The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
Every week The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show brings the best and most up to date information on doing business in Japan. The host of the show, Dr. Greg Story is the leading expert on business in Japan and best selling author of Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Business Mastery.
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368 The Cure for Corporate Cancer: Rethinking Sales Outreach
09/14/2025
368 The Cure for Corporate Cancer: Rethinking Sales Outreach
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? The rock rolls back to zero. Every January, or whenever your company decides the fiscal year begins, you stand at the bottom of the hill again, staring at the same heavy stone. And your sales manager will always say: “Don’t tell me about your last deal, tell me about your next deal.” That has been the universal sales manager mantra since the role was invented. The tension, pressure, uncertainty, and foreboding in sales never let up. Maybe you had a great year last year. You made President’s Club, you stood on stage at the convention, you pocketed a fat bonus. Congratulations—but so what? That was then. This year is a brand-new race. Or maybe last year was a disaster. You barely scraped by, you nearly got fired, and you made little money. Tough luck—but again, so what? That was then. This year, the rock is waiting, regardless. So, here is the real question: how are you going to roll that stone this year? Deals are always out there. The business exists. The only question is: will it come to you? If your strategy is to sit by the phone, hoping for an email enquiry to arrive or for marketing to deliver a steady stream of leads, then you are fooling yourself. That is not sales. That is passivity. And to be blunt, that is what the losers do. Winners know they must take action, not wait for lightning to strike. This is where Grant Cardone’s idea of the 10X Rule comes in. Grant is a sales trainer in the US, and his book has had a big influence on how we think. In our office, we even put a huge signboard on the wall: 10X Your Thoughts and Actions.Why? Because the truth is, most of us fall into the rhythm of rock rolling. We get used to small, incremental gains—classic kaizen thinking. Kaizen has its place, but let’s be honest: small steps will not vault us ahead of our rivals. They are also improving incrementally. If we want to leapfrog them, we must think exponentially. That is the essence of 10X thinking. The mindset that got you last year’s results will not take you much further. If we want to reach a higher level, we must break out of that cycle and think ten times bigger. And then, crucially, we must act ten times bigger. Genius ideas sitting in your head, unexecuted, are worthless. Of course, it sounds easy. For the first thirty seconds, it is easy. But then the discipline required to sustain it kicks in. And that is where most of us fall short. Sales managers have a critical role here: they need to drive this thinking every single day. That means looking at every angle of the rock-rolling exercise. Ask yourself: who bought from us recently? What similar companies have the same needs but do not yet know us? Why are we not calling them? Are we avoiding it because we are afraid of rejection? Do we think the low success rate makes the effort not worth it? If so, we are making excuses, not sales. Let’s flip the thinking. Imagine we had the cure for cancer. If your family or friends were suffering, would you be shy about picking up the phone to tell them? Of course not. You would feel an obligation to reach out. Well, our firms may not cure personal cancer, but they do cure corporate cancers—the inefficiencies, the gaps, the problems that drag companies down. If we do not believe that, then we should not even be in business. But if we do believe it, then there is no reason to hesitate in contacting companies who have not yet heard of us. We owe it to them to let them know we have the solution. This is how we overcome the fear of rejection. We remember that we are not intruding; we are helping. We are bringing the cure. And if we approach sales with that conviction, the fear evaporates. So, how do we put 10X into practice? Start with mindset, but do not stop there. Take massive action. Ten times the calls. Ten times the meetings. Ten times the follow-ups. Activity drives opportunity, and opportunity drives results. The more buyers we see, the more business we win. That is the math of sales. Yes, the rock rolled last year. It is rolling again this year. But we do not have to repeat the same tired rhythm. Let’s ask ourselves: how can we 10X every stage of this process? From the first call, to the first meeting, to the proposal, to the close. That is how we roll the stone not just up the hill, but higher than ever before. So, let’s do it. Let’s roll the rock 10X harder, 10X faster, and 10X higher this year.
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367 How to Give Your First Major Presentation With Confidence
09/07/2025
367 How to Give Your First Major Presentation With Confidence
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 standing before the Board, or a large public audience, the pressure intensifies dramatically. Under the spotlight, it can feel less like support and more like interrogation. Your heart pounds, your palms sweat, your throat goes dry, and your stomach turns. These symptoms are the fight-or-flight response in action. Adrenaline surges through the body, shunting blood to large muscle groups and away from the stomach, leaving it unsettled. Your pulse races as your system prepares for action — even though you’re not about to sprint offstage or wrestle with the Board. And this nervousness isn’t unique to beginners. Frank Sinatra famously admitted he was always nervous before stepping on stage. Nerves, in other words, are normal. How to Calm the Body While you can’t prevent adrenaline entirely, you can manage it. Two simple techniques help: Deep breathing slows the heart rate and steadies your voice. Purposeful movement — pacing, stretching, walking privately — burns off nervous energy. These physical resets won’t eliminate the reaction, but they make it manageable. Why Preparation Matters More Than Slides The second, and often overlooked, antidote to nervousness is solid preparation. Yet many presenters make the same mistake: they obsess over perfecting the slide deck and neglect rehearsals. This imbalance undermines confidence and delivery. True preparation rests on three cornerstones: Know your audience. What do they want, and why are they there? A senior executive once gave a polished talk on personal branding, but the audience was almost entirely small-business staff. The mismatch meant her message fell flat. Define one clear message. Every strong presentation can be distilled into a single sentence. That sentence becomes your anchor, guiding the structure, supporting points, and conclusion. Plan your opening and closing. A compelling opening draws people in. A strong conclusion ensures your message sticks, even after the Q&A. You Are the Boss, Not the Slides Slides should support you, not control you. Too often, presenters become servants to their decks, filling them with text and losing the audience’s attention. I coached a senior Japanese auto executive preparing for an international car show. His PR team had created a detailed English script for each slide. It looked professional — but it was impossible for him to memorise and still deliver naturally. The solution was simple: we reduced each slide to one word. Each word acted as a trigger. He could then speak authentically, in his own voice, without being trapped by a memorised script. The difference was dramatic. From Fear to Focus The encouraging truth is that once you start speaking, adrenaline begins to subside. The spotlight feels less harsh, and your focus shifts away from your nerves and onto the audience. You begin to notice whether they’re engaged, nodding, or leaning in. With rehearsal and repetition, this transition happens faster. Over time, presentations lose their fear factor. They become opportunities to persuade, inspire, and lead. Key Takeaways How can you deliver your first major presentation with confidence? Accept that nerves are normal and manageable. Use breathing and movement to calm the body. Prepare with audience needs in mind. Build your talk around one clear message. Take control of your slides — don’t let them control you. Rehearse until delivery feels natural. By following these steps, presentations stop being ordeals to survive and become moments to make a genuine impact.
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366 Win the Deal: Negotiating in Japan Without Losing the Relationship (Part Two)
08/31/2025
366 Win the Deal: Negotiating in Japan Without Losing the Relationship (Part Two)
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 long-term partnerships. Q1: Why is preparation the secret weapon in Japanese business negotiations? Preparation is the sharpest tool in the negotiation kit. Before talks begin, we must clearly define what is negotiable, what is off-limits, and what represents both our ideal and realistic outcomes. Most importantly, we must set our fallback position — the minimum acceptable deal before we consider walking away. In Japan, this process must also include anticipating the other side’s goals. What would they see as their ideal outcome? What is their fallback or “exit strategy”? By mapping both sides in advance, we avoid being blindsided during discussions. Unlike the United States, where executives may improvise and pivot quickly in meetings, Japanese negotiators value deep preparation and expect the same from us. Mini-summary: Success in Japan starts with preparation — knowing both sides’ fallback positions makes us credible and ready. Q2: What is BATNA and why is it critical in Japanese negotiations? BATNA — Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement — defines the point where we walk away. It is our exit strategy, our fallback, our protection against endless concessions. Without BATNA, we risk chasing the deal at any cost, eroding trust and weakening future negotiations. In Japan, patience is prized. If the buyer senses desperation, they may push harder. By quietly knowing our walk-away line, we project confidence. This is not about issuing ultimatums; it is about ensuring we never undermine our long-term credibility in the market. Companies in industries such as pharmaceuticals, finance, and manufacturing use BATNA as a discipline to negotiate firmly while still respecting relationships. Mini-summary: A clear BATNA prevents over-conceding and signals quiet strength to Japanese counterparts. Q3: Why does silence carry so much power in Japanese business culture? Silence is a natural rhythm in Japanese communication, but it is often unnerving for Western negotiators. In the U.S. or Europe, gaps in conversation create anxiety, prompting businesspeople to rush in with concessions, discounts, or extra details. In Japan, however, silence conveys thoughtfulness, patience, and respect. By sitting calmly in the silence, we allow the other side to feel the weight of the pause. They may reveal information, shift position, or even concede. Silence, when embraced as a tactic, is a strategic advantage. This is not empty stillness — it is strategic patience, and it is one of the most overlooked tools in Japanese business negotiations. Mini-summary: Silence in Japan is not a void — it is a negotiation tool that rewards patience and composure. Q4: How does decision-making authority work inside Japanese companies? In Western firms, the person across the table often has authority to close the deal. In Japan, authority is distributed. Decisions require ringi-sho consensus documents, hanko seals, and alignment across departments. The person negotiating may not have final authority but instead acts as a bridge inside their organisation. We can mirror this by using the “higher authority” tactic ourselves. Saying, “I need to check with senior management,” is not seen as weak here. It reflects the reality of collective approval. This delay can buy time, cool heated discussions, and adapt to the slower, deliberate pace of Japanese corporate decision-making. Mini-summary: Authority in Japan is collective — deferring upwards is normal and effective in negotiations. Q5: What negotiation tactics are most common in Japan? Japanese negotiations often feature specific tactics that foreign executives must anticipate: Ultimatums — final deal-or-no-deal conditions that must be defused with alternatives. Persuasion through value-adds — sweeteners, incentives, or extras that cost us little but feel significant to the client. Time pressure — deadlines that push for faster decisions. Delays or inactivity — slowing responses to build pressure on us. Add-ons at the end — last-minute requests after the main “yes” is agreed, which are often easier to accept than renegotiate. Recognising these tactics helps us avoid being cornered. More importantly, by preparing our own “value-add concessions” and “low-cost, high-value incentives,” we can shape the flow of the negotiation rather than react to it. Mini-summary: Expect tactics such as ultimatums, sweeteners, time pressure, delays, and add-ons — and prepare responses in advance. Q6: How do we win the deal in Japan without losing the relationship? In Japan, closing one deal is not the finish line. It is the starting point of a relationship. Winning here means balancing firmness with respect. If we prepare carefully, set a clear BATNA, embrace silence, understand authority dynamics, and anticipate common tactics, we can achieve sustainable agreements. Unlike in Western markets, where aggressive wins are celebrated, in Japan a hollow victory damages reputation and future prospects. The real win is when both parties feel respected and motivated to continue working together. Mini-summary: The ultimate victory in Japan is not just a signed contract — it is a relationship that generates future business. Conclusion According to cross-cultural negotiation research, Japan remains one of the most relationship-driven business environments in the world. Frameworks like BATNA give us structure, but cultural fluency gives us access. By blending discipline with empathy, foreign executives and Japanese leaders alike can negotiate firmly while preserving harmony. This is how to win the deal in Japan — without ever losing the relationship.
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365 Win the Deal In Japan Without Losing the Relationship Part One
08/24/2025
365 Win the Deal In Japan Without Losing the Relationship Part One
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 the trust barometer would be located, if we started “outwitting” our clients in our negotiations? Especially in Japan, where trust is such a crucial element and everyone is focused on long term relationships. So success in negotiating in Japan will be very different and it will definitely be a win-win approach. Fine, but do you have a consistent process to apply to your negotiations? Often we do it the hard way without a roadmap or we forget parts of the process. We are all rank amateurs anyway, because the amount of negotiating we do is limited and the size of the deals are usually modest. Have we got the basics covered? Here are four steps we need to cover: Analysis We begin by clarifying our own position. What is it we want to achieve and then we identify alternatives we can live with, if we can’t achieve all that we wish. We also look for ways to add value in areas other than price. Price is only one lever in a negotiation although most people get stuck on the idea it is the only lever. We want to understand the client’s positions and interests and the background reasons driving their approach. This is especially useful when looking for alternative solutions, as we might have something that is valuable to them, but not a great impost to us. We also should look to reframe the conversation to avoid confrontation. There are trigger words which can rapidly inject emotion into a logical discussion and we need to know what those words are for the opposite party. We can then phrase things in ways which is not incendiary. Presentation When we do public speaking we know that if we rehearse what we are going to say, it will go much better. When the American political leaders have their famous televised debates, they practice taking difficult questions so that they will appear unruffled and credible in their answers. Doing the same thing before a negotiation makes sense doesn’t it. Have well prepared what you are going to say and how you will say it. Have a colleague hit you with “toughies” – questions you would rather not have to face thank you very much. “More sweat in rehearsal, less blood in negotiating” should be the mantra. Like lawyers do when getting ready to go to court, we should also prepare the opposite sides case, the client’s case, as though it were our own. This gives us an insight into the likely approach they will take and we are then much better prepared to deal with it. Price isn’t the only thing so we should be ready to present added value alternatives to simple numbers. Because we have rehearsed their position, we can more effectively link our solution to the client’s positions and interests. Bargaining At some point there will be a gap between offer and acceptance and this is when we start trading things we want, for things they want. Bargaining down at the bazaar, in the souk, at the local flea market and in the B2B business world are entirely different. Our object is a sale with a nice regular, perpetual re-order attached to it, rather than “a one and done” outcome. So at the start we decide our ideal, realistic and fallback positions. We do this through the prism of our current demand, local and global business conditions, future business trends, price point profitability and our cash burn through rate. Negotiating tactics will be applied to us but the key is to respond logically rather than react emotionally. Easier said than done! However if we did our preparation well then we should be rock solid. We should be looking for win-win so we are trying to make it easy to agree with us and hard to disagree. Agreement Japan isn't much for legal contracts compared to the West. Most of our business is done without any contracts, as we agree verbally and then carry out our word and they carry out theirs. If we are talking about huge amounts of money however, then absolutely contacts will be needed. So even if a formal contract is not involved, we need some specification of all points of agreement. Put every key item in writing, be it the form of a quotation, invoice or just an email capturing the joint understanding of what is going to happen going forward and how much money is involved. To make it very clear, create a checklist and schedule for fulfillment. These four steps are not rocket science, but remember we are mostly amateurs in the field of negotiating and are you using this simple methodology or just winging it? Probably the latter, so these four things are there to work on, before your next negotiation, to become a more professional business person.
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364 You Can’t Win A Knife Fight With A Slide Deck
08/17/2025
364 You Can’t Win A Knife Fight With A Slide Deck
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 uncomfortable. We still have our message to get across but we have to make some adjustments to head off trouble. The essence of the issue is disbelief. The audience, for whatever reasons, simply don’t believe what you are telling them or they just don’t trust you, regardless of what you tell them. The first casualty of this type of speaking engagement has to be big, bold statements. In less tense situations we might be throwing these types of statement around with gay abandon and not face much resistance from the audience. If what we have said gets brought up in the Q&A, we bat it away without breaking into a sweat. No problem, we have this one! In more fraught circumstances, those big statements will get us hammered, maybe even as soon as they are issued, with no regard for waiting for the Q&A, as the interrogation gets underway immediately. By the way, if there is an intervention by someone in the audience, we should redirect them to ask that question in the Q&A, which is where we will handle all questions. This stops your flow being interrupted and the proceedings being hijacked. We need to be more circumspect about the claims we make. We need to introduce ideas surrounded and buffered by evidence. Instead of saying, “this is how it is”, we need to say, “according to the research, this is how it is” or “according to the experts, this is how it is”. We swiftly and subtly slip off to the side of the attack and let the third-party reference take it between the eyes, rather than ourselves. We need to wrap up our statements in cotton wool and preface them with comments like, “as far as we know…”, “according to the latest information…”, “to the best of our knowledge…”. In this way, we are not holding ourselves up as the oracle, the all-knowing, all seeing sage, unburdened by limitations of self-awareness. We are making ourselves a small target, harder to attack and providing many escape loopholes to leap though, should we need to. We need to lead with context and background. Making statements and drawing conclusions, before we get to the evidence part, is ritualistic suicide as a speaker facing a hostile crowd. We need to take a note from the pages of the Japanese language grammatical structure. Unlike English and most European languages, in Japanese the verb comes at the very end of the sentence. This is a great metaphor for doling out the evidence first before we get to the punchline. In Japanese, we don’t know if the sentence is past, present or future oriented, if it is negative or positive, until we get to the end of the sentence. That means we have to sit there and absorb all of the context, background and evidence before we can make a judgment about whether we agree with what is being said or not. This is what we should do with a hostile audience – load them up on the details, the data, the evidence, the testimonials, the expert statements, before we venture forth with what we believe to be true. We deliver this deluge of facts piecemeal, so that the audience is taking in the information, processing it in their own minds and jumping to conclusions about what they have just heard. Our object is that the conclusion they have jumped to is the very same one that we have reached, based on the same information. It is almost impossible to disagree with our context. They may not agree with our conclusions from our understanding of the context, but the context itself is usually inviolable. Before we go into Q&A we must publicly announce the amount of time available for questions. It is going to get heated and we don’t want to appear like a cowardly scoundrel beating a hasty retreat, because we can’t take the rigour of investigation of what we are saying. By having stated the time available at the start, we can simply refer to it later and say, “we have now reached the end of the fifteen minutes for question time” and go into wrapping up the evening with our final close. Hostilities may commence immediately we begin to speak, so we have to be mentally ready for that. We also need to switch our presenting tactics to account for the pushback which will come. By making ourselves as small a target as possible, it becomes much harder for any enemies in the audience to successfully attack us. If they are going after you, they are definitely not your friend, so keep that in mind when you are preparing.
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363 The Truth About Death by Overwork in Japan
08/11/2025
363 The Truth About Death by Overwork in 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 mental and physical exhaustion and the associated stress that piles up, until it totally overwhelming. So the real source of death from karaoshi is stress, not physically working too hard. Just where is that stress coming from? It is coming from two sources: the individual’s inability to deal with the stress of long hours, long commutes, and no time for recovery, driving them to depression and ending their own precious lives. The other source is management incompetence, to allow that amount of stress to be experienced by their staff in the first place. It is compounded by power harassment of those who struggle to keep up with the output requirements. In my view, management irresponsibility is the prime killer. If there were no cases of exceptional stress buildup, then the staff wouldn’t need remedial actions at all. The long hours worked, long hours of public transport commutation and high amounts of pressure from bosses are the real problems. The hundreds of extra hours of overtime worked are being logged for no justifiable reason. In many previous cases, such as Dentsu, the company tried to hide the extent of the hours being worked. Management was party to the process, all the while knowing it was wrong. They were also aware of previous cases where people cracked under the strain of too little sleep and permanent tiredness and took their own life. They knew this was a possibility, but did nothing to alter the work flows. This is criminal and that is what the courts found. Dentsu was fined 500,000 yen by the judicial system. However, was justice served? The young woman involved was 24 years old when she jumped off the roof of the Dentsu dormitory, to kill herself and end her stress and depression. Many would consider a fine of 500,000 yen insignificant. The management didn’t control the work flow. If there was so much work on, why didn’t they bring in either more full time staff or part-time or contract workers to help? This is what bosses are paid to do – get through the work and apply the required resources to do that. The system didn’t see it that way. Presumably, they expected the staff to put in the ridiculous hours to save the company the money needed for salaries for new or additional staff. We can talk about there being a culture of long hours in Japan and it is true. Dentsu was picked out in the 1970s by Time Magazine as a company of fearless samurai salarymen, toiling ridiculous hours for their bosses, so this is not a new development. They were held up as a model to contrast with their flabby Western counterparts. These long hours weren’t needed then and are not needed now. It is being driven by a pathetic white collar culture of low productivity. The work expands to fit the time in Japan as per Parkinson’s Law and so working hours elongate to suit. If bosses were capable, they would be seeking improvements in productivity to get through the work in less time. Is Japan not capable of being highly productive? The kaizen and kamban production systems in manufacturing are well known in the West as methods of achieving maximum efficiency by blue collar workers. The irony is that one hundred meters away, staff in corporate offices are working at super low levels of efficiency for the same company – the contrast is large. How can the same senior managers entertain these two contradictory ideas in their minds, at the same time? No problem for them because they have compartmentalised the situations. “This is how we do it around here and so we will keep it going just as it is. The factory system is different to an office, so there is no relevancy”. That is simply lazy thinking. Efficiency in process, in workload distribution, in systems sequencing, in checking methods, in approvals are all areas that can be applied to office work as well. What is being kept alive by mediocre company leaders in the way of standard Japanese corporate practices? Here is a list of leadership crimes for which no one is ever reprimanded. No clear daily prioritised individual goals, poor time management, meetings too numerous and too long. Painfully slow decision-making required to get everyone on board. Disengaged staff turning up to get paid and not motivated to be bothered to innovate. Poor communication, no real coaching, demotivating performance evaluations, mistaken mistake handling methods and zero effectiveness delegation skills on the part of undereducated leaders, promoted on the basis of longevity and age hierarchy, rather than their ability. There are no excuses for this legacy system to continue in the 21st century and we have to change it from the inside out. Government estimates are that roughly 20% of the working population is suffering from depression. It is time to change things in Japan. We should see no more cases of karoshi here – there are simply no justifications for continued company mismanagement of their staff. We need to better educate the leaders on how to lead, to teach the managers how to manage and to encourage the staff to push back on illegal requests from senior management to work crazy hours.
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362 One Pitch, No Matter How Genius, Never Works in Japan
08/07/2025
362 One Pitch, No Matter How Genius, Never Works in 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 the final decision is a rubber stamp exercise, because the actual decision has already been taken. Nevertheless, we turn up for the meeting and the buyer side has a number of representatives sitting in the room. Often it will be me facing across the table to five to ten buyers. Where do we start? Well the meishi or business card exchange is a critical step. Those hip, modern folk who have dispensed with the humble paper business card are at a massive disadvantage. From the meishi we can immediately understand exactly who is in the room. We can determine their function and rank instantly and this is very, very helpful. Before we know how to present to their team, we have to analyse the people in their team. A buyer team will often comprise multiple layers. We might have some functional interests represented such as: Executive Buyer Financial Buyer User Buyer Technical Buyer Our Champion Each one has different drivers for making buying decisions. We can mentally list them in order from those with a long range vision to those with shorter range views. In the case of the Executive Buyers they are thinking about their strategic vision, the future opportunity and growth potential. For the Financial Buyers their attention will be turned to items such as cost, terms, flexibility and preserving cash flow. User Buyers will be interested in the detailed features, ease of use and reliability. Technical Buyers are looking at efficiency, practicality and capacity. Our Champion, the person driving the decision on the buyer side, will be concerned about relationships, influence and recognition. This sounds daunting enough, but just to spice things up a bit, there are also the buyer personality styles. The Amiables take their time, don’t rush into things and are concerned about the impact on the people from the decision. The Drivers (often the CEO) are the “time is money” types who are always in a hurry, can make an immediate decision and solely focus on the outcomes. The Analtyicals (often the CFO or the Technical Buyer) are comfortable with numbers to three decimal places, are keen on the micro detail and want tons of data to support their decision. The Expressives (often the Head of Sales and Marketing) want the big picture, do not want to get immersed in the weeds and want to have a big party to celebrate the success, at the end. So their role within the company and their individual personality styles will be key factors to fully understand when we present. Just when you thought we were getting a handle on the complexity of the task, there are also going to be attitudinal differences. It will vary according to the individual and even their mood on that day at that time. Different people will be hostile, resistant, discontent, ambivalent, favourable, supportive, enthusiastic. We are not finished yet with the layers of complexity. There will also be different levels of expertise in a team. Different experiences, education, biases, problems, goals, expertise and culture. Before we present, we need to know who is going to be in the meeting and try to understand what will be driving their reaction to what we are going to say. We need to work on our Champion beforehand where possible and yet we may not know this breakdown completely beforehand. We will have to start placing people into different sectors once we get into the meeting room. Have I talked you out of presenting to buyer teams yet? It is a bit overwhelming isn’t it when you break it all down into its component parts, but harden up baby, you have to move forward anyway. Your Champion will have fed you the problems they are facing, you will have analysed them and this meeting is to present the solution phase of the sale. We need a presenting structure which will be well regarded by the majority of people in the room. We need an opening to grab their attention. They will various things buzzing around in their brains competing with your message, so you need to blast way in to get everyone to listen to you. A startling piece of news or data is always good to grab attention. Next we need a statement of need for change. You can list up the enterprises which have gone to the wall because they couldn’t make the changes needed to adjust to the demands of the market. Suggesting this is a fate awaiting many more is a good step to get people thinking about their own longevity. Very few firms are invulnerable and everyone is always worried about what comes next, in particular things they may not be properly prepared for. Japanese buyers are always very interested in what their competitors are doing and so if possible, give an example from their industry, where there was a similar business with a similar need for change. Next suggest three possible solutions. You will be very balanced, going through the advantages and disadvantages of each of the three solutions. You will present their pros and cons, including practical and emotional reasons, why they are excellent alternatives. Finally you suggest the best solution for them with evidence as to why it is the best choice. Now you go into your first close, where you repeat the final recommendation and ask for any questions. Following the questions from the buying team, you repeat your close again so that this is the last thing ringing in their ears as the meeting ends. Buying teams are formidable and that means we have to cast a broad net to capture each person’s interest and need for our solution. There is no shortcut for this process and the key is in the design at the start. So take into account all the complexities I have listed and design an approach for that level of diversity.
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361 Your Outfit Speaks First – Make It Say ‘Professional’
07/27/2025
361 Your Outfit Speaks First – Make It Say ‘Professional’
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 dressed, sophisticated capital city where serious money is spent on quality clothing. Business suits are a given when presenting. Not even coat and slacks in the Italian style, but business suits. The colour should be on the dark spectrum to fit in with the solemnity of your “aura and presence” as an expert, about to pontificate on your subject. A serious speaker in a light coloured suit is an oxymoron in Japan. Go dark. The suits don’t have to be the deepest black in colour, because darker greys and navies will work. Now the odd thing is this applies in summer too. The summer speech outfit will be a little lighter in colour than the winter suit, but not as light as the very light colours in summer suits. It doesn’t matter if they are three piece, double-breasted, or have one, two or three buttons. Needless to say the suit should fit well. I have a very old and dear friend who has, like me, been in constant battle with his weight. We take it off and then we put it all and more, back on again. Very frustrating of course, but a painful reality. The sight one day, of him giving a major speech, while only able to close the bottom suit button, rather than the top, was very sad. It said to the audience, “I am fat, in denial and have not bothered to adjust my suits to match this reality”. We all have our “fat suits” of course, for those occasions when we are losing the struggle against our expanding waistband, so that would be a good selection if you are carrying a few too many kilos. However, if even the reliable “fat suit” is now too tight, then go to the tailor and get it adjusted. Better to be paying a small amount of money for that, then telling the world you are a loser in the battle of the bulge. The shoes will be formal, brogues are good, shined within an inch of their lives and never “down at heel”. It would be rare to wear any other colour than black, because the suits are going to be dark. The belt obviously must match the colour of the shoes and be in good condition, not looking like you have worn it to death. I don’t even know why I mention this, except that I often see some Japanese gentlemen messing it up, getting the colour coordination wrong and displaying a belt clearly on its last legs. The socks should match with the colour of the slacks and when presenting, avoid fascinating contrast colours that herald your rebellious and exciting individuality. Save that funky revolution for the weekend. They should be over the calf rather than ankle length. When seated on stage, for say a panel discussion, there is nothing more alarming than the sight of a very hairy shin protruding from underneath the suit trousers. The shirt should be white, never coloured. I know this seems very limiting and lacking in imagination, but there is a biological reason for it. When we are on stage we can become nervous or the lighting on stage can really heat us up. The consequence is we begin to perspire, and the neck area is one location where this happens very quickly. That gorgeous Egyptian Giza 45 cotton shirt, in light blue, becomes a two-tone job, as soon as the sweat envelopes your collar and makes it turn dark blue. Now the audience is losing touch with what you are saying and are fascinated by your unfolding two-tone colour gradation of your shirt. For the same reason, NEVER take off your suit jacket. I am soaked under my jacket, by the end of a 40-minute talk, because I am pumping out so much energy and heat. If I had my jacket off, there would be a much darker colour running down the side of my body. By the way, there is nothing more unpleasant than seeing someone in a shirt, sporting a saturated armpit, raise their arm so the waterfall armpit becomes visible to the audience. Your tie collection may have some daring beauties but leave them at home. At one stage, I was sporting some very ferocious Versace ties, with very vibrant colour combinations and adventurous patterns. I never wore them for speeches though, because they were competing with my face, for the attention of the audience. Also, forget the power colours. You don’t need them, because your speech delivery should have power and authority to command the obedience of the assembled masses. The same daring do logic applies to pocket squares. Especially fluffy, elaborate and exuberant little darlings grab the gaze of the crowd and they take their eyes off your face. We don’t want that. The plastic name badges you are given by the organisers are another trap. Don’t wear them when you get up to speak. They reflect the lights and your body movement can set them off on a navy shipboard signal lamp training session. We don’t want anything competing with us when we are speaking. I am highly reticent to speak about ladies’ fashion, because I have so little knowledge of this subject. My wife tries to encourage me to become more expert, but there has been no great progress to date. My only advice would be basically adopt the same ideas – dark suits, white blouses, black shoes, no scarves, modest earrings and broaches and basic hair and makeup approaches. This is not a runway fashion extravaganza, but a chance to drive home your message. By the way, if it is a panel discussion, where you would be seated on stage, then a trouser suit may be easier. Always make your face the centrepiece, so the audience is firmly focused there. Our faces can transmit so much power through emotion to drive our messages, so we can’t let anything compete with this awesome weapon
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360 Back Your Team Or You Break Their Trust
07/21/2025
360 Back Your Team Or You Break Their Trust
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 your team. Often, being the boss, you are the last to find out what is going on. Japan, in particular, is excellent at hiding bad news from bosses. “The less the boss knows about the source of the trouble the better” is the mantra here. Japan is a zero mistake tolerance culture and so everyone has learnt to be circumspect about sharing the bad news around. The irony though is the boss is the one person with the capacity of power and money to fix a lot of issues. It gets easier to fix issues when you know about them early, rather than trying to sort things out later when the proportion of the problem has grown larger. I found this when I was working in retail banking here. Compliance violations occur and have to be dealt with. Usually, they are not fatal errors and the person committing them can recover, learn from the mistake and keep going. The bias toward hiding mistakes though creates problems in the work environment. That minor compliance violation has to be hidden, the perpetrator believes and this is when the problems really begin to kick in. The hiding part is the bigger issue. The problem is like a balloon that keeps inflating and inflating. You stick it away in your desk draw hoping no one will notice. Discouragingly, the problem gets bigger and bigger until it breaks out of the bounds of secrecy. It now looms large across the landscape at an immense threatening size. The genie once out of the bottle can’t be stuffed back in again. At the bank, people were getting fired for what were minor compliance violations because they tried to hide them. This was unnecessary, but that didn't change the effort to keep problems away from the boss. Why is that? The usual boss reaction to the trouble in Japan is yelling abuse. This somewhat hampers the effort to have more transparency. HR recording a black mark in their secret book of employee misdemeanors and crimes doesn’t help much either. So we are pretty much guaranteeing that when things go bad, the boss will only hear about it at the worst possible moment. This is usually when the window for a helpful intervention has been slammed air tight shut. There are always going to be two sides to the story and the boss’s job is to find out both. Sometimes the client’s representative can take a personal dislike to our guy or gal, or they can become emotional because they are under stress within their own organization. In Japan, they can be fervent about doing a perfect job. If perfection is your standard, then there are bound be shortfalls in delivery at some point. How do we sort this mess out without destroying the relationship with the client and killing the motivation of our own team member. Our team member can genuinely be trying to help the client, but may not have enough capability to do that to their satisfaction. These gaps are what test the loyalty of the team. If the boss hammers their staff member for causing the problem, the rest of the team carefully watches and works out that telling the boss bad news is a losing proposition. They will become experts at hiding trouble until it is too big to hide anymore. This is not an ideal outcome. So we have to back our people, apologise to the client, sort out monies involved with a partial or full refund if they are genuinely not satisfied. The boss’s job is to switch the brunt of client anger away from their subordinate to themselves, as the senior representative of the organisation, and also become the one to find a solution which satisfies the buyer. In Japan, that means bringing expensive gifts for the client, lots of deep, deep bowing in apology and listening sincerely to endless and unremitting tirades from grumpy clients. In Japan, they really labour the point. If there is going to be any on-going business, it can also mean switching that team member out of that project and bringing in a new person to be the contact point. The air needs to be cleaned up and that means reassigning those previously assigned to the project. This has to be communicated in a way so that the staff member understands we support them and we trust them. We are now in the modern business era in Japan of desperate recruiting and even more desperate retaining. Hanging on to people, even when there have been issues, becomes a much more delicate calculation than in the past. We have to be comfortable with much more complexity than earlier. Simply firing people if the client complains, berating people publicly for mistakes, ranting to the whole team about not making mistakes, are tools that have seen their “use by” date well and truly pass by. We need to be more sophisticated, intelligent and nuanced than that today.
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359 The Sales Trap Crippling Japanese Business
07/13/2025
359 The Sales Trap Crippling Japanese Business
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 professional training. Only talk to existing customers because you are scared of finding new buyers Japanese people are risk averse and everyone here prefers the devil they know to the angel they don’t know. Staying in the comfort zone of the known customer is preferred to trying to create a new relationship with a buyer they don’t know. Measurements systems and incentive schemes definitely need to include the number of new clients achieved as well as the overall revenues, if you want to grow the business. Pitch your product range, without having any idea about what the buyer needs Diving straight into the company brochure or the product catalogue, the nitty gritty details is a big favourite here. The trouble is they want blue, we don’t know that because we haven’t asked what they want and we keep showing them yellow. Don’t seek permission to ask questions Why don’t Japanese salespeople ask the buyer questions, to find out what they need, like the rest of the universe? It is considered rude by the buyer, also known as GOD. That is a cultural aspect that can be overcome if permission to ask questions is asked for first. Why don't they do that? Because they are trained by their seniors who never asked questions and who just went straight into the detail of the spec. The salespeople need training to learn how to craft the permission request. Let the buyer control the sales conversation In Japan the buyer is not a lowly King but as I mentioned, an almighty GOD, whose penchant is to destroy pesky salespeople’s presentations. Salespeople here don’t know how to control the sales conversation, because they don’t know how to get permission to ask questions and control the direction of the conversation. 5. Don’t uncover the buyer need at all It is almost impossible to hit a target you cannot ascertain. If the questions to ask need are not there, it is impossible to work out whether you have what the client needs or not. Only talk about the spec and maybe the benefits of the spec, but never talk about how to apply the benefit, show evidence where this has worked before and then go for a trial close. When salespeople dive into the detail, they get stuck there. We don’t buy the spec. We buy the things the spec does for us. We need to draw out what are the benefits the spec delivers but much more than that. Few Japanese salespeople even get to the benefit explanations stage. We need to show how the benefit when applied in their business will improve their business and we back that up with evidence of where this has worked before. Don’t have any clue how to properly handle objections Japanese salespeople suffer the same objections as everyone else, “your price is too high” etc., but they have no way of dealing with them. On the job training as an instructional methodology taps out pretty quickly when we get down to the finer points of sales ability. The simple answer is professional training because this is the difference between the pro and the mug. Always drop the price to gain the sale It is shocking to think how much money is being left on the table by salespeople when they get price objections. Just dropping the price by 20% is common and it doesn’t have to be like this. If you know how to handle these types of pushback, then you can do a deal and either defend your value or reduce the amount of discounting. Don’t ever ask for the order So many meetings end with a big fat nothing. The salesperson left the client “buy or won’t buy” bit quite vague and not clarified. Always ask for the order. The worst that can happen is you are told “no” or “we will think about it” but always ask. Don’t make the client do all the hard work, ask for the business. Sales is not complex. It is a serious of basics that need to be performed professionally. Take a good look at what your Japanese colleagues are doing and see how many of these nine you can uncover.
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358 Story Magic
07/06/2025
358 Story Magic
Storytelling is one of those things that we all know about, but where we could do a much better job of utilising this facility in business. It allows us to engage the audience in a way that makes our message more accessible. In any presentation there may be some key information or messages we wish to relay and yet we rarely wrap this information up in a story. As an audience we are more open to stories than bold statements or dry facts. The presenter’s opinion is always going to trigger some debate or doubt in the minds of the audience. The same detail enmeshed in a story though and the point goes straight into the minds of the crowd and is more likely to be bought as is. When we are planning our talk, we think about what is the key message? We should get this into one sentence, able to written on a grain of rice. Okay, you are not likely to be able to achieve that any time soon, but the keys are brevity, clarity, focus, conciseness, and paring the message down to its most powerful essence. We build the argument to support our key message, broken up into chapters throughout the talk. We design our two closes, one for before Q&A and one to wrap up the whole talk at the very end. We design our blockbuster opening to pry the phones out of the hands of the audience, to get them to listen to what we are saying and going to say. We can inject micro stories, by which I simply mean short stories, into every part of this design. The opening could be a short story which grabs the attention of the listeners and primes the room for our dissertation. It might be focused on an incident which relates to the key message of the talk or about an episode from a famous historical figure or about someone in the firm or a client that drives home the message. Each of the chapters of the talk can rely on micro stories to back up the evidence being presented to justify the conclusion we have come to and the point we are making. These stories bring flesh and blood to the dry facts and details. They can enliven the point we are driving hard on, by making it something the audience can relate to. These facts don’t just appear. They are there because of a reason and there are bound to be stories aplenty attached to them. Both of the closes can be separate stories that enhance the final messages we are delivering to the room. We keep them short, bountiful, memorable and attractive, such that they linger long in the minds of the audience members. We want our story attached to the inside of the brains of the listeners, so that they remember it long after the event has passed by. A thirty minute talk would probably have five chapters, an opening and two closes, so at least room there for eight stories. These stories can be our own, garnered from our experiences or they could be folkloric stories from the firm’s rich history or we could be borrowing other people’s stories to make our point. We all have products and solutions. Where did these come from? How were they created and who created them? What about the firm’s founders’ stories? Why does this company exist and how has it manage to stay in business for so long? Taking the key chapter content, we can inject some life into the data points by looking for creation stories or application tales of high deeds and gloried achievements. Other client’s stories can be some our stories too, as we relate how our solution changed their world. These stories lend themselves for inclusion in the “about us” component of the firm’s website and for placement in the corporate brochure. The point is we have so many stories to choose from, we have a surfeit of content lapping all around us. All we have to do is collect it. So from now on build a library of stories about the firm, the personalities, the products, the client successes etc. When you are reading about other companies look for their stories that you can borrow to make a point about your own business. Add them to the library so that you don’t have to go scrambling about trying to think of stories. You have them there, ready to go whenever you need them.
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357 Sabotaging Your Conversations?
06/29/2025
357 Sabotaging Your Conversations?
We are often good talkers, but poor listeners. We have many things we want to say, share, expound and elaborate on. For this we need someone to be talking it all in. We like it when people do that for us. It soothes our ego, heightens our sense of self-worth and importance. We are sometimes not so generous ourselves though when listening to others. Here are six nightmare listeners you might run into. By the way, do any of these stereotypes sound a bit too familiar to you? The “preoccupieds” are those breathless types, racing around, multi-tasking on steroids, permanently distracted. They don’t make much eye contact because their eyes are constantly scanning for things other than you in front of them. When we meet this reaction we need to grab their brain. We can say, “Is this a good time to talk?” or “I need your undivided attention for just a moment”. Once we do get their attention, we have to get to the point, because their attention span is fleeting. The “out-to-lunchers” have the lights on (their eyes are open) but no one is at home. They are thinking about everything else but what you are saying to them. It is a good practice to check in with them to make sure they have absorbed the key points you are sharing. You can ask them a very pointed question about one element to determine if they actually heard you. Closed questions are good because an answer has to be yes or no, they can’t fudge it or fake it easily. The “interrupters” are ending your sentences for you, jumping in all over you while you are speaking, they are fixated with their important contribution and not much interested in yours. You cannot stop them, so don’t resist. Let them blurt out whatever it is they cannot contain and then interject, “Thanks for that. As I was saying…” And pick up where you were, as if they had not spoken at all. The “whatevers” are giving off that jaded, bored impression that what you are saying is of little interest or consequence. To grab their attention you have to lift your energy and spice up the content, make it more dramatic. Also, ask them specific questions that will draw them into the topic. Use open questions where they have to use actual sentences rather than monosyllabic responses. The “combatives” are people with a strong sense of their rights and they are very interested in demanding they be heard and defending those rights. They are quick to call out perceived affronts to their dignity and will readily argue every point. Look for points of agreement and concentrate talking about those or ask to agree to disagree. The “analysts” are logical thinking, very detailed orientated and are always in fix-it mode. They love handing out advice regardless of whether it was requested or not. You can go around idea generation from them by saying “I just need to bring you up to speed, so you know what is happening. I’m not looking for advice” By contrast what would a good listener look like? The “engagers” are empathetic listeners who really concentrate on what you are saying. They employ eyes, ears, hearts and minds to absorb your messages. They understand that they already know what they know and can learn a lot more from finding out what you know as well. They let you talk. They make you feel good, because they are obviously following along with you and taking an interest. When they are your boss, they let you talk and give you the opportunity to self-discover solutions and ideas. “We own the world we help to create” and bosses who listen and give their people the opportunity to speak, to suggest, to innovate are going to have a highly engaged team. That is the team that is going to win against the vast majority of teams who just show up to get paid. So the ROI (Return On Investment) from listening can be huge. Were you listening?
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356 How To Win Business With Japanese Buying Teams
06/22/2025
356 How To Win Business With Japanese Buying Teams
Selling to companies in Japan usually means sitting in a meeting room with a single buyer or perhaps two people. There are occasions though where we may need to present to a larger number of buyers in a more formal setting. It may be a pitch to secure the business, or it may be a means of getting the buying team more easily coordinated on their side. Before we know how to present to a team, we have to analyse the people in the team. That means we need to know ahead of time, who will be in the room from their side. A team comprises multiple layers of responsibility. We might have some functional interests represented such as the Executive Buyer, Financial Buyer, User Buyer, Technical Buyer and Our Champion. Each one has a different driver for making buying decisions. The Executive Buyer will have a strategic vision for the organization so they are interested in opportunities and growth. We need to include the big picture here of what our solution will do to position the company into the future, as well as today. The Financial Buyer is always interested in cash flow, no matter the size of the organisation. They focus on the cost, the terms of the transaction and how much flexibility it can provide for them. The User Buyer wants to know about the features, how easy is the solution to use, how reliable will it be? The Technical Buyer is concerned about efficiency, practicality and capacity. Usually we are in that room because of our Champion. They are concerned about their relationships within the company, with having influence over the buying situation and gaining recognition for their efforts. Just to make it more complicated, there are also the buyer personality styles to contend with. The Amiable who is focused on relationships and is never in a hurry to make a decision. The Driver is the exact opposite. They are dynamic, fast movers who just want the facts so they can make a decision and move on. The Analtyicals want data and lots of it. Three decimal places is fine for them. The Expressives are bored with the nitty gritty detail, preferring the big picture. It is possible to focus on just one group but not very wise. The presentation should have a little something for everyone. There are also going to be attitudinal differences. Some will Hostile, Resistant, Discontent, Ambivalent, Favourable, Supportive and Enthusiastic. We need to get our body language meter on full throttle to read the audience and we need our Champion to give us the who’s who of who is in the room, so we can anticipate where we might hit trouble. There are different levels of expertise in a team. There will be varying levels of Experiences, Education, Biases, Problem/Positive issues, Goals, Expertise and Culture. Before we present we need to know who is going to be in the meeting and try to understand what will be driving their reaction to what we are going to say. We may not know this completely beforehand but we will certainly start locating people into different sectors once we get into the meeting room. We need a presenting structure which will be well regarded by the majority of people in the room. We need an opening to grab attention, a statement of need for change, an example of the need for change and to suggest three possible solutions. For solution one, we outline the advantages and disadvantages. We repeat this balanced formula for solutions two and three. We then suggest the best solution of the three, with evidence as to why it is best. In our closing remarks we repeat the final recommendation. Selling to a buying group is fraught with difficulty, because of the massive variations in the room, as to perspectives, needs and interest. Nevertheless we can use this structure to cover off as many of the needs in the room as possible. We rely on our champion to brief us on who is in the room beforehand and to go around drumming up support following our presentation. We win or lose though the quality of our preparation and our structure. If they are both in good working order, then the chances of winning the business go up dramatically. We won’t get so many chances to present to a buying group but we need to be well prepared when we do.
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355 How To Make Your Employees Actually Like You
06/15/2025
355 How To Make Your Employees Actually Like You
We often hear about the need for bosses to do more to engage with their teams. The boss looks at their schedule and then just checks out of that idea right then and there because it seems impossible. The employees for their part, want to get more praise and recognition from the boss, to feel valuable and valued. Bosses are often Driver type personalities who are extremely outcome and task orientated. People are there to produce, to get the numbers, to complete projects and to do it with a minimum of boss maintenance needed to be invested. The snag in all of this though is employees don’t want that. They want the boss to be more interested in them, their career and their family. The feeling of being valued by the boss has been found to be an important trigger to create strong engagement in staff. Driver bosses rarely pull that trigger. They believe you need to “harden up baby”, do it yourself “like I did”. They wonder why we need to mollycoddle this lot. In fact they don’t know how to snuggle up to staff and get to know them, because they never experienced that from their own bosses, and they are not built that way. They grew up independent and self-reliant. They are driven to achieve and have a take no prisoners approach to business. They are survival of the fittest advocates. Consequently, they are not much for small talk. They are permanently time pressed, so everything has to be driving toward an outcome, or it is a waste of their valuable time. How do you snuggle up to employees anyway? Bosses need to engage with their staff by using the “innerview” to deepen their understanding of who the person is who works for them, what are their motivations and interests. The sceptics may be thinking “brilliant”. Now they can interrogate their staff, find and start pressing their hot buttons, to get more production out of them having found some keys to staff motivation. This is not what we are talking about. Staff can spot this very quickly. They won’t be interested in being manipulated by their bosses for higher productivity gains. The effort is to get to know the team better, so that as the boss you can help them to succeed in their work by aligning their goals, interests and motivations with those of the organization. The classic win/win. Getting to know staff starts with asking basic factual questions. Where did they grow up, where did they go to school, what did they major in. Where have they worked in the past, what are their hobbies, how many in their family etc. To go deeper we need to ask causative questions. The “why” of their choices. Why did they pick that field of study, why that school, why this company, why that hobby, etc. Then we get to values-based questions. Getting to know how they tick. If you had your life over again would you do things differently and if so , what would you do? What were some turning points in your life? What have been some of the work and non-work related things you have done that have made you feel proud? If you were giving advice to a person entering the workforce what would that be? These questions have to be asked in a relaxed manner, not spewed out like machine gun fire. This is getting to know someone better in order to better be able to appreciate them as a person. It is not a drill in shaking them down for private information, which can be used later to exploit them. Conversations like this, done correctly, invite massive mutual understanding. The end result is better communication and shared values. A uniting of mutual interests toward achieving goals together. So all of you driver bosses out there, this is how to get cuddly with the team. First sort out your objective and make sure it is reflecting the real interests of the staff. Drop that manipulation thing. Then make the time available to have a deep one on one conversation with another human being who also exists on this planet just like you. Believe me, good things will flow from this.
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354 Presenting Elicits Valuable Lessons. Capture Them.
06/08/2025
354 Presenting Elicits Valuable Lessons. Capture Them.
Today is a good time to start reviewing and reflecting upon the presentations you have over the past few years. What have you learnt not to do and what have you learnt to keep doing? Those who don’t study their own presentations history are bound to repeat the errors of the past. Sounds reasonable doesn’t it. We are all mentally geared up for improvements over time. The only issue is that these improvements are not ordained and we have to create our own futures. Do you have a good record keeping system? When I got back to Japan in 1992 I was the Australian Consul and Trade Commissioner in Nagoya. As far as the locals were concerned, I was the Australian Ambassador to the Chubu Region. I am sure the parade of the various Ambassadors in the Tokyo Embassy never saw it that way, but that is how the locals viewed my vice-regal presence. One consequence was you were regularly asked to give long speeches. I say long because a one hour speech would be a dawdle, compared to the two hour monstrosities you were expected to fill. I started writing down the speech number, the title, who it was for, what language was I speaking and how long was the speech. I did this because Japan loves the devil they know and you would be asked back to speak again and it is embarrassing if you don’t recall the first talk. I am now over 560 speeches on my list. Without knowing it I was compiling a body of work as a speaker. The list noted the topics I covered, which was a useful reservoir of things I could speak about if asked to venture forth a topic for the nominated speaking spot. I would often use visuals. When I started we were back in the dark ages and were using overhead projectors (OHPs) and breakthrough innovations like colour OHPs instead of just black and white images. For photographs, we used a slide carousel and a slide projector. At some point we moved to powerpoint and life got a whole lot easier, when it came to preparing presentations. Somewhere I probably still have those OHP presentations stored away somewhere, except today you would struggle to find an overhead projector to show them with. We can much more easily store our presentation materials today, so there is no excuse about not doing that. I keep my presentations in digital files stored by the year in which they were delivered. This is very handy because you can go back and see what you covered when you gave that talk. Some of the images may be plundered for a current presentation, if they are relevant, so it is a nice resource to draw on. You can also see how much you have grown in sophistication as a presenter, by looking at the quality of what you have been presenting. This is a step we shouldn’t miss because we are often so caught up in our everyday, we lose sense of the time progression in our presenter lives. A more difficult task is to grab the points that are additional to the slides. These may be kept as notes on the print out of the slide deck or in a notes format for the talk. If I have notes, which these days is pretty rare, then they will be very brief. They are flags for me to expand upon when I am delivering my talk. More frequently I will print out two or four slides per page and then write on those pages. I will note some key points I want to make when we get to that slide. If I am not using slides then the notes format plays the same prompt role. Things occur to me during a talk, which were not planned. Maybe I got a light bulb type of idea or a question exposed an answer and brought some additional information to the forefront. One thing I strongly recommend is immediately after the speech, carve out thirty minutes for quiet reflection on the talk and think about what things you would change in order to make it better next time. The tendency is to rush back to work, which usually means either meetings or catching up on email. They can wait. Don’t schedule back to back activities after the talk – give yourself a little time to think. What I find hard to do is to store the notes hand written on the pages and the notes on the ideas which occurred to me after the talk. Paper tends to get lost and you throw it out in a bug of spring cleaning and lose it. Either take photos of the notes on your phone or scan the pages and then file them together with the electronic slide deck in the file for that year of talks. This way you never lose the inspiration and record of your thinking about this topic. Time will pass. You will deliver talks, will get ideas both before and after. Capture them and learn from what went well and how you can improve on it for next time. You need a system and if you don’t have one today, then now is a good time to think about creating one.
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353 Build Relationships That Last: Get Your Re-Order Mojo Happening
06/01/2025
353 Build Relationships That Last: Get Your Re-Order Mojo Happening
Here is an important mantra: We don’t want a sale, we want the re-orders. That task however is getting harder and harder. Customers today are more educated, better prepared and have more alternatives than ever before. Satisfying a customer is not enough – we have to exceed their expectations and provide exceptional customer service. Customer service has only one truth – how the customer perceives the quality of the service. Forget what we think is good customer service. We have to be really clear about what is the customer’s perception of good customer service. This is a totally subjective idea on the part of the customer, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have influence on that perception. Here is a quick audit on your understanding of the customer. How well do you know the customer’s perception of high quality customer service? When was the last time you asked about how well you were doing with serving that customer? Are you assuming that because there are no claims, that the customer is fully satisfied? Do you have a clear idea of the level of service your competitor is providing in terms of customer service? The building of a strong fan base amongst your clients is a key step to becoming more successful. We all know the acquisition cost of finding a new customer is many times more expensive than deepening the scope of the relationship with an existing customer. That is fine but we need to also expand our numbers of customers. We always need more good customers, but how can we create new fans? How do we do that when there are so many rivals? Here are four approaches to consider. Have broad product knowledge Whenever we ask a salesperson a question and they cannot answer it immediately, we doubt their value to us. Often however, we salespeople can become concentrated on just a few products and lose touch with the broader perspective. We need to keep studying our total product line-up, so that we have broad knowledge to show we are professionals in our business. Prove that we can be trusted to serve the customer. So ask yourself, how well do you know your own product line-up? Have an extreme desire to help So many times, as customers, we are told “no” by salespeople. Are we ever happy about that response? Buyers are looking for salespeople who they feel are really motivated to serve. The way to prove that is to show your strong desire to serve at every customer face to face meeting, on every phone call and in every response. Great in theory but are you really doing that now? Have a sincere interest in the customer’s situation We have targets to achieve, pressure to perform and so often we can become totally focused on our own situation. By the way, here is a newsflash - the client only cares about their own situation and how dedicated you are to helping them. Are you really sincere about helping the customer or are you focused on yourself, your numbers, your deadlines? Don’t be in any doubt - customers can feel the difference. Understand the customer’s expectations Customer expectations change, but often salespeople are not changing with them. Business moves and what was enough some months ago, may not be suitable enough now. We have to really monitor the customer’s situation to see what has changed. That means we have to keep asking them about their expectations of service from us. Are we serving them in the way they want to be served. Most salespeople never want to ask this type of question because they are scared of the answer. We have to be brave and ask and if we do, we will be delivering exactly the type of service the customer wants and expects. When we do that, we differentiate ourselves from our competitors So what percentage of your customers would you count as your loyal fans? What are you currently doing to drive that percentage score much higher? Customers will become someone’s loyal fan. We have to make sure that is us and not our competitor. Assume that the customer’s expectations and perceptions of what they consider outstanding service will keep changing. We have to keep up with the change but are we doing it?
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352 Let’s Build Our Personal Brand As A Presenter
05/18/2025
352 Let’s Build Our Personal Brand As A Presenter
The New Year’s resolutions concept is ridiculous, but only because we are weak, lazy, inconsistent and lacking in discipline. Apart from those small barriers to execution of desires, the concept works a treat. The idea of a new start is not bad in itself and we can use the Gregorian calendar fantasy, to mark a change in the year where new things are possible. We learn as we go along and we add experience from year to year to hopefully make life easier. So as a presenter what would be possible? There are around 4.4 million podcasts around the world. Blogs are in the billions now, video content is going crazy, live streaming is rampant. Every single which way, we are under assault from competitor content marketing on steroids. In addition, there is all of the advertising content coming at us through every medium. Will it diminish? No. What does it mean for us in business? Personal reputation will be built through our efforts to cut through all of the clatter competing with us. People are consuming information on small screens and are deluged with competing content. The experience is transitory, because the next deluge is coming down the pike. How do we linger long in people’s memories? Well we don’t. Even the few who see our content soon move on. In offices, people sitting next to each other send emails rather than talk. Phone calls put a dread fear into those younger colleagues entering the workplace. The anonymity of the texting facility is preferred to human contact. We are becoming increasingly impersonal, as we are fixated with our internet connected devices. In business though we need the human touch. We want to do business with people we can judge are a safe option as a business partner. We can check out their social media to get a sense of what they are about. We can watch their videos to get a better idea of who they are and what they know. This is all still rather remote and at arms length. We don’t do business that way. We want to look them in the eye, to read their body language, to gauge their voice tone, to judge their intelligence through their mastery of the spoken word. AI can write your posts for you, but when presenting on stage it is just you baby and you had better have the goods. We want to see what we are getting. To get cut through, we need to be standing in front of as many audiences as possible. Yes, we can attend networking events as a participant and we should, but we should be striving to do better than that. We should be hogging the limelight, a titan astride the stage, commanding attention and delivering powerful messages. That means seeking every opportunity to speak we can possibly manufacture, being proactive in promoting ourselves, unabashed about pushing our personal brand. Yes, there will be haters. Two of my staff attended an American Chamber function recently and some helpful fellow attendee started laying into me about my social media profile and prolific posting behaviour. They being very loyal staff were really upset about this, told me about it and were obviously frustrated regarding what to do about it. I asked them a couple of clarifying questions. Was the individual or their company a client? No. Were they ever likely to become a client? No. Did they have a personal brand of their own? No. I didn’t bother asking who it was, because they are obviously a know nothing, do nothing, become nothing nobody. If you want to promote yourself you have to pop your head above the parapet. Expect there will be someone who will want to kick it. That doesn't mean we should self-censor ourselves, because some nobody is jealous about what we are doing. Grasp on to the bigger picture here, have courage and go for it. Those who get it will respect you, haters will hate you, no matter what you do. Public speaking is the last bastion for those who want to take their personal presence to the top. We are being flooded by information around us, so we need to look for chances to break free from the crowd and establish ourselves as the expert in our field. It means putting ourselves out there to be judged, but we are going to be judged anyway, so let’s control our own destiny. In 2025, resolve to do as much speaking as you possibly can and create as many opportunities as possible to promote your personal brand. Of course, AI can create a vast number of talks for competitors and can drown the market in content. What makes the difference though is our the sharing of our experiences and the personal stories we can tell. The AI cannot match this personal authentic factor and we can escape the velocity of the vanilla content which AI produces so effortlessly. This is how we can stand out and be memorable. When we read text, we can tell this was authored by AI. Audiences will soon start to recognise speech content created by AI and they will immediately discount it and the person delivering it. In a way, it is a golden chance to standout amongst the AI Lilliputians. Don’t wait for people to clamour on your door to give talks. Get out there and seek those opportunities for yourself and keep polishing your abilities
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351 My Boss Isn't Listening
05/11/2025
351 My Boss Isn't Listening
351 My Boss Isn't Listening f you reading this title and thinking “this has nothing to do with my leadership”, you might want to think again. We hear this comment a lot from the participants in our training. They complain that the boss doesn’t talk to them enough because they are too busy, don’t have much interest in their ideas or do not seek their suggestions. In this modern life, none of these issues from staff should be surprising. There have been two major tectonic plate shifts in organisations over the last twenty years. One has been the compression of many organisational layers into a few. The other has been the democratization of information access. Bosses have been struggling to keep up. When we had more layers in our company structures, leaders matured like a fine wine. They rose up the ladder in small increments, over an extended period of time and were groomed for responsibility. There were assistants aplenty to do mundane, time consuming tasks. The striping out of the layers, for the sake of cost cutting and “efficiencies”, has thrown this world off its axis. The fewer layers means the jumps are larger, the responsibilities greater and no assistants. Boss busyness has resulted in less subordinate coaching and delegation getting done. Explanations have been replaced with directives – “do this, do that”. Bosses don’t delegate much anymore, because they are time poor. They don’t have the bandwidth to explain, so they say to themselves, “it will be quicker if I do it myself”. Does this scenario sound familiar at all? The internet has made information instantly available and free. Boss monopolisation of information is not as easy or replicable as in the past. The amount of information emerging everyday has become a massive flood tide against which resistance is useless. Bosses cannot be in command of its entirety, so they have to rely on others much more than before. They need their subordinate’s help, but the sting in the tail is that they are not doing enough about accessing that help. Subordinates have good information, get ideas, are closer to the market, collect the most up to date experience and produce insights. Harassed time poor bosses have no time to seek out these ideas and bring these insights out into the open. They don’t create the time required to coach. They do delegation, but in a way guaranteed to fail, because they won’t invest the time to sell the delegation. The consequence is that subordinates hesitate to engage with their boss, because they see how distracted and frantic they are already. When they do talk to the boss, it is all formulistic around reporting on progress on the various projects being worked on. Bosses don’t bother to enquire about the other key things going on in their subordinates lives. They fail to seek ideas and innovations because they are already preoccupied with their own work. They hover between distracted and selective listening. On a slow day, they might stray into the zone of attentive listening, but that would be a rarity in a year long period. In fact, bosses tend to excel at pretending to be listening, because they are brilliant at multi-tasking. They are mentally fixated on something else, while they are talking to their subordinates on a completely different topic. Does this ring a bell? They are listening for key items which will be of interest to them and they are tossing out everything else. The subordinate doesn’t feel they are actually being listened to at all. They don’t feel it is attentive listening, let alone empathetic listening. They draw the conclusion that their actual perceived worth and value to the boss is pretty low. They get discouraged and soon just stop inputting ideas into the system. If you have not been hit up with an idea from one of your subordinates in the last month, take a moment and reflect on exactly when was the last time that happened? The chances are it has been a long time between drinks. The reason is probably that you are not really engaging with the team and making sure they feel they are being listened to. They need to know that their ideas have value, that you are recognising their contribution. They want to see their ideas being put into application. Are you doing this? Are you really listening?
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350 The Rule Of Three
05/04/2025
350 The Rule Of Three
350 The Rule Of Three Our financial year ended in August and we were up over 20% on the previous year’s revenue results. I should have been ebullient, chipper, sanguine, fired up for the new year, but I wasn’t. Was it because we were back to zero again, as we all faced the prospect of the new financial year? That sinking feeling of , “last year was hard and here we go again, but this time with an even higher target”. Maybe that was it, but it was hard to tell. There were three other things which were gnawing away at me, regarding incidents which happened the previous week. Sales is an emotional roller coaster, we all know that. Well knowing that and being able to deal with the emotional downers is another thing altogether. I am a positive, upbeat person, for whom the glass is always half full. My glass got severely drained and it is still bugging me. I had a pitch for a client’s business to help their sale’s effort. Actually they said they wanted a “transformation programme”. I had met the CEO previously and had understood what he was after. I came back to him with a comprehensive proposal. In the interim, a new HR person was recruited and I was informed were now going to have a five entrant beauty parade. They had various needs. They wanted transformation for their senior leaders, middle level sales managers and also wanted an internal trainer-the-trainer functionality, because the size of their sale force. That cost would preclude an externally delivered vendor solution. I gave them that transformation formula. I even brought all of the training materials to the pitch, so they could see the professionalism we offer. I went through in detail what each group would need if they wanted to transform the business. That week the HR guy wrote to me and said we didn’t get the business. I had no idea why, but I did know I wouldn’t find out the real reason by talking to the HR guy. All I would get would be vagary. I needed to seek out the CEO directly and get some feedback. We rarely ever lose pitches, so I was a bit perplexed. To be honest, my ego was bruised, hurting and I found this news depressing. The point here is that although I know intellectually, that sales is an emotional rollercoaster, it doesn’t make much difference in the moment when you don’t get the deal. The second piece of bad news was a delay in commencing a project. I had done a similar project for their company and they asked me to come back and do another one. That last project was a real nightmare. I was dealing with a young staff member who proved to be very demanding and sucked up a lot more of my time than was expected. Frequent changes were de rigueur and often without much actual requirement, except for whim. Frankly, I was a bit gun shy to go again. However, it was a different member of staff this time, again quite young, but I agreed. Deja vu. Very demanding, very picky, but despite recurring nightmares about last time, I decided I wouldn’t throw in the towel and would tough it out. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger type of thing. Then I got the email telling me to put the project on hold. I am guessing they were shopping the project around and were putting me on ice. I was wondering what was the issue? Was this a generational thing? Both individuals were quite young in business. You have to have some degree of experience, to have perspective and to know how to judge what you are looking at. Is this why there is a gap between what we were both looking at? Another deeper thought occurred to me. Am I secretly blowing it up, because I actually I don’t want to do it? I know how much time it required last time and it looked like we were going down the exact same path again? I was wondering, what was my psychology here? Was I trying to get out of doing it? Or was I too old and inflexible to deal with these demanding young whippersnapper pups? That was a depressing prospect. The third one was a case of sports negotiating. This is an ego trip for buyers, who like to see who is the sheik of the souk, the biggest wheeler and dealer, the cleverest negotiator, the bargain hunter extraordinaire. They like to play a little game of “beat down the supplier” to show how tough they are. Okay, you do run into that from time to time, but on this occasion it came from an unexpected source. You meet people in business who are attractive, charismatic, your type of person. This buyer was like that. We have a lot in common and I like the cut of his jib. He asked for some training previously and I sent him my proposal. He came back with a counter offer that was at a steep discount. I like the guy and reluctantly agreed, because it was the first business with his company. I thought , “well once he experiences our quality, he will pay the right price”. My big mistake right there. So I delivered the training and then found out that the next round will be done by someone I knew who used to work with us as a contract trainer. This guy has a full time job in HR and does some training on the side. That was another red flag. There is no comparison in the quality of what is being delivered here, but I started to see where the client’s negotiation pricing benchmark was coming from. So he subsequently asked me for some one-on-one coaching for presentations. I sent him my proposal and he came back with what he thought the price should be. The language he used in the email was the same as the last email and so another red flag appeared. I asked myself, why is this guy nickel and diming me? The quality of the training he got from me last time was at the top of the tree. So I felt his haggling was insulting and saying our quality wasn’t appreciated. I also thought we had a better relationship that that. This time, I stood my ground, defended my quality, our brand. I answered him that if he wanted the best, then this is the number. As far as I am concerned, this time, there will be no discounting of even one yen. Subsequent silence on his part. So what do we take away from all of this. Despite the many years we have all been in sales we need to prepare for cyclical depression. I should have known that there is going to be an inevitable downer associated with the start of the new year. I have to remind myself that my team will be feeling the same way, so I needed to work on boosting all of our emotions to move to positive ground. Just kicking off “as usual” in the new financial year won’t cut it. I needed to make an intervention. I told my team, “no” isn’t “no”. It is just “no” to this offer in this format, in this budget cycle, in this economic situation. I needed to tell myself that too. I need to separate my ego from the non-acceptance of our offers. There may be a number of reasons why the pitches failed and I needed to find out what was the mismatch between what I thought they needed and what they actually chose. I discovered my new found buddy was actually no buddy. Where possible, I like to make my clients my friends. I thought he would be in that category. By the way, in his industry, his firm’s fees are very stiff and they don’t discount them at all. What I realised was his value system substantially differed from mine. He wants to “win” the negotiation. I am focused on building partnerships that concentrate on the re-order, not the one off discounted deal. We have a strong brand to defend and the way to do that is to draw a line in the sand on what you believe your value is worth. So he was moved into the acquaintance basket. Not long after, he up and quit as President and suddenly moved to Saudi Arabia, so he eventually disappeared altogether. I still feel unhappy, but I do feel better about standing my ground.
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349 Success Speaking Formula
04/27/2025
349 Success Speaking Formula
I was invited to an English Speech contest for Middle School students. The students must have home grown skills and are not eligible to compete if they have spent more than six months abroad, in an English speaking environment. This was pretty grand affair. The organisation running it is run by students at university, who took part in the contest themselves when they were in Middle School. Many of the graduates become business patrons and supporters as they work their way up in their business careers. It a perfect Japanese storm. Japan loves uniforms and the organising body had that covered and Japan loves formality and there was plenty of that on display too. There were some significant lessons on offer for presenters as well. One of the sponsoring countries had their Ambassador there to present a prize and give a speech. Extolling the virtues of his country and its educational opportunities for these keen students of English is a natural fit. What wasn’t so natural was that he had to read his speech. I have been a diplomat, yet I see this time and time again - Ambassadors who are poor public speakers. Anyone in that position, for that type of occasion who has to read his speech, qualifies as a poor pubic speaker in my book. By contrast Her Imperial Highness Princess Takamado gave a splendid speech, alternating between English and Japanese. She wasn’t reading it, the content was relevant and interesting. When you are a member of the Imperial family there is tremendous expectation on you and she could have chosen the safe route and have read her speech. Yet, she gave her remarks without notes and spoke freely. It was so much more powerful and connected with her audience. The toast was given by a senior Government official, who did so in excellent English and without any notes either. The only one who couldn’t give his speech without reading it, was the one native speaker involved. Rather ironic I thought. Then we had the three finalists give their talks. Of course they had memorised their speeches. As Middle School students living in Japan it would be unlikely they would be able to do anything less. A five minute speech is a long time to memorise a speech, but they all did it brilliantly. If the Japanese education system does one thing well, it is rote memorisation. The final speech was given by the winner and it was very surprising. Also surprisingly, the three finalists were all boys, where normally this is an area of education where girls usually do better. The English pronunciation of the finalist was certainly not as good as the second and third place winners. You would think that would disqualify him for winning but it didn’t for a number of very important reasons. When he started speaking I was thinking that his pronunciation wasn’t so good, so how did he manage to win? What followed was a winning combination of factors. We can learn a lot from a fifteen year old Middle School student from the backblocks of Wakayama Prefecture. His theme was about him trying to improve his poor pronunciation which was congruent with who he was. In other words he was being authentic and appropriate in the eyes of his audience and so he could connect with them. The other boys told stories too but this boy included dialogue with his grandmother in his recounting of his story and this added that additional element of drawing us into the action. When he spoke he did something more than the other contestants. He spoke with his whole being. The other two finalists with better English pronunciation used their voices, some small gestures and some facial expressions in their talks. The winner however was speaking with his whole body language lined up behind his words. He was moving in a relaxed way that was congruent with his message. He sounded more natural, even though it was a totally canned speech. He wasn’t the best English speaker in the contest, but he was the best communicator in English. That difference is huge. I found the same thing with my Japanese. I started by worrying about linguistic perfection but discovered it didn't matter. Even if my vocabulary was limited, my pronunciation unreliable and my grammar garbled, the audience came with me into my story, when I delivered it the right way. As adults, in business, we can decide to avoid reading our speeches at all costs. Thinking about our audience when we craft our talk is critical. In the delivery, we should be authentic. That means we don’t worry about occasionally mispronouncing words or stumbling over phrases. We are focused in our delivery on bringing our total body language, our passion, to the subject. We don’t get hung up on perfection, because we are focused on communication. If we do that, then we will be successful in getting our messages across.
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348 Open The Kimono Leaders
04/21/2025
348 Open The Kimono Leaders
The supervisor has super vision. The leader knows more. The captain makes the calls. The best and the brightest know best. The cream rises to the top. We accept that there will be leaders either our “superiors” or “the first among equals”. We put leaders up on a pedestal, we expect more from them than we expect from ourselves. We judge them, appraise them, measure them, discuss them. When you become a leader what do you find? There are rival aspirant leaders aplenty waiting in the wings to take over. They have the elbows out to shove the current leader aside and replace them. Organisations seem to be stacked with politicians who are excellent at ingratiating themselves with the higher ups and climbing over the bodies of their rivals to get to the top. Their political nous seems to be in inverse proportion to their lack of real leadership ability. Given we have much flatter organisations today and the correspondent pressure to do more faster and better with less, the pressure on leaders is at an all time high. The super leader is bullet proof, never makes a mistake and sums up the situation perfectly. They are also a pain to work for. Followers don’t deal well with perfection. This is mainly because it is fake, because no one is perfect. It is a leader charade, a marketing effort, a clever attempt to maintain their position power. We never feel close to people like that, because there is no way in for us to be close to them. They are always separated from us by their self important self-image. We cannot identify with them because while they project they are perfect, we are only too aware of our own failings. We don’t like perfect people because they make us feel inadequate and uncomfortable. They seem nothing like us, so there is felt to be very little in common. The irony is that as leaders, the less perfect we try to project ourselves, the more effective we will be in winning over followers. Yes, absolutely, we have to be competent, but we don’t have to be perfect. We have the have the goods but we don’t have to be a pain. By admitting our foibles and failings, we provide a way in for our followers to identify with us. When your basic premise is “I am perfect”, then you have to invest a lot of energy in backing that claim up and maintaining the perfectly assembled facade. On the other hand, you can say I am imperfect, but I still bring plenty of value to my followers and the organisation. You are confident enough to say you are not Mr. or Ms. Perfect. People lacking in confidence often try to appear something they are not, because they are not confident to show others their weaknesses. I was exactly like that for a very long time. When I was younger, I thought I had to be the best, brightest, smartest, toughest, quickest and the hardest worker. I thought all of this was necessary, because I didn’t know how to be vulnerable. I was raised in a typical Aussie macho environment in Brisbane, where men had a clearly defined role and weakness wasn’t any part of it. How about your case? As you move through your career you meet leaders who don’t make any claims about how great they are and their teams love them. They don’t strut around trying to prove they are the best and they just get on with helping others succeed. They are comfortable within their own skin and having nothing to prove to anyone. They get the job done like a duck on water. Above the surface it looks like they are just gliding along, without any effort being made, while the legs are working away under the waterline. The previous Mayor of Yokohama Fumiko Hayashi was relating a story about her time as a manager in BMW. She was unafraid to appear less than perfect, to encourage the men working for her to help her achieve the firm’s goals. She later became president of BMW, Tokyo Nissan Auto sales and the Daiei supermarket chain - all bastions of male management. She was able to project her vulnerability and yet succeed in a male dominated Japan business world. I don’t think this had anything to do with the fact she was a woman. I can think of another example right now of another extremely successful Japanese woman, who just projects ice in the veins, vicious, steely, killer toughness. The out-machoing the men in the room way to the top. This domination approach is one way of doing it and I have worked for plenty of men like that. I never liked them, respected them or was motivated by them. I thought they were jerks. Hayashi san however was able to be vulnerable and get others to help her and this is the lesson we can all learn. By being able to be vulnerable, we establish a relationship with our team where they feel comfortable. They still respect our ability, experience, dedication, hard work and our focus on helping them to succeed. None of that goes away just because we don’t go around projecting we are superman or superwoman. So let’s be confident and vulnerable at the same time. If we do that, gathering followers will become easier and leading will become more enjoyable and successful.
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347 Roots of Poor Customer Service
04/13/2025
347 Roots of Poor Customer Service
Poor customer service really irritates us. When we bump into it, we feel betrayed by the firm. We have paid our money over and we expect excellent customer service to come with the good or service attached to it. We don’t see the processes as separate. In this Age of Distraction, people’s time has become compressed. They are on the internet through their hand held devices pretty much permanently. We all seem to have less time than before, so we become cross if things from the internet don’t load or load too slowly. If we have to wait we don’t like it, regardless of what the circumstance. We are perpetually impatient. Here is a deadly breeding ground for customer dissatisfaction There are five elements usually driving customer unhappiness with us. 1. Process We need processes to run our organisations on a daily basis. This includes how we communicate and align the features and value of the offering with the customer’s expectations. In constant drives for great efficiencies, we tend to mould the processes to suit the organisation’s needs, in preference to the customers needs. Japan is a classic in having staff run the business based on what is in the manual. If a decision requires any flexibility, this is usually dismissed because the staff only do what the manual says. As the customer, we often want things at the odds with the manual or we want something that diverges from what the manual says. Take a look at your own procedures. Are there areas where you can allow the staff to exercise their own judgment? Can you empower them to solve the customer’s problem, regardless of what is in the manual. Our processes often become covered in barnacles over the years and from time to time we need to scrape them off and re-examine why we insist things can only be done in this way. 2. Roles Who does what in the organisation. This includes agreement on tasks and responsibilities and holding people accountable to these. Japanese staff, in my experience, want their accountabilities very precisely specified and preferably to be made as tiny as possible. They are scared of making a mistake and being held accountable if things go wrong. They have learnt that the best way of doing that is to become as small a target as possible. The usual role split works well, but what happens when people leave, are off sick or away on holiday? This is when things go awry. Covering absent colleagues requires flexibility and this is not a well developed muscle in Japan. What usually happens is everything is held in abeyance until the responsible person turns up again. Customers don’t respect those timelines and they imagine that everyone working for the firm is responsible for the service rather than only the absent colleague. We need a strong culture of we pick up the fallen sword and go to battle to help our customer, if we are the only person around. This is particularly the case with temp staff. They are often answering phone calls or dealing with drop in visitors and they need to be trained on being flexible and fixing the customer issue. 3. Interpersonal Issues How customer service personnel get along with each other and other departments is key. This includes such things as attitude, teamwork and loyalty. Sales overselling and over promising customers drives the back office team crazy. They have to fulfil the order and it is usually in a time frame that puts tons of pressure on the team. This is how we get the break down of trust and animosity reigning inside the machine. This leads to a lack of communication and delivery sequences can get derailed. When colleagues are angry, they tend not to answer the customer’s phone call as sweetly as we might hope. We need to be careful to balance out these contradictions and have protocols in place where we can minimise the damage. What are your protocols and does everyone know and adhere to them. Now would be a good time to check up on that situation. 4. Direction How the organisation defines and communicates the overall and departmental vision, mission and values is key. This is the glue. We need this when things are not going according to plan. When we grant people the freedom to uphold all of these highfalutin words in the vision statement with their independent actions, then we introduce the needed flexibility to satisfy clients. Are your people able to take these guiding statements issued from on high and then turn them into solutions for clients? 5. External Pressures The resources available to the customer service departments such as time and money become critical to solving customer issues. How much control do we give to the people on the front line to solve problems for our customers? Often we weight them down with rules, regulations and procedures, which make them inflexible. Check how much freedom you have granted to your team to fix a problem for a client? You may find that during the last recession you wound that whole process in very tight and forgot to loosen it off, after times got better. We need to get under the waterline and check for a build up of barnacles impeding our customer service provision. Scrape them off wherever you find them and have a steady routine to always take a look and see what has built up over time. Invariably you will find something that can be removed or streamlined, that the customer will appreciate. Remember, if you can do this and your rivals can’t or don’t, that is a big advantage in the customer satisfaction stakes.
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346 Presentation Review Techniques
04/07/2025
346 Presentation Review Techniques
Athletes and coaches spend a lot of time watching their team’s performance. Strengths and weaknesses are sought in order to amplify the former and eliminate the latter. Close scrutiny is applied to key moments, crucial transitions and pivotal points. Presenting should be no different. Cast your mind back though, to the last twenty presentations you have attended and ask yourself how many speakers were recording themselves for later analysis? I would assert that the answer would be either zero or very close to zero. Why would that be? High performance athletes are constantly using video to check on what they are doing. Why don’t high performance leaders, experts, executives, industry influencers, and assorted gurus do the same thing? These days the technology is very good. A simple video camera and tripod investment is a minor affair. The camera microphone itself at a certain distance is fine or you can add a shotgun microphone if needed. You just set it up turn it on and forget about it until the end. You may have to be careful with the arrangements such that no one in the audience will be in the shot and you need to tell everyone that is the case in order to remove privacy concerns. Well if it is all this easy why aren’t more speakers doing this? The smarter ones are. I often coach speakers before major presentations and we always use video. I can tell them what they are doing that needs improvement, but there is nothing more powerful than having that information pointed out to you and seeing it at the same time. If it is just you shooting the video yourself and there is no coach review possibility, there is still enough material on the video for you to make improvements in your presentation. How do you review the presentation? Look at four possibilities for the next time. What can you delete, add, reduce or amplify? There may be habits you have that detract from the persuasion power of the message. Perhaps you are mumbling or umming and ahing. Confidence sells and to sound confident you must be clear and consistent in your delivery. Look for tell taLe body language tics that have a negative connotation. You might be swaying around in a distracting way that competes with what you are saying. Or you maybe be fidgeting, or striding around the stage showing off to everyone how nervous you are. All of these habits weaken your message with your audience. Are you engaging the audience with your eye contact? My Japanese history professor at university would deliver every lecture staring at the very top of the back wall and never engage in any eye contact with the students. Don’t be like that. Use every second of the presentation to lock eyes with members of your audience for about six seconds, one at a time and in random order. Are you using congruent gestures during you explanation or no gestures or too many gestures or permanent gestures? Gestures are there to be points of emphasis, so hold for a maximum of fifteen seconds and then turn them off. Video is also excellent for considering what you might have done, looking for things you could have added to the presentation. Maybe there was a chance to use a prop or introduce a slide to support a point or call for more audience participation by getting them to raise their hands in response to a question. I was giving a talk recently on “AI in the Workplace” and I showed two paintings labelled A and B and asked the audience which one was painted by AI. They had to raise their hands to vote. This was more interesting than just showing them a slide with a painting done by AI. Roughly half of the audience went for either A or B. In fact they were both done by A1 so it was a bit of ruse, but very effective to drive home the point I was making. If you cannot organise a video or if the hosts are not cooperative, then have someone you trust give you feedback. Don’t ask them a broad question such as “how was it?’. We need to be more specific. “Did my opening grab the attention of the audience?”, “Were my main points clear and supported with credible evidence”, “Was I engaging my audience with good quality eye contact throughout?”, etc. Give them a checklist before you start so you can guide them in what to look for. Unless they are a public speaking expert themselves, they won’t know how to help you best. In a year, most people don’t get that much opportunity to speak in public, so it very hard to get the right frequency to enable improvement. If you could do the same presentation five times in a row, by the last one you would be on fire, but that hardly ever happens. This is why the video or expert feedback becomes so useful. You can review the presentation at your leisure and improve on your professional public speaking capabilities for the next outing
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345 Japan Leadership Blind Spots
03/30/2025
345 Japan Leadership Blind Spots
Leadership is a swamp. 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 a constant 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 certain type of leadership being employed and the chances are that was why there were so many “command and control” leaders in the 1950s and 1960s. The Woodstock generation questioned what had been accepted logic and wanted a different boss-employee relationship, where those below had more input into the direction of the company. Technology breakthroughs and the internet made hard skill warriors the gurus of leadership. Steve Jobs abusing and belittling his engineers was accepted, because he was so prescient and smart. Technology has however also democratized the workplace. Thanks to search engines and now AI, the boss is no longer the only one with access to key information. Being really smart and even mildly abusive isn’t acceptable anymore. The boss-employee relationship has changed. It is going to keep changing too, especially here in Japan where there are 1.3 jobs for every person working. Recruiting and retaining people becomes a key boss skill. The degree of engagement of the team makes a big difference in maintaining existing customer loyalty and the needed brand building to attract new customers. Social media will kill any organisation providing sub-standard service, because the damage travels far, fast and wide. The role of the boss has changed, but have the bosses been able to keep up? Recent Dale Carnegie research on leaders found four blind spots, which were hindering leaders from fully engaging their teams. None of these were hard skill deficiencies. All four focused on people skills. Leaders must give their employees sincere praise and appreciation We just aren’t doing it enough. With the stripping out of layers in organisations, leaders are doing much bigger jobs with fewer resources. Time is short and coaching has been replaced by barking out commands. Work must get done fast because there is so much more coming behind it. We are all hurtling along at a rapid clip. The boss can forget that the team are people, emotional beings, not consistent revenue producing machines. Interestingly, 76% of the research respondents said they would work harder if they received praise and appreciation from their boss. Take a reality check on yourself. How often to do you recognise your people and give them sincere praise? Leaders do well to admit when they are wrong The scramble up the greasy pole requires enormous self-belief and image building. Mistakes hinder rapid career climbs and have to be avoided. Often this is done by shifting the blame down to underlings. The credit for work well done, of course, flows up to the genius boss who hogs all the limelight. The team are not stupid. They see the selfishness and respond by being only partially engaged in their work. In 81% of the cases, the research found that bosses who can admit they made mistakes are more inspirational to their team members. Effective leaders truly listen, respect and value their employees’ opinions Who knows the most? Often the boss assumes that is them, because they have been anointed “boss”. They have more experience, better insights and a greater awareness of where the big picture is taking the firm. So why listen to subordinate’s mediocre and half baked ideas? Well, engaging people means helping them feel they are being listened to by their boss. Sadly, 51% of the survey respondents said their boss doesn’t really listen to them. Ask yourself, am I really focusing 100% of my attention on what my team are telling me or am I mentally multi-tasking and thinking about other things at the same time, especially what I am goi g to say? Employees want leaders they can trust to be honest with themselves and others There are two elements to this – external and internal reliability. External reliability is the boss does what the boss says they will do. They “walk the talk”. In the survey, 70% said their boss couldn’t be depended upon to be honest and trustworthy when dealing with others. That is a pretty shocking and damning result. The internal reliability focused on being consistent with your own core beliefs. Again, 70% said their boss fails in this regard – another total shocker! Obviously, bosses are not employing their full self-awareness about how they are being perceived. You get back the 360 degree survey and there is your blood everywhere and we can argue people have it wrong, but perception is reality. We need to pay more attention to each of these leadership blind spots if we want to engage our team members. Only engaged team members can deliver the highest levels of service to clients and that must be our aim. To achieve that, we have to take a cold hard look at ourselves and lift our game, no matter how painful that might prove.
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344 How Can Chinese Retail Be So Bad In Japan?
03/23/2025
344 How Can Chinese Retail Be So Bad In Japan?
Bad service is a brand killer. This is a controversial piece today, because I am singling out one race, one group in isolation. It is also a total generalisation and there will be exceptions where what I am saying is absolute rubbish. There will be other races and groups, who are equally guilty as well, who I am not singling out or covering, so I am demonstrating a blatant and singular bias. I know all that, but let the hellfire rain down on my head, I am just sick of some of this lousy service here in Tokyo. It is a mystery to me how the service in some Chinese restaurants here can be so oblivious to Japanese standards of omotenashi. Omotenashi is that sublime combination of anticipating and exceeding client’s expectations, that has made Japanese service so famous. I love Chinese cuisine and I enjoy the high quality standard of Chinese food in Japan. They have the best, most expensive quality, very safe ingredients and really great Chinese chefs here. When I go to places in Tokyo like Akasaka Shisen Hanten in Hirakawacho the service is very, very good. My observation is that is probably the case because the serving staff are Japanese or Chinese who have grown up here. Whenever I go to some “all Chinese” affairs, with only Chinese staff, I find the service is disappointing. I had this experience again recently in the Azabu Juban. It was a first and last time to go to this particular restaurant. The food taste wasn’t the issue, in fact some dishes were delicious. It was the total disinterest on the part of the serving staff and their manager. You don’t feel any particular need to go back there, when there are a hundred other restaurants within a two-minute walk. This makes no sense to me, because when I am Singapore, Hong Kong or Taiwan, the restaurant service is usually very good. Obviously, the more expensive the restaurant, the better the service of course. So, there is nothing inherently missing in the service mentality and capability, that couldn’t be applied in Japan. Why then is it so lacking in omotenashi? I remember reading a purported Chinese saying that, “A man who cannot smile, should not open a shop”. Obviously, some of the Chinese staff working in these establishments I am complaining about, have never heard of that piece of ancient Chinese wisdom. Smiling, making you feel welcome, treating you well are a big fat zero in my experience. The way of serving is very perfunctory, even rough, in some cases. Japanese style restaurant table service is generally very much more refined. What is driving this difference and what does it mean for the rest of us in the service business? Perhaps some of the Chinese staff we are seeing serving in Japan are students. According to the media reports, many are actually working almost full time. They are not professionally trained service staff, in the sense that this is their career. Coming from certain parts of China and from different socio-economic backgrounds, they may have had no exposure to what good levels of service looks like. I went to China for the first time in January 1976 and have been back a number of times over the years. I studied Chinese language, history and politics at Griffith University’s Modern Asian studies faculty. I like many aspects of Chinese culture and studied Tai Qi Quan for about ten years with my excellent teacher, Cordia Chu in Brisbane, before I moved back to Japan. I haven’t been back to China for a while, but I don’t recall the service being particularly bad when I was there last. Perhaps some of these local serving staff living here in Japan only ever eat Chinese food, so they are never exposed to how Japanese restaurants serve their clients. I find that hard to believe though. The thing that puzzles me most is that despite the fact these Chinese staff are working in Japan and are floating in a deep ocean of omotenashi, some don’t seem to picking up any ideas on how to treat their clients. Why would that be? The managers are also Chinese, so they are responsible for leading their staff in the restaurants. Are they oblivious to the service market in Japan and how it functions? Are they just poor managers, who cannot place their operation in a broader context of local service standards. Are they inflexible and incapable of understanding the lifetime value of a repeater client? This is a very competitive restaurant scene here, has more Michelin starred restaurants than Paris, so you would expect that everyone, including some of these Chinese run establishments, would be doing everything they can to build a loyal, repeater client base. This challenges me to consider what we are doing in our own case, with our customer facing service. If I am going to bag some of the Chinese restaurant’s service here in Tokyo, then I had better consider our own standards at the same time. We are a gaishikei or foreign run establishment here. I am not Japanese, but I am the boss. Am I operating the company service provision in terms of what I am used to in Australia, my home country? Am I doing an Australian version of what some of these Chinese restaurants are doing here in Tokyo in their service business? Are we in fact, providing enough omotenashi service to our own clients? Could we do better in this regard? I find a lot of Japanese service very polite, but also rather impersonal and almost robotic sometimes. Compared to the poorer versions of some of these Chinese restaurant service offerings however, I will take the Japanese polite, impersonal, robotic option every time. How can we see our service businesses in a different light? How can we make sure we are not only providing omotenashi levels of service, but are going beyond that, to offer a more personalised experience? Maybe we need to audit what we are doing, to see if we are missing some vital areas for improvement. I really like Elios Locanda Italian restaurant in Hanzomon, because I am treated like one of the family. This is the feeling transmitted through their Japanese staff. Elio himself, is not always there, all the time, but that authentic Italian family style service is there. He is setting the service standard and the Japanese staff are following it. I see this example and I think to myself, “it is possible to have a more personal level of service here, transmitted through your Japanese staff”. My family and I have been regulars at Elios since we returned to Tokyo from Osaka in 2001. Talk about the repeater, life time value of the customer. They have seen my son grow from a baby, to a young man in that time. We are part of the family and this is the key - we were made to feel like that from Day One. How about your service provision standards? Are you making your clients feel like part of the family? What is your repeater rate? How many people continue to buy from you, year after year? Are you tracking this? Do you know what the average buying continuity rate is with your customers? When we see bad service, it is always a good reminder to make sure that what we are doing ourselves is at the required omotenashi level. If you are not sure what I am talking about with this omotenashi thing, here is my recommendation. Go to a very upscale Japanese kaiseki restaurant preferably in Kyoto or a Toraiya traditional sweets shop and remind yourself what excellent service looks like. Then reflect on what you are offering in service terms. Break down your every touch point with your customers and clients and see if there isn't a lot more omotenashi that can be introduced in each case. We can always learn from our own mistakes and from the mistakes of others when it comes to providing better service. The point is to observe carefully, change quickly and commit to massive improvement.
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343 Your Inspirational Talk Must Be Dynamic
03/16/2025
343 Your Inspirational Talk Must Be Dynamic
Public speaking takes no prisoners. I was attending a Convention in Phuket and the finale was the closing inspirational speech for the week of events. I had to deliver the same speech myself at the Ho Chi Minh Convention a few years ago. This is a daunting task. Actually, when your audience is chock full of presentation’s training experts from Dale Carnegie, it is simply terrifying. The length of the speech is usually around ten minutes, which though it seems shortish, can feel quite long and challenging to design. Being an inspirational speech, it adds that extra degree of difficulty. It comes up though. The organisers ask you to deliver the closing, rousing call to action to fire the troops up for another year. Are you ready to meet the challenge? There are some key components we must assemble. There must be one clear and compelling message. In a speech like this, we can’t rattle off the twenty things everyone should be doing. They can never remember them all and the whole effort becomes too diffused. It is a single call to action, so what is the action or idea we want to propose. We might use slides or we may not, it will really depend on what we want to say. Often in these cases, we can use images very effectively without any words and we supply the narrative during our comments. Photos and images are powerful for capturing attention and people’s emotions. A call to action is an emotional commitment that goes beyond logic. We need to hit the bullseye of what grabs people’s hearts. This is delivered through stories. We take people on a journey of our construction. We plan it such that it leads them to feel what we want them to feel and to think what we want them to think. This planning creates a funnel effect where we keep pulling people back to our central message. Storytelling technique is a terrific vehicle for the speaker to lead people’s hearts and minds. We populate the story with people who are familiar to the audience. Ideally, they can see these people in their mind’s eye. They might be people they have actually met or have heard of. They may be historical events, legendary figures, VIPS, celebrities or people of note who are familiar to our audience. In Ho Chi Minh for my closing speech at Convention, the timing was such that we had previously suffered from the triple whammy of earthquake, tsunami and triple nuclear reactor meltdown in Japan. I spoke with emotion about that event. About having a nuclear cloud pass over your head polluting all the drinking water. Of having massive aftershocks every day for weeks, of the relentless black churning oily water engulfing coastal communities, of the chaos and destruction. I brought that experience alive to drive home my central point. We flesh out the surroundings of the story to make it real. We are all used to watching visual storytelling on television or in movies, so we are easily transported to a scene of the author’s creation, if the words create pictures. We describe the room or location in some detail in order to transfer minds to that place. We place the event into a time sequence with a peg for the audience to grab hold of, to make the story come alive. We might do this by nominating the date or we might specify the season or the time of day or night. This type of context is important because it takes the listener down more layers of the story to make it more relevant. They can draw on their memory of similar occasions to approximate this story. The delivery is where all of this comes together. It is a call to action so the speaker needs to get into high gear to make that happen. There will be an element of theatrics involved for effect. This is not some dubious, dodgy trick or variant on a parlour game to distract the punters. No, it is taking the key message and driving it hard through controlled exaggeration. Our speaker in Phuket, toward the end of his talk, dropped down to the push up position and pumped out twenty rapid fire pushups on his fingertips. I don’t know if you have ever tried this fingertip version, but it was pretty impressive for a man of his age group and was totally congruent with his key point about stress equals strength. It was dramatic, it was daring, but it also added that X factor to his talk. There must be vocal modulation too, from conspiratorial whispers to hitting key words or phrases with tremendous intensity. Gestures will be larger than normal and more dramatic. The speaker will be eyeing the audience with great intensity, with a fire burning in their pupils of complete certainty of the veracity of the key message. There will be a level of super engagement with the audience, to the point they are cheering and responding throughout the talk rather than consolidated clapping only at the end. Crafting a key message, a powerful call to action for an end worth pursuing and then wrapping it up in storytelling, delivered with energy and flair, is the formula for success when delivering the closing inspirational speech at your conference. Make it memorable and don’t hesitate about going BIG.
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342 Success As a Leader In Japan
03/09/2025
342 Success As a Leader In Japan
Being the leader is no fun anymore. In most Western countries we are raised from an early age to become self-sufficient and independent. When we are young, we enjoy a lot of self-belief and drive hard along the road of individualism. School and university, for the most part, are individual, competitive environments with very little academic teamwork involved. This is changing slowly in some Universities as the importance of teamwork has been re-discovered. However, for the most part, it is still a zero-sum game, of someone is the top scholar and some are in the upper echelons of marks received and others are not. This extends into the world of work where the bell curve is used to decide who are the star players, who are in the middle and who at the bottom are going to be fired. The modern world of work though demands different things from what we have had in the past. The sheer volume of information available is mind boggling. When I was at University, your world of knowledge was what was on the shelves of the stacks in the University library or other libraries in town. There was a physical card index system to help you find information, although browsing book spines was the fastest method of locating relevant tomes. Today, we have the entire holding of libraries digitized and available for discovery through advanced search tools. We have search engines like Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia and YouTube and now AI platforms to help us find what we need to know. There are powerful publishing platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok which floodlight information to us, using crowd sourcing of knowledge. We have email connecting us globally 24/7, we have video recordings, live streaming of events, podcasts, etc., all drowning us in information. My 23 year old son’s generation have had to learn how to swim in the floodtide of data, how to analyse, synthesise, select only what is relevant, reliable and credible. Voice commands have replaced keyboards and AI is speeding up the process of access. Even the single, most powerful savant cannot withstand this data flood, cannot keep up with the publishing platforms, cannot do it all alone. Teamwork, the distribution of labour based on finite specialties, crowd sourcing of information and ideas is now a must. Most leaders were not raised in this maelstrom of confusion and over-reaching and struggle just to keep up. We were more or less able to have a superior grasp of subjects, better information than our followers, expert authority and greater specialisation to justify us being the boss. Today, we cannot know it all or do it all by ourselves. In any boss/follower situation, as you climb the ranks you get further and further away from the coalface and have to live the market reality absorbed by osmosis from your people. The flood of information makes that imperative even more pressing. The problem is are you and the other leaders in your organisation any good at coalescing the team’s total power? Are those at the top able to develop people further to make them highly valuable experts supporting the growth of the enterprise? In Japan, the middle management echelon has been crushed by technology, too much data and the democratisation of data challenging their position power. Further, the speed of modern business is being propelled forward in asteroid catching slingshot mode, by instant communications and the widespread flattening of layers in organisations. In Japan, the gradual rise through the ranks, where you were coached by your bosses up the corporate rungs, until you got into a leadership position has been collapsed into only a few rungs today. Your erstwhile bosses had the time to develop their people. Today, be you expat or local, you as the boss in Japan, don’t have any time to do that. You keep adding spinning plates to be kept in motion, as you flit from meeting to meeting, interspersed by deluge email, relentless social media and phone calls on your mobile at any hour of the day. Your “coaching time” has been compressed into barking orders and giving direction to the team. You have no time for doing much brainstorming, because you just have no time. Anyway, the brainstorming method you are using is almost 100% ineffective anyway, so it probably makes no difference. You may as well do a few more emails instead. Actually, it does make a difference though, compared to what needs to be done. The bosses can’t do it all by themselves anymore. They don’t have all the key data and insights. They are perilously time poor, distracted, stressed and busy, busy, busy. They need to have the support of the team to get all the work done and they need the team to be engaged to care about getting it all done. People quality is an issue and only going to get worse as Japan’s demographic decline means anyone with a pulse will be hired. People who just turn up to work in Japan, waiting for their turn to rise up through the ranks, based on when they entered the company, who are scared of their own shadow and can’t take risks are pretty much useless. These people by the way, are the majority of the workforce. So the boss needs to be able to engage the team. This means being a great communicator, who flags the WHY all the time and makes the smallest task or simplest job seem relevant in the big scheme of things. Leaders have to be able to motivate the team through involving them in decision-making, through getting their ideas out using effective brainstorming methods, through excellent coaching of talent to help them rise. Delegation is a powerful coaching tool hardly used for that purpose in Japan. It is corrupted by “seagull management” - the “fire orders, dump and flee” technique of the harassed boss in Japan. Because of this, it always underdelivers and underperforms. Excellent time management is a must, if bosses are to have the margin to develop their people. That activity requires good people skills and needs time. It can’t be short circuited or compressed. We have to know what is the motivator for each of our people, so we know how to align the talks and the work to be a best fit to help them advance in their careers The days of the singular, independent, warrior hero boss are dead in Japan. The new boss is sitting atop the amalgam of the talents of the team, orchestrating the teamwork, supporting the innovations, and inspiring greatness through the actual words being spoken into the ear of each single team member. Be honest, tell me, is this what you and the other leaders are doing down at your shop? If not, then what are they doing and what should they be doing? Time to take a cold hard look at your leader cohort and if there are gaps, then get them help to fix those deficiencies.
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341 Don't Get Sabotaged By Your Colleagues When Selling in Japan
03/02/2025
341 Don't Get Sabotaged By Your Colleagues When Selling in Japan
Sales is a nightmare. It is usually a solitary life. You head off to meet customers all day. Your occasional return to the office is to restock materials or complete some processes you can’t do on-line. Japan is a bit different. Here it is very common to see two salespeople going off to meet the client. If you are selling to a buyer, it is also common to face more than one person. This is a country of on-the-job training and consensus decision making, so the numbers involved automatically inflate. Even in Western style operations, there is more of a tendency to send more than one person to the sales meeting. Often, there is a need for a technical person or someone with highly specialised knowledge to attend the buyers’ meeting. This can present some issues if there is no plan for the meeting. I was coaching a salesperson recently who related a horror story to me. The person in question is relatively new to sales, so still finding their way. A more experienced salesperson from a different division was joining the meeting. The intention was to provide more than one solution for the buyer. Without any prior discussion, the accompanying salesperson offered 70% off the pricing in exchange for a volume purchase, in order to grow the relationship. Hearing this from him I was so shocked. I nearly blew my coffee out through my nose. There are so many things wrong with this vignette. These are both salespeople on a base and commission arrangement. One salesperson is hacking into the commission of the other, for a product line-up they don’t represent. This is outrageous behaviour. If you are in that sales meeting and your partner blurts out a combustible like that, you cannot reel it back in or reduce its toxic lethality. It is stated, out on the wild now and you have to live with that statement having been uttered by your side. This was first meeting too, so the damage is even worse. Now the client automatically discounts any rack rate or stated pricing by 70%, because that is what you have trained them to do. When you are in a first meeting in Japan, it would be reasonably rare to even get into pricing. The first meeting has some fixed requirements. The first is to build the trust with the buyer. They don’t know you, so they are suspicious. They are not sitting across from you thinking, “oh goody, here is someone who can help our business to grow”. They are not sure if your word can be trusted, whether you are smart enough to deal with them or if they like you. These outcomes take a good chunk of time to achieve and doing so in one meeting is being overly confident. You also have to understand if there is any point in talking at all. Do you have what they need? In order to make that judgement, you must be asking them highly intelligent questions. What are they doing now? Where would they like to be? If they know that, then why aren’t they there already? What will it mean for them personally if this goes well? We have to be running a scanner over them to understand their needs and then match it up with our catalogue of solutions. All of this takes time. We usually only get an hour with the buyer in Japan, so we need to grab as much information and insight as we possibly can before we have to high tail it out of there. Before we do so though, we must set the date and time for the follow-up meeting to present the solution. Don’t wait - do it right there and then or we may never get back into their busy, busy diary. Back at the lab we brew up the perfect solution and craft it into a killer proposal. Now we go back and present the solution. They may want us to email it to them, but with every fibre in our body we resist that option. We never ever want to be sending a naked, unprotected proposal to the buyer. It needs us right there alongside it, to underline the value attached to the pricing and deal with any questions or misunderstandings which may emerge. We want to read their body language very carefully when they react to what we have suggested. We only talk price in the second meeting and we never start with a discount. We offer the set price and this is the anchor that sets the terms of the discussion. We may drop the price in exchange for a volume purchase, but by 70%? That is the stupidest thing I have heard in a while in sales. As it turns out, I know the guilty party in this case, so it is even more shocking. They should have had more common sense. The problem is they state it and there is nothing you can do. Common sense is not common. The horse has bolted for our hero in this story, but the rest of us should all take careful note. So don’t expect that the people accompanying you to have common sense. Now this is especially the case if they are selling a different line of product from you and they have no skin in the game concerning a heavily discounted sale of your offering. Before the meeting, set the ground rules, just in case. Pricing creates tension and some people cannot bear it. There will ensue a very uncomfortable silence but we want this. Our comrade however will feel they must say something to release the tension in the room because they cannot hack it. Absolutely do not allow this to happen, because that tension is our bosom friend. Say this up front: “when we get to my line-up explanation, I will be the one making the offer and that includes pricing. When I state the price, absolutely do not speak. The number will generate some considerable tension in the room. Under no circumstances release that tension by adding a comment or a justification or anything else. I need that tension to make the sale. Sit there and be silent as the tomb. If you cannot do that, then don’t come with me”. Fix the way you will both handle the components of the meeting before you get anywhere near a client. Be very direct with what you want. This is your livelihood derived from your commission we are talking about here. Don’t let an uninterested party or some useful idiot helping the buyer’s side, destroy your pricing arrangements. Once they shoot their mouth off it is too late. You have to get to them beforehand and nobble them. If you do it this way you will sell more and do it more easily.
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340 How Crazy Can We Go When Presenting In Japan
02/23/2025
340 How Crazy Can We Go When Presenting In Japan
Japan doesn’t love crazy. In our High Impact Presentations Course we have exercises where we ask the participants to really let go of all their inhibitions and let it all hang out – and “go crazy, go over the top”. This is challenging in Japan. Normally, we are all usually very constrained when we speak in society. Our voices are very moderate, our body language is quite muted and our gestures are rather restrained. Unfortunately, this often carries over into our public presentations. Without realising it, we find ourselves speaking in this dreadful monotone, putting everyone to sleep. Our body language is minimal and our gestures rather weak, even perfunctory. The radical exercises we put everyone through are there to expand their range of possibilities as presenters. To do this, we really exaggerate the energy levels and scope. Of course, in its raw, uncontrolled form, it is way too much for a professional presentation. As a specific training tool it is fine. I am often asked though, how much is too much, when it comes to being more powerful as a presenter? How much “over the top” is appropriate? I definitely think there is a place for going “over the top” in a business presentation. The degree to which you push the envelope though is dependent on the subject, your message and the audience. There is no simple scale where the excessive bits are neatly marked in red warning lines for our calibration. If you are giving your talk and you outraged by something, then expressing your outrage during your talk will be entirely congruent. You may do that with a higher level of voice volume, hitting certain key words harder, combined with strong body language, a matching facial expression and bigger gestures backing up the message. You can’t keep going at that “over the top” level though, because you will wear out your audience and its real impact begins to unwind pretty quickly. Clinical, well planned bursts are more effective, because of the contrast between the storm and calm. It is a bit like classical music with its crescendos and lulls. When presenting, our body language is very powerful and very expressive. It can really jumpstart an idea. We are firm devotees of this concept. For example, in our morning meetings or chorei, we have a couple of set pieces. Each day a different person leads the group. We go through the Vision, Mission, Values, one of Dale Carnegie’s principles, motivational quote, etc. In our Mission Statement component we say, “By providing customised business solutions, based on the Dale Carnegie Principles, we exceed our client’s expectations”. When the chorei leader says the word “exceed” everyone does their version of thrusting a pointed finger as high as possible, upward toward the sky. At another point in the chorei we talk about our mantra, which is to “10 X our thoughts and our actions”. We used to do this by thrusting our arms across our chests, opening up the fingers of both hands, so that we are expressing the symbol of an X shape and the number ten. One of the team had the genius idea of going more over the top. So now we stand with our feet well apart and push both our arms out and upward at 45 degrees, so that the effect is to create a cross symbol, in the same shape as the letter “X”. It is a very dynamic movement and very powerful in communicating the idea behind it. What has this got to do with presenting in public? The difficult part is to free ourselves from the limitations and constraints of normal daily conversation. Usually we are highly restrained by societal conditioning and so we need to let some pizzazz come into our presenting persona. Our daily chorei gets us used to going over the top. How can we change what we have been doing for so many years? Let’s start small. When speaking in public, just hitting a key word very loudly or elongating its pronunciation is very dynamic. This pattern break will grab your audience’s attention. It helps us to break through all of the mental clutter and minutiae that is dominating their thoughts and preventing them from giving us their full attention. Always assume that when they enter the venue, their brains are already completely full and we have to create some space for our ideas and main points. When we combine a key word with a very big gesture, then the amplification of that message becomes very powerful. I noticed this when I was presenting to an audience of five thousand people. The venue was large, the seats at the back were far, far away. To the top tier guests, in the very back rows, I was as big as a peanut from that distance. In this case, you have to use the whole stage, center, left and right sides and the stage apron. You have to employ very exaggerated gestures to overcome the tyranny of distance from your audience seated in the cheap seats at the back. Props are another area where some showmanship can work well. In a speech in Japanese in Nagoya, I was making the point that Australia was very much focused on the Asian region. I decided to reverse an 18th century Meiji era slogan for effect. In the original, Japan was being encouraged to leave Asia and follow Europe. It was always written “Datsu A Nyu O”. I reversed it to “Datsu O Nyu A, meaning for Australia to stop following Europe and to follow Asia instead. By itself, reversing the well known slogan was a powerful idea. It was a new construct for a Japanese audience to have such famous a Meiji era call to action, which they all studied at High School, reoriented to a completely new meaning. The ”over the top” contribution was to have it hand written in Japanese kanji brushstrokes, pasted on to a traditional roll such as you will often see with Japanese paintings. I attached small weights to the bottom of the roll, so that when it was unfurled, it dropped like a stone and made a slight snapping sound when fully extended. It was a very dramatic unfurling of a surprising usage of the Japanese language and culture by a foreigner. It was “over the top” but congruent. The audience reaction was immediate and strong. I had achieved my aim to reorient their thinking about Australia, through the context of my talk using some showmanship. We can take the chance to stand out at different times. We need to pick our moments and decide how far we will push things. None of us need another vanilla presentation from some entirely forgettable speaker, but we don’t need pyrotechnics every time either. Find some spots for hitting a word hard, or using a big gesture. Use a powerful facial expression of wonder, disgust, surprise, puzzlement, joy or anger, where it is congruent with what you are saying. “Less is more” though is a good rule and leave the amateur theatrics to the aspirant thespians. But where it works, do go “over the top” and engage your audience.
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339 Building A Team In Stages In Japan
02/16/2025
339 Building A Team In Stages In Japan
Team building is fraught. Actually, when do we create teams? Usually we inherit teams from other people, stocked with their selections and built around their preferences, aspirations and prejudices, not ours. In rare cases, we might get to start something new and we get to choose who joins. Does that mean that “team building” only applies when we start a new team? If that were the case, then most of us would never experience building a team in our careers. This concept is too narrow. In reality, we are building our teams every day, regardless of whether we suddenly became their leader or whether we brought new members onboard or we started from scratch. Teams are fluid. People come and go, so there is never an end point to team building. “Yeah, it’s built” would be fatal last words for a leader. Before you have even drained the champagne flute in celebration, your best performer is planning to head off to bigger and better things with your competitor. So we are constantly adding people to the team, even if we kicked it off ourselves. New individuals arrive with their own work culture, cobbled together like a coat of many colours from their previous employment. The team has to coalesce again and again and we are the orchestra conductor. Our job is to get all the specialists to “play nice” together and in harmony. It helps to analyse what we are doing and remind ourselves that there are four stages of team building. 1. Uncertainty If we have newly been parachuted into a team as the boss or whenever new members are injected into the existing team, we are in stage one of team building. In Japan, this is a tricky stage. If we are new, the team is uncertain of us. They have been moulded by our predecessor and have worked each other out. Here we turn up, all shiny and new with our “whacky” ideas , idiosyncrasies, foibles, penchants and talents. If we later bring in someone new, now the whole team has to regroup again. What will this person be like, are they going to be cooperative, nice, trustworthy? What will happen to my role – is it safe, will it change? Anxiety If we know in advance that there is this uncertainty stage then we can prepare for it. Often though, the “new broom” boss arrives, puffed up with their own massive self-belief, hubris, ambition and zeal. They scare the team because they blow up everyone’s comfort zone. Things start to change rapidly. Few in Japan are up for the roller coaster ride about to commence. People’s roles start to change as the new boss reorganizes things. Performance standards are invariably raised, because the new leader is here to demonstrate their metal to their boss. Life becomes more fragile for some and they look for ways to protect themselves. In foreign multi-nationals, if things become too intense or too dire in Japan, then the real trouble starts. Senior executives at headquarters start to receive anonymous communication, telling them what a jerk this new boss is and pointing out in florid detail how they are destroying the Japan business. In smaller Japan operations, there is a possibility some people are going to be moved out. “Am I next?”, is a permanent question in the minds of the survivors. New people are being absorbed into the team, but this takes time. Change creates a sense of instability in the team. Are these new folk going to be “teacher’s pet” because the new boss hired them or are they going to become part of the existing team? The key question for everyone is are they with “us” or “them”? Clarity The card carrying “boss watchers” in the team, that is to say, the whole team, start to work the new boss out. Their intelligence, skill set, experience, capability, emotional quotient, etc., are very carefully calibrated. The navigation required for dealing with the new boss is gradually discovered. People adjust to the new style or they just leave if they don’t like it. As we know, people don’t leave companies – they leave bosses. The new mid-career hire arrivals get a similar ruler run over them, to measure how well they will fit in. If they don’t fit in, then the herd groups together and tries to isolate them out. So, if they stay, then they have been successfully acclimatised to the dominant culture of the work group. This is often the opposite of what the new boss desired to happen. They expected the new people would be sprinkling their pixy dust on the “old” team members and creating the internal changes needed. Consistency Presuming the new boss doesn’t blow the whole thing up and go down in flames, then things start to settle down. People get used to the new work requirements, their new colleagues, new boss, new targets and get back to focusing on their work. The team might even improve their performance and enjoy the recognition which comes with success. If the boss is any good, then the team now have a greater sense of shared responsibility toward achieving the targets and to supporting each other. Just when all this harmony and light comes together, the boss gets sent somewhere else to a new role and a new shiny boss arrives. “Here we go again”, is the common refrain. The team has been here before, so they know the clock is ticking on the new arrival. Many have worked out how to slow down change and ride the wave of instability. Building the team is complex anywhere, but short stay bosses in Japan really have their work cut out for them. These four stages will help to provide a framework for context and agility to make the decisions required to be effective here as a team leader.
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