The Leadership Japan Series By Dale Carnegie Training Japan

The following scenario will feel familiar to Japan old hands.  The foreign enterprise hires the retired President of a local company to run their operation.  After five years it begins to become obvious the enterprise is getting nowhere.  The aging President is retired out of the company and HQ dispatches one of their local leaders to Japan to turn things around.  The brief is to get the Japan business moving and produce results.  To a hammer everything looks like a nail and the foreign change agent Hammer has just landed at Haneda Airport.    Things don’t look right to the Hammer.  The way of working isn’t the same as back home.  There seems to be plenty of institutionalised inefficiencies.  After some perfunctory meetings with direct reports, the orders start to flow from the Hammer.  Weeks go by and then the Hammer notices things which should be happening are not happening.  Thinking back, there was no resistance to the Hammer’s directives at the Department Heads’ meeting.  Everyone got their marching orde