Discipline To Do What You Know
There is not knowing how to do something and not being comfortable with doing it—and the two are not the same.
Reject Status Quo Salesforce Behavior
Rapid growth of business frequently means improved selling behavior of your salesforce. Some leaders I encounter are aware there are issues in their salesforce, but often don’t have complete visibility into specific behaviors that ought to be changed. Below are five of the most common behaviors of salespeople I have encountered and what I advised.
Your Best People Build Relationships
Good employees are responsive to customers. Great employees innovate ways to build relationships. In a world where outstanding customer service is frequently the norm, it is customer relationships that count.
Empowerment That Counts
Empowering people can be motivating and serve as a boon to your business’s results, but only if you do it right. However, nothing engenders cynicism more than pro forma exercises in prima facie empowerment. Too frequently, I find ham-fisted attempts of managers at making people feel empowered, often at the behest of some kind of […]
Excellence, Not Diversity
If you are a business leader pursuing diversity, you are chasing the wrong goal. It is not diversity that matters, but rather excellence that counts. Diversity of people is merely a natural result.
No Tradition in Mediocrity
If you have ever heard someone use the adjectives traditional Japanese to describe an uninspiring manager, the moniker is only half-true. Only by replacing the word traditional with mediocre can you accurately reflect reality. There is nothing traditional about mediocrity in Japan, just as anywhere else in the world.
What I Learned from Van Cleef & Arpels President Akiko Yamamoto
Insights from a conversation hosted by the French Chamber of Commerce in Japan On July 22nd, I had the pleasure of interviewing Akiko Yamamoto, President of Van Cleef & Arpels Japan, as part of a special event hosted by the French Chamber of Commerce in Japan. Van Cleef & Arpels is not just a luxury […]
Not Invented Here
“Not invented here” syndrome is not unique to Japan and is one of the most common forms of passive resistance to any reasonable organizational improvement or change in organizations everywhere in the world. Make no mistake, those who warn of the dangers of “not invented here” pretend to be doing so in the best interest […]
No Behavior Need be Enigmatic
You cannot divine attitude of anyone from behavior alone, whether you are familiar with his or her culture of not. Yet whenever a non-Japanese CEO tells me he is concerned about the attitude or mindset of Japanese people it is usually because he or she trying to do just that.
Provoke Your People
If you want to achieve dramatic change in mindset and behavior, the fastest way is through provocation. By provocation, I mean deliberately evoking a visceral emotional response in others. There is nothing wrong with provocation if you do it right. It’s just that, as a leader, you ought to be provocative, but never a provocateur—the […]
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