Effectively building human relationships that you can always call on for help

Alliances work on a person-to-person basis

The existence of the word “alliance” aside, probably the first time I became aware of alliance behavior was with my immediate superior during my IBJ days. The first alliance relationship I developed was with this person.
He was well-known for being so severe that the people working under him didn’t want to show up at work because they didn’t want to come face to face with him. In fact, some of my senior colleagues would deliberately pile up a mountain of books on their desks so they wouldn’t have to meet his eyes while they were working.
At that time, my assignment was in the international business division, and we were involved in formulating international strategy. One of our jobs was to create briefing papers for the president and other top executives that summarized matters on a single A4-format page. Almost every time I would present one of these papers to my superior, however, he would just take it and turn it face down right before my eyes. Then would come an exchange that always went like this:
“Just what is it you’re trying to say?” he would ask.
“Well, you see…”
“It isn’t clear from this, so summarize it in five lines,” he would exclaim.
“Yes, sir. First is this…. Second is this….” And I would give him the main points.
“Then write it like that on a sheet of A4 paper.”
Ordinarily when we create information summaries, we think about including this and that, and identifying that risk, and so on. We want to fit in as much as we can, even if we have to put it in a tiny font. Not only that, but when a superior asks, “What about this problem?” then the person doing the work wants to be able to say, “Oh, that’s right here on the other side of the page,” or something of the kind.
The superior I am recalling here, however, was different. What he would say was, “Write the briefing information in five lines.”
“What kind of determination do you want the president and the managing director to make when they look at this information?” “Should this branch office be established, or should the idea be dropped?” “Does the matter require more study first?” These were the kinds of searching questions he would ask in order to find out what the briefing was supposed to accomplish. He would shoot the questions at me rapid fire to bring out all the risks and other perspectives that needed to be considered in order to make a business decision.
This approach to report-writing is very reasonable, and that is the basic approach I take even now when I am putting together information materials. At that time, however, I was just a new university graduate, wet behind the ears. I felt as though he was fussing at me, and to be honest, I found him unpleasant.
The change came one time when the strategic question of whether or not to open an office in a certain country was being discussed. In our work, we would work till late at night as a matter of course. We would have day after day of extremely demanding work. No matter how hard we pushed ourselves, we couldn’t get this project in shape.
Then my superior suggested that we work at his place on a day off. I grumbled to myself about having to look at his face even on my day off, but the fact was that our project didn’t seem likely to get anywhere otherwise. It was with great reluctance that I went to his home, but what I found there was a big surprise. When he was with his wife and children, my superior presented the appearance of a wonderful father. Not only that, but when he introduced me to his wife, he told her I was one of his very capable staff members. This completely blew away my image of him as a severe, unpleasant person.
Of course, if you think about it, even the most charismatic business leader is likely to come across as just an ordinary man when he’s shopping in a department store.
Since that time, the way I think about people has changed. No matter how powerfully individualistic a person may be, and no matter how many times more capable or experienced a person is than me, there is no reason that we can’t communicate with each other as one human being to another. In that case, I decided, I was going to go ahead and dive right in with people regardless of who they were or what their standing was. Since we are all human beings, we can be allies rather than enemies, and we can cast off our preconceptions and stereotypes, as long as we’re facing in the same direction.
This approach led to me to develop the idea of alliances. From that point on, even though my superior kept on scolding me the same as before, I was able to see that he was scolding me for my own good. Later, when I was reassigned, I felt great respect and gratitude for this person, and that was something that would have been inconceivable before.

The trick of a negotiating technique that attracts allies is not to attack

I have engaged in many tough negotiations, and I still have no hesitation about plunging into the midst of a conflict with other people. I do not, however, go in with the desire to beat them. My approach is more like the United Nations, approaching them gingerly as though with a white flag held up on a battlefield. I just throw myself right into their arms, declaring myself from the very start to be on their side.
This approach is probably a remnant from my childhood years in the United States and Canada, where it was very important for me to show that I was “on their side.” In the United States, it’s common practice to flash a big smile and say “Hi!” or something of that sort when encountering somebody, even if it’s a stranger. When I would open a door and go through, I would always hold it open a little while if there was someone coming through behind me. In those cases, the person behind me would always thank me. This is part of the culture.
This may be a matter of the national character, but unfortunately, we rarely see this kind of behavior in Japan. It’s not that Japanese people are unfriendly or unsociable. When it comes to conveying one’s own feelings to another person, however, Europeans and Americans are far more skilled at it.
The alliance negotiating technique follows the European and American approach more closely. It also starts before you have meet the other person. First of all, from the point when you make an appointment by e-mail, you make a point of using language at the maximum level of politeness. You provide the other people with information to help them know as much as possible about you as a person. For example, as I mentioned earlier, you put information about your blog or your company website in your signature block so that the other person doesn’t have to go to the trouble of looking it up. In your e-mail, you make a positive effort to use exclamation points and other elements to convey a sense of intimacy, so far as it does not infringe on the sense of courtesy. No matter what, written language does not convey feelings as well as spoken language, so I think it is actually better to err on the side of excess.
By the way, there was something that particularly impressed me out of all the e-mail exchanges I’ve carried on with a wide variety of people. This has to do with the e-mail from someone who has been a friend of mine since elementary school, and has since become an internationally known lawyer. His name is Masakazu Iwakura, and he is a sixth-generation descendant of Tomomi Iwakura, a leader in Japan’s modernization during the 19th century. His writing style is very polite and respectful to his correspondent, and it is humble without sounding at all sarcastic. On top of that, he responds very quickly.
When meeting for talks, you smile at the person and ask him, before anything else, about how he is doing and about his interests. I’m very fond of this saying: People don’t smile because they’re happy; happiness comes to them because they smile. Start out with a smile and talk to them in an animated way. Anybody will withdraw from you if you approach them with a dark expression on your face.
Next, it is good to use information you have looked up in advance to move the conversation toward subjects the other person is interested in. First ask the other person about himself, then get their comments or advice about the matter that is on your mind. This is the trick to developing a smooth conversation.

How to mediate, and one very different result of the alliance approach

Needless to say, no amount of preparation or activity can necessarily guarantee that a conversation will go well. This is particularly the case when a third party has spread bad information before the meeting takes place.
It often happens, for example, that party “A” of “A Corporation” is not acquainted with party “B” of “B Corporation” and party “C” of “C Corporation,” which do business with “A Corporation,” although they are going to be working with them. When “A” and “B” are having a conversation, “A” might let slip to “B,” without having intended any offense, “I heard from “C” that your way of doing business leaves something to be desired.” Now on hearing this, “B” is likely to think that “C” is a terrible person for having said this to “A.” Therefore “B” and “C” will be in a relationship of distrust even before they have spoken directly with each other. If you happen to be “B” in this situation, then what you should do is consider calmly, “Who is telling me this information and for what purpose?”
This case arises from the careless statement made by “A.” If “A” were to have this kind of conversation deliberately, then it might be because there is some circumstance that would make it difficult for him if “B” and “C” were to team up with each other. In order to keep that from happening, the first thing you should do, if you are “B,” is to speak directly with “C.”
In discussing information sorting techniques, I mentioned that most of the information in circulation has ended up there as the result of somebody’s interpretation of it. According to the alliance approach, I wrote, one must connect with that information directly oneself, sense it in one’s own way, think about it, and act. This is crucial if we are to have communication.
In fact, I have witnessed many scenes in which hearsay about some slight derogatory remark ended up causing unimaginable losses. In order to keep that from happening, I create opportunities for “B” and “C” to meet and speak directly with each other. I do this because this way I can, together with “B” and “C,” eliminate the impediments of misunderstanding and move forward with work for a common purpose.
In the alliance negotiation technique, it is important not only to mediate between oneself and one’s counterpart, but also to mediate skillfully among third parties that one knows.

The essence of the alliance negotiating technique is enjoyment and calm

The fact is that through IBJ and NTT DoCoMo, I came to be known as a real professional in negotiation. At IBJ I mainly handled overseas business, and at DoCoMo I established tie-ups with a number of companies. My negotiating technique, however, was nothing like the slashing and hitting approach taken by so-called tough negotiators. The way I worked was basically the same, no matter what kind of counterpart I was facing: it was to start out by establishing a cooperative relationship. On that basis, I would get my counterpart to persuade his superiors, and sometimes I would work on his superiors myself.
Of course, the fact was that I sometimes came up against counterparts in negotiation who would say they weren’t interested, or they would talk it over with their superiors, before I could get a cooperative relationship going. Nevertheless, my stance was not to press for a contract with the other people no matter what, but to form an alliance. In order to accomplish that, I pointed out what I would be able to offer, and tried to make them see that it might be interesting to work on something together.
In this chapter I will present techniques of communication and human relationship for building alliances. These techniques are fundamentally not about arguing with the other person, but about making friends with the other person.
In this case, there is no need to use psychological techniques even when you are working on a difficult deal. The psychological basis of this approach is an extremely relaxed experience such as enjoyment or calmness. You will find many business books that say you must negotiate using such and such a method, but it is crucial rather that you free yourself of fixed notions about negotiating technique.

Presenting oneself with unstudied charm to attract people without even trying

The question then is how to present oneself when engaging in communication to build an alliance. To put it quite simply, rather than making yourself a person of accomplishments, make yourself a person of openings and potential; and rather than being sharp, be a little bit slow. Rather than trying to look good, try to be likable.
In my case, for example, what I found convenient when putting my business alliance techniques to use was having a physique that was unmistakably fat no matter who was looking at me. This is not to excuse myself, but there was a time when I was slender. In those days, however, people tended to think I was off-putting or edgy-seeming, and people seemed to find me rather forbidding. When I went to work as a business person, I started putting on weight, and now people think I look like a panda or a doughboy. If asked their impression of my appearance, this is the kind of unwelcome responses people would give.
The thing is, however, that this visual impression makes people feel at ease, or even makes them feel superior. This might even act as a point of attraction that makes me more approachable to people. Considering the advantageous aspects of this, I feel like saying, “Wait a minute,” to business people who are dieting helplessly because of metabolic syndrome or whatever. Of course, this is assuming that such people are taking care of their health.
In any case, I am not, of course, telling everybody to get fat. Anybody who is trying to build a network of personal connections will be eager to make themselves more appealing. The alliance approach does not work by the charisma or attractiveness of someone who has promoted himself. Rather, people think about what is advantageous to them plus whether or not they want to work with this person (you), and decide to join you.
What this means is no matter how much people may think, “This guy can really get things done,” if they say to themselves, “He’ll probably take all the profits for himself in the end,” or “I feel like I’m going to be overpowered and cheated,” then they are unlikely to form an alliance. To explain by an example, say that a friend who is extremely handsome and a very smooth talker says to me, “There’s going to be a party, why don’t you come?” If I say to myself that all the girls will only be interested in him, then I won’t be so interested in taking up his invitation. An alliance is more likely to develop when the other person thinks he will have a good chance, too, or it seems that participating will raise some interesting possibilities for him.
Whether or not you can manage to make the other person sense the attraction of an alliance can really hinge on very little things. When you meet with this person, if you start off by saying you are sorry to make him take time out of his busy schedule, then that alone is likely to make him feel that you have some consideration for him. In the case of e-mail and telephone calls, where you can’t see the other person’s face, I think it’s good to be almost too polite in your language, so long as it’s someone you aren’t quite close to. When talking on the telephone, and especially when talking with a man, speaking in a low voice can tend to make you seem brusque. It’s good to raise your voice just about one octave when speaking.
When meeting your counterpart with his superior, remark that “Mr. xxx has taken extremely good care of me, and I am truly grateful.” Praising him in front of his superior like this will heighten his motivation greatly. Naturally, if you have to lie to say this, you are sure to be found out, so only say it when you truly mean it.
The point is not to draw attention to yourself, but always to shine the light on your counterpart. The alliance relationship is skillfully developed through this kind of communication.

Power games are a weakness in an alliance

I mentioned that we shine the light on our counterpart. In the case of an alliance, however, the most difficult problems occur when a third party who didn’t receive a share of the spotlight feels envious and becomes an enemy.
More often than not, you will form an alliance either with people whose human qualities make it a pleasure to associate with them, or with people it is advantageous to be involved with in terms of work. So long as a person belongs to either of these categories, then I don’t think there will be any particular reason to actively exclude him. It is unfortunately the case in any circle, however, that power games arising from those feelings of envy or egotism will be in play in some hidden area of the relationship.
When I encounter a person or company that causes this kind of problem, by the way, I try to see that this person must be very unhappy, or this company must be in real trouble. I make a point of thinking that this person is unhappy in himself, and that is why he behaves rudely or seems envious. I do this as a reminder to try not to become that way myself.
If we involve someone who is hurtful toward people in an alliance, it is likely that we will bring trouble not only to ourselves but to others around us. A person with a bad reputation will probably be seen that way by others, too. Then we have to calmly analyze the information available around us, absorb it, and depending on what we perceive in that person, it may be necessary to exclude him from your relationships with other people. This is because, if the relationship becomes hostile, it will end up as nothing but a disadvantage to you. The time you have to spend worrying over that kind of disadvantageous relationship is a great waste. This is why it is important to develop a good eye for judging people, because it will give you more time in the future, as well.
In order to prevent a relationship from turning hostile, you have to talk about the advantages the other person brings, and you have to start doing this as a regular thing. It is necessary to broadcast this kind of information and take other measures of this kind that place that person on your side. Notice things that will please your counterpart. If you are fully aware of the other person in this way, and build a relationship of trust accordingly, then it is less likely that your relationship will be affected by derogatory information from outside.
You must be sure, however, not to fawn on the other person or butter him up. An alliance is above all a human relationship that you develop in order to achieve some purpose of your own. It is not a matter of personal networking that you manage by simply saying, “He’s a nice guy,” or “He’s trustworthy.”
Therefore there is no need to try to force a friendly relationship. The important thing is to share the same orientation, and if you have that, then you can develop a cooperative relationship. Moreover, this is a work-related relationship, so it’s also important to maintain an appropriate distance. In this, too, please don’t lose sight of the basic premise, which is that, as long as you share a common purpose, you make everybody your friend and have no enemies.

Three conditions to turn you into someone people will want to meet again

I find it necessary to give my counterpart three motivations in order for the alliance to draw people in:
The first is the motivation of being able to expect something of it. The point here is to give the person the idea that, if we work together, they can expect to receive something positive from it. I want him to think that he has something to gain from it.
The second is the motivation of enjoyment. This is something similar, for example, to the kind of comical television personality who has become so popular recently for playing the fool. Someone who seems just a little bit slow can give the other people a sense of superiority. This makes them feel comfortable, so that they do not feel your presence as an unpleasant pressure.
The third is the motivation of comfort. Praising them and giving them positive feedback makes them feel comfortable. At the same time, this also makes them feel good about having done the work they did, which is a motivation related to enjoyment.
Another important element is to give the other person a sense of participation. This is also a major factor in giving enjoyment. By sharing your thinking about things with the other person, and showing deference to him, you place yourself on his side rather than on the opposing side.

Two essential factors in the success of making your Platform and by alliance

As I discussed above, there are certain structural elements that are crucial to the development of personal connections through an alliance. In terms of work, what this comes down to is the major premise that we have something to gain by joining with the other people participating in the alliance, which is why we do so.
In the case of the Osaifu-Keitai credit service, many of the people who cooperated with the project were interested in it in the first place because I was at NTT DoCoMo and therefore potentially in a position to realize this new service. If a total outsider had come up with a purely theoretical possibility, then that alone would not have been enough to draw people in.
The alliances I have now, since going independent, have also been formed because people felt they had something to gain by joining them. This is nothing so simple as, “If you talk with me I’ll give you 500 yen,” or anything of that sort. There are various factors involved, such as, “If I meet with this person, my network of personal contacts will expand,” or “It’s exciting because something interesting seems likely to happen.”
What is necessary for this to happen is something that both information sorting and networking have in common. That is, the ability to actively communicate to the other person, in easily understandable terms, what it is that you yourself want to do. “This is what I want to do.” “This is the kind of person I am.” You have to start out by conveying these things clearly in a form that meets the other person’s expectations.
Something I’ve found very helpful in this connection, as well, is my continuing effort to “explain it concisely in five lines.” This, as I related earlier, was how my former superior so strictly trained me to write briefing papers. Another expression similar to explaining concisely in five lines is the foreign phrase, “elevator pitch.” This refers to the way the presidents of venture firms and people in similar positions explain who they are and what their company does in a very short time. It comes from the practice of approaching extremely busy people by getting on the elevator with them and using that brief time to pitch an idea to them.
People who become your allies approach you closely because they are interested in the kind of person you are and the things you are trying to do. Most people don’t want to listen to a laborious explanation of these things. Therefore, we should take pains ahead of time to devise some method that can make people understand what you want to do in one shot.
Communicating what you are trying to do, however, does not mean just one-sidedly stating your vision. That is not enough. For example, you might simply say to a woman, “You changed your hair, didn’t you?” She will get the impression that you are someone who has truly been aware of her. The same applies to subordinates and people you do business with. If you praise what they have done, and give them recognition, they will get the impression that you value them properly for themselves.
It is said that the word for the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. It is important first of all to take an interest in the other person and make sure to communicate that interest to him.
This corresponds to what Abraham Maslow, who formulated the theory of the five-fold hierarchy of needs, called “the need for affection.” This comes at a deeper level than the ego need that seeks self-esteem, and that in turn is at a deeper level than the need for self-actualization, which is the need to be able to accomplish what one wants. All that we find at the levels below it are physiological needs, such as the need for food to eat, and safety needs, such as the need for a place to live.
You will be able to appreciate from this that the act of providing other people with benefits is therefore much more important than being able to do what you personally want to do. This is why the two essential factors in an alliance are always giving the other person a beneficial reason to take part, and using this as a platform to explain talk about your vision.

The magical method of negotiation that gives the advantage to both you and the other person

If we have, for instance, 10 conditions that we have to reach agreement on with the other party in a business deal, everything will go well, even in difficult business negotiations, if we allow them to take six of the conditions and we take four for our side. The advantages represented by the other side’s six conditions and our side’s four conditions may not differ very much. However, the other people will see that we are not just out for our own profit. We have their profit in mind, as well. Just with that, the subsequent relationship will grow very strong and firm. A project undertaken by people who distrust each other will probably bring a net result in the red just from the time and effort spent trying to reach an understanding. If a project turns out well because an alliance proves successful, the mutual advantages can actually end up being many times greater. That is why I have always conducted negotiations with the priority on maximizing each other’s long-term profit.
Negotiation, however, may involve some things that we cannot yield on out of concern for our own company’s profit. In sales and similar areas, too, it probably happens sometimes that we come across a customer who makes demands we can’t agree to. For those occasions, it is important to obtain the internal agreement in advance of our own company, including the top management, regarding how much we can yield to the other party.
Let us say, for example, that you are negotiating without having determined the scope of our possible concessions in advance. If you indicate to the other person during the negotiation that you agree to something, but then you later have to take it back, they are likely to decide that it’s pointless to negotiate with you. They will want to talk with your superiors, instead, or with another company. This will be understandable if you try taking the opposite position. It is because withdrawing from a point that has once been agreed upon in negotiations or in a contract is to undermine not only your own credibility, of course, but also the credibility of your company itself.
Therefore we must obtain advance in-house confirmation of how far we can yield. This is an absolute necessity not only for the success of the negotiations, but also for the other person’s approval of the alliance with us.
Another key factor in negotiation is that it is effective to decide in advance who is to wear the black hat. When we are conducting a negotiation, we may run into some contested point that we simply cannot yield, for the good of our own company. At that point, we have the black hat step in. This can be a person or another department in our company. It might even be good to say it is our company president. However, we must be sure that the black hat is a person or department that actually exists, so that our stratagem won’t be revealed later. For example, it might go like this: “Our Legal Department refuses to play ball. There’s nothing we can say to them. They are stubborn, and they insist that they can’t go along with it.”
Even more than whether this excuse is true or not, the alliance members who are negotiating with each other are always focused on the success of their project. The point here is to create a common enemy so that they can avoid getting into a fight or an emotional conflict with each other. During the course of the negotiation, of course, there may be moments when neither of the two parties can yield to the other, and they may pound on the table and grow angry out of sheer earnestness. Through the work of the negotiation as a whole, however, one has to behave so as not to lose the trust of the other people.
By setting up a black hat, we hope to get the other person to think that, “even under these challenging circumstances, that person is doing everything he can for us,” or that “at least he understands us.” With reactions like these, the alliance will make significant progress. What we must note well is that it is not just a matter of explaining that one happens to be facing very challenging circumstances at the moment. The point is to communicate one’s stance of thinking about things from the other person’s point of view.
Before, I discussed the concept of give, give, give and take. This is certainly applicable to networking, as well. Before receiving anything, prepare something to give to the other person. This does not refer only to money. It also includes the simpler feelings that “this person is going to help me gain something,” or “he’s seriously doing his best on this.”
In business the way it has been conventionally thought of up to now, we sell something and what we receive in compensation for it is money. What we’re looking at here is somewhat different. When we bring together our resources to make one plus one into three, or four, or even ten, that is the alliance networking technique.

Offering the best things you have to other people

The i-mode was in a very leading-edge sector even in the IT industry of the time, so there were many people who wanted me to give them some information that would be useful in their business. In fact, a wide range of people, from venture capitalists to members of major corporations, wanted to talk with DoCoMo and me. As the context to this, it is also a fact that I was in a very advantageous position in terms of providing information because of my place in DoCoMo and IBJ. It’s often the case, however, though we may surprisingly tend not to realize it about ourselves, that everybody possesses information that can be of use to the other person—and quite a lot of it.
Let’s take somebody working in the automobile industry as an example. He will know much more about cars than I do. Even somebody who works part-time as a cashier in a convenience store will naturally have more raw information than I do about what products are selling best at the moment. A university student will definitely know more about what is popular among young people right now than a man in his forties, which is what I am. Anybody who takes a thorough self-inventory is bound to find they possess some kind of information that could be sold. I suspect that the reason people don’t realize this is that they always tend to be thinking most about what they can get, and they don’t give much serious thought to what they can give. I recommend that you try sometime actually writing out what you have that you could tell to another person.
When you do this, don’t try to think up something earthshaking right from the start. Instead, just look straightforwardly at where you are now, and where you have been up to now. If you have been doing the same work for a long time, then something you are taking for granted may actually be precious information that is completely unknown in some other industry. People who change jobs will often find this to be the case.
To put this another way, and without holding back from fear of possibly being misunderstood, it is precisely those people who are doing work they don’t want to do who actually tend to possess valuable information and know-how. This is something I picked up during my IBJ days, when I was in charge of dealing with non-performing loans in China. Those were all very backward-oriented, difficult cases, and that job was very hard for me. I felt jealous of the people who had more positively-oriented work in sales.
We were almost at the point of concluding a contract with a firm in China. Then the responsible official from that firm looked at the signatures on the contract and said to me, “This is the signature of my predecessor, so it has nothing to do with me.” At that point, I felt like crying. Looking back now, however, I can see that the knowledge of civil law, bankruptcy law, and cash flow I acquired from my studies at that time are still proving useful to me today. These have become my strengths. Above all, that experience gave me the strength of will to never give up.
Most of my colleagues from IBJ at that time who have since gone on to work at foreign-owned investment banks and funds were involved in handling non-performing loans. Acquiring the sort of work experience that most people would prefer not to go through may be an ordeal at the time, but it leads later to valuable information and know-how.

Pursuit of immediate profit does not make an alliance succeed

If it is just a matter of building networks of personal contacts, then you could do your best to gain the favor of highly-placed people, for example, or get the approval of somebody who has a lot of personal contacts. Through efforts of this kind, you could create a network that at least lets you brag that you know some very important people. Another thing you could do is to attend study groups that have a large attendance and exchange name cards with a lot of people. Then you could claim that you have a lot of personal contacts.
In an alliance, however, what is important is what kind of people are willing to participate in the things you want to do, and how those people change “what I want to do” into “what we want to do,” and work on promoting that. Our aim, therefore, is not on powerful people or superior people. It is people who are highly motivated, and people who can share your thoughts.
In the case of the Osaifu-Keitai, it was not the number-one corporations in the industry that helped me get the project going. Rather, it was the corporations ranked in second place and lower. As far as credit cards are concerned, it was the cooperation of then second-ranked Mitsui Sumitomo Card that got us through. (I understand that the Mitsui Sumitomo Card has now risen to first place in the industry, which makes me very happy.)
In the convenience store industry, the companies that showed the greatest motivation to take on the risk of our project, and that joined with DoCoMo to take action, were Lawson,am/pm , Family Mart. Of course the cooperation was not all from outside. The Osaifu-Keitai was made a reality through the cooperation of my capable subordinates at DoCoMo, the young members of the various companies involved, and the many other people who were overflowing with motivation.
No matter how large a project may be, it will inevitably achieve results if you gather people who have the spirit of challenge and the motivation, and together create the power of a large collectivity. In that sense, it is not immediate profit that will make a project grow so much as it is the kind of people who will respond when you call out to them. The alliances of the future will develop out of the care you show for the people who are present before you at this moment.

People who can give you time command alliances and businesses

As far as giving is concerned, it is a fact that there are limits to what can be given, depending on the position, the environment, and other such factors. For example, even though we may want to give the other person some profitable information, whether we can get our hands on useful information will vary according to the person’s location, the people around him, and the timing.
There is something, however, that everybody has equally, but that can give the other person a totally different impression depending on how it is used. That is time.
In the current business scene, many people have become habituated to talking about how busy they are from day to day. There are more and more instances in which time as something a person can give has come to have greater value than money or information. In sales, for example, visiting customers and spending time doing one’s utmost for them has greater power than any number of telephone calls made or e-mail messages sent.
Spending time on another person signifies saving that person’s time and increasing the amount of time available to that person. With precisely tailored consideration shown by our side, any amount of time can be given in that way. When I had an alliance with a beverage manufacturer, I did a number of different things to increase the amount of time available to the other people by finding out the locations of vending machines, looking up the locations of new convenience store branches, and so on. As a result, they went ahead with a project that had been stalled, and this had the effect, conversely, of increasing the amount of time available to me. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, we can also use mobile phones and other such devices to send prompt responses, thus saving the other people time.
When I get on an “I’ll e-mail you next week” schedule, I make a point of bring it forward and sending the e-mail on Friday of that week, instead. That way the other person doesn’t have to wait impatiently to see when next week I will write, because the e-mail from me will be there waiting for him first thing on Monday morning. This also relates to not taking up the other person’s time lost to anxiety and uncertainty.
When sending next week’s e-mail messages early, on Friday, became an established practice, I gained another free benefit. My Monday mornings used to be blue because I had to rush around to send my e-mail messages, but now I am in the position of waiting for replies from other people instead. Mondays have become a pleasure as a result.
Just as time is precious to you, it is similarly precious to the other people. The busier people become, the more they hesitate over spending time for somebody else’s benefit. Someone who can graciously use his time anyway will gain credibility with others.

Assign importance to your own likes and dislikes for the very reason that this is your work

Everybody certainly has an equal amount of time, but the time available is limited to 24 hours per day. Under these circumstances, it is natural that we can’t manage to see everyone we would like to meet with. What it comes down to is that we have to figure out how much time we are going to allot to people depending on who they are.
In doing this, I do not pay attention only to business benefits, but also to the person’s wavelength. More specifically, this is my likes and dislikes. Even if the work-related benefits are significant, if I feel that the other person is on a different wavelength that doesn’t match mine, then I will very easily back out. In fact I have done this many times.
The conceptual image of an alliance is that all of us are riding on the same bus. The people allowed on the bus are basically those people who want to work with us. The driver of the bus is you, of course, the leader of the alliance. The engine that keeps driving the bus forward requires feelings of “let’s do something new,” “let’s press ahead toward our objective,” and other such shared agreements, ideas, and relationships of trust.
There are occasions when we sense this intuitively rather than confirming it through language. This is much in the way that insights are said to be crystallizations of experience. The question of whether our sensibilities that are heading in the same direction will be well matched or not is something that will become readily apparent to everyone riding together on your own bus of the alliance, and it becomes more apparent the farther you drive it.

Associate with people with humility and a sense of gratitude

Ultimately, the key to building a network of personal contacts through an alliance is a simple matter: It is humility, straightforwardness, and a sense of gratitude to the other person.
That is to say that an alliance is not a matter of aggressively forcing your own views on the people around you. It develops when you listen receptively to differing opinions with a sense of humility, and evolve those thoughts and ideas in bursts of forward movement. Even if you understand this intellectually, however, it can be surprisingly difficult to put into practice. It might be, for example, that the person who expressed a valuable opinion is a junior colleague or a rival of yours. In that case, most people would reject the opinion, saying that it’s impudent or assuming that nothing that person might say is to be accepted, or something of that sort. It is not uncommon to find the progress of an alliance blocked by such feelings of jealousy, prejudice, and pride.
Where humility is concerned, we also find cases of things not working as we had anticipated, even though we have our own expectations regarding those things. In connection with something we want to accomplish, for example, let us say we invite someone who we are already friendly with, and who is knowledgeable in the field concerned, to join us. As it turns out, however, where we had hoped that person would apply himself more to some particular aspect, he seems to be interested in something else so that he rarely gives his time to the thing we had in mind.
When something like that happens, we would probably feel like complaining to that person or being angry with him. The alliance, however, is not an organization created by force. It is more like a vortex where people who are attracted by what you say gather together of their own volition. The more you try to impose force on that situation, or issue orders, or enforce discipline, the more the vortex of that alliance will grow murky and clogged. Eventually, it will dwindle down to nothing.
This is exactly why things that occur in an alliance should all be left up to the people concerned. That is the proper stance to take. This is so that the way the alliance is developed and the various relationships within the alliance are all left to the volition of the people involved, and within that context you can freely choose how to make your own decisions.
To that end, too, please be grateful above all to all of those people who have agreed to join the alliance. Whatever feelings the other people bring to their involvement, and whatever they think of us, is irrelevant. It is enough that you maintain a sense of gratitude for the fact of the other people’s involvement in our alliance.
You will be able to communicate your feelings of gratitude, whatever form they may take, if you are of a mind to do so. For example, you could invite the other person to some gathering that you intend to hold. If you notice some information that seems likely to be useful to that person, or if you think of somebody who it might be interesting to introduce that person to, then let him know about it right away. Alternatively, even if there is no object or information to mediate your feeling, you might give that person a telephone call when you think of him, or send him an e-mail, or write him a letter, or meet with him. At that point, you can express your feeling of gratitude in whatever way you are able to convey.
The important thing is always to maintain the feeling within yourself of being grateful to the other person.
When you do feel this gratitude, then you will naturally feel like saying thank you when you see the other person, and you will be smiling as though you are truly happy to see him. You will naturally tend to come up with ideas for things to do that would be useful to the other person, and you will become able to realize when some idea might be of benefit to him. A perspective that is not centered on yourself but is rather focused on the other person is actually going to become a power that expands the vortex centered on yourself.
For that purpose, we should make it a regular practice not to use negative expressions and always to choose positive expressions. You will then find that you have transformed, without even noticing it, into someone who receives help from other people and who is visited by opportunity after opportunity.

Chapter 5 Alliance learning methods

An order of magnitude more effective and more fun

Calculate your own value, to see what you need to learn

In Platform and alliance thinking, the goal of studying is an ongoing enhancement of your personal value. To do that, naturally enough, you need indicators for measuring your value.
Those indicators could be either quantitative or anecdotal. Of them, anecdotal indicators rate you simply in terms of actual achievements. That means that it is vital to uncover in detail what you yourself have achieved, no matter how small. For example, one example of an achievement might be, “While working in project finance, I read 10 English dictionaries’ worth of contracts in English in order to draw up an English-language contract.” Another might be, “I blogged for 100 consecutive days,” or “I was praised for cleaning neatly.” Anything can count as an achievement; here major or minor is not an issue.
The question is, rather, whether you can clearly appreciate what your self evaluation means: “What am I able to do?” “What do I want to do?” and “Where am I lacking?”

“I read 10 English dictionaries’ worth of contracts in English in order to draw up an English-language contract.”
Plus: English-language ability
Query: Ability to negotiate a contract?

“I blogged for 100 consecutive days.”
Plus: A minimum level of persistence
Query: Could I turn my ideas into a book?

“I was praised for cleaning neatly.”
Plus: Ability to focus energies properly on the fundamentals
Query: What could I do to improve quality and boost speed?

These questions will, at the least, determine several of your directions. And in the process of examining your own value qualitatively, you are probably beginning to see what sort of alliances you might want to build.

Now, what about that quantitative evaluation? To carry it out, I recommend drawing up your own profit and loss statement.
At first glance, that phrase might suggest some complicated way of looking at the numbers, as in a company’s financial statements. But what I’m suggesting is to try to give numerical values to something pretty simple: “How much am I making for my present company?” and, “How much is the company paying me?” You might also think about the rent on the space that you occupy at your office—just knowing how much real estate you are occupying might well change your attitude towards your work. Are you doing enough work to justify the space you take up? (This is the same way of thinking as calculating yield per hectare for crops.)

Coming up with a figure for how much your are making for your company might not be too hard if you are achieving a certain level of sales on your own. But people who are part of a project team or who are in the accounting or general affairs department of the company may not clearly know what price tag to put on their contributions. In that case, why not try writing your resume—in fact, two resumes, one covering what you have achieved thus far and the other what you plan to achieve from now on. You don’t need to be thinking of changing jobs to benefit from this exercise: taking a look at your past can bring a surprising number of things into focus. Perhaps you have been trying too desperately hard, perhaps you have been too focused on what is right in front of your eyes. One of the new career guidance sites, which offer a free service in which they calculate your market value, might be another way to get a handle on the problem. If you are interested, those sites may give you some useful pointers for drawing up those resumes, too.
What can you put in your resume? What would you like to be able to write about yourself, but can’t? By helping you to see what you have mastered and what you lack, this exercise helps you discover what you yourself need to be studying.

Think out of the box to expand your mental capacity

I myself have learned a great deal from my bosses at work. It is, I suppose, perfectly reasonable to learn from those in positions above us at a company. But many people may say that that their own bosses are not all that wonderful. Aren’t there even better mentors, such as people who write books or give lectures, out there?
Why overlook what your bosses can teach? One reason may be a tendency to define the people around you at work, narrowly and quite arbitrarily, merely as managers and colleagues and fellow employees. Perhaps you cannot quite shed your fixed view of a potential mentor as “That guy who’s always ordering me to do the unpleasant jobs.” You’re wearing blinkers, blinkers that keep you from seeing and making the most of the models at hand that you could actually utilize in your work.

Platform and Alliance thinking means removing your blinkers, giving up seeing the people around you in rigidly defined ways, and taking an objective look at them. When you’re operating from that perspective, there’s so much to learn. You could, for example, learn how to make copies cleanly and quickly from someone working part-time at your company—and you might have a great deal to learn from that manager in another section whom you’d always found intimidating and tended to avoid. If you’ve been avoiding him, he probably senses that you dislike him—your reaction is getting across at an emotional level.
That fellow who’s your boss: there’s a reason for that. He has lots of knowledge and practice in the work you are doing now, simply heaps of experience. I find myself wondering how much you could really learn by listening to someone you don’t know, someone who’s been labeled a “success,” if you can’t learn anything from the mentor standing right beside you.
I’m not saying be pals with your boss. What I am saying is forget about the categories superior and subordinate, step back, and see him in terms of an alliance: you need to acquire expertise, and he has it. You don’t have to be that close to him to learn a great deal from him. In fact, you can learn something from almost anyone. How? Instead of picking up on the disagreeable aspects of another person, look for what she is really great at and learn from that.

How, then, can you learn from those around you? The most effective technique is simply asking for advice. Your boss will, ordinarily, find being asked for advice quite gratifying. Consult with her about things that are going well, of course, but be especially sure to ask her advice quickly when something may be going wrong.
Don’t restrict your requests for advice to your immediate superior, either. Managers in other sections, even the company president can be good to sound out, too. In fact, younger colleagues, part-timers, customers, clients, people you met at some training programs—ask their advice, and they will tell you what they think.
What you hear may not be what you wanted to hear, but that is not a problem. The more people you listen to, the greater variety of views you will hear, and that is in itself quite educational.
For me, asking advice is the root of all my efforts to educate myself. It is, thus, my starting point in building alliances. Asking, “I’m thinking this way, but how does that sound to you?” is the way to expand alliances. If, instead, you make up your mind that “There’s no point in asking his opinion” or instantly reject the answer you receive without even trying to understand it, your thinking will progress no further.
First, try to take on board the other person’s ideas and understand them. When you have done that, define your own ideas and put them into action. That receptivity will vastly expand your mental capacity—and become the key to making great strides yourself.

To enhance your personal brand, first become someone who can do the obvious

Asking advice is a highly effective way to learn. But a precondition for its success is that you yourself must become someone others will turn to for advice. Anyone can give advice, you might think. Think again. If, for example, you don’t finished your assigned task on schedule, if you are always late to work, if you blame your failures on others, then who, with a straight face, would ask you how succeed at work?

At the root of the relationship I am calling an alliance is trust. Think about it: won’t your reaction to the same suggestion vary widely, depending on who made it? If A said it, then it must be true. If that information came from B, better double check it. And if others think of you as unlikely to put your ideas into effect, then, no matter how clever the ideas you come up with, no one is going to want to cooperate with you. Your only option is to demonstrate, day in and day out, through your attitude, that you are trustworthy.

In terms of the standards applied at work, your trustworthiness is, not surprisingly, being gauged in the course of your regular work. That does not mean that you have to pull off spectacular achievements to be regarded positively. For a new employee, even greeting people crisply and correctly can help. Why worry about something as superficial as conventional greetings, you might think, but if someone cannot even get out a proper “Good morning” or “Thank you,” then no matter how much she might have learned about complicated negotiations, negotiations she is conducting will not go well in practice.
Some companies may assign tasks that have nothing to do with the work you were hired for. “New employees have to do the cleaning” is a classic example. Tackling even cleaning by thinking about how to do an efficient, high quality job of it, you will learn something in the process. Even more important, others will get the message: if you worked for all you are worth at cleaning, you’ll probably do other things properly, too. That feeds into a growing awareness that you can be trusted.
Your boss and all the others around you are indeed watching, more carefully than you might think. That’s why no task you undertake is a waste of time.

Through each of those ordinary, basic actions, you build up your own reputation, your evaluation as person. Demonstrating again and again your determination and commitment, even in small ways, will naturally build up others’ recognition of you as “Someone I’d like to work with”—and, little by little, you will be moving closer to the work you really want to do or the department that really interests you.
Alliances can make a dream that seemed out of reach into a reality, but not over night. It takes your own attitudes and efforts, day by day, to attract alliances.

Confidence multiplies the effects of study and builds up people, too

The best shortcut to enhancing your own value is to develop at least one area in which you are the expert bar none.
When I was at DoCoMo, I had my subordinates study so that they could build their own areas of unchallengeable expertise. “You’re the engineer, so study up on the technology in the FeliCa non-contact IC card,” or “With your background in economics, I’d like you to learn about e-commerce.” Making sure that each was willing and eager to tackle the assigned subject matter, I allocated a specific area of study to each.
In doing so, I made a point of never handing my subordinates the usual “Give it your best” send off. Instead, I framed it as, “Let’s all do our best.” Why? Because we were all trying to master new subject matter—and that is what made this alliance-through-learning technique so effective.
The upshot was that when someone wanted to know more about FeliCa, I could say, “Ask him,” and our new FeliCa expert would give a lecture.
Sometimes it would even be a fairly new employee in my department who would unveil the results of his studies in front of a client’s senior executives, watching them as they listened carefully, nodded, and took it all in. That was a tremendous source of confidence for the person sharing his knowledge. And the effects did not stop there. After all, we learn most by teaching others. Such achievements spur our people on to acting on their own to reach the next level, actively deciding what they would study next.

I’d like to share another story having to do with self confidence. When I was at the Industrial Bank of Japan, I hoped for a position where I could use my English. But the first department I was assigned to after I was hired was not one that fitted my hopes.
What I did, along with constantly reminding the human resources department that I do speak English, was to do the work set before me as well as I possibly could. The result, in my third year at the bank, was the assignment that I wanted, at last.
My English-language skills have been an asset for me, but acquiring them has not been a piece of cake. As my first name, Carl, suggests, I was born in America. As a small child going back and forth between Japan and America, I could not speak either Japanese or English properly for a time.
Back then, there was no school for Japanese nationals; in fact, there were almost no other Japanese. I thus went to the local public school, where I encountered prejudice against Japanese. I was also teased: “Your name’s Carl, so how come you can’t speak English?” Young as I was, I found it extremely upsetting to be only halfway competent in both Japanese and English.
What saved me was the piano. My elder sister was studying the piano, and I started having piano lessons with her. Then I entered a competition and by some stroke of luck finished second. That gave me the confidence to believe that if I really tried hard, I could overcome the language barrier and make something of myself. It helped that my friends took note of my success at the piano, too. So from then on I got up every morning at six and studied both English and Japanese for all I was worth.
It’s said that if you can excel at one subject at school—Japanese, physical education, art, whatever - you’ll be able to handle all the others, too. It’s the same in the business world. If you can do one thing—no matter how small—well, then you’ll have confidence in yourself, and the way others see you will change completely, too. Start by deciding on the point you want to build up, something you like doing and are good at, focus on it, and learn more. If you can’t see what your forte should be yet, just do the work set before you for all you are worth. It really matters.

Focus on basic concepts, set a time and place, for study that’s much more fun

Once I’ve decided to study something, I tend to throw myself into it, heart and soul. For example, back when I was at the Industrial Bank of Japan, I came up with the idea of learning about nonperforming loans, a subject that I needed to know about in my work anyway. That meant that I needed legal knowledge, but, even taking a correspondence course, I wasn’t really getting what the laws really meant and was just becoming more confused. I even tried memorizing laws, but I’d forget them immediately, and the whole thing was so boring, I’d nod off.
After thrashing about quite a bit, I decided to start over and study law from the very basics. Luckily, my brother-in-law is a lawyer and was able to give me some advice. Also, a bar examination fame had just opened his bar exam prep school, and cassette tapes for studying for the bar exam had gone on sale. I spend almost my entire bonus on a set of those tapes.
The material to be mastered for the bar exam covers a wide range—civil law, criminal law, constitutional law, litigation. For the purposes of my work, I probably did not need to master constitutional law, for example, but studying the basic rules for drawing up laws, the concepts behind them, what the purport of legislation is, why each of those provisions is included, studying the basic concepts made the law extremely interesting.
If you understand the reason why a law exists, the background, and the basic rules, then you can come up with a far more effective solution without tediously memorizing detailed provisions, even though the circumstances may be complicated. That’s true of corporate management, too: if you have a solid grasp of the basic concepts, you can make decisions about all sorts of issues swiftly. It’s the same principle.
With the right starting point—the basic concepts—and an overview of the whole, a subject that had made no sense to me became fascinating, and even fun.

In addition to starting from the basic concepts, it’s important to think about place. If you can find a place where it is easy for you to study, and to concentrate on studying, you will make more progress and also squeeze out more study time.
What about the time you spend commuting, for example? They say we each spend about five years of our lives riding on commuter trains or lined up waiting for them. You can’t cut your commuting time. Whether you use that time effectively or waste it, though, is up to you; and how you use it can make a big difference in your life.
It was my brother-in-law, who is now a lawyer, who had the idea of turning his commuting time into something useful. Back when he was working at a bank, he decided to study for the bar exam by riding the Yamanote Line around Tokyo early in the morning.
His job at the bank meant long hours, from early morning to late at night. But he decided to get up early to catch an earlier train than he needed to and spend about hour each morning studying on the then-empty Yamanote Line train while the train made a full circuits around the city. Then he would go to work.
Actually, back in my busy days at the bank, I used not only my commuting time but also my sleep for studying. Studying while sleeping is not at all complicated. I just put on my law cassette and listened to it while falling asleep.
If asked for the scientific basis for the effectiveness of learning while sleeping, I might not be able to come up with a reasoned argument, but the upshot was that in my relative brief sleeping time I managed to learn as much law as you’d learn at a university’s law department, so that I could have a conversation on an equal footing with a lawyer. I have since put that experience to good use in tense business negotiations and many other ways.

When studying something, I always set an objective that means something to me personally and a time frame for achieving that objective, even if it’s an artificial one. It’s good to have a specific objective and an opportunity to check your progress towards a goal you can reach in six months - if we are talking English, aiming for a certain score on the TOEFL or being ready for a trip overseas, for example.
Setting a vague objective with no specific deadline for its achievement—It would be nice to have foreigners as friends someday”—encourages slacking off from study. Another counterproductive step is to avoid taking the exam by telling yourself, “Well, I haven’t studied much yet, so I’ll wait until I’ve got more under my belt.” Procrastination means you’ll never gain that mastery.
A situation where you must put what you have learned into practice, output it, whether an exam or a trip overseas, makes clear what you need to input. And regularly outputting the results of your study enables you to check your progress. That also helps you increase your motivation, to move on to the next milestone. And that is the secret of sustaining study in the long run.

Alliances—a series of opportunities to study

“Study”: to many people, that means going to school or reading books, deliberately trying to pack your head with information. Formal classes and reading books can be effective methods of study, to some extent, but I am keenly aware that for learning related to work, nothing beats learning by doing for both efficiency and effectiveness.

Starting with a specific goal, working hard to achieve it, and going to school in friendly rivalry with friends or colleagues who have shared targets is in itself meaningful. But the pattern of study for the sake of study to which we are so prone is meaningless in the working world.
Of course, books on business do contain lots of useful information, and reading them can increase your motivation. But by far the most important thing is, after you’ve read the book, how you find your own way to put it into practice. You cannot just put knowledge into your head; you have to digest it yourself and put it to use in order to call it your own.
That is why the most efficient and effective way to study is through an encounter with another human being, for that increases your opportunities to learn by doing.
Here, too, working in terms of alliances will increase your opportunities for contact with other people and thus your opportunities for learning by doing.

I think of each meeting with a new person as, in a sense, fated. But that destined connection is not something that someone will serve up for you on his own. You grasp that connection yourself only because you yourself lift up your antennae and transmit information, your determination, to the other.
For example, imagine two ways of looking at the same scene. In one, you are thinking about how many houses with red roofs are in it as you look at it. In the other case, you are vaguely looking at the scene, not particularly aware of anything, and there happen to be some red roofs. Please imagine both experiences.
In each case, visually speaking, you are looking at houses with red roofs, but how they appear will change radically depending on your own mindset. If you are, as in the first case, thinking about how many red roofs there are, you may discover not just red but blue and yellow roofs. The latter case may be just fine if you are simply spacing out to relax, but if you were trying to retain something from what you saw, you’d probably find that you did not even have a recollection of whether there were any red roofs.
The same applies when meeting other people. If your antennae are not on the alert when you are meeting others, you will fail to notice the opportunity for a valuable alliance and just pass on by.

My meeting with Dr. Andrei Hagiu of the Harvard Business School, with whom I jointly created the consulting company I now manage, was one such fateful encounter.
Dr. Hagiu came to Japan to conduct interviews about the Osaifu-Keitai to use as course materials at the Harvard Business School. I was one of many people whom he asked to interview. At the time, I was wildly busy, with a dozen or so conferences and interviews a month, but I managed to make 30 minutes in the afternoon available for Dr. Hagiu.
And then, with the interview with Dr. Hagiu, I made a host of new discoveries. One was that, at merely 26, he was the youngest assistant professor at Harvard Business School and now Associate Professor. Another was that he was thrilled by the idea of the Osaifu-Keitai and passionately explained to me why the idea had so much international significance.
His keenly honed questions gave me an opportunity to reflect objectively upon the work that I was doing. In the process, I found myself understanding at last what Managing Director at the Industrial Bank of Japan, had meant by not getting so you “Can’t see the forest for the trees.”
Dr. Hagiu was passionately enthusiastic about making the Osaifu-Keitai into a case study to be used at Harvard. I couldn’t resist his excitement and, not having time that day, worked by email with him to develop the case study and his papers.
Meeting Dr. Hagiu might seem like a happy accident, but if I myself had not been giving lectures about the Osaifu-Keitai all over the place, he would not have wanted to interview me. And if I had not been interested in the theoretical framework behind such Internet-related business as Google or the Rakuten online retailing site, I would have treated the interview as a trivial chore.
Several years later, I joined Market Platform Dynamics in Boston as Senior Advisor and he and I  founded NetStrategy, Inc., a Strategic consulting firm in Japn together. It was because I myself was aware of my interests and transmitted that fact to him that this fateful encounter came about.

The ultimate objective of study is to master “people power”

A human being is a creature who grows and develops upon finding his own area of special ability, gaining confidence, and being recognized by others. To grow, we master one thing and then move on to another. When we master that, we move on to the next, making constant progress. That is the true goal of the alliance approach to learning.
The knowledge that matters in our work is never an isolated skill or piece of information; mastering it is nothing like studying for exams, where we can say, “Here is the answer to this problem.” Moreover, we now live in an environment in which the world, and technologies, are changing second by second, and so is the knowledge required of us. At the end of the day, what we need to master is an output-oriented methodology that makes us grow, no matter what sort of situation we face. Studying is only one of our options, to be chosen as the occasion dictates.

In Japan, indicators such as total sales or total market capitalization are widely used to rank corporations. In Europe and America, the ranking that matters is that of “the most respected company.” That goes for people, too. The person who has acquired all sorts of knowledge and ends up being useful to the company is the most highly respected.
What we should learn, when it comes down to it, is not knowledge or skills but “human power,” the ability to attract others. That is why learning from others is the cornerstone of the alliance approach to learning.

Total user orientation gives rise to services that customers truly want

I myself have met and had the opportunity to learn from so many stellar people. I’ve been very fortunate in the people I have met. But I think it was my boss at the Industrial Bank of Japan, whom I have already mentioned, DoCoMo, with whom I worked side by side for seven and a half years, and Keiichi Enoki, who was then the director in charge of i-mode as a whole at DoCoMo, who taught me the essence of work.

One statement that taught me the essence of management

What I learned from Keiichi Enoki was, above all, a way of people-oriented thinking and a way of questioning what management is. The idea of alliances that I am introducing in this book is itself, come to think about it, something that I largely learned from Enoki.
Enoki was recruited from the Tochigi branch of NTT DoCoMo for what became the i-mode project when the company president, Koji Ohboshi, said, “Let’s do something new.” Enoki then assembled his own team of eccentric geniuses through his own network of friends and acquaintances. The bedrock of his leadership was his steadfast way of thinking about other people. I had a particularly good chance to learn that from him in a joint project with a foreign firm.

The joint project was originally a proposal that had been recommended by the international business section at NTT DoCoMo, but because the service would be provided in connection with i-mode, the management of the project was moved to the i-mode team. Unfortunately, as we realized, the project had little hope of further development.
Finally, the i-mode team  reached the conclusion that the project should be disbanded. At that point, I was assigned to negotiate with the foreign firm. At the Industrial Bank of Japan, I had had many years of experience in tough negotiations with companies overseas, but these negotiations took a direction that was quite unexpected, even given all my experience.
As the result of our discussions, I managed to get the other party to agree, somehow or other, to disbanding the project itself, but they refused to include a clause exempting the president of the project from legal liability in the final contract. In similar joint projects with overseas projects, particularly when a project was disbanded or dissolved, we would draw up contracts detailing each of the various agreements, and they always included what is known as an “escape clause,” stating that the parties involved would not be held liable and taken to court afterwards.
But in this case, the other company utterly refused to include an escape clause. They wanted to leave open the possibility of suing the president as an individual over his responsibilities as president.
The company president in question was an extremely capable person who had been recruited from outside for the position, and there was no question that the project’s failure was solely his fault. But the foreign company apparently wanted to make it clear where to assign blame.

As we were negotiating, news of the project’s dissolution was leaked to one of the newspapers. That put me in a real pickle. Nothing had been settled, and having a story like that in the paper put me at an extremely disadvantageous position with the other company. At DoCoMo, people kept telling me to wind up the negotiations quickly. The PR department was reminding me, every day, that from an investor relations point of view, they needed to release a clear statement soon. “When is the contract signing?” they kept asking.
It was in that context that the date for the signing was set before both parties had reached agreement on what would actually be in the contract. The contract was to be signed at 8:30 a.m. on a certain day in December, just before Christmas. The situation was tense: time was very short, but we could not agree to the contract unless the escape clause was in it.
I spent almost every hour of the week before the signing, almost without sleep, negotiating with the other company. But at 2 a.m. on the morning of the signing ceremony, I was at my wit’s end, unable to make any progress. It was then that I telephoned Enoki at home.
“There might be some chance that they will sue the president, but we have reached a compromise on every other point in dispute. The story’s been leaked to the newspapers, and the signing ceremony is just six hours away. Could we compromise on the escape clause?”
“Absolutely not!” Enoki replied.
Acutely aware of the time pressure I was under, at those words, I felt a bit faint. But then Enoki went on to say, “Even if the negotiations are broken off and they sue DoCoMo, we’ll just have to cope. It is absolutely out of the question to let the president as an individual be dragged into this. That could destroy his life. No matter how much a suit might hurt DoCoMo’s reputation, we have to protect that individual’s life. I will take full responsibility; you tell the other side that this is our position.”
“I see, I’ll tell them that.”

I immediately wrote an email message to the other party saying that we could not accept their demand and that DoCoMo was breaking off the negotiations. Totally exhausted physically and mentally, I fell asleep. At 7 a.m. that morning, still passed out in front of my computer, I heard the notice announcing the arrival of an e-mail message.

It said, “Agreed.” They had accepted our conditions. With tears in my eyes, I telephoned Enoki to report. And at 8:30 a.m., the contract signing to dissolve the project went off on schedule.

That was a week in hell for me, but it was also an extremely important experience: it taught me that the value of an individual human life is more important than anything else.
When Enoki laid down the law, he freed me from all the negative emotions I had been trapped in. I felt that I would do anything, no matter how difficult, for him. I was not alone in my respect for him. When Enoki left the i-mode division, hundreds of people rushed to attend his farewell party.
What Enoki taught me was that any organization is made up of people. That critically important lesson taught me the essence of management. I learned, above all, what it means to live on the principle of valuing individual human beings.
To me, study means not acquiring mere knowledge or qualifications but, through working with magnificent human beings like Enoki, learning their ways of thinking, their values, and their ways of life.

Targets to expand your own potential don’t need limits or back calculations

My late father was a professor at a medical school, and my older sister also teaches at a university. Because of my family environment, I was taught from early childhood that nothing was better than being a university professor. Thus, when I graduated and found a job at the bank, my father was extremely disappointed. To him, going on to graduate school was the only possible choice. As I then moved to NTT DoCoMo and then set up my own company, I expect that up in heaven he has gone past anger to totally giving up on me.
But, after quite a few twists and turns, I have ended up teaching as Professor at Business Breakthrough University hosted by Kennichi Ohmae, world famous guru in Japan and the United States. No one would have predicted that back when I was at the bank or at DoCoMo, but, what it comes down to is: that I made this happen because I made up my mind to.
Many people study to reach a certain objective or build a personal network they need to achieve certain goals. But the bedrock of the alliances I am talking about is not a world of a scope that can be imagined by calculating back from a restricted set of objectives. The very act of studying and of building a personal network causes the objectives themselves to change, to broaden, to evolve, in a world of great promise. The times demand people who can execute right-brain ideas in a left-brain manner.
If you continue to study, your objectives, your dreams will gradually change. If you set limits on yourself, then your growth stops there.

After grasping the platform and alliance method, I was influenced by many people and stimulated by a variety of value systems. As a result, what has happened to me has far exceeded my expectations, and I live each day in happy anticipation of what is to come. Who knows, tomorrow I might find myself cut adrift, but it’s the unexpectedness that makes living so exciting.
Everything about yourself as a human being, your existence, your life, what you do, is the sum total of the decisions that you yourself have made, day by day, since you were born. Have the confidence and the courage to continue to follow your chosen path.

Chapter 6 Platform and Alliance career enhancement skills

How to have a career that exceeds your wildest expectations

There are reasons for repeated failure

The platform and alliance approach means freeing yourself from fixed opinions and asking for help. When I realized that, I became able to face problems by relaxing and adopting a more natural stance, a perspective from which I could say, “We only live once; I need to challenge my own beliefs.”
When I stopped trying to handle everything myself and began to believe in other possibilities, work became more enjoyable. As a result, not just my career and income but my whole life became better than I had ever imagined.

Before that happened, however, the old me had experienced a series of defeats and disappointments.
First, I was often teased because, even though I was born in America and given the name Carl, I couldn’t speak English. After joining the Industrial Bank of Japan, I thought they would never assign me to the sections I wanted. At DoCoMo, I was promoted to section chief—with only one subordinate. Somehow, though, we managed to start up a new business from zero. But all the credit card companies initially showed us to the door when we tried to enlist their participation in our Osaifu-Keitai (“mobile wallet”) credit service.
Things never went exactly as I’d hoped; feeling down, I couldn’t stop pouring pressure on myself. I think I have got to where I am now by desperately forging ahead when given second chances.

My message to you, however, is not “Work yourself to death, trying hard is all important.” What I learned from my repeated failures was that in each and every case, the reason for failure was my clinging to my own fixed ideas.
What lay behind the failures was my being too attached to my own fixed ideas. Thus, I was always gripped by anxieties: “I won’t be able to do this,” “This seems too risky,” “Nobody has ever done this before,” “What will happen if I fail?”
When I was in that state, what would I have seen if I’d tried to take a step back to see myself as others saw me? Is there anyone who wants to work with somebody who says, “No matter what I do, it’s a waste of time” or “I’m trying so hard; why is it that things never go right?”
When you worry and struggle and take too much on all the time, you lose your freedom of movement. And not only your own freedom of movement: you build walls around you that make you unapproachable to the people around you.
That is when you need to know that, “Two heads, three heads, the more the merrier, many people thinking about a project is better than one.” If, instead of constantly pushing yourself to struggle on alone, you proactively seek help from others, both you and those around you will be happier.
Work for your own sake, no matter how hard, and the result will please only you. In business and all of life, those who share both the burdens and the rewards are much, much happier.

When you make yourself the platform, your world expands

Look around: too many of us think only of ourselves. I was no exception. For example, I often meet people who want to found high-tech startup companies or launch their own new businesses. The fiercely ambitious people with that goal include many outstanding individuals with specialized knowledge or skills.
When you talk with them, however, you discover that the ones who have a hard time are almost always those who want all the profits for themselves and thus are unable to recruit allies well.

When you have thought up something new, it is only natural to want to use it to make money for yourself. Everyone works for himself and expects to benefit from his own efforts; anything else would be meaningless. It doesn’t matter, however, how outstanding the idea or technology is if nobody else in the world needs it. Pursuing it then amounts to nothing more indulging in pointless self-satisfaction.

With an alliance perspective, though, what you say instead is, “We have this technology or this idea and would like to do this with it. Won’t you join with us in thinking about what to do?” As you talk with as many people as possible, your world expands. The more the number of people who identify with your goals increases, the greater the demand for what you want to do grows.
What you mustn’t forget, however, is this: What the people who identify with the technology or idea, the people who are drawn to it, want is what lies behind the idea or technology, a sense of direction that answers the question, “How will this improve people’s lives?”

Whenever a new business starts up, it is always possible that rivals will turn up with the same kind of business or that the start-up company’s idea will be stolen by a big corporation.
There are, however, no companies that flourish perpetually just by keeping on doing the same thing. The important thing is not to be stuck in one’s own box, to have a sense of urgency, and, however big the business becomes, to keep moving ahead, always.
How, then, can you learn to think outside your box? When you ally yourself with other people, your small world grows larger. You must always be thinking, “Who can I band together with to take this new idea of mine and make it bigger?” To advance your own career, you need to make yourself a launch pad, a platform where new ideas are shared and nourished. That is the shortcut to success.

Don’t be trapped in someone else’s framework, and make decisions based on your own criteria

What kind of career can you envision if you approach your work with this mind set? Because of my career, with my involvement in i-mode and the Osaifu-Keitai, recently people tend to think of me as a physical science type working in the IT field. My university degree, however, was iUniversity of Tokyo in economics. And, as I said at the start of this book, when I joined DoCoMo, I was totally ignorant about technology. I was a complete novice. But, ignorant as I was, I found myself involved in all sorts of projects, and that taught me something.
What I learned was that the issue wasn’t whether I understood all the technical details, but rather whether I understood what the technology made possible and whether the services that utilized it really fit people’s needs.

Imagine that you majored in one of the physical sciences at university. That means that, by and large, you have had two years of specialized study in your field. Someone else could study for 30 minutes or an hour a day after finding a corporate job and, before you know it, catch up with you. Technology is always advancing. If you graduated from a faculty of engineering 20 years ago, that in itself means nothing today. That is why obsessing about whether someone is a scientist or a humanist is nothing more than acting in terms of fixed ideas.
When I was working at the bank, one of the senior executives, who was about 50, was fascinated by China. He began to study Chinese on his own, starting from scratch, and after two or three years, he was fluent. Of course, he had worked terribly hard to do that. But what his achievement teaches is that, remarkably hard as it is to perceive it in the face of our “Oh, no, that’s impossible” thinking, we are all full of potential, bursting with the ability to do things.

How many of the people who have thought, for example, “I’d like to become a mystery novel writer, but it’s just not possible” have managed to write just one novel and taken it to a publisher or released it on a blog?
Want to become a composer? Yes, you can. But, of course, I am not irresponsibly promising you that you can, no matter what. I am talking, instead, about your talking to other people about what you would like to do or what you have. That is where building alliances begins.
By transforming wishes into actions, I can say with confidence, something new will start stirring in your life.
At the end of the day, the biggest reason why we think, “That’s impossible” is because we’ve never tried. So long as we are constantly coming up with new options, the possibilities are endless.

As long as you proceed knowing your own values, you can be a winner

When we were small, the values imposed on us dictated that we had to get into a good school. As we went on to high school and college the message changed to, “You have to get into a good company,” to which we then added another, “You have be a winner, even if that means pushing other people aside.”

According to magazines reporting data on business people, almost no one is satisfied with his or her current salary. We look at the people beside us and worry about whether our salaries are higher or lower than theirs. And that means we tell ourselves that we have to become one of those earning even more. Higher sales, better jobs, greater results...these define the direction in which our lives are pointed.

Many of my friends are multimillionaires. They have plenty of money to do whatever they like, but they still want more. They see someone who has a second home ten times bigger than theirs and, always comparing themselves to others, they are driven to aim even higher. They likely wouldn’t be satisfied until they surpass Warren Buffet, the world’s richest man (even though Warren Buffet gives 99% of his assets to charity).
From a macro perspective, too, the quest to improve short-term profitability is increasingly driving people, with top tier listed companies announcing their quarterly results.
This is not the cooperation and co-existence that alliances require, but rather a set of values that views the business world and all of human life as constant competition. These people are totally infected by what you might call U.S.-style capitalism. Is that, however, a happy way to spend the human life we only live once? When I left the bank to join DoCoMo, my salary dropped by three million yen.
Lots of people said to me, “Wouldn’t you have been wiser not to quit?” But I never doubted my choice. What I was aiming at was something other than the money and position that public opinion calls being a winner.
More money and a promotion are not, of course, bad things in themselves. If, however, you sell all your time to the company, money and moving up in that company are all that you will ever receive in return.
The fact is that there are too many people who believe that, “If I leave this company, there is nothing else I can do.” On the other hand, I also hear that many, would-be job changers earn the interviewer’s laughter by asserting, “I can be a department head.”

Of course, our values, our concepts of happiness differ from one person to another. Some want to be rich; some want to achieve a dream; some want to contribute to society. Values come in many forms.
The critical question is whether the values that have been formed inside you truly reflect what you yourself want. Take a good look at yourself: what is the direction in which you truly want to go?
On reflection, what I found in my own case was that more than salary, what I wanted from my career was to make a reality of something that I had imagined, work that was meaningful to me, work through which society would be enriched. That is why, instead of staying with the bank, I chose to become involved with cell phones, to which I owed so much for being able to stay in contact with my mother while she was hospitalized.

With regular maintenance of your own orientation, money and career will follow

How about thinking about your own personal values from a global perspective? To stay forever on the same set of tracks is, no question about it, safe and secure. That’s no problem if they always point in the direction you want to go, but there’s no guarantee of that. Your environment may be pulling you in another direction.
That is why I take time for regular maintenance, reviewing and reassessing the environment that surrounds me, what I am thinking, and what I want to accomplish. I ask myself, “Am I achieving what I’ve hoped for?” And when I can’t see the answer, it’s time to act on the alliance concept and talk over what is bothering me with others.

When I was thinking about going out on my own, many opposed the idea. But two agreed with me and gave me the green light. One of them was Takayuki Kamikura, CEO of Imagineer Co., Ltd. Formerly at the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, he now heads a company that is listed on the stock exchange and is continuing to make even greater leaps forward. The other was a lawyer, Kenji Kuroda, Japan’s top authority on Chinese law. Kuroda, setting out on his own, has founded and grown his own large law firm.
I got to know them in the course of business while I was at IBJ and later at DoCoMo. Now our relationship includes much more than business: they have had a great influence on my life as a whole. To me these are two of my most important alliances. If I’d chosen whom to associate on business grounds or because I could or could not make money through the connection, though, I doubt I would ever have happened to meet them.
At any rate, my discussions with these two allies stimulated my thinking. What occurred to me was that in today’s world, we never know when a company will go bankrupt, be acquired by another firm, or undergo a merger. That is a risk that would be hard to avoid with nothing but my own powers as a single individual to rely on. With so many imponderables that can affect our careers, I realized that I had to think outside the boxes of company and job to form alliances with all sorts of people, to increase my own value.

In my case, the result of becoming independent is not a income equal to that I earned at the bank or DoCoMo, but instead one several times greater. But that’s not important.
I realized that, while working at the bank and at DoCoMo, I had long been interested in creating a new company. I realized, too, that I shared the goal passed onto me by my father, a university professor, of teaching at a university. Another part of me wanted to write a book.
I was afraid of losing both emotional and financial stability if I veered off the track I was on. As, however, I looked more closely at myself, I realized that the things I imagined were attainable if I accepted the twists and turns and the amount of time they would require. And then I would truly enjoy the work I would be doing, the greatest reward of all.
We live in the now, in the present. Shouldn’t you, too, be taking up the challenge of doing something that makes you happy, something in which you truly believe, something that only you can do, in these hours of your life? After all, it is your life. Only you can decide how to live it.

Techniques for changing jobs, enhancing your career, building new paths, and increasing your value many times over

Now that yesterday’s lifetime employment system has collapsed, many people, including my readers, are considering changing jobs.
Please don’t misunderstand what I have said so far. I am not saying that the alliance concept entails urging you to change jobs or start your own business. If, however, in addition to your desire to quit your current company, there is no one you can respect in the people senior to you or the management team and if personal growth is impossible there, you might want to consider changing jobs, not matter how good your current salary is.
Conversely, even if your salary is low, if you sincerely believe that there are people or a management team that you respect or that the situation offers you the possibility of personal growth, then I’d think there is no need for you to search actively for a new job. Why? Because if these two conditions are in place, my experience tells me that a higher income will surely come your way.

That said, if what is moving you to consider a job change are negative factors—you find your work uninteresting, you hate your boss, you don’t get along with your co-workers - then don’t expect improvement. You’ll only encounter negative opportunities. In fact, in most cases, you will encounter the same problems at the next company you join.
If you find your work uninteresting, ask yourself why. Does that have something to do with your own behavior, attitudes or thinking? Take a good look at yourself. Have you acted or spoken in a way or delivered the kind of results that make people appreciate you or want to work with you?
What, then, should you do? First, try forming alliances that you yourself find interesting. If you hate your boss or co-workers, you don’t have to do the impossible and try to make yourself like them. Instead, try forming alliances with people you do like in your company. You may find yourself forming a network and environment unlike any that you have experienced before. To me, that is the first move to take, rather than starting to look for a new job.

For people who do want to quit their current companies, the most futile thing to do is to waste precious time moaning and groaning all by themselves. They need to be talking with people outside the company, people senior to them that they can trust, people who are their friends. You need to recognize that working on while consumed by gloom and despair poses a great risk both to your company and to you yourself.

By talking things over with people, you can expand your alliances. The wider your human network, the more likely you are to attract work. That could be a side business that starts when someone asks you to do something for them, or it could be your being headhunted—”Wouldn’t you like to join us?”—for a position at another company. Whether or not you accept is a separate issue. What is certain is that opportunities will increase.
Most of my current work comes from people who have been introduced to me or have heard me give a talk. Introductions have led to my serving as an advisor to various companies, to opening my own office, and, in fact, to writing this book. It all came through introductions that resulted from alliances.
But perhaps you are a young person, new to your company, and you have no one who could help you find work. As you broaden your alliances, however, you will connect with that key person, and everyone in your network of alliances, including yourself, will grow.
The more than you strengthen your alliances, the more your career will advance and your opportunities increase. The networks cultivated through alliances become clearly more powerful resources than any formal qualifications or achievements you might boast. Your allies in enhancing your career are those who have earned to trust you through the alliances that you have formed, not your company as such.

When you change, your environment and the people around you naturally change as well

To advance our careers, we are always thinking about being recognized and appreciated by those around us, whether in our own or other companies. That is why we always aim to increase our own value and improve our skills. That recognition is, indeed, important, but we must not forget, in forming alliances to further our careers, that we need to think more about, “How can I make others feel appreciated?” instead of, “Will they appreciate me?”
People who are motivated only by how well they themselves are regarded will feel extremely dissatisfied if others do not appreciate them. But it works both ways. If you do not recognize others’ strengths, they will not appreciate yours. Unless you correct that in yourself, you’ll have a hard time becoming the kind of person that lots of others appreciate.
Those who have trouble getting ahead are often those who think only about getting what they want. They lack the ability to think of others.
That is why I often share work with others. Say a job has come to me. If I judge that someone else could do it, I’ll suggest, “How about doing this together?” and split the profit fifty-fifty.

When a big project comes in, I assemble a group of people I trust and do the work together as much as possible. By recognizing others’ abilities and sharing what we earn, I create new opportunities to form alliances.
In doing so, I can go beyond just working for my own benefit to making myself useful to many other people. Conversely, if I tried to monopolize the work for myself, I would break these ties. These people would be unlikely to want to work with me again.

People who help others are people that others help. That is why it is better, instead of always thinking, “What’s in this for me?” to be thinking, “What will this accomplish for those around me?” The reality is that thinking of others is the quickest way to success for yourself.
As alliances proliferate, so do opportunities. Then, since you are able to tap into other people’s alliances, the opportunities expand exponentially.
Isn’t that, when you stop to think about it, a truly extraordinary thing?
Extraordinary, yes, but everyone has plenty of potential to experience its effects.
Being helped by others who have the abilities and skills you may lack to achieve a common goal is the bedrock of business alliance skills.
All you need is to make a slight change in how you look at things. Instead of trying to change those around you, focus instead on changing your own mind set. Through that process, you can discover what you truly want to do. And, I think, the person who can make what they want to do a reality is the happiest person on earth.

If you broaden your alliances, you may find one day that I have joined them. We have an alliance now through this book, but I hope that we can actually meet one day and exchange ideas.
The more of us who put alliance thinking into practice, the more our dreams will be realized. With the people of Japan and people all over the world helping each other, we can achieve our own happiness.
It is with this stupendous hope for a better future that I bring this book to a close. Thank you for reading it.

In Conclusion

First, let me thank you again for reading this book all the way to the end.

Platform and Alliance thinking requires (1) knowing yourself, (2) communicating your thoughts and feelings, (3) knowing the other, and (4) empathizing with the other’s feelings. Through these four steps we can, I believe, find a new self.
Through our encounters with many different kinds of people, things sometimes may not go as we had thought they would. But that process can lead to self discovery—discovery of a self that transcends our own imaginings.

I was asked if I wouldn’t write a book while I was still at DoCoMo. Because, however, I wanted to write about true inside story in DoCoMo and my own experiences in my own way, I decided to wait until I was independent to write it.

What made me want to write a book was the publication of Path of a Mother of Returnee Children (Kindaibungeisha), by Rieko Hirano, my mother. She had completed the manuscript before her death, and my late father edited it and had it published. Although it came out over thirteen years ago, it seems to continue to sell. I have heard that, thanks to word of mouth, it can be found in Japanese schools overseas and in libraries.
It seemed to me at the time that if I wrote a book, even after I was gone from this world, some people might read and be encouraged it. That would be a wonderful thing.
My mother’s book is a documentary, and, as a member of her family, I am a bit hesitant to talk about it; it is a bit embarrassing. It begins in 1955, when she and her children boarded a propeller-driven airplane to follow our father, who had gone to the United States to teach at a university. Still, back then the number of Japanese who traveled to the United States was, in fact, very small.
The cultural differences, linguistic barriers and other obstacles Japanese living overseas faced then are hardly imaginable today. My mother wrote about the everyday life of our family as, drawing on our family ties, we joyfully overcame all those difficulties.
People who read her book have posted their responses on book-related websites. My hope is that my book will also contribute, as my mother’s has, to a richer and more enjoyable life for those who read it. If, decades from now, someone reads it and finds him or herself energized, I can’t imagine how I could be happier.

Last but not least, I would like to list my personal credo for achieving Platform and Alliance thinking which I hope will benefit for you all.

1 set your goal and writes it at wall
2.acquire the business manners
3.make networks in various industries.
4.become network type man.
5.polish "Power to tell".
6.your have to be rolled before others roll you
7. provide needed information from you first rather than taking information from others
8. admit, and satisfy others's demand at first
9.believe the person.
10 don’t hesitate to reveal your weakness to others
11.Let's go directly to meet with person a few minutes instead of just sending 100 emails
12.consider  feelings of others
13.put  "Only you  feeling" to you e-mail.
14.don’t speak ill of others even if others do
15.polish the networks by the business scene in daily life.
16.E-mail to the person whom wants to be met again .
17 scatter the seed of networks in one's twenties, and bear fruit in one's thirties.
18.hear a surrounding reputation but not affected by them, and trust yourself
19.associate with the person who has morality
20.host a small party to make your own platform and making alliance with peoples
21.cross real and virtual, that is, meet  in person whom you find interesting at Facebook
22.have lunch meeting at guest’s near place
23.arrive office ten minutes earlier in the morning and greet others
24.become a person who can apologize honestly
25.look for another side of a person you are not good at communicating with
26.enjoy others’ envy to you as you are already winner to him or her
27.pile a small success every day
28.make your boss and subordinates success
29.move for satisfactory of others first
30.respect others who you are negotiating with
31.share your knowledge at your office around you
32.see yourself  by objective eyes.
33.Let's challenge your dream which seems a little difficulty.
34.Be the chairperson of the event.
35 shorten the time of the internal meeting by prior preparation
36.put yourself  on the place where the person you can respect.
37 be  professional
38.Don’t make efforts by yourself
39 try to receive trust from others
40 make your own Platform

In closing, I must once again extend my heartfelt thanks to all of the people who worked with me without whom this book would not have been possible.

I wrote 6 books so far in Japan and most of them were ranked No1 in Amazon Japan bestselling ranking but this book is originated for US people for my love to USA as my birth place.

From my home in Hongo, Bunkyo , Tokyo, Japan
July 2011
Carl Atsushi Hirano
Professor, BBT Univesity