Is Japan Changing?

But didn't the Americans already do that in WW2?

This morning, I suddenly recalled this article which I read on Choosun Ilbo - which pretty much explains on what we can learn from Japan from South Korea's perspective. Out of all the things being discussed and elaborated in the article, I found one to be most agreeable - Japan's inability to change and adapt to modern times, in essence, failure to ride the wave of globalization. Now yes, I know, how can say such a thing for a country whose manufacturing goods are all over the place? If you look closely, they're not anymore. You want to talk about TVs? Samsung is now the world's largest TV maker, and Hyundai overtook Toyota in America's market. They're still up there, but they're not as dominant as they were during the 1980s and 1990s. South Korea has started to take up their fair shair of the world, even their music industry is starting to shine brighter than Japan's J-Pop.

Now I can give hundreds of reasons why (too nationalistic, their attitude being less inclined to learn English compared to South Korea, and there's also the factor where they have such an advanced robotics industry, losing ground in the automotive and electronics industry may not seem to be such a big deal) they are falling behind against their Korean rivals - maybe I'll do another post on that later. But for now the question is, are they changing? Are they reacting positively to these signs? Seems like like they are.

Ex-CEO of Olympus - Michael Woodford

Let's start of with the Woodford Olympus Controversy - the first Non-Japanese to become the CEO of a Japanese corporation, only to be fired 6 months into the job for investigating what seemed to be a potential (okay, maybe the appropriate word would be apparent) coverup by the directors. For being a whistleblower, he was fired. But now since the issue went to headlines, and after much pressure from the public, he was invited to attend a Board Meeting this week, which he accepted. This is definitely fresh and different to how the old-school hard headed Japanese would normally handle things - cover up with your superiority in rank and lobby the media and politicians.

Hiroshi Mikitani - CEO of Rakuten

In another two cases, Yamada Denki, Japan's largest electronic retail chain decided that they will now sell more foreign brands in their stores in a response to an increasing demand and interest for Samsung and LG products. They recently opened a procurement office in China - something which Japanese companies would not normally do. The CEO of Rakuten, one of Japan's largest online retailer, shocked the media by giving a press conference in English - and in response to fears in losing their Jobs, more and more Japanese are taking English lessons to justify / exert their importance in their respective companies.

This is, without a doubt, signs of change - from their inclinedness to learn English, to the way they run companies. However, one key area which still requires improvements is their political system; they need a strong and visionary leader to take them out of this trap. These are good signs - they're probably 10 years behind South Korea now, but that does not mean that they won't be able to catch up. Knowing the level of rivalry between them, and the advantage that Japan has in certain industries, I'm very confident that Japan can pick themselves up again - maybe not to a point as high as where they were, but to the least, high enough to ride the tide of total globalization.

The only question is - how long will it take?

Why Would Anyone Agree With You?

Winning! Tiger blood!

Where identifying challenges is the first step to creating a solid corporate strategy, the next definite step would be to question yourselves why did you set that strategy. I know this sounds ridiculous when you put both of those two back to back; to put it simply, once you've identified the challenges and developed a strategy - you need to ask yourself why would anyone agree with me on this?

Is what the article is trying to say, at first I thought.

But upon reading deeper into it, it turns out that the article is more focused on "looking outside the box". So once you have a strategy in place; think about how outsiders would see it. Would they agree with you? Is there something amiss? It's relatively easy to identify challenges and plot a strategic roadmap on your own but it is much tougher to convince your colleagues (particularly outsiders) that what you've developed is actually realistic and relevant.

Oh, time for my morning coffee!

How To Be Positively Weird

Turn left at innovation drive pls

Think Different. Schumpeter, The Economist.

An article about innovative-thinking, including a quotation from Clay Christensen and his book, "The Innovator's Dilemma" which popularized the term Disruptive Technology. Learned a thing or two from it.

Good read.

Corporate Strategy : The Bad & Ugly

Teh biznez cat has spokenz

This is a very interesting article on how most companies would blindly set coporate strategies and directions without much thought on whether the strategies and directions in which they set are correct and beneficial to the company. In it, the author noted several key points in why most Corporate Strategies set by organizations fail;

• Failure to identify current challenges and problems.
• Mistaking goal, vission or mission as strategy.
• Bad strategic objectives; focusing on multiple objectives, instead of a few.
• Flulffs; using sophisticaed words which masquerade an otherwise direct strategy.

The author also noted the reasons why people tend to make common mistakes listed above as well as several good tips on how to create an effective strategy. What caught my attention in the article was the "Condorcet’s paradox" or also known as Voting Paradox.

I wonder why they coined it in French.