The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show

  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 alway...

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 k...

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...

 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 Unive...

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...

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 a...

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...

Salespeople often miss the point. They are brilliant on telling the client the detail of the product or service. When you think about how we train salespeople, that is a very natural outcome.  Product knowledge is drummed into the heads of salespeople when they first join the company.  The product or service lines are expanded or updated at some point, so again the product knowledge component of t...

Q&A can destroy your personal brand. Creating and delivering the presentation sees you in 100% total control.  You have designed it, you have been given the floor to talk about it, all is good.  However, the moment the time comes for questions, we are now in a street fight.  Why a street fight?  Because in a street fight there are no rules and the Q&A following a presentation is the same – no rule...

Staff can be a nightmare. Teams are composed of the most difficult material ever created - people. That requires many capabilities, but two in particular from leaders: communication and people skills. Ironically, leaders are often seriously deficient in one or both. One type of personality who gets to become the leader are the hard driving, take no prisoners, climb over the rival's bodies to grasp...

Enterprise killers can include Customer Service. We know that all interfaces with the customer are designed by people.  It can be on-line conversations with AI robots or in-store interactions, but the driving force behind all of these activities are the people in our employ.  The way people think and act is a product of the culture of the organisation.  That culture is the accountability of senior...

Don't let your speaker introduction be a disaster. Usually when we are speaking we are introduced twice.  Once at the very start by the MC when they kick off proceedings and then later just before our segment of the talk.  The MC's role is quite simple.  It is to set the stage for the speaker, to bring something of their history, their achievements and various details that make them a credible pre...

Suddenly you hear your name being called upon and you are being requested to make a few remarks.  Uh oh.  No preparation, no warning and no escape.  What do you do?  Extemporaneous speaking is one of the most difficult tasks for a presenter.  It could be during an internal meeting, a session with the big bosses in attendance or at a public venue.  One moment you are nice and comfy, sitting there i...

Change is hard to create anywhere in the world. Getting things to change in Japan also has its own set of challenges. The typical expat leader, sent to Japan, notices some things that need changing. Usually the Japan part of the organisation is not really part of the organisation. It is sitting off to the side, like a distant moon orbiting the HQ back home. There are major differences around what...

Last week we talked about when presenting, you need to transfer your energy to the audience.   However don't have your energy levels at the maximum volume all the time.  That just wears an audience out and wears you out too.  Instead, you need to have some variation.  Very strong and then sometimes very soft.  And I mean drop it right down.  Remember to have that in the voice range.  Sometimes say...

This is a tricky part of designing and delivering our presentations.  Think back to the last few presentations you have attended and can you remember anything from the close of their speech?  Can you remember much about the speaker? This close should be the highlight of their talk, the piece that brings it all together, their rallying cry for the main message.  If you can't recall it, or them, the...

As the leader we have to work on the presumption that people know what they are doing. It is impossible to micro manage every single person, every moment of the day. By the way, who would want to do that anyway? The issues arise when things deviate from the track we think they are on or expect that they are on. We find that a process has been finessed, but we don't like the change. We find that so...

Life is busy, busy today.  Communications has sped up business to an extent unthinkable even ten years ago.  Every company is a publisher now, due to social media's pervasiveness.  Content marketing is driving original content creation and release.  LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook are favouring live video, so we have to become television talents.  Voice is the next big thing, so podcasting requir...

Having an audience interested enough in your topic to ask questions is a heartening occurrence.  Japan can be a bit tricky though because people are shy to ask questions.  Culturally the thinking is different to the West.  In most western countries we ask questions because we want to know more.  We don't think that we are being disrespectful by implying that the speaker wasn't clear enough, so tha...

Teams are fluid. People move or leave and new people join. Targets go up every year. The compliance and regulatory requirements become more stringent, the market pivots and bites you, currency fluctuations take you from hero to zero in short order. Head office is always annoying. There are so many aspects of business which line up against having a strong sense of team. We can't be complacent if we...

The hero's journey is for the very, very few.  I did it my way, I slaved away in a garret and got to the top, I realised the American dream – all good stuff, but an illusion for most.  The reality is there are more of us who need the cooperation of others, than those who can succeed despite others.  The age of the "one" has been taken over by the age of the "many".  Hero teams are more powerful th...

Normally, as the seller, we are getting told "no" in sales, rather than the other way around.  When salespeople become desperate to hit their numbers, they start to do crazy things.  They start telling lies to the buyer, they exaggerate the scope of the solution, they savagely discount the price, they overpromise on the follow-up, they agree to horrendous delivery dates, they become visibly agitat...

Gaining credibility as a speaker is obviously important.  We often do this by telling our own experiences. However, having too much focus on us and away from the interests of the audience is a fine line we must tread carefully.  When we get this wrong, a lot of valuable speaking time gets taken up and we face the danger of losing our audience. They are like lightening when it comes to escaping to...

We are on the cusp of a change amongst youth in Japan.  Those already entered into the workforce have memories of the Lehman Shock and the triple whammy of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear core meltdown and the impact this had on the job market.  They are looking for security of employ and family life, because of the fragility of both were exposed to them in September 2008 and again in March 2011. ...

What are the chances of getting a "no" to your offer in sales?  Probably around 70% of the time, this is what we will get. Given that type of frequency and hit rate, you would think that salespeople would be masters of dealing with this type of response.  You would be wrong.   The chemicals kick in and sales people lose all reason.  I was reminded of this recently when we were conducting sales tra...