324 The Younger Generation Are A Handful
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
Release Date: 10/13/2024
368 The Cure for Corporate Cancer: Rethinking Sales Outreach
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
Let’s talk about sales, and why the new year always feels like a repeat performance. Greek myths rarely have happy endings. They are mostly cautionary tales, reminders of how the Gods treated humans like toys. One myth, in particular, perfectly captures the life of a salesperson: the story of Sisyphus. He was condemned to push a massive rock up a hill, only to watch it roll back down again, forever. That is exactly what we face in sales. We push that giant rock—the annual budget—up the hill every year. We grind, we hustle, we celebrate the results at year’s end, and then what happens?...
info_outline
367 How to Give Your First Major Presentation With Confidence
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
At some stage in every career, the moment arrives: you’re asked to give a presentation. Early on, it may be a straightforward project update delivered to colleagues or a report shared with your manager. But as you advance, the scope expands. Suddenly you’re addressing a whole-company kickoff, an executive offsite, or even speaking on behalf of your firm or industry at a public event. That leap — from small team updates to high-stakes presentations — is steep. And so are the nerves that come with it. Why Presentations Trigger Nerves In front of colleagues, we often feel confident. But...
info_outline
366 Win the Deal: Negotiating in Japan Without Losing the Relationship (Part Two)
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
Negotiating in Japan is never just about numbers on a contract. It is about trust, credibility, and ensuring that the relationship remains intact long after the ink is dry. Unlike in Western business settings, where aggressive tactics or rapid deals are often admired, in Japan negotiations unfold slowly, with harmony and continuity as the guiding principles. The key is to combine negotiation frameworks such as BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement) with cultural sensitivity. By doing so, foreign executives and domestic leaders alike can win deals without damaging vital...
info_outline
365 Win the Deal In Japan Without Losing the Relationship Part One
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
Our image of negotiating tends to be highly influenced by the winner takes all model. This is the transactional process where one side outwits the other and receives the majority of the value. Think about your own business? How many business partners do you have where this would apply? For the vast majority of cases we are not after a single sale. We are thinking about LTV – the life time value of the customer. We are focused on the proportion of our time spent hunting for new business as opposed to farming the existing business. Where do you think...
info_outline
364 You Can’t Win A Knife Fight With A Slide Deck
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
Presenting isn’t always adoration, adulation, regard and agreement. Sometimes, we have to go into hostile territory with a message that is not welcomed, appreciated or believed. Think meetings with the Board, the unions, shareholders, angry consumers and when you have sharp elbowed rivals in the room. It is rare to be ambushed at a presentation in Japan and suddenly find yourself confronting a hostile version of the Mexican wave, as the assembled unwashed and disgruntled take turns to lay into you. Usually, we know in advance this is going to get hot and...
info_outline
363 The Truth About Death by Overwork in Japan
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
So many sad cases of people dying here in Japan from what is called karoshi and the media constantly talks about death through overwork. This is nonsense and the media are doing us all a disservice. This is fake news. The cases of physical work killing you are almost exclusively limited to situations where physical strain has induced a cardiac arrest or a cerebral incident resulting in a stroke. In Japan, that cause of death from overwork rarely happens. The vast majority of cases of karoshi death are related to suicide by the employee. This is a reaction to...
info_outline
362 One Pitch, No Matter How Genius, Never Works in Japan
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
Presenting to buying teams is very tricky in Japan. Because of the convoluted decision making process here, there will be many voices involved in the final decision. What makes it even harder is that some of those key influencers may not ever be present in the meeting. Those proposing the change have to go around to each one of them and get their chop on the piece of paper authorizing the buying decision. In the case of Western companies, the decision tends to be taken in the meeting after everyone has had their say. In Japan there is a lot of groundwork needed so that...
info_outline
361 Your Outfit Speaks First – Make It Say ‘Professional’
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
How should we dress when presenting and does it actually matter? Yep, it matters - particularly in Japan. Japan is a very formal country, in love with ceremony, pomp and circumstance. Always up your formality level in dress terms in Japan, compared to how formal you think will be enough. This was a big shock for this Aussie boy from Brisbane, who spent a good chunk of his life wearing shorts and T-shirts or blue jeans and T-shirts. Tokyo is not Silicon Valley, where dress down is de rigueur and where suits have gone the way of the Dodo. This is a very well...
info_outline
360 Back Your Team Or You Break Their Trust
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
We don’t run perfect organisations stocked with perfect people, led by perfect bosses. There are always going to be failings, inadequacies, mistakes, shortcomings and downright stupidity in play. If we manage to keep all of these within the castle walls, then that is one level of complexity. It is when we share these challenges with clients that we raise the temperature quite a few notches. How do you handle cases where your people have really upset a client? The service or product was delivered, but the client’s representative is really unhappy with one of...
info_outline
359 The Sales Trap Crippling Japanese Business
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
We see Japan as a modern, high tech country very advanced in so many sectors. Sales is not one of them. Consultative selling is very passé in the West, yet it has hardly swum ashore here as yet. There are some cultural traits in Japan that work against sales success, such as not initiating a conversation with strangers. This makes networking a bit tricky to say the least. We train salespeople here in Japan and the following list is made up of the most common complaints companies have about their salespeople’s failings and why they are sending them to us for...
info_outlineWe are on the cusp of a change amongst youth in Japan. Those already entered into the workforce have memories of the Lehman Shock and the triple whammy of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear core meltdown and the impact this had on the job market. They are looking for security of employ and family life, because of the fragility of both were exposed to them in September 2008 and again in March 2011. They saw the dire straights of those who slipped into the part-time employee hell of low wages, no prospects and everything tough, tough, tough.
In 2016, only 6.9% of those in the 25-34 age group switched jobs. The September 2016 survey by the Japan Institute For Labor Policy and Training also found nearly 90% supported lifetime employment. This figure was only 65% in 2004. Of those in their 20s, 55% wanted to work for the same company right through. That same number was only 34% in 2004.
There is a generation coming behind them though who will be different again. They were born around the time of the Sydney Olympics in 2000, have little recollection of the Lehman debacle in 2008 and except for those with close links to the Tohoku region, vaguely recall the ordeal of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear core meltdowns.
They are going to graduate after the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. They are going to see the part-time jobs market filled with Asian, mainly Chinese, students working their allowed 38 hours a week (more hours than the work week in France). They are going to see driverless electric cars, Artificial Intelligence breakthroughs, the ubiquity of voice commands, bumptious robots and the Internet of Things controlling their lives. Their demographic curve is in rapid decline, their numbers are dropping every year and will be half today’s figures by 2060. They are going to be in big demand. The current unemployment rate of 2.8% will sink even further. They will be free agents looking at multiple job offers and openings available to them.
They will be the last juku or cram school generation. University entrance requirements will collapse. Except for the absolute elite institutions, a pulse and cash will be the only entry requirements. Tokyo is going to cap the numbers of students on campus, but the rest of the country will have no limits. Many universities will be hungry for fees and desperate to attract students. The Millennial’s successor generation, who some are calling Generation Z and for Japan, I am calling the “Olympics’ Generation”, will have an entirely different perspective on education. “Exam hell” will mainly disappear as a cultural construct for the 90%-95% who don’t aim for the elite universities.
Mid-career hires are still an anathema for many local Japanese firms, but that is going to have to change. They simply will not be able to find staff. What to do with women is confusing for them, as their structures are built on the old post-war model of husband works and the wife raises the kids. That will have to disappear quite soon.
This whole concept will have to change and they are going to have to learn to be more flexible about hours worked and leave. When the kids get sick, the husband is still unlikely to be dropping tools and heading off to the school to pick up junior. The working wife will need to do that and woe be tide to any firm who doesn’t cooperate, because others will and she will move on.
Today, some domestic firms still look askance at employees having a profile on LinkedIn. This site started as a pseudo-job board, but it has become another source of useful information available for free. This will all add up to assisting greater job mobility.
Recruiters will be poaching people right, left and center to satisfy firms desperate to find young workers. The wooing to move will be constant. We have seen an aberration of Economics 101 where labour supply shortages have not yet resulted in wages growth. That cannot last much longer. Certainly this Olympics’ Generation will enjoy the financial benefits of powerful labour demand.
The key word for this Olympics’ Generation will be “mendokusai” （めんどくさい）or “bothersome” and anything duly defined will be resisted. Companies are going to struggle with leading this generation. The current Millennials may become their immediate bosses, but the cultural divide between them will be vast.
Middle managers in Japan will be faced with the greatest challenges of any generation of Japanese leaders. Unless they are properly trained for this onslaught, it is going to be a nightmare. Their situation will simply outstrip the leadership answers usually tapped from OJT (On The Job Training). There is no roadmap for this eventuality, because this is all a brave new world of leadership.
Is anyone in Japan thinking about this? I would say based on my discussions so far, the answer is “no”.
You heard it hear first folks: “Winter is coming”.