Just last week, I had a chance to visit one small logistics company that I have been working with recently (we're recommending a customer to use them), called So-Fast (Ota-ku, Tokyo). The owner, Mr. Keiichi Ito, kindly offered to let me take a morning tour of their pick-and-pack operation - which I can tell you brought back a flood of memories for me of my own factory...

If there is one piece of basic psychology I use just about every day in managing my business, it's the hierarchy of human needs developed by Abraham Maslow in the 1940's. Simply put, Maslow theorized that people have successive layers of needs, and that as each lower layer is satisfied, then...

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...