The Leadership Japan Series By Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Fads are a constant in business.  Consultants have a field day. They rush around providing companies with ideas on how to ride the new fashion wave.  They then have to milk it as hard as possible, because they know it will be soon supplanted by the next fad.  Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is right up there as the latest fad in Japan.  I am not saying that DEI isn’t legitimate or important.  What I am saying is that for many companies, this is a patina of legitimacy, a fig leaf, as they seek to show good citizenship rather than a heartfelt belief in the importance of DEI itself.  “If others are doing it, then we should be doing it too”, is more the motivation, in many cases in Japan. The benefits of DEI in the West are numerous.  These include faster problem-solving, better decision-making, increased innovation, employee engagement and better financial performance.  None of these outcomes have been accepted as relevant in Japan as yet.  The scope is also quite different. In the West, we are dealing wit