Who reads Rules (Lessons from Japan Part 2)

My mother, known lovingly as Janice and beloved by all, had a tendancy to give me novelty gifts (often duplicated for all siblings) that have included but not limited too, parfet sundae glasses (to which I reacted 'a vase') and an indoor badminton kit (having never expressed nor played badminton ever) which all the same when it comes to gift giving, it truly is the thought that counts and above all its these seemingly useless gifts that I remember most easily and shall cherish as memories until I lose them. I mean you have to admit not many people actively sit down to recall their cherished memories.
But Janice did pick out a book one year for me as a gift called 'Lost Japan' written by Alex Kerr. I highly recommend this book, it is one of the best gifts Janice ever picked (or had recommended to her) and reading it before I departed for Japan gave me the priveledge of having a deep understanding of both the strengths and weaknesses of Japanese culture.
So prepare for what will no doubt be a long post, when I first got inspired to write this post it was going to be a simple defence of how much time I spent in overseas libraries on holidays delivered as my contempt for people who 'don't have time to read'. Suffice to say I shall deal with the latter first then move on to Japan.

He who reads rules

As a teenager I spent time needlessly stressing about the mythical phantom that was 'my resume' it was an almost constant throb at the back of my head that more then anything else robbed me of the pleasures of holiday mode as I came of age and holidays in Ballarat became less about taking a much needed break to reflect, watch videos and play computer games, and go cycling around with mates committing petty acts of vandalism and trying to discover those secret places in Ballarat back alley's that by day where childrens playgrounds and by night no doubt used for date rape.
The 'resume' which didn't exist was a liability because of the age old conundrum of 'the experienced kid' gets the job, and its hard to get experience without getting a job first.
Which is or at least should be a myth to intelligent employers. A proven mediocre performer cannot profit where an unproven but potentially high yeild prospect would not. The job goes first and foremost to the applicant who potentially can deliver the greatest value.
And the value of most 'experience' in ballarat is proving that you can turn up to work, do some mindless task and go home, on an ongoing basis without dipping your hand into the till. and jackoff employers are probably going to write a golden reference no matter how well you perform safe in the knowledge that you are becoming some other companies liability. Or that the performance expectations of a shitty casual ballarat job are significantly low to make 'impressive' performance a foregone conclusion.
That is if your future employer even bothers to read your resume anyway.
And that's the clincher, I was advised not to just put down 'reading' as an interest on my resume because it makes you sound introverted and almost every applicant makes the claim.
I guess you could tidy up the presentation of such facts about oneselfs choice of spare time by stating the benifit rather than leaving the meaning implicit. Because first and foremost my competitive advantage in my brief working life and source of greatly accellerated development has been: reading.
If I could rely on a resume at all I would look for the simple words 'I read' above and beyond everything else, and here's why:

1. Reinventing the wheel is 'do' learning and of value to the participant but of little to no value to the greater organisation except in the hope that the lessons of undergoing the process may have some future application to the company's bottom line. Reading can accellerate this process by giving some simple preparatory insight into mistakes and reasons others have made in the past.
2. Most of history did not have access to quality recording devices, therefore the richest repository of the human races collective learning is found through literacy, and then a little extra insight through archaeology. One can look in and see what the few people that have ever 'moved the earth' so to speak have learned in the process and what made them successful, diverse people such as Napoleon, Genghis Kahn, Julius and Augustus Ceaser, Shakespear, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander the Great, etc.
3. Books are an active medium, you have to look at them, pay attention to them. This greatly improves retention.
4. If a person lives there whole life and takes a moment to write down the one or two important things they learned in that whole time, it represents an enormous time saving to the reader.
5. Writing is difficult, to succeed in getting a book published, and the book being attractive enough to get read, is a form of natural selection, the strongest books have a tendancy to get read.

And as such, I have to say being able to pick up a book by Drucker and reap the rewards of a lifetime spent consulting with executives around the world and being able to myself effectively know what makes a good executive and what makes a bad executive is something a lot of uni graduates could not even claim.
Reading the memoirs of successful businessmen like Ricardo Semler even allows me to contrast and analyse the recommendations gathered from drucker and gain a general understanding of organisational problems something that won't be contemplated by a lot of colleagues my age until they are sitting in the hot seat.
Reading Takuan Soho's unfettered mind, and Musashi Miyamoto's Book of Five Rings, or Yagyu Munenori's Life Giving sword can give me strategic philosophy that I can reflect on and make my own so I know why I'd want to sit in the hotseat.
Even reading Sci-fi is a competitive advantage as Sci-fi has inspired a lot of systems that have defined the modern era including genetic engineering, the internet, AI, cybernetics and so fourth, furthermore many sci-fis plot is based on a study of a particular human behaviour exagerrated, philosphy or system of government, such as 1984 and Brave new world. The distopia's created can still be powerful insight.
Infact any form of reading if reflected on, if done consciously can yeild a greater understanding of the human condition. Be it the simplest childrens book as function of the social conditioning inflicted on the young from an early age.
Reading as competitive advantage has only two necessities: reflection and diversity. Reading the Koran or the bible over again ain't of any advantage at all. (and their so spiritually profound you shouldn't be going making up your own interpretations anyway right? thinking is a lack of faith.)
That being said my recomendation numero uno thus far for Japan is that: All citizens be forced to read the book of five rings and I'll explain why.

Fettered Japan:

Zazen is a practice that takes two forms, rinzai sect sits in contemplation of koans, nonsensical puzzles (that you can now obtain the "answers" to over the internet) until one obtains enlightenment through the mental gymnastics. The second school is soto zen, of which sitting in the proper posture is the entire practice. The practice of sitting like a frog leads to an improvement in concentration and eventually enlightenment. Suffice to say I could use the benefits of such a practice to gain control of my mind.
Japanese people from what I have observed have no longer any real cultural heritage from zen when it comes to their daily lives. Japan is fettered to an inertia. Many of its most famous sword saints drew inspiration from zen, similar to Neuro Linguistic Programming, Zen is the art of attempting to stop one's mind from interfering with one's perception of reality, to minimise the filter of reality imposed by the mind.
To a swordsman this was litteraly the difference between life and death, anticipation lead to expectations so like comedy surprise was the key to ending one's own life.
Musashi had techniques to exploit this weakness in opponents, such as never attempting the same attack twice, he found 'using the same path to victory' after one failure shameful. It has often been articulated in western culture as the definition of insanity 'doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result' or as my principle use to beat into our brains at least 12 times a year 'you always get what you've always got, if you always do what you've always done' which to his credit cockhead though he was, was this legacy hopefully will live on in me.
Musashi also had 'ways of seeing' techniques of literally how to take in the opponent which he called 'looking at mountains far away' the technique consists really in what it doesn't involve, which is stressing something to watch, such as watching the tip of your oponents sword, or paying particular attention to his eyes, or watching his footwork to try and predict his next move. Musashi simply opened his eyes, relaxed, waited and reacted. Reacting to the reality of the confrontation, easier said than done and Musashi had a myriad more techniques to actually make this effective, but such technique methinks could easily be applied to poker where 'you play the man not the cards' to not be looking for the tell on your opponents face and as such miss out on the crucial twitch of their hands.
One takes in the whole picture without narrowing the focus so one has a greater chance of seeing what actually happens.
Now Musashi's Zen teacher was Takuan Soho, so progressing even further one can get a better insight into the mind of Musashi, Takuan Soho's treatise on the sword was called the unfettered mind which was to say, freeing the mind of thought in order to experience reality. There is close to no discussion of swordplay at all but Takuan had a profound impact on two of the greatest swordsmen of the day Musashi Miyamoto and Yagyu Munenori.
Now if I had to imagine that Japan the nation today was a swordsman here's how they would be:

They would be large, very large, fat and sluggish even.
They would have their eyes as narrow as possible if not completely shut.
They would hold their sword out infront of them.
They would be going 'la la la la la la la la la' over and over to eliminate the chance of anyone offering any guidance.
They would progress towards where they think they're enemy was at a slow but steady pace, unwavering in their courage/stupidity. Using their bulk to hopefully drive their sword deep into their opponent.

That's how Japan strikes me at the moment. I'll try and substantiate with observations later. But for the most part, if you were Japan's opponent, you would simply have to stick your own sword out and wait for Japan to impale itself, its vast folds of fat preventing it from having even an early nervous warning system.
But probably truer to life is that there is no opponent at all, Japan the mighty fat warrior will walk forward steadily and forces of nature (read externalities) will finish it off.
When I first read 'Lost Japan' in the late 90's, people were talking about the greenhouse effect, but the ozone layer was more pressing, nobody really ever talked about china or expressed any interest in going their.
Japan was known to have a stagnent economy at the time but the book and my own experience left me thinking that 'there is enormous opportunity in Japan' for many years I shouldered the dream of living and working in Japan and becoming an insider. When I heard my bosses criticise Japan I had assumed that they just didn't 'get' Japanese culture.
Last time I noticed the changes (my second visit to Japan), all girl carriages where coming in, mobile phones were flogging video, everyone could use email from their mobiles. Fashion had changed etc.
Now though I truly appreciate the impact of China's growth and Japan's growing irrelevance, what truly breaks my heart is that I see the Japanese people, simply doing absolutely fucking nothing about it.
From the country that produced the wiimote last year (something that prompted my friend Miyuki, a japanese expat in Oz to say 'I'm so proud of my culture') I have to say I expected more. But my initial observations are that, the Wii is an exception, innovation is not the rule. Newton's law of Inertia states that an object will continue on it's current path indefinetely until another force acts on it. Japan is careening off into space.
I have to admit, I can't follow the television here and have to look up the news on Google to find out what's happening in the country. But contrasting to the only other country thus far I really know, public debate is not really on the cards, I see no other force gaining momentum to deflect Japan's course from becoming 'the arsehole of the world' Sick as Australian democracy is, Japanese government is sicker, think the Howard dynasty, but with no opposition whatsoever.

There is no Game:

This is rule number one, in my opinion of game theory. A game is most easily lost by people using the rules. The most important rule, again in my opinion, is that of scope. If the scope of the game is not large enough, one 'narrows one's focus to one key point' then an externality, ie something external to the game one is playing ruins the game.
Think lightning at a golf tournament.
For years the Japanese's own word for foreigners was 'Gaijin' this means loosely translated 'outsider' I have come to accept over the years that I will forever in Japanese eyes be an 'outsider' no matter how hard I try to fit in, to know Japan and its ways and its people. But who is the real loser from that transaction?
History Lesson: The only word in regular use in English language that originates from Japan without specifically referring to an aspect of Japanese culture is 'tycoon' Commodore Perry's nickname for Abraham Lincoln and the Tokugawa Shogunate's diplomatic title in foreing correspondance. Perry bestowed this title on Honest Abe because America's gunboat diplomacy had opened up Japanese ports to trade for the first time in 200 years.
This is a perfect example of someone succeeding, indeed dominating in a game that's scope was arrogantly small. The Tokugawa's had one of the most stable and enduring reigns of any political dynasty in history, the Tokugawa shogun's conquered all of Japan and maintained peace for 200 years, expelling foreigners and kicking off Japan's cultural renaissance.
The Tokugawa's just overlooked the rest of the world whom in the meantime developed steam powered navies, and artilleries that left Japan entirely defenseless, having never progressed beyond simple firearms and fuedal era military strategy.
The whole world was incorrectly reduced to Japan and it simply wasn't the case.
The Japan I see today, really hasn't broken the habit, and thus complies again with 'the definition of insanity'. Japan is simply fucking insane if it thinks its nationalism will win out against an increasingly integrated rest of the world.
But Japan is the second largest market in the world? but poised to become no.14. The USA is going to probably slip to number 2 in the next couple of years after China, but in reality will probably still be a player for a while because of the inescaple fact of it's military monopoly from the Reagan years. What it chooses to do with that will even ill advised probably still be better than what Japan could do with it.
Case in point, my friend Brenton, working in Japan as a floortrader told me of a company that was poised to be aquired by a US company at 30% premium on the share price.
The nationalistic Japanese share holders voted down the aquisition in what was internally viewed as a victorious blow for nationalism, the cost to the shareholders 110% of the companies value. Any victory that involves depriving yourself of future growth can be loosely termed 'death' yet this is precicesly what nationalism is.
Whilst generally acknowledging that the future is in immigrant labour, Japan displays no behavioural evidence of becoming multicultural. Tokyo maybe I haven't returned their yet, but Tokyo is just 20 million of the equation, the other cities show little evidence of any significant migrant impact. Think Melbourne being reduced to a suburb of significance in Australia rather than second largest city, and the whole rest of Japan being ballarat and you have a fair picture of the multiculturism in Japan.
And all the while its companies are shrinking, yet rather than experience reality, Japan seems dedicated to experience the opposite, in reality following contrary advice to that of their own invincible swordsman's strategy for invincibility. It is not even a case of upbeat denial, it is childish denial, a simple nagging fear of being unable to face the facts. That Japan can't keep paving itself forever in a poor show of a functioning economy. It needs to become part of the global culture.
It as a nation has a rather disfunctional relationship.
The more PC term for a foreigner now is 'Gaikokujin' or loosely translated 'people from an outside country' whereas outsider at least has been acknowledged as wrong.
But in reality I have sufficient esteem to not take offence at not being a member of Japan club, I can still come here, live here, eat here. The club is a weight around Japan's neck. Outsider is recognising that club Japan has become a nightclub so exclusive, noone else even tries to go there anymore, it has become irrelevant.

Deadweight Nation:

By far the inescapable lie japan insultingly throws up in my face is that 'it isn't a welfare state' Japan I begin to suspect is infact the worlds worst welfare state. In Australia, the cowardice endemic in our political structure when it comes to running at the sign of any policy that might be of shortterm detriment to the business sector such as the limp dicked involvement into stopping the futureless forestry and rice industries in Tasmania and Victoria respectively makes me furious and discard democracy as a workable model of government.
But in Japan it is at a level most heinously insane. For example, where in Australia you would employ one casual teenager to do a job, in Japan you would employ 3 or 4 full time employye, these include a person to guide you into the petrol station, a person to talk to you through the window of your car about your petrol and another to pump the petrol and then the fourth to safely guide you back onto the street. Not only is this an inferred slight apon your judgement it is also a complete waste of resources. And at one time I just thought was reflective of Japan's love of service and ceremony but I now see is a necessity to keep thousands of people needlessly employed rather than face the problem of real unemployment, the failings of the education system and the extreme undercasualisation of the workforce.
There are people who are paid needlessly to stand at certain intersections and direct traffic, others at pedestrian crossings that have lights there are construction workers that simply sweep paths.
There is so much fat to be cut, but the obvious problem would be that this would leave about 40% of Japan's labour market unemployed.
This is why I take this situation as personally offensive:

1. I view the entire world as a communal birthright of all those that inhabit the universe.
2. Stalin used to break men's spirits by have them dig holes and fill them back up again endlessly until the were completely broken. Stalin's record is pretty clear, but Japan seems to tolerate this as okay, in abundance.
3. The worlds resources are scarce, using them needlessly is a theft from future generations.
4. Making people small is the best way to mediocrity, giving people demeaning job's is not a happy place to live.

This is an expensive exercise not like China were the deregulated labour market makes it cheaper to higher 20 people to cut your lawn by hand than buy an expensive foreign lawnmower.
This is the country that houses the best car company in the world, Toyota that more or less invented Total Quality Management, from doing a years worth of Car surveys I know in Australia Toyota more than any other company is semantically synonomous with innovation.
And they teach you to go through any system and cut out all the fat as a matter of course. It would be cheaper to pay welfare, use the dissent as a platform for education and make something of a future for the country. But Japan is the archetype of culture's that refuse to admit they have a problem. You cannot walk 100m in Japan without meeting a useless employee. Its too stark to be noticed.

Tradition is the worst reason to keep doing something:

By virtue of tradition being the only real reason to keep doing the same thing. A sample for posterity is good. The Japanese love traditions and festivals, but this is not what the human race is destined for. The human race is gifted with the ability to improve upon itself. Japan has transformed itself into a truly ugly place. Its city centers shine brightly with Neon, crazy fashion and a sea of department stores and friendly cosy restaurants. But you can never escape the concrete.
It is paved from here to nowhere. Brenton played golf after four months in Japan and had forgotten what grass looked like. He too has adopted a standard sufficient enough to call Handa where I currently reside, the countryside despite a factory being in our back yard and high voltage power lines marching across said countryside, In australia you would call it Zone 2.
And that's the clincher, for me I had assumed all the concrete was necessary to allow for stable living in an earthquake prone country, but turns out entire departments are dedicated in government beauracracy to identify projects to pave that have no need or function whatsoever simply to keep the construction industry running.
Useless effort is endemic, Japan is a deadweight, a deadweight precisely because it seems it is unable to learn, even from its own culture. Musashi, Yagyu, Tokugawa, Hideyoshi, Oda, Toyota, Honda, Nintendo none of these big Japanese institutions where made famous by their conservative inertia, there strength of tradition in the face of growth. None of them succeeded by giving handouts to their useless aspects. They are infact shining examples of breaking the mold, of active participative learning.
If I was the Carp Japanese ancients thought Japan was on the back of I would have tried desperately to shake it off too. It is heavy, dirty and ugly now, somethings got to give.

A Belated Apology:

People who critacise Japan are known in Japanese Academic circles as Japan Bashers. But the costs of Japans moment in the sun are starting to become huge gaping soars. I bought Alex Kerr's follow up book to lost Japan because it seemed to sing out a profound knowledge of the generic problem of which I was increasingly noticing the systems. Japan is killing itself. When I would guestimate aside from Italy it probably has the richest living culture to draw upon as an asset.
But people who complain often do so because they care deeply, for me Japan was a dream of mine, to see it so lost is like having a child that despite your every effort to communicate keeps engaging in self destructive behaviour.
Criticising is not the answer, it is not even the first step. Behaviour is what counts so here is my behaviour:

Japan can I give you some feedback?

When you don't engage with the team in the conduct of our work, you withold any value you may contribute, what could you do differently?

I'm happy to work on this with you anytime.

散歩する

I've been getting aroudn on foot for most of my time here. The benifits are many, not only do I believe that the only three means of transport for one to truly get their bearings are foot, running or on a bike but it also burns energy allowing me to keep trim.
The downside is that after 8 hours or so of meandering around a foreign city, though I may have a profound knowledge of my surroundings my feet sometimes ache. One time I got back to my hotel thinking my little tow nail was causing grief by digging into the next one along only to discover a blister the size of my little toe coming of of it. I'm no pussy when it comes to tolerating a little pain for the greater good though, and I'm not going to throw down for taxi's especially when I often have no idea where I'm actually going.
What I do know is that not all bike's are born equal. Recently a philanthropic neighbour gave me a bike. And its a donkey, an absolute fucking donkey. It must weigh roughly my weight again. Has three gears, a step through frame, an alternator in its front hub and a seat that is in essence a throw pillow mounted on a stick.
But I appreciate it non-the-less.
It has allowed me to explore handa proper, and riding here is a cultural experience in and of itself. Right of way for bicycles is a very confusing affair and I regard myself as one of the safest riders in Japan.

On the plus side:
1. No need to wear helmets.
2. Bikes acknowledged with their own lane on pedestrian crossings.
3. People don't yell stuff at you just for riding a bike.
4. Nobody steals bikes in Japan (especially not mine)

On the down side:
1. AT any given time you may be faced with a rider heading directly into you on a busy narrow street.
2. Hook turns are precarious at best, having billboards take up all corner to corner visability.
3. An alternator light stops working when you stop moving.
4. Japanese traffic lights take approximately 1 half century to change.

but all up it is good to get on a bike again.
My hands have become lady soft in the interim month though some of the bigger callouses remain, looks like I gotta work my way back to man hands as well.

Popping the Question

I struggled to think of a more inappropriate name for this blog, it was about a personal meets professional dilemma I face which revolves around Misaki and I was trying to think of something clever that something like TIME magazine or The Economist would use, and I thought of them 'the Japan question' sort of article headlines, and then i thought 'the misaki question' and then thought why not up the ante, so sorry to those that got excited by the relatively boring prospect of me having a lifestyle change into some kind of pussy whipped pussy, but sadly no, but you do get some insight into the creative process behind some of these creative blog titles.
No my question is much tougher than something romantic such as the notion of life lived together, consented to under the duress of public humiliation. Instead it is simply this, I have accumulated some knowledge of business over the years, through reading, studying, thinking and work experience. Misaki is just heading into her professional career, already experiencing the personal cost of being a working woman.
Namely some months ago we ended our relationship on account of her career path railroading her future.
This places me in an awkward position, and ethically I don't know what to do.
So I'm asking you what do I do?but first some specifics.
Miki left her course in Australia to return to Japan to work for Japan's number one Jewellery retailer, the attractive part of this internship is that her mother owns a famous as I'm lead to believe Jewellery shop in Shizuoka. Misaki will take over in a supporting role to her sister at the end of her internship. Suffice to say their is significant emotional investment in this career path, indeed a lot of Miki's emotional identity is wrapped up in it.
That being said, her current internship is for a company that pays a whopping $700 a month, based in Shikoku, initially in Tokushima, which is roughly the same population as Ballarat Australia, but much more 'countryside' and about as rural backwater as Japan gets.
So cynical tohm would infer, that a core component of said Jewellery guru's strategy is, to hire increadibly cheap labor (possibly criminally cheap) and then operate a direct sales model (ie. door to door) in one of Japan's neichingest markets. I have heard little to substantiate that this guy has more to offer in business saviness than this cost control model he has developed. And furthermore the little feedback I recieved from Miki was that it operated on the Win-Lose quick kill mentality of target chasing short term.
Bitter pills? well that's what I worry about. Let me compound it though.
The little insight I have into Misaki's mum's business leaves me unassured that it itself is a good business model, nor that there is any real ability in the business to allow it to survive through any means but dumb luck.
Specifically, Miki's mother needs to retire at some point and as such most of her loyal customers will retire from buying from her as she is the 'sales expert' this is however a vote in favor of her daughters and the trusted name taking over. (Yet no excuse for a poor business practice of indespensibility to begin with). The key crises they believe they are facing is a failure to attract new customers. (yet cannot state this problem in any other means but a solution)
However another problem is that the experienced sales staff seem to have an irrational problem with working for the next generation, the daughters because of their inexperience and complete abscence of knowledge of how to run a business. So a large threat looming is that they not only lose their key expert but the supporting cast as well. And like most industries, large scale chains seem to be gradually conquering the market putting the squeeze on independant retailers.
And on a personal level, the mother's own sister was hostiley bought out of the business and Miki feels a need to support her own sister as she due to the long ours of retail work here has had no time to start her own life and meet a guy, have a baby and so forth.
So that's the picture, and due to my skewed personal bias, I have chosen not really to intervene or even offer comment as I know how unpopular this can be in a relationship.
Yet without coming across as a pussy, is it worthwhile me communicating my below concerns/observations/recommendations to Misaki?

1. A family run business is a dangerous thing, despite some well known examples from the days of yore, generally a family business model doesn't work in the modern day and age, due to the successful ones usually being trade jobs and only family members having the priveledge of the trade's education, however in an age of standardised service chains and companies providing their own aftermarket service outlets in the pursuit of margin (such as car company branded dealers) they have generally fallen into decline and disrepute.
The art of sales having become science, and taught and trained well by various professional institutions there is not much competitive advantage to a family retail name. Furthermore underpinning all of this is basic knowledge, to draw from a gene pool restricted to one's own progeny, one is highly unlikely to place the best person for the job by excluding the rest of the population, particularly when this involves excluding tried and tested staff in favor of blood.
An example of a successful sustainable family business is Du Pont which gauruntees Du Pont family members an entry level position, however to progress up the chain of command, one has to be adjudicated by a panel of non-family employees and approved as exceeding in ability all other candidates. A form of internal quality control, because to assume that a family name is a preferable quality to say 10 years experience and a proven track record isn't stupid, it is simply placing one's personal interests ahead of that of organisational responsibilty, and that is above all else unethical management.
SO on the first grounds, Miki's business has a bleak future if the people decisions (some of the most difficult and consequential decisions any manager ever makes) are based on hollow sentiment. This means a company is exarcerbating a weakness (lack of experience) and needlessly discarding strenght (experience and customer relationships) its like deliberately taking ten steps back, and all this in a time of crises.

2. I have to assume, Misaki wants this career path and is not making this decision under duress or emotional bullying, her own personal value she can bring to the company (apart from her sales experience as door to door) is questionable. It is questionable because the business model employed by her boss is fundamentally flawed. By employing inexperienced staff he reduces his risk (wages) under the guise of internships he can pay them subsistence wages, probably obtaining as close to free labor as one can get.
I wouldn't stop short of believing that most of the companies employees are further subsidised with rent and/or petrol by their parents all to benifit from the learning opportunity.
But good business is generic, the problems of business profit and management are generic, porter devised the 5 forces as a linear generic method of analysing a given industry to understand how the game was played and now game theory makes industry analysis a relatively accessible exercise for all.
Thus said, looking at a successful jewellery business may by as usefull as looking at a successful bakery, the same business principles can be applied to a business in another industry, all it requires is a fundamental knowledge of your industry.
To compound this, unless you can replicate the problem you cannot expect to replicate the solution.
Miki is unlikely to be able to pay subsistence wages to her own workforce and demand the same output as a fulltime dedicated and experienced employee, largely because a regular member of the workforce wouldn't stand for it.
But by reducing his own labor expenses current boss can tolerate a higher advertising investment, a slower stockturn rate, in all he can apply far more risk elsewhere, risking more stock and so whilst whipping his staff into an exhaustive frenzy.
From my own experience generally as a commission only salesrep I knew that for my own $50 commission it usually meant my company was gaurunteed $150, it was no risk to employ as many sales reps as it could pull of the street and simply knock as many doors as possible. Virtually the only hitch was the client having an SLA of certain degree of penetration or 'positive churn' in an area, so failing to sell we got more annoying in the same area as the inexperienced reps 'burned' walks (the process where a bad rep barely talks to anyone and generates no leads, so he knocks all the doors on the streets he is assigned) so there was a degree of risk but not enough to prevent the company on loading up on as many sales reps it could fit in a bus and send out for 10 hour days 6 days a week to try and bring in a good $3-4k a day by knocking pure dumb luck.
And as such I could not apply any of my learnings (apart from some basic sales theory) to my job in sales at Honda, that needed to build long term profitable relationships.
The transferable skills where minimal. I suspect if you take a business model and don't reevaluate the basic assumptions or conditions, it is doomed to failure. If you do reevaluate the basic assumptions or conditions, you conclude you may aswell earn some decent money working at a bakery in civilization somewhere.
As such, I worry that Misaki as expert is not a viable strategy for overcome the crises of 'no new customers'

3. The bosses new business venture exposes his relative inexperience as a business man, from a poor marketing theme (too much creativity, not enough mnemonic appeal), poor positioning strategy (middle market on a high involvement purchase decision) and furthermore not really putting any investment into launching the new store.
As such business is starting slowly and suspiciously, its apparantly the first time a business like it has been tried (so one can appluad the risk element) however such enterprises often fold, nor does it seem to be the kind of experiment such as the London perfume and makeup store that arranged its merchandising by colour tones, and sents rather than by brand. A spectrum merchandising strategy if you will, run purely as an experiment to test the changing market conditions in consumer preferences.
This however seems to be a cake and eat it too strategy, and the same pressure to produce sales is being applied despite the distinctive lack of selling opportunities (think of a mercedes dealer in Bendigo demanding a sale from every staff member before they go home each night, just not going to happen).

4. Misaki sighted her motivations to support her sister in allowing her to 'get a life' that is relieve enough work load to allow her to go on dates, form meaningful relationships and have a future.
This to me has overlooked two things.
A) her sister chose the relatively 'low risk' (highest risk of all) career path of entering the family business. A relatively safe way to overcome having to sell yourself to a different company, and thus should take responsibility for her own predicament (though accepting of course that Misaki may have an emotional investment in her mother's business aswell)
B) to allow this, Miki has given up her own life effectively doubling the problem before trying to solve it, so in simple terms just moving the problem around. She has given up her relationship, moved to a backwater, working too long hours to form meaningful relationships with anyone and so fourth.
I am highly skeptical that infact Misaki will have any success at freeing up anyones time, remember that her mother still has to retire aswell and they may be loosing their experienced employees.
From my perspective given what I know, and have observed thus far, Misaki's support is to her own pure detriment and of superficial benifit to her sister, long term it will probably cost both of them their lives. (not in the lethal sense, but in the dreams and aspirations sense).

So that being that, I realise that Miki has said loud and clear, no matter how shitty this career path may seem to me, she prefers it to building a relationship with me. ALbeit one can never assume the level of ignorance or naivety one makes this decisions at.
I realise my predicament in that I can only find myself guilty and her innocent no matter how grounded I may seem. It just seems to me, that I would perhaps be remiss in my ethical duty as a manager, to not point out these areas of concern to someone who may not have considered them. Furthermore I am not the only loser from this situation, Misaki's friends and networks here have also lost out, including best friends and such.
The only person that seems to have gained is Miki's family, who communicate so often and freely and easily through channels I seem to never be able to use, to indicate an indecisive chat fest incapable of even effective communication.
SO what do I do or say? DO I continue trying to minimise the emotional cost of her decision and play nice guy say nothing tohm?
DO I tell her to her face what a bucket of shit she is lugging around all the while thinking it is a golden ticket to willy wonkas chocolate factory?
ANd if so how do I tell her, there are deep seated cultural values here that I know don't react in an open and gratefu way to such feedback, but are still susceptible to the ultimate feedback of reality.

DO I just put it down on paper and hand it to her and let her know the decision on whether to read it or not lies with her.
For me it is relatively low risk, as we are probably talking about grosse 3 hours of catchup in the rest of my life I may cost myself here, for her though it could be a confidence shattering bout of needless second doubts.

Where I've been coming from was to say, let her find out for herself, live her own life, I'll be fine don't worry attitude, but increasingly I feel like if I know something, or feel I know something I should communicate it.
All this is based on observed behaviours, and behaviour is hard to lie about. What I infere may be innacurate but I really, really don't know how to weigh up the costs.
So I guess that's the misaki question.
What do I do knowning what I 'know'

You Need A Horse to Ride

I now feel that I did indeed need to quit my old job. This belive it or not was not an easy decision for me. I mean there were a whole lot of reasons, not the least of which was simply I have the opportunity to do so now.
But in a very 'Good to Great' sense, I looked around and thought, me becoming MD of this company is only a matter of time. And I mean 20 years or so, and not discounting the facts that external competition is going to intervene, but suffice to say I knew I could pursue that if I wanted to apply the discipline necessary. And ultimately I knew for me then, that goal was simply not big enough, and I mean not 'not big enough' in a financial or prestige sense, but simply that this was not virgin soil, it was tilled, it had strong foundations, good backing and career paths.
I needed to be thrown into a dogs breakfast, and carved out Michaelangelo's David from the redeemable things I found there.
And leaving Honda has finally turned my mind back to this organisational soup that is my dream, and I didn't realise it for weeks, but I looked up in the library one day (yes thats right, I am travelling around the world and visiting libraries) and whilst perchad on a seat too small for me reading 'Cookie King flies' a japanese childrens book. I realised that I was taking this really seriously. I was taking myself and my organisation seriously. Finally. I was thinking in a Drucker sense 'what does the organisation require of me?' and that i guess is key.
SO if there's anything I can share with you, a little late in the spring season (southern hemisphere of course) its this:

Everyone needs a horse to ride, the first horse you can ride is your company, ask yourself 'is this horse going anywhere' if yes, it may be the horse you want to ride.

After that your boss is your horse, and I mean your direct boss, ask yourself 'is this horse going anywhere?' and if yes, that might be the horse to pick.

But at the end of the day, probably your best horse to bet on is yourself ask yourself 'am I going anywhere' and if yes, make sure its somewhere good.

If not, bet on me Because I'm going for $4.70 at this stage which I think is a steal.

Do As De La Does

I now have the 'De La Do' Trugoy the dove's uneven hairstyle from 3 feet high and rising days. I can now go bald complete, having achieved all hairstyles I could ever seek.

That is all.

Pockets full of shit

The first time I came to Japan, I noticed a complete abscence of public bins in Japan. Yet littering doesn't seem to be a problem apart from the occasional turfing of a cigarette but out the window.
This time I'm getting around on foot and discovered, that places that sell you shit are also expected to provide you with bins, so usually you use the bins out the front of a convenience store or one of the recycling bins that are increasingly paired up with vending machines.
I liked this because it smacked of responsibilty, however I must confirm that tatamae (officially stated position, presentation) is the most important thing because this relationship between the waste producers and those responsible for disposal seems to not have produced any result in the way of reducing packaging. I scratch my head at the logic behind buying a 600ml bottle of drink (half the price that it is in Oz) and then putting it in a 600ml bottle sized individual plastic bag. THEN providing a recycle bin and a combustables bin (japan simply doesn't have the land to use land fills).
In the meantime knowing the futility of this seemingly wise policy, I and up having to walk from Combini to Combini stuffing packaging and wrappers into my pockets (so as to have a free hand for photo taking) and feel like a hobo as I empty my pockets into the bin of a store I don't intend to buy anything from 500m away.
Everythree days (people should know I don't rotate my shorts that often) I empty out my pockets to find those bits and pieces of wrapper, excess packaging etc that invariably slips below my coin stash and thus never gets disposed of.
Fucking shit.

Daily Disciplines Reviewed

So here's how it's going,

Running: 4k is a struggle I still don't think I'm up to the 8k magic barrier but I am managing to do it most days, it was only really a problem in Osaka when staying at the capsule hotel, as it made changing a pain in the arse, adding an additional change to my day was in retrospect not worth the benifit of running around Osaka's busy streets and seemingly non existent parks.
But every morning I wake up and go for a run now. Including the dreaded sprint session, which when you say I'll do 10 sprints that's 1k roughly, and I'll be sprinting them so it'll take me, 140 seconds, which is 2 and a half minutes...well that's wrong, sprinting takes just about the longest to do.

Zazen: This is the hardest, and I let it slide for about half a week, and haven't done it today, which means really I should incorporate it into my running, something I also haven't done today. today is a day off. I decided it. Anyway as much as this is the hardest one, I think I definitely overthink, a dangerous thing to do when travelling because it can detract from actual experiencing, which is the point.
I have real trouble not thinking. I want to add it to my reportoire though because like a good musician, the music isn't just in the notes being played, but the beats when nothing is being ploayed, the placements of the rests. I do think already I'm getting better at recognizing when not to think, such as in a park or on a train, or while running. But still, I got a long way to go on this one.

Active Listening: This has been the easiest, as I'm naturally falling into this pattern trying to listen to what is being said to me, and scanning peoples facial expressions for clues, however whether this will result in my laxing back into lax ways when around my native tongue again I don't know, also my ability to understand is somewhat questionable, but I am in a more questioning state of mind, asking more people for feedback and such in my own channells kind of ways. anyhoo, the other side I guess, is I'm probably lax in asking the questions of myself of what questions I should be asking. To be fair I don't really know how to active listen, but I think I'm doing it every day.

Lessons from Japan 1

I firmly believe that people are essentially the same the world over. Everyone has the same resources, the same fundamental equipment to progress through life. As such culture is a set of learned behaviours. Its these lessons I'm looking for now.

The things intriguing me at the moment are:

1. filial piety - Japan are big into this.
2. conservation of space - particularly from a geoist perspective Japan uses almost every inch available productively, even national parks probably currently are extracting full realisable value. But they operate under a private land ownership system rather than resource rentals.
This does reduce the study to its other beneficiary - wealth distribution, I don't feel equiped though to follow the paths wealth takes through the population. I imagine speculation must just about be inflated to its logical extreme here though given the productivity per square meter. (if there is a space a vending machine can fit it is put there).
3. convenience is fixed - miki put me onto this one. Conveniently stores other than boarders are open until 11 at night here, infact almost everything is open until 11 at night. Tuesday is a great night to go out on the town. so is every other night. But what allows this to happen. Presumably the population and population density in japan makes this feasable, however Misaki inconveniently works retail here and so is occupied until 9-10pm at night. By virtue of her store closing early at 9pm. but the crazy thing is, Japan's workforce hasn't been casualised, so she is working 12 hour shifts 6 days a week. And from my wanderings in takamatsu this seems to be the case in almost all retail outlets. But says I, if everyone is working all the time, how convenient can the long opening hours be for anyone but tourists, uni students and the retired. Namely three groups with no money between them to be throwing around on consumer durables.
So such convenience comes at a cost, a terrible cost of shitty full time jobs. I think this would defeat the arguement against casualisation in one go, because I'm telling you, if you need the money from that kind of job with that kind of hours, then you have bigger needs than that, you have something wrong with your life, give up your house or kid or whatever is putting in that situation because god knows you can't appreciate it.
4. Attitudes to transport. The Japanese have much higher per capita utilisation of bicycles, also of umbrellas, also if you get caught drink driving even a little over the limit you get fined $2000 equivalent in yen, not just you but any friend in the car who has allowed you to drive.
5. Attitudes to water, every business I see is hosing down the pavement in front of its premis without fail sometime between 8 & 9. this is then mopped as pedestrians walk over it. Exorbitent, exorbitent water usage. You should see the baths also.

So I guess you couldn't really say 'lessons learned' more points of ponderisation. However I do believe the central learned behaviour of this culture is 'tatamae' or loosely translated 'appearances' the official reality is far more important than the actual reality. In other words, if the map doesn't match the ground the ground is wrong.
I really notice the strain Japan goes to to pretend things are okay, or that things are working well.There are big gaps and assumptions that dictate behaviour. As a foreigner these are easy to exploit, not that I want to, such as growing a beard my own highschool would never allow when an exchange student. (that time I wanted to) anyhoo, as easy as it is to exploit it is hard to correct, even using a powerful questioning technique such as NLP.
I did have some success getting Misaki to reevaluate her own mapping for withholding her opinion. The waiters at the restaurant were so fucking distracting though. I hate fancy restaurants.
Apart from that, I shall keep my eyes open.

Along Came A Spider

I'm told that a spider intuitively knows the different vibrations of prey in its web. This means it will quickly pounce and secure a feed that happens into its web, but wont waste its energy on a leaf or rain or wind that might set the web a shaking.
This in essence is model recruitment.
And by that I mean most recruiters or headhunters are pretty good and not employing leaves and sticks, but one of my most pressing challanges I have come across is inspirin not just people to throw in their lot with me, but the right people to throw in their lot.
For me recruiting is a specialised form of performance management, specialised because the act of employing someone shoudl integrate them, or graft them straight into the existing development plan essentially they start with direction the same as the existing employee base does each day.
The specialisation is in doing a good development plan by inferring the data one collects as a matter of course with the existing employee base.
And that means pouncing on people with the right development potential and not wasting energy on dud prospects, people with limited and/or the wrong kind of growth potential for the organisation.

But one may say touche tohm you dickbrain, is the energy really wasted if you learn the vibrations through spending the energy on dud employees.
And I guess that would be were the second functional element of the spiders system comes in.
Stricktly speaking the answer is 'no' I do believe people have an intuitively good sense to judge things such as disingenuosness (that's gotta be the word of the day) or untrustworthiness or bullshit. So so long as interviewing a dud prospect doesn't result often in hiring a dud prospect i'd be happy.
The other side of the spiders system is the web itself. If you think about it the spider positions itself at the crossroads of the web the central transmission point. This creates the efficiency of hunting using a net (that transmits feedback) but it is essentially a preprepared tool. The Spider expends energy to create it, then is rewarded by the greater efficiency, so spending energy sending out 'feelers' or transmission lines, building a web that not only catches prey but allows for effective notification...
...do you hear what I'm saying? the web's functionality isn't that it is large, that's not the true efficiency gain, it's function is that it communicates rapidly whether the cooking is good so to speak. The spider sits in the right place, usually the middle of the web and then its reach and accuracy skyrocket.
That is the natural recruiting model. Both reach and accuracy, maximising opportunity whilst minimising risk.

The trick is where a spider seems to innately understand its objectives, recruiting is more abstract, a fly is a commodity, one fly is much the same as another. A recruiter for a call centre might for example work this way, it is looking for people with hands, and voices. Rather simple criteria, so picking up that vibration off the transmission lines is pretty simple.
Someone say looking for a designer with an ability to empathise with the target market is going to make our recruiter spider's job that much harder. Because it then needs to pick up a specific combination of these abstract ideas to make the hire.
Then the next day it has to look for something different.
My solution:

Most companies start with the position for which they are hiring and then look for someone who fits.
I think I would want to start with a person I want to hire then create/modify/select the position that best suits them.
And throughout such a process the risk of expending energy devising a development plan is reduced.
Once again we are dealing with a relatieve commodity, but this time it is talented people

I guess from here the next logical thing to actually nut out and create is the performance development process, which would tie recruiting and outplacement together nightly. Then I'll have my flowing rockpool to relax in.

Space = Time

One of the first things I noticed once I stopped working is the space. Not just that I am no longer in an office in front of a computer most of the day (well now I am) but that my headspace has expanded a lot. There are no nagging issues I have jumping around my head late at night and popping in anxiously when I wake up.
I think my 'stress' level was always that buzzing healthy level when working, as I always felt capable of doing whatever it was that was bugging me. But now it is something else. Almost the only thing I worry about is my pack, do I have to move it today, what do I need from it, is it safe to leave here? etc.
I house is pretty hard to steal, a pack is, and the psychological difference between having your life in a house and having it in a pack is significant.
I haven't thus far been in the situation of sitting up at night with a handgun watching for thieves until dawn but it could happen.
Overall the Japanese are trustworthy though, I'm sure I could leave my pack in the middle of the shopping mall and some polite fuckers would tape off the area until I came to claim it.
So really that's the only trivial concern I really have day-to-day and when resolved I have none. But if there is a simple truth about this state of being it is this:

Life needs a context

Also expressed as the devil finds work for idol hands, so I'm not really surprised to see me dedicating 4-5 hours a day to working on ideas for consulting, for my organisation I plan to start and my own personal development, more or less how I want to work in the future.
But still there is plenty of space.
I think there's a danger in not deliniating a life into work and leisure, public and private etc but I think those lines should definitely be dotted, because a life in context is still one big system, a fool would believe that one's private life does not effect their public one and vice versa.
So for me this informal state of 'working' when I want is necessary both for my sanity and as practice for easing back into gainful entreprenurial employment.
So part of all this space I have is dedicated to rebuilding my body, running every morning (which is fucking hard) meditating daily, learning a bit of language, sightseeing (but seeing people is one of the best sights to see) and also sitting down and trying to nut out the various problems and challenges of a start up.
The space I have is more in terms of time, and time affords choice I was reading up on Nuero Linguistic Programming as one such step on my musha shugyo and came across this handy insight in an online crash course:

nlp presupposition 8 - context of behaviour
You need to evaluate your behaviour in terms of what you are capable of becoming. You need to strive to become all that you are capable of being.

And I think that is exactly what my journey is all about right now.
I can't imagine spending all the time I have afforded myself to pure 'tourist' activities, it would seem a suspension of life, like I am floating in the ether achieving nothing, just experiencing things without thought and reflection.
Going to 'tourist attractions' such as castles and gardens though does provide insight into architecture and planning and geometry as part of the sentient relationship to space.
Also from my last month at Honda dwelling in process map land, it was interesting to see the einsteinian concept of Space = Time represented so perfectly. The aim of a process map is to simplify a process as much as possible. A complicated process map, takes up a lot of space and usually this follows that the process itself usually takes up a lot of time.
If you cut down the process, it simplifies it, presumably making the process more efficient by eliminating choices or sentient effort that may result in redundancies or errors.
But such simplification in the broader sense enhances choice, because when liberated from a complicated process, we are presented with more choices as to what to do with our time.
It creates the kind of Space I have now.
I remember thinking that working for a company is the act of selling my time.
As a supplier of time in the market place it is surprising given the amount of buyers how little choice the package comes in. Namely its 40 hours a week or bust.
Yet when you achieve efficiencies I think their suddenly are two choices one are presented with.

To use the Space/time saving to contribute more value

or

To use the Space/time saving to reduce ones working hours.

I think at different junctures I would like to make different choices, but because of the restrictive bundling of how much time I have to sell, I am really forced to constantly make choice one, or if I'm being bad, opt out for boredom.
Same same, now that I'm travelling, boredom will be my biggest enemy.

Hey Miki you're so fine

美咲 aka Miki, aka Miki so lah, aka pretty cake, aka Misaki Shinanibobbles remains one of my favorite people. Whilst being unfortunate to lose her as a partner, I am fortunate to have the opportunity of meeting her twice, once in Australia as a student bum and here in Japan as a working retail assistant.
When she broke up with me, I underreacted probably, but that's because I saw it coming a mile off in the unrealistic attempt to accomodate impossible working hours and geographical distance. Also I was flooded with fond memories.
What really deserves to be said though, that of all my relationships, this one was the best. I mean nobody fills my so easily with Joy as misaki, and for the duration of our relationship I think I learnt a real lesson about actively living my life rather than living in anticipation of a better tomorrow.
Some balance has to be struck though, I have often made tomorrow much easier for me today.
but deferred happiness is a tragic syndrome of our times, most peoples careers being the ultimate manifestation of it. It for me makes it more tragic that Misaki has chosen a nose to the ground hard working life ahead of one of kicking in Australia having fun, but to be fair I can't imagine what she'd do career wise, or what I could offer to keep her challenged and occupied. But still even now she is irrepressably charming and retains the ability to make me laugh.
A classic girl, through and through. The day is for enjoying today.

One thought follows another

I was thinking today about the difficult business situation of letting someone go. It sparked off a few thoughts that I distractingly tried to pursue all at once, and then I thought, here is a good place to straighten them out.
I forget how it originated, I think it was me wondering how to approach explaining the power versus relationship matrix which hinges a lot on having an understanding of the abstract concept called power.
Power is something I've thought about long and hard because I think it is something important to understand, and once understood it becomes empowerment, because power as far as I have experienced is given usually and not taken, albeit it can be given under strong persuasion it is usually vested by someone to someone else because they believe it to be their best option.
But I don't want to go too deep. Recently Rod showed me in one of his training courses a simple 2x2x1 matrix of power versus relationships, to give one a little background. (the one refers to one dimension or namely one exchange, say an employment relationship, uncomplicated by other relationships such as personal ones) and really on the balance of things their will between two people be one relationship that defines the power structure between them all the time. One would be foolish to exploit there power in the context of their advantage, say being a rip off mechanic to a customer who is also the financial advisor at other times you are relying on to maximise your wealth. Although it does happen.
Anyway that sort of complication is what can cloud up the simple matrix whose outcomes follow:
1. Low Power-Low Relationship = Lose-Lose
2. Low Power-High Relationship = Lose-Win
3. High Power-Low Relationship = Win-Lose
4. High Power-High Relationship = Win-Win

I don't want to go into the detail here accept to say such a tool is useful for negotiation and such to access the value of a relationship and/or the headspace you are in. Although asking yourself the question: 'Is my power high?' could potentially be misleading.
In Intro to organisational behaviour, the last subject they taught was potentially one of the most interesting, infact the course material was itself really interesting but the course delivery at RMIT being student driven was usually ill-prepared, undisciplined and highly variable. But the subject matter touched briefly on some of the different forms of power to list a few:
Legitimate power, Expert power, Social power, Physical power etc.
Someone is always likely to be the sum of various components of these, I think legitimate power can sometimes be a bit of a trap, namely because it can lead to you using your authority that when derived from legitimate power (a position and title) is a limited resource, a bank account if you will with a certain amount of credit and if your subordinates don't percieve a return on the use of said authority the credit dries up. Yet most people aspire to such legitimate power, if anything from my observation its a handicap to developing Social (or informal) power. Usually legitimate power is attractive because the mechanism of giving power is more rigid, the givers of the power are inclined to do so freely in recognition of its contribution to running the organisational machine.
Anyway I was thinking about this because I was thinking of the matrix in the original context it was taught to me, a sales context (in the more broader negotiation sense not just cold transactions) and Rod pointed out (that my limited experience confirms) that most sales techniques and courses focus on the Win-Lose High Power-Low Relationship as being the ideal.
This is a great way though to churn customers and alienate your customer base, namely use up your resources the first time, then try and plunder more. A win-win mentality I was taught in Uni (and not subsequently in my sales jobs) under the moniker of "Consultative Selling" that is you determine a clients needs and then see if you can mutually benefit from the transaction. If not you would actually direct that person to a competitor, knowing that the precedent you have set with the customer will make you a preferred sales consultant in the future.
Anyway for some reason this got me thinking about the organisation I endeavor to build, I want it to be very much an intellectual commons, that is its practices and intelligences, operational procedures and so fourth are as open and accessible as wikipedia, and where do you draw the line.
I surveyed some friends of mine early on in the conceptualisation of my organisation and asked the question: 'in dealing with problem employees how would you go about it' or some such shit. Both responded it shouldn't come to that, but by and by being open and honest with them.
I do regard feedback, honest feedback as a gift, an dishonest feedback namely being encouraging when thinking otherwise as one of the worst traps an organisation can set for itself.
But I firmly believe there is also a too hard pile, of employees if you will, that simply don't have the growth potential to justify giving any more chances, getting the right poeple on the bus and the wrong people off.
It is a basic opportunity cost question, is there someone else I could sit in your seat, pay your wage and get more value out of? And in that situation I am a firm believer in laying someone off. That is taking into account the full picture (long term, short term, training costs, knowledge loss costs, payout costs etc.) and I also realise with that question the answer for anyone, always is probably yes, so some degree of realism is needed as well to keep that philosophy from becoming the misguided corporate chainsaw.
But to get to the point of the subject, I would like to be open and honest, and I think there is a lot to be said, and a lot of times I have dropped the ball on this front, of getting the stakeholders involved as soon as possible.
The destructive forms of communication are indirect and passive, because you aren't raising an issue with a person who may have the power to change it, and I think maybe too many employees get the chop or have their career growth impeded because of managers evaluating through an indirect channel (discussing employees amongst other managers/top upwards assesment) or passive (not sharing their opinion with anyone but acting on it in key decisions).
The other two are assertive and aggressive, both of these are sufficiently direct to do something with. Employees are usually more guilty of indirect or passive communication than their managers as legitimate power positions usually have some structured feedback method, and providing feedback top down is usually encouraged.
So in dealing with a troubled employee I gotta say I'd be inclined to bring them in as a stakeholder the moment I start having concerns, and then discussing the concerns with them, and asking the person for solutions. Then the onus is on them, I'd also be inclined to say opinions being facts in themselves, excuses are not necessarily as persuasive a form of communication to hear as behaviour is, the clearest and loudest form of communication there is.
And of course built around power sharing, if nothing else feedback is the most basic form of power sharing, it is saying: 'I want you to be involved in this decision'
And like that my approach changed, and it fits with my overall vision of a participative organisation without compromising my value of maintaining the best employee base as possible.
And axing an employee I guess is the logical output of someone making excuses, or more to the point communicating the wrong message in behaviour. Next I think I'll tackle recruitment.

天才 じゃない

Well I now have another day in Osaka thanks to my being disorganised and Miki unsurprisingly being just as hard to contact when I'm in Japan as when I'm not in Japan.
Yesterday I went to Osaka castle despite feeling all castled out. They had an exhibition on of the chief advisors to Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi is Japans Abe Lincoln, despite not being particularly renowned for freeing slaves nor his honesty. But he is the rags to riches unifier of Japan. In his latter years he simply went crazy, crazy with power.
But the castle is impressive, one could imagine it being almost impregnable certainly to any forces japan could muster but maybe not to western artillary of the time.
An interesting study in the nature of power. The pains the old rulers of japan took just to go to bed at night and wake up in the morning created a nightmare security task for the staff. also just a pain in the arse, and thats just precautions such as passwords, gaurd rosters, body doubles, rotating sleeping rooms, nightingale floors etc.
Then add on top of that a castle as big as Osaka castle and you have one insecure leader. I always liked the more secure, emperors new clothes anecdote were the emperor strolls down naked in his special material that even he wont admit to not being able to see. I'd certainly want to be that free and easy as a leader, not having a security patrol and such.
But how to achieve this? I think security measures indicate that ones power is derived from depriving anothewr of it. Even democratically I imagine that 'you can't please everyone all the time' anecdote of Abe makes some security detail necessary, but at G20 the precautions there for Economic advisors would indicate that people aren't very happy with the job your doing.

セが 高い！

Finally I'm in the upper percentile of tall guys somewhere.
Anyway I'll try and get down some thoughts in the brief time I have.

In Osaka there are bicycles. Lots of them, behaving in ways one would be inclined to pull aside and give a lecture about how callous and irresponsible and faggy they are to be riding bikes in Australia. Not the straight sticking to the gutter riding on hume highway that I was doing back in Oz that would infuriate the drivers of campbellfield to the point of having to lean out their window and yell something lost in the crush of the doppler effect such as 'FAgn' or 'CUnn'.
I see cyclists here riding on roads and crossing from the left hand side of the street to the right and vice versa. on footpaths and riding into oncoming traffic. but its not worthy of conjuring up instant images of chaotic crazy asians cycling around transporting livestock in any way shape or form. the overall effect is pretty bland. and on average I see far less people thumping their horn or yelling at anyone. its all pretty calm. no helmets no nothing. its the land of do as you please when it comes to bikes.
And the streets are lined with them. No steel bike hoops sunk into concrete either, people just line them up on the street with a pissant lock to complete the deal that usually just immobolises the back seat. In shinsaibashi this is far more present than other cities of Japan I've been in.
The dark part of my mind says just pick up one of these bikes (I do miss my bike, the black stallion) and cut the lock with scissors and enjoy the convenience. I mean one could clean up with a pair of tin snips, a bolt cutter would make easy cutting for one of these.
but nobody does.
Same deal, the hotel I've been in the past two nights is a capsule hotel, my door is a woven read drape I pull down, no lock no nothing, I feel pretty comfortable here (if anything I'm dissapointed at how polite Osaka people are) but I know people I know who may object to sleeping so insecurely to be stabbed or molested in the night. and it is insecure just a practical reality. One becomes more conscious when ones life moves from ones apartment to something more takable such as a backpack of security.
I choose to trust people with it, and I trust them more if I pay money. However, both these trust based microeconomies, namely bike ownership and capsule (open door) hotels are almost utopic in there functionality, I'm refreshed that someone still treats security as optional not integral and provides another perspective of looking at society.
It all works here because there's a basic trust that nobody is a thief, it is simply below the japanese peoples dignity in the day to day sense, I'm sure all these crimes exists but in the alienating closeness of a city like Osaka, people in numbers choose to trust.
My bike got stolen locked to a hoop next to a basketball court in broad daylight where people where playing. What's the tradeoff to get a society from there to Osaka, what did it cost Japan to get so trustworthy?

that's not my problem motherfucker

the above is a quote from "shatterday" by Harlen elson. It refers to a guy who discovers his been cloned and then preceeds to immediately try and fuck himself over.
and that's a little how I feel leaving my life behind. I'm not coming from the background of bussing tables saving up having no friends and going overseas to drink and party. for me I have just let go of my job, my apartment, my friends (so to speak damn facebook they'll find me anywhere), my family, my dog and a fair portion of my clothes.
so the question that's been annoying me most is the "are you excited?" one because up until leaving I wasn't everything I had to do was all cost, all losses. not pleasent. so I couldn't honestly say I was.
I think I told Rod aswell that I view this whole trip as preparation. I'm honestly if anything more excited about the prospect of getting back having done this travel than what I'm doing over there. I mean I picked my destinations somewhat as I picked my uni subjects with the same haphazard method of picking stuff that seems convenient and fits my overall educational objectives whilst none of them perfectly combining all the things I want to learn.
For me work play and everything is the same browny green mix of playdough. It's probably a good thing I left my work as despite all my efforts to not work overtime it had started to become the largest part of my life, it could also be a symptom of the handover training though. I don't think I ever took anything else at work that seriously.
Christina better not be copping out yet. Its prudent I think of her now as I was lecturing her in my last honda days about the importance of attitude. On the plane I was amazed at how quickly my fear of not being in control overcame me again. just paranoia like, what if my friends in Japan don't like me anymore, what if the hotels booked out I should have made a boooking. I was admittedly dissapointed with my reaction and did my first zazen session in Hong Kong airport (they have promotional posters for "clean coal" there with beuatiful montain vistas and ceo's in sports jackets but you couldn't see 2 k in the airport for the smog there. a dangerous precedent for beijing) to calm myself down. I thought I'd gotten better at accepting and improvising than that and to be honest I probably have since I recognise it now. knowledge of how you work is empowering but it doesn't necessarily bring about control.
Saying bye to Zamin was the hardest and the sweetest. I think he puts it all in perspective really. I mean the time I have to look forward to not seeing anyone I know if multiplied by 12 is how long he's been seperated from his family. and If I feel out of control (an illusion) then when he was in Jordan and Nauru and Melbourne for the first time I can't really conceive of how tough its been.
But now with startling clarity I am now looking at the lesson I have "planned" for myself and I see avenues for getting stronger and better. I mean its 8 months of more or less solitude. Its not even culture shock as such because I probably will never have time to adapt to my surroundings and build a new life before moving on. As a traditionally sedentry person this should be good (stressful) for me to build on. It also means I've got to initiate relationships with people if I want to be anything more than a mute observer. Japan shouldn't pose to much of a threat but theseother countries where I don't speak the language may prove problematic.
and of course sticking to a budget and so forth. I hope its not all just a reaction to my surroundings type learning though and I get to do some structured personal development.
anyway for autumn here I sure am stewing in ball soup. I'll describe osaka and hopefully have some pictures posted on facebook soon.
fuck you all you people with homes and beds to go to. you wish you were here.

Daily Disciplines

While away I'm going to be endeavoring on a number of structured activities designed to help rebuild my mind, strip down the clutter and make it more efficient. Infact to correct myself also my physiology. And technically I shouldn't be drawing a destinction between my mind and body. That kind of thinking can lead to spirituality

Discipline #1: Zazen - the practice of zazen is zen. The attainment is the practice. The practice is attainment. Thoughts are like weeds for which we should be glad. And a weed is like a cloud over the moon obscuring our vision but giving us appreciation for the clear night. confused? me too. The physical side be sitting still. I'm going to start with 20 minutes a day and build up to 2 hours or so hopefully by the end of my journey.

Discipline #2: Muscle Balancing exercising - My hip rotators, hamstrings and lats are imbalanced causing my bad posture and threatening injuries. I need to increase their flexibility and range so I need to do the static stretches every day to correct my posture.

Discipline #C: Jogging - Right now my calves resemble somebodies neck from peddling up and down the hume highway all day. And I'm nigh on 14kg heavier than my year 12 days with no significant increase in height. So I need to rebuild and reshape myself running minimum 3k getting up to a regular 20k. Major obstacle to this is that my food budget is going to be drawn and quartered whilst my calorie intake skyrockets. If I hit 71 kg I'll start worrying.

Discipline #4: Active Listening - Foreigners should make this activity easier as I will have to concentrate on what they are saying. This is all based on the human ability to speak at 55 words per minute while thinking at 250 words per minute. In that lag is usually where the listener gets distracted and for myself especially this is usually the space in which I make up my humorous and/or scathing response rather than really focusing on what a person is saying. So I'm consciously going to try and do this while I'm away.

And now I've communicated my goals I'm more likely to succeed. I'm also mindful that internal changes are often noticed on a subconscious level, so conscious of the changes I'm making perhaps you will be better equipped to notice them.

Policy

I'm tired of morley putting the onus on me for my blog to be something more than a self indulgent emo set of posts. I thought since my first post ever is so long ago dead and buried to maybe reiterate what this blog is for and some rules I have for me.

The blog is an expansion on Johari's window to increase my Visable window through the facilitation of me disclosing things about myself and feedback from various levels of anonymous readership (yes both of you) would indeed reduce the aspect of what is known about me by others but not myself.
So as such cetain rules follow:

censorship: none, nothing it would defeat the point if I self censored my posts to avoid embarassing myself or others though sometimes I reveal a little about my sensitive side by not disclosing the name of someone I'm talking about.

spelling and punctuation: no consistency gaurunteed.

proofreading: I don't do it, if I proofread as well I'd never post anything and I try to be as true to my first take or thought on something as possible.

emotionality: no consistency gaurunteed.

truthiness: blog posts are not honours thesis' I never will guaruntee that I will have checked my facts, used reason, have supporting evidence nor rely on any basis of my perspective actually existing.

But don't let any of that hold you (the reader) back. In the spirit of Johari, any feedback is appreciated, if you point out some flaw in my thinking that makes me a hypocrite for example this is good because I then go and reflect on why I'm a hypocrite and may or may not disclose my reasons for it.
Your feedback may result in no actual change in my mindset, if say you object to my point of view on Zionism or something. But I do like to hear it.

And thats why I maintain a blog.

Preparation

You may have noticed, I almost haven't touched this blog. its fallen a little by the wayside recently as I prepare to travel round the world. Life has been as interesting and stimulating as ever, however the kind of organisation involved in travelling is not friendly to a fundamentally disorganised guy like me, someone who likes to wing it. I mean they practically force you not to wing it.
Is this the true cost of terrorism?
Whatever the decline in touching this blog has lead to an upturn in the more convenient more readily at hand touching myself. But today I am sunburnt. Sunburnt just days before setting off so far north as to avoid summer all together.
Anyway, I'm going to attempt to redesign this blog in preparation for the brief alteration of lifestyle from reletively sedentary rock pool creature to wandering teen angst nomad. so from here on you will see a few changes on the page that hopefully will make your eyes weep blood as you attempt to read a layout that would make even myspace purveyors wince.

Role Models

Charles makes a very good point. This I think is the crux of any arguement that may attempt to justify any sort of today tonight expose on any athlete ever.

What is that scent? Nostalgia?

I saw Superbad yesterday when I made the first of what will probably be less than I should catch ups before I flee the country. Good old Sonam he has shit going on, if I collected people it would be based on their laughs and propensity to laugh and for that Sonam is awesome.
I used to train Sonam on how to be a man on a date and shit so he could capatilise on all the chemistry he had going on. Seriously though someone should seriously jump Sonam he's awesome.
Anyhoo Superbad is a film well worth seeing unless you trust herald sun reviewers and in that case what the fuck are you doing on this blog? learning grammer. fucktard.
It was a long almost absurdist take on the whole 'getting laid before college' motif. And it probably ended up being a story about how alcohol wasn't necessary for having a good time. But for me my experience on the whole 'getting laid before college' was non existent, not just because it didn't happen but also it seemed the pressure to get laid and make it public knowledge seemed insignificant compared to that that was placed on upon losing the mantle of 'frigid' an odd mantle but it seems there was far more social pressure on making out with a lady than the whole getting laid.
Grade 6 was for the early adopters and most joined the party in year 7, which is a whole year thats the duration of 26 long term relationships in year 7. Year 8 was slow but respectable for late blossomers and then the rest of us were camped out on the frigid island left hanging without high fives for anyone.
We were just left there, the kids making out were only matched in contempt for us by our contempt for eachother preventing us from hooking up and joining the love boat for its high school cruise.
So prominent was this death sentance hanging over my head when I landed my first official girlfriend Kim I choked after 8 hours of officialdom and ended it clawing my expectations out of my throaght and remaining frigid.
Fortunately for no rational reason being on race around the corner made me cool and I soon found myself dating Sarah back in my hometown. I was very happy with this as Sarah had sufficient personality to not just be my girlfriend but also be one of my friends. However I just could adjust my home habitat to couple life, the desk moving involved the 'hanging out' was a huge adjustment for me and being frigid prevented me from being cool about it.
So after 3 days my second relationship fell through. I was in dire straits, looking at a life sentance of never kissing a girl.
I plunged into the depths of teenage angst, I was reconciled to just being a psychological bully for the rest of my life and using the remarkably effective treatment of making myself feel better by picking on people smaller than me in physical and/or psychological size.
Then a few months which seemed like an eternity Sarah turned around one day and declared rather publicly that she still really liked me. And me, I played hard to get, demanding that their would be no flip flopping this time and an explanation for giving up on me the last time before I was reassured enough to 'give her a second chance' which you know I don't understand to this day because I was such a loser and I knew it and how I pulled off the high ground I wish I could replicate again.
And I finally managed to play it cool, we just sort of hung out for a week and then one day after wandering around Balifornia and I was dropping her off at a bus stop when she jumped me and that was that.
When my cherry got popped I sort of thought the transformation was so suttle I really should have dicked around in highschool. But the first kiss was such a burden off my mind, such an outreaching (I was probably something like Sarah's 18th kiss) and the new burden of my relatively stronger teen emotional dependancy on Sarah was not a whole lost of fun.
But that was probably the worst social pressure to do anything I've ever experienced, worse than smoking, drinking or any of the stuff they warn you about, worse than getting laid and other stuff they make movies about.
So kids out there, if you want the early advantage play around with your cousin.