The Growth Zone

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party is moving to raise the thresholds required for activist shareholders to propose resolutions at company annual general meetings. This is not a technical adjustment to securities law. This is protection — for incumbent boards, for mediocre capital allocation, for the status quo that suits the people already comfortable inside it. […]

Honda just announced its first net loss since listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange — in 1957. Let that sink in. Nearly seventy years of profitability, and this is the year it ended. The company cancelled three EV models it had been engineering for years — writing off up to two and a half trillion […]

Today’s episode hits close to home for many of the CEOs I work with. Almost every week, I’m in a conversation with a senior leader who tells me the same thing: “Steve, my sales team is underperforming — and I don’t know what to do about it.” They see it in the behaviors. They see […]

Today I want to talk about strategy. Specifically, I want to talk about a mistake I see leaders make constantly when they set strategic goals — and I’m going to use a somewhat unusual teacher to make my point: a flight instructor from the early days of jet aviation. Bear with me. This is going […]

Today I want to talk about one of the most common — and most avoidable — crises I see in foreign companies operating in Japan. A CEO is preparing to move on. Maybe he’s been recalled to head office. Maybe she’s found a compelling opportunity elsewhere. Maybe it’s simply time. And when that moment comes, […]

On March 11, 2011, the ground under Japan moved. You know what happened next. The earthquake. The tsunami. The Fukushima nuclear plant. The world watched Japan face one of the worst compound disasters in modern history. And somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, a Swedish clothing retailer had to figure out what to do with its Japan operation. H&M's acting CEO in Japan — a man named Hans Anderson — called headquarters in Stockholm. He needed instructions. He needed a plan. And headquarters told him: "We don't have one."