some specific features which make the leadership terrain quite unique.  Mid-career hires are the norm in the West and the exception in Japan, as far as larger firms are concerned.  New graduates are malleable and the company leadership wants to install their group think, culture and conservative action methodologies in them.  Seniority is a respected Confucian attribute in Japan, which has little currency

Tokusan the scholar visited Ryutan the Zen Master to learn about Zen.  Tokusan was a very smart fellow and very confident in his knowledge and experience.  He was good at impressing others with his capabilities and many people looked to him for guidance and advice.  After about ten minutes of conversation, Ryutan invited Tokusan to enjoy some green tea.  As the Zen master poured the hot tea into the cup, the tea began to flood over the brim, but Ryutan kept pouring the tea.  Tokusan became agitated and said to stop pouring, because the cup was already full.  Ryutan then told Tokusan that he couldn't understand Zen until he emptied his own mental cup, to allow new ideas to enter.   This is a famous zen story in Japan and we leaders are Tokusan.  We can be convinced of our ideas and become stubborn and inflexible about departing from them.  We have risen through the ranks based on our abilities, experience and results.  We had to work things out for ourselves and our decisions were correct.  Over time we came t

Key Competencies Needed To Lead Others (Part Two)   In Part One we looked at two broad categories of leadership competences around being Self-Aware and having Accountability.  In this next tranche, we will look at being Others-Focused and at being Strategic.    Others-Focused has many sub-points, but today we will investigate five key aspects   Inspiring   Through role modelling and communication skills, leaders can and should inspire followers.  The olde days of the boss having to know more than everyone else has gone.  The focus has shifted to developing followers, through personal interest and example.  Are you consciously, systematically doing this?   Develops Others   Once upon a time, certainly when I first started work,  there was no particular concept that it was the leader’s role to develop others.  Individuals had to step up and do it by themselves. This is fundamentally what all leaders had done in the past.  Today however, business is more complex and fast moving, so everyone needs help.  One of t

Leading is super easy.  You are given the title, the authority, the budget, the power and then you just tell people what they need to do.  How hard can that be?  As we know, leading is a snap, but getting others to follow you is the tricky bit. Our awesome power will certainly bludgeon compliance. Sadly, the troops turn off their commitment and engagement switch whenever they come into contact with kryptonite bosses.  We get promoted because we personally did a rather good job on our individual tasks.  That is a false flag though when it comes to being able to communicate, coach, set the direction and inspire others.  Few great athletes become great coaches. It is a totally different skill set.    There are four broad areas we will focus on to help us become successful leaders: Being Self-Aware, Accountable, Others-Focused and Strategic.  The possibilities are endless, but these four areas will serve us well to elevate our thinking about what is required to be a great leader.   Under the umbrella of Self-Awar

Japan has some set pieces around leadership.  The Middle Manager boss sits at the head of an array of desks arranged in rows, so that everyone in the team can be seen.  This is important because this is how the boss knows who is working well in the team and who isn’t.  They can be observed every day, all day long.  What time they arrive and what time they leave, who is late back from lunch – it is all there in front of the boss.  Meetings are easily arranged and follow up is a shout away – “Suzuki, what is happening with that report?”.  Now the team are at home, away from the constant surveillance of the boss.  The boss has little idea how they spend their days and our clients tell us many Middle Managers  are struggling to supervise the diaspora.   In many cases, the day would start with the chorei, the morning huddle, getting the team together to go through what is on for that day.  These meetups can continue even when everyone is at home. We have just moved it online. Everyone needs to be on camera at 9.00

Clients sometimes ask us to help their Japanese executives have more “presence”.  This is rather a vague concept with a broad range of applications. There is a relevant Japanese concept called zanshin ( 残心 ).  A rather difficult term to translate into English, but when you see it, you will recognise it.  In Karate we do the predetermined, specified forms called kata (型).  When someone is performing one of these kata, there are different points of emphasis and after the physical action is completed, there is a residual energy and intensity of commitment that continues.  It is the same in the kumite (組手) or free fighting.  After a powerful punch or kick is completed, the karateka keeps driving their energy, intensity and focus into their opponent.  In business, we call this intensity “executive presence” but usually without the concomitant violence.   When the executive makes a comment, there is an energy that remains after they have stopped speaking and the audience feels that intensity.  We also call this hav

In business we live in the world of shallow statements of opinion.  Imagine there is a topic for discussion amongst the leadership team.  People will let fly with their thoughts and this becomes the basis for decision making, based on people’s statements on the matter.  Usually everyone is pretty busy, so the drill is to listen to what was said and then make the choice from amongst the various alternatives and move on.  There is a problem with this.  We are trapped in Phase One thinking if we continue in this way.  Phase One thinking is that first reaction level of contemplation on what you have just heard.  Instantly, you pour out your immediate thoughts on the issue.  The problem with this is, although it is quick and saves time, there is pretty light contemplation going on here. The famous Greek philosopher Socrates lived from 470-399 BC and was famous for his questioning techniques.  He used this method to help others dig deeper into their thinking.  We have to take inspiration from him and develop our ow

Leadership is stressful during normal times.  Dramatically different situations being enforced to deal with Covid-19, such as working from home, just adds to the stress. The current business revenues may be under water.  You may now owe the Japanese government a sizeable chunk of cash just to keep the firm alive.  The strain may be apparent or it may be quietly building up like a cartoon pressure cooker about to explode.  Folk law says, as we get older our tempers get shorter.  So if that is true for older leaders, now exposed to more than usual stress, this might be a dangerous cocktail being shaken, rather than stirred.  My wife assures me that as I have gotten older, my temper has quickened.  Personally, I can’t notice it, but like most things, she is probably right.  Is it because we are getting closer to falling off the perch, that we have less patience with everything, in our flickering twilight years on this planet?  I am sure there is many a psychologist thesis written on this subject, but I will rely

Kokorogamae is one of those Japanese concepts which are a bit tricky to translate.  Kokoro by itself as a word has a wide variety of meanings – mind, spirit, mentality, idea, thought, heart, feeling, sincerity, intention, will, true meaning, etc.  It is a radical in the Japanese kanji ideographic script and so appears in a large number of compound words.  Kamae comes from the verb kamaeru meaning take a posture, assume an attitude, be ready for, etc.  In Japanese, when the two words are combined, there is a phonetic shift of the “k” in kamae to a “g” sound. I first heard these two Japanese words in my karate dojo back in 1971, but never as a compound word.  Every class we were given the command “kamae”, meaning to take our fighting stance. For anyone doing Japanese martial arts, this is a very familiar word. The Kokorogamae concept is closely linked to Japanese ideas around perfectionism and mindset.  You cannot produce a perfect output, if your mind is not properly aligned with the action.  A great calligrap

In any organisation we are going to have our A, B and C players.  Hopefully no D players but if you do, then commiserations.  The Pareto Principle tells us that 20% of our team will produce 80% of the results.  Quite straightforward.  Why don’t we just fire the 80% and keeping adding to the 20%.  Well mathematically it doesn't work and also practically it is problematic.  If you have very deep pockets and you can hire the best, then go for it. The rest of us are just hellbent on making payroll.  We do our best to hire well, but after the probation period has ended, certain things become apparent. As Warren Buffet famously observed, once the tide goes out you can see who was skinny dipping.  In a properly functioning labour market, the poorer performers, could be terminated and replaced.  This is where Japan makes the whole premise more interesting. Covid-19 has crushed the hospitality and tourism industries, so there are a lot of people available on the market for that type of work.  Some other industries hav

Leaders are now leading invisible people.  Their staff are no longer in sight or at best are only visible in person a couple of days a week.  What are their people doing at home?  How are they spending their time, how motivated are they, how engaged?  Being in the office brings a certain level of discipline with it.  You can see if people are goofing off.  In an open office environment, you can hear the phone conversations with clients to gauge what is going on.  When people are at home though, there is no way to be sure the team are using their time effectively. Time is life.  Time management is life management.  The key tool to controlling time is the schedule, daily, weekly, monthly and annually. The temptation is to just imagine that time management is only about work time management.  We are holistic beings, multifaceted, with multiple responsibilities.  We play different roles in our lives and the work role is only one of those.  Concentrating all of our time on work throws our lives out of balance. The

Leaders who are remote from staff have long been identified as a problem.  They don’t delegate, preferring to do it all themselves. This subtly tells everyone, “I don’t trust you”.  They keep the drip, drip, drip of information from above firmly to themselves, as a means of maintaining their position power.  They are poor communicators and don’t know how to inspire the people who work for them.  They have poor people skills and are generally regarded as duds, as far as the troops are concerned.  They dislike mistakes and will publicly flay the perpetrators, effectively driving passivity and fear into the team. Now, all of this was taking place in the office, where heads can easily be counted. People can simply be engaged by calling their name out and telling them to come and see you.  Judgements can be made on who is working hard and who isn’t, by observing body language and activity.  Meetings can be called quickly and coordination is relatively straight forward.  Life gets a lot more complex when we start t

Leaders do dumb things and sometimes they have to do difficult things.  The line between which is which can sometimes be a bit hard to plumb.  I clearly remember the senior bosses coming back from a boozy weekend offsite, embraced with the idea that we, the great unwashed salespeople, would identify the top guns working for our rivals, so that the firm could recruit them.  What could possibly be wrong with this idea, in an industry that rapidly hires in market upswings and ruthlessly cuts staff in the downturns? Shareholder value in the US is another serious thing.  Quarterly earnings reports are weighty matters, which drives leader behaviours in directions you just have to shake your head at.  Capitalism gone mad in many cases.  Fortunately, for most of the world, this lunacy has been restrained to some degree.  Downturns turn out badly for employees.  Lofty rhetoric is tossed aside and “thoughts and prayers” becomes the common lament, as they toss you out on your ear.  The survivors are taking all of this i

Many decades ago, I remember a visiting Korean business delegation coming to my home town of Brisbane.  At the end of the day, in thanking us for being their hosts, the leaders noted it was very valuable visit and said “we didn’t know what we didn’t know about Australia”.  I had never heard that phrasing before and thought that was pretty cool and that these Korean chaps were pretty switched on. Nowadays, I realise how dangerous that “we don’t know, what we don’t know” business is in commerce and especially in leadership.  Shocking statistics emerged from a recent research piece we did on engagement in companies across 15 countries.  Respondents who had answered that they were “very satisfied” with their immediate supervisor, I would have expected were also among the most highly engaged staff in those companies we surveyed.  If my staff said they were “very satisfied” with me as their leader, I would be pretty chipper and upbeat about what a legend of leadership I was. Unfortunately, when we correlated that g

In Part Two we have looked at getting engagement, having transparency and the impact of tech.   One issue can be the lack of means to measure whether what the big bosses are saying is actually happening or not.  The Culture Champions do measure and track progress, so that they can correct issues.  These can be staff anonymous postings on speciality externally hosted third party sites, that allow the team to freely talk about problems with no fear of attribution.  Staff satisfaction and engagement surveys also work.  In the old days, these used to be every couple of years, but in some cases companies are doing light versions every quarter.  When Covid-19 settles down, we are all returning to back to the War for Talent.  Recruit and retain will again become major concerns of the organisation’s leaders. An attractive culture is a strong enabler in being successful in this regard.  How will you fare in this talent grab scrap?   The research we did was interesting, because even though the Culture Champions and the

How To Join The Culture Champion Workplaces – Part Two In Part One, we have looked at how to identify the culture in the organisation and if it is a keeper, the numerous obstacles to maintaining that culture.  In this instalment we look at what the best in class companies are doing about building an unbeatable culture. Our proprietary research showed that for all companies the main challenge to both creating and maintaining positive culture was the pressure to produce results. This makes sense, because all of those high-falutin words coming out of the C-Suite, tend to evaporate by the time they loft down to the engine room and the down and dirty world of revenue production tends to take over everyone’s concentration.  Saying you believe something is easy, but losing money to show you believe it, now that takes a lot more courage.  In the good times, your CEO airily says cool stuff like, “Our staff are our most valuable resource”, “Our most important assets go down the elevator every evening”.  This is very hi

How To Join The Culture Champion Workplaces – Part One Harvard Emeritus Professor James Heskett’s comparative study of the impact culture has on corporate financial performance was shocking.  He found that “as much as half of the difference in operating profit between organisations can be attributed to effective culture”.  Half, wow.  Now that is a big impact point, especially when we are talking operating profit rather than just gross revenues.  What is going on here? Corporate culture is like a glue that holds everything together.  It impacts the formation of the strategy, how decisions are taken and followed, clarity around the WHY, respect for those at the top and how customers are thought about and therefore how they are treated.  Edgar Schein’s famous study of organisational culture identified how to uncover your existing culture.  If you have a great culture, a so so culture or an underperforming culture, how would you know that in detail and where should you look.  He found there were three levels of

Sales Leadership For The Online World   Covid-19 hit business in Japan like a brick thown through a shop window.  All of a sudden everything was a mess and there were glass shards, dangerously sprinkled around everywhere.  We were all tiptoeing around trying to find a safe way through this catastrophe. Companies were upended and people were vanquished to their rabbit hutch homes to conduct business from there.  Commerce ground to a halt, as we went into lockdown.  Toilet paper, rice, pasta and Zoom licenses were selling well, but for most of us, things came to crashing halt.   In this scramble to adjust to the new situation, sales leaders were struggling to handle the new working conditions, themselves now sharing a small space at home with the spouse and kids.  Most Japanese bosses were not familiar with the new technology, so there was a period where a lot of energy had to be invested to learn how to connect using the new medium with the team.   The first thing we all found was that communication was much h

Back To The Future At The Workplace   Let’s presume you have all of the safety protocols in place for providing a safe working environment.  How do we co-exist with Covid-19, while gathering together back at the workplace?   Human interaction is definitely something that many people long for after months of working from home.  Yes, there were the online catch ups, maybe even virtual lunches, coffee breaks and happy hours, but it has not quite been the same.  It doesn’t mean everyone has to rush back to the workplace though.  There may be some people who are better off continuing to work from home, so organisational flexibility is the key.  In fact we must now question the logic of some of our workflows.  This deadly virus may have also been deadly for workplace inertia.  Pre-Covid-19,we just did things a particular way, because that is how it has always been done around here.   Sharing our lock down lives is a good way of bonding the returning team together.  With appropriate social distancing, get together i

The Great “Safe” Return To The Workplace In Japan Congratulations on escaping the Covid-19 virus by staying safe and working from home.  We all want to see our businesses succeed and we all want to stay healthy.  If it is time now to go back to the workplace, understand that there will be members of the team, who are concerned about their continued safety.  As the boss, you have a responsibility to ensure a safe working environment for the team. Here are some things for everyone to think about. We all have to learn how to co-exist with Covid-19, so why try and replicate the old work style?   Avoiding crowded transport and elevators are smart ideas. Try working from home in the morning, go in a bit later to the office to avoid the crowds and do the same thing by leaving earlier than normal.  When you get back home continue working.  Yes, it may mean continuing to work after 5.00pm or 6.00pm,  but this is the trade off, for coexisting with the virus. You will get the same amount of work done in a day spread out