No One Has a Five-Year Strategy
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 meant the day that Apple announced the iPhone? Business conditions are too unpredictable for most strategic plans to mean anything even beyond six months, and even that might be too […]
Takeaways from Conversation with Yuji Okamura, Takami Former CEO and executive adviser to L’Oréal Japan’s CEO
On November 6th, 2023, I was privileged to conduct an onstage conversation the America and French chambers of commerce in Japan with Yuji Okamura, Takami Former CEO and executive adviser to L’Oréal Japan CEO, Jean-Pierre Charriton, who was also on hand to introduce Okamura-san and take questions. Takami is a Japanese skincare product company founded […]
Increase Your Attrition
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 fight to eliminate or at least reduce rates of attrition when it is increased attrition that can do the business the most good. Retention of the best is all that […]
Never Presume Attitude
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 with a prospective customer, a vice president at a major publishing firm. I spoke and understood French but lacked the confidence to hold a business meeting in French at the […]
The Zeal of the Convert
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 me matter-of-factly that I was wasting her time and mine when we met. Her CEO had just hired me to help improve the capability of her division, consisting of more […]
Attracting the Best
If you want to attract the best people to your company, it’s not difficult. It just requires the courage and resolve. Here are the four things that you can do to make sure you are attracting the best and that you are retaining them.
Retain Just the Best
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, even in the tightest of labor markets.
Don’t be a Japanologist
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 office. While such conversations are great for dinner parties, talks with students, and war stories with friends, unless executives in your head office are interested in Japanology as a hobby, […]
Your Own Worst Enemy
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 of difficulties he faces in buying from a division of a large Japanese industrial company, not because of a lack of will to sell on their part, but rather unnecessary and […]
Be the Success Exception
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 of success and failure does not make these axiomatic. My most successful clients make themselves the success exception, and you can too. In my experience, I have never seen any […]
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