My motto used to be, “I don’t want to be on a team unless I’m leading it.” (And yes, I am embarrassed to state this publicly. Live and learn.) Like so many of us brought up in American culture, I was trained that leading is somehow the loftiest (best?) way to relate to others, and
No, this is not about the aftermath of getting a bad haircut. But I am willing to bet that when you read this title you thought not about “humility” but about “humiliation.” While having my hair cut recently, my Japanese hairstylist and I wandered onto the topic of “being humble,” something one experiences comparatively less
How many times have you found yourself in a meeting wondering, “What am I doing here??” One of the biggest complaints my clients have is about how much time they spend in meetings–not only the time they spend in them, but also the quality of the time they spend. More often than any of us would
In a recent conversation with a Japanese executive, he told me that “the Japanese are not resilient.” Since I think the Japanese have demonstrated remarkable resilience in the last 70 years, I was really taken aback by his assertion. After recovering from my surprise, I questioned him more closely, and it turns out that his
For several months, I’ve been thinking about starting a blog focused on the practice and the challenge of my organizational development (OD) work, in both California, US and in Tokyo, Japan—and also, the interplay between them. I have applied “California” ideas and practices in Tokyo, and vice versa, and doing so has expanded my repertoire