Cultivating Boldness
The scarcest resource in a business today is not talent, money, or technical ability, but rather independent thought and the courage to act on it.
The scarcest resource in a business today is not talent, money, or technical ability, but rather independent thought and the courage to act on it.
No one has a five-year strategy, or even a three-year strategy much less a twenty-year strategic plan. How much do you think Blackberry’s five-year strategy
A CEO client of mine has been asking his senior executives to be more “entrepreneurial” in their approach to the business, and he is certainly
A leader can never give anyone ownership of a business initiative or objective. Ownership is always taken, and to take ownership requires the will to
I find it disturbing when business leaders choose to use CSR to compensate for ethically questionable business.
A company I know has a stated value of innovation that it parades out in front employees on a regular basis, but rarely, if ever,
Years ago, I was having coffee with an entrepreneur who, at the time, was bootstrapping a software business. He had been a CIA operative during
Many companies are struggling to find the qualified people they need, so they resort to retaining the people they have whether qualified or not. They
Don’t recruit. Poach. In a tight labor market, there is no percentage in tentativeness. If there is any time to go on the offense, it
Years ago, I moved to Paris, started a business, and hired a French woman to help me with marketing. Early on, she and I met
You cannot rush buy-in, and that’s OK, because while buy-in is nice to have, professionalism is all you need. A vice president of sales told
You want to retain just the best in your organization. Why? Retention, per se, is no business objective. It is retaining the best that counts,
Japan-fatigue is real and can be fatal to your success and career. Don’t try to explain how Japan is different to executives in your head
On February 6th, I was pleased to speak onstage with Danone Japan President Rodrigo Lima. Below are my takeaways from the conversation.
On February 4th, I was pleased to speak onstage with Nicolai Bergmann, a world-renowned floral artist and entrepreneur. As we talked, Nicolai produced a beautiful
Businesses can be their own worst enemies when business process supplants business thinking. The CEO of a large industrial American company in Japan told me
Exceptions are “exceptional” by definition, and always exist no matter how rare. Just because research in organizational change shows a strong correlation between certain factors
The only data you need are those needed for making a decision. Yet in my experience, much data reported to head offices are rarely needed
The simplest explanation is most likely the right one. Occam’s Razor holds true not just for science but for international business as well—even in Japan.
A highly successful Japanese CEO I know who had just taken a new role leading a deeply troubled company in Japan asked me, “What are
In a small Tokyo sales office of a Kansai-based company, the sales manager in charge habitually turns away sales people from other companies who call
English 
Japanese