Next, let's look at what I call the "bonus items" of hiring a Japanese CEO. These are the assets or value brought to the table by virtue of the candidate's position within the Japanese business culture. As I have mentioned in previous articles, Japanese business reflects a village and tribe mentality, wrapped into an autocratic work structure, and thus...

One of the problems with being thousands of miles away from your subsidiary, added to the problems of language and cultural differences, is that you can never be sure what is really going on in your Japan operation. I know of a number of instances where even large and famous companies have had fraud and cronyism problems at CEO level simply because the CEO couldn't be monitored...

While the remuneration packages for Japanese or locally-hired foreign CEOs are all over the map, there are some basic components and market realities which need to be considered. Firstly, no matter what the mix, compensation for a CEO should always recognize the person's criticality to the business, and reward...

In the last part of our "How to Become a CEO" series I cover a means of getting yourself selected as the CEO of a foreign company based on your personal merits and not whether you have an MBA or went to an Ivy League school. That method consists of targeting firms which are just getting established...