Can Japanese to be the country head??

Hi all.

I have a question for all the business people in Japan.

"How do you compete with young, motivated and smart fresh graduates?"

About 30 million fresh graduates from India are predicted to be entering the workforce by 2014.

This issue goes beyond India. The Indian market can’t absorb all the fresh graduates therefore about 20 million of them will be hunting for opportunities to work globally.

In the next four years, we are going to see the same number of people from good universities in India.

In three years time, we will be facing serious competition.

Most of those students from India have multilingual capabilities and adaptability to adapt to different cultures.

If we don't have the knowledge and skills to manage those kinds of people, we can't work in the global organization anymore.

Did you know that the head of some global organizations in Japan are not Japanese even though their clients are all Japanese?

For most of those organizations, Japan is an important market.

But Japan is not the ideal place to find those suitable employees and leaders.

Actually, many Indians and Singaporean have already filled those positions.

The global heads of some American companies are French, Norwegian, Dutch and Brazilian.

The nationality of the global head is not an issue for global organizations now but why is it that the Japanese haven’t been able to fill the positions as country head of those global organizations?

I think that there are three reasons behind this.

1. Language capability

2. Adaptability

3. Mobility

Many Japanese business men are not good at English in verbal communication. Most of them are good at reading and writing but they find it difficult to hold a conversation face to face. In the business world, communication is an important role for operation. Without speaking and listening comprehension it will be difficult to do business.

Adaptability is hard to get. It means that we have to understand different cultures and values. There are no right answers but right questions. So business people have to deal with various ideas and perspectives.

Mobility is also hard to get. Japanese have a tendency to stay at one place all the time. They don’t want to move to a new place or city. They love their home town and don’t want to take the risk to move around.

From a management’s point of view, we want to hire the people who can change quickly, adapt new initiatives smoothly and can work every where globally.

The many Japanese who lack these three elements can’t act in an important role.

It is critical for Japanese managers to learn the above three skills.

How can they develop those skills?

I will show you another time.

Regards