Japan’s Luddism Toward AI Is a Leadership Trust Problem, Not a Technological One
An employee at a Japanese financial services company was given a labor-intensive task — modify an enormous spreadsheet of data manually, using a mind-numbing repetitive process. It would have taken days. He chose instead to combine some AI and automation tools — available in the company for anyone to use — and completed the task in an hour. Was he praised for his innovative ingenuity and initiative? Far from it. His colleagues were angered that he demonstrated how their jobs could possibly be replaced — or how he made it more difficult to justify overtime pay, which many rely on to supplement their income. His managers were annoyed that he […]
DISRUPT OR BE DISRUPTED: CEO Roundtable Discussion Summary
A few years ago, I stood up at an Economist Corporate Network event in Tokyo, surrounded by executives from some of the best-known companies in the world. And the entire session was about one thing: how to avoid being disrupted. I couldn’t sit still for that. So I said it out loud: somewhere in Tokyo, right now, there’s a parallel event happening. A room full of people talking about how to disrupt every business represented in this room. Why on earth should we just stand for that? We should be disrupting them. That’s the whole premise of my book, Disrupt or Be Disrupted. And it’s the reason I brought it […]
The Tyranny of KPIs
A sales team had inventory. A customer wanted to buy it. The company needed the revenue. The salespeople said no. Not because they couldn’t sell. Not because the product wasn’t available. They refused to sell because the transaction would have made their sales forecast look inaccurate — and they were being evaluated on forecast accuracy. So they turned away a willing customer, with cash in hand, to protect a KPI. When the company’s president found out, he was livid. He killed the KPI entirely — in direct defiance of his global headquarters. And he was right to do it…
No Country for Old Men – An Homage
A CEO client of mine was fired. No performance issue. His results were outstanding. A regional VP sat down with him, said it was to talk about the future, and then told him he was out. The reason: “to make room for new blood and reduce headcount.” He found out later he wasn’t alone. Same VP. Same reason. Different executives. Every single one of them was over fifty. Age was the offense. Here’s what that VP didn’t understand. Wisdom is not for sale. It cannot be trained into someone in a workshop. It comes from years of doing the job. Getting it wrong. Getting it right. Staying calm when the […]
The Black Ships in the Harbor Again
This week, Softbank Group CEO Masayoshi Son stood in a Tokyo hotel ballroom and told Japan’s top executives that AI is coming for them. He invoked the Black Ships from Japanese history — U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perry’s arrival in Japan in 1853 with a squadron of four gunships — as a metaphor for a technologically superior external force arriving on your shores when you are not ready. It’s a powerful metaphor. Son was not wrong to use it. But Son is only telling you half the story. The half he left out is far more important — and far more uncomfortable…
Succession as a Discipline, Not an Event: What Toyota’s CEO Transition Gets Right
In February, Toyota announced that its next CEO would be Kenta Kon. He’s the company’s CFO, and for eight years he was the personal secretary to chairman Akio Toyoda. Some of the coverage outside Japan framed this as a family story. Akio Toyoda’s son, Daisuke, the founder’s great-grandson, was given a role at Toyota’s Motomachi plant around the same time. A lot of people read that as the first step toward the Toyoda family taking back the top job. Here’s the thing. The real story is more interesting than that. And if you’re a foreign executive trying to read succession signals inside a Japanese company, it’s a story you need […]
Uncertainty as Your Strategic Weapon
Japanese automobile manufacturer Suzuki just announced they are targeting Africa as their next major growth market. They’re calling it “the next India.” They entered India in 1983. At the time, the consensus said India was too poor, too complex, too far from the kind of premium market that serious companies were supposed to chase. The case for saying no was overwhelming. Suzuki said yes anyway. Forty years later, India is their most important market. It is their production hub. It is where 60% of their planned capital investment is going. And now they’re doing it again — this time in Africa. You might be thinking: interesting story, but I run […]
Defy the Head Office, Deliver Customers Bad News, and Survive
A technology company CEO I know recently told me a story I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. His company was facing a crisis. Supply chain constraints — driven in large part by the AI-fueled explosion in chip demand — had caused component prices to triple. In some cases, product simply wasn’t available at any price. The problem was that his company had signed contracts with customers. Fixed prices. Delivery timelines. Penalty clauses for non-delivery. And now the entire basis of those contracts had been invalidated by the market. Head office issued its missive: go to your customers and force through price increases. The contracts say what they say, […]
RAPID CULTURE CHANGE: CEO Roundtable Discussion Summary
Last week I presented some of the most provocative ideas from my book, Rapid Culture Change, at my CEO Roundtable here in Tokyo. The talk opens with a trick: I read out a list of dysfunctions that sound unmistakably Japanese — and then I tell the room they actually describe a French utility. It’s designed to get a room full of experienced Japan hands to catch themselves mid-assumption. What followed was forty-five minutes of pushback, war stories, and at least one direct challenge to the title of my own book. Here’s what the room actually wrestled with…
Strategic Resilience Is Not Just a Supply Chain Problem
Japan’s government just designated 17 priority sectors for long-term protected investment — AI, semiconductors, quantum technology, shipbuilding, defense, and more. The headlines call it a return to Japan Inc. But what Japan is actually doing — whether its policymakers fully realize it or not — is attempting to build strategic resilience into the national economy. Not growth. Not export dominance. Resilience. The capacity to absorb shocks that nobody predicted, keep functioning, and adapt. And it raises a question every business leader in Japan should be asking right now — not about government policy, but about their own organization. How resilient is your strategy, really? Here is the uncomfortable truth about […]
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