Perspectives

The summer movie season has opened in earnest. I have a 9-year old nephew visiting from Japan, so I get to watch a lot of kiddy movies (of course, that’s the excuse I’ll use when I waltz into the theater this week-end’s opening of Despicable Me.)

I do admit that I’m a movie fan (perhaps not a buff, since I don’t know all the details of who won what in which year). And I’m most definitely a fan of any film with a Pixar logo attached to it.

This summer’s Pixar blockbuster is Toy Story 3, the three-quel to the original Toy Story. Now, Toy Story and Toy Story 2 were not my favorite Pixar movies. I’d rate Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, and last year’s UP! ahead, but this year’s Toy Story 3 shows why once again, Pixar always makes films that are relevant.

Toy Story 3 happens in a world where Andy is grown, ready to go to college, and must get rid of his old toys. He needs to make choices (sound familiar?) of which toy to keep, which ones to throw away, and which ones to give to charity. He makes a decision, but unfortunately, this is not executed properly (this sounds more and more like BP), and his toys all end up in a day care center.

Initially, the day care center seems like a dream world for the forsaken toys—children will play with them once again.. they will feel useful, again (sounds like workers who got outsourced, but then found a home at the outsourcing agency). But then, the toys face the stark reality that these children don’t love them, they just want to play with them, and rough (think strikes at Chinese factories).

And even in this world of spent toys, there’s a dark leader (Darth Vader in a Pink Bear costume), who just like the Star Wars version, was turned dark by circumstances beyond his control. The fearless leader, Woody (Tom Hanks’ voice), who is motivated to act by watching a little girl interact with and truly play with her toys (with love), performs feats of Xtra-Toy proportions to save the day.

But then, at the end, just as Andy’s Mom has to watch her son go, Andy also learns that true love is by letting his toys go, giving away even his fav… Woody to the little girl who teaches him that sometimes, the boss has to let his people grow up on their own.

Without focusing on the bad meaning of “letting go” (how did HR people come up with that one?), the movie was truly about the process of letting someone go. Andy’s Mom seeing her child grow up and going to college. Andy, seeing that his toys were needed more, not by him as a nostalgic momento, but by a little girl who would give Woody as much love as he did. And Wood and Buzz and all the toys, knowing that they had to let go of Andy and grow out of his wings so that they can find their own world, so that they can make other children happy, knowing full well that they had done their jobs.

Now, if that’s not how a boss and employee relationship should be like, I don’t know where you can find a better example.

In the book Innovating The Pixar Way, Ed Catmull, Pixar’s founder, thinks back of how he had lost his energy to do anything after the completion of the first Toy Story. His life work had been completed, and nothing more challenged him. But in the subsequent years, as he saw the Pixar creative talent battle with the corporate side of the business, he realized that he had a much more important mission—to create an environment where the next Toy Story can be made, over and over again.

That was how Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3 came about. It was about American ingenuity, grit, hard work, talent, and persistence. It was about a bunch of people who got together and wanted to tell great stories. It was about co-workers who truly cared about each other, who openly critiqued each other’s work (and sought such critiquing), and who dared to do the simplest and hardest thing in Corporate America—being honest to each other.

Through that process, Ed created a company where “letting go” meant patting someone on the shoulder not to say, “I’m sorry, you’re gone,” but to praise, “Great Job. Now go out and make it on your own!”

Joseph Lee is an adjunct professor at the Graziadio School of Business and Management and Peter Drucker & Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, where he teaches a course on management consulting. He also teaches MBA courses in Business Communication and Negotiation/Conflict Resolution at Chuo University’s Graduate School of Strategic Management. Joseph provides Leadership Communication training to global Japanese companies.

On January 20, 2010, the New York Times and all major Japanese papers reported the bankruptcy filing of JAL (Japan Airlines). The crane that once symbolized Japan’s powerful national airline is no more. Not even privatization could help an airline run into the ground by arrogance and incompetence.

But this is actually old news—everyone knew this was coming. The activities of the Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corporation of Japan (ETIC), a new government body “with broad powers and a five-year mandate to revitalize Japan’s ailing regional economies,” were being reported on in the media every day.

We knew that the old CEO was a goner when Kyocera Honorary Chairman Inamori, a well respected old-timer, was dragged out of retirement into the frenzy. The appointment was supposed to add credibility to the so-called management team.

Lesson 1: Getting Bill Gates to run a bankrupt United Airlines doesn’t make too much sense, does it?

Likewise, the government’s plan of slashing 15,700 employees, mothballing all of JAL’s 747’s, and drastically reducing the debt were, perhaps, necessary steps, but hardly the foundation of a successful enterprise. In fact, we have no idea what JAL will be doing to continue as a viable player in the airline community going forward.

JAL was going to “hold shareholders accountable” by wiping out the entire capital. The only problem was that a bunch of those shareholders were individuals whose worthless stock gave them the only thing that mattered to them—special discounts to fly JAL.

The ETIC was going to ask hard sacrifices from employees by eliminating a third of the work force. They could have saved even more money by eliminating 90% of the work force, but then there wouldn’t be enough people to wash the planes. Retirees were also arm-twisted into accepting sharp reductions in their pensions. By focusing so much on teaching existing stakeholders hard lessons, perhaps the ETIC forgot that it was turning the airlines biggest fans into, well, mere stakeholders.

Competitive Fall-Out
I’m sure Delta and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines are lobbying hard for JAL not to dump all the Asian routes so that the sky won’t fall off the Sky Team label. All Nippon Airways (ANA), which was lobbying for JAL’s “good routes,” immediately did the brotherly thing by issuing a press release announcing the unfairness of a rival carrier being propped up by government money without any accountability. But ANA should be happy that JAL is alive. Toyota found out the hard way that being number one is not a guarantee of profitability.

Lesson 2: Competition is always good—it keeps management on its toes.

In the world of corporate governance, we love to use the words transparency, accountability, and independence as if they are sacred. They’re like the holy grail, but better. The members of ETIC, all experts in their own right, reported back daily on what they were doing. They demanded that all those key words be satisfied. But perhaps they forgot what stood behind them—transparency is not a goal, and neither are accountability or independence.

Lesson 3: The goal should be for companies to have sound managers making sound business decisions for the benefit of its shareholders.

Soon, the Japanese tax payers will be the shareholders of the collapsing crane. The US bail-out of GM will look like an investment in gold compared to the deal that the folks in Japan will get.

Capitalism Always Wins

I wrote a novel 4 years ago about the Japanese airline industry except the roles were reversed: A US airline was failing and was rescued by a Japanese company. The plot revolved around a major US airbase being returned to Japan as part of a big conspiracy by two airlines to dominate the trans-Pacific routes. My publisher in Japan has now moved up the release date of the paperback version of my book a few months to capitalize on the excitement over JAL.

Lesson 4 (perhaps the greatest of them all): There’s always someone waiting in the wings to capitalize on other’s misfortunes.

This is a post from Joseph Lee’s posting on the Graziadio Business Report.

Joseph Lee is an adjunct professor at the Graziadio School of Business and Management and Peter Drucker & Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, where he teaches a course on management consulting. He will start teaching MBA courses in Business Communication and Negotiation/Conflict Resolution at Chuo University’s Graduate School of Strategic Management starting in April, 2010.

The media, sports, business, ethics, and image pundits are all out now, pointing out what Tiger must do to revamp his shattered image. And we all ask the question—what do we learn from this?

Surprisingly, the business takeaway isn’t really about ruined images or the billion dollar golf industry that Tiger, almost single-handedly created and handed over to his fellow golfers. And there may be those who say that integrity counts both in real life and in business, and few will doubt that. However, perhaps the greatest lesson is that arrogance and power come hand-in-hand, no matter how good a person may be, and that’s why we’ve decided that as a society, we don’t need a benevolent dictator. Or perhaps more precisely, we cannot allow one because a single bad act can undo all the great things that are done.

Ken Blanchard has mentioned that there are only three ways that people can change—by experiencing a near-death experience, by finding a spiritual guide, or by having a strong role model.

I can probably make a safe guess that Tiger will not have a spiritual awakening and I don’t think running into a fire hydrant with a SUV qualifies as a near-death experience. That leaves only one alternative. No one will ever know when Tiger’s indiscretions started. It has less to do with marital infidelities than it has to do with seeing how far he can go without getting punished, much like a two-year old will test his parents telling junior, “don’t you dare open the refrigerator” (remember Kramer v. Kramer?).

Tiger lost his father figure just a few years ago, but his empire was already in place way before then.

And the word “empire” reminds us of another character that was tempted by the Dark Side of the Force. That was, of course, Luke Skywalker, but he had a dead guy and an 800-year old master guiding him. I don’t think Tiger had such spiritual role models. In fact, he only had temptations, with no one daring to challenge his masculinity, his supremacy, his absolute power, and his arrogance.

There really was no choice for Tiger—we’ve known for too long that absolute power corrupts absolutely. The minute he attained the illusion that he had absolute power, he was history.

It is little wonder, then, that we have corporate executives who never seem to learn. In their tiny worlds, the title, CEO, gives them the illusion of absolute power. And it is this illusion that makes them do the Tiger Woods’ equivalent– emptying the company’s coffers or lying about bad results or buying $30,000 toilets. They cheated on all their stakeholders.

I love the game of golf, and I’m actually a big fan of Tiger’s. He’s disappointed a lot of us, but I hope that the biggest disappointment was Tiger’s for himself.

I hope he finds his Yoda–someone who will tell him to “Unlearn what you have learned” or that “Size matters not.” He’ll either come back to become the greatest, or we find out that he was Mike Tyson. I don’t think there’ll be an in-between.

It is good to see our President being beaten down during his first year in office. I’m sure that the silliness of both the Republican Party and his more “progressive” supporters has more than made up for the lack of a Yoda-isms. It is hard not to be humbled by the fact that great intellect will lose to silly numbers (count 41) in the world that we have chosen to live.

But back to the world of corporate executives. I don’t see any Yoda’s in the corporate board rooms. The SEC, PCAOB, Congress, the corporate directors, and the auditors have, by and large, let the Palpatines (that’s the bad Emperor in Star Wars) do whatever they choose. Self interest continues to be the guiding principle and the best predictor of human behavior.

And if we remind ourselves of Ken Blanchard’s words, it is highly unlikely that arrogant CEO’s will discover god and I don’t wish upon them near death experiences either.

I miss Yoda.

Joseph Lee is an Adjunct Professor at both the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management and Pepperdine’s Graziadio School of Management. He’s also an executive leadership trainer for global Japanese firms.

November 19th was management pioneer (now deceased) Peter Drucker’s 100th birthday. To celebrate the life and teachings of this remarkable man, the Drucker Institute hosted a weeklong event, Drucker Week, featuring some of the most respected business academicians (a paradox?) of the world at Claremont University.

Ken Blanchard (author of The One-Minute Manager and Know Can Do!) was there, along with Warren Bennis (author of Judgment), Stephen Covey (author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), Charles Handy (author of The Gods of Management and Myself and Other More Important Matters, Frances Hesselbein (co-editor of the Drucker Foundation’s three-volume Future Series and Leading Beyond the Walls, and Jim Collins (author of Good to Great)—real heavyweights.

Here is a short account of my experiences attending this notable event:

On Tuesday, November 4th, Ken, Warren, and Charles entertained a downtown Los Angeles crowd at Club Nokia. Ken spoke of the need for the servant leader—someone willing to put himself at the bottom of the organization chart (an upside down pyramid)—to support those closest to the customers. After all, as Peter Drucker said, the only purpose of a business is to create a customer.
Charles Handy told the audience that this opportunity to talk about Peter Drucker was a great chance for him to learn—for what better way is there to learn than to teach another person what you know? He also challenged the MBA programs around the country to offer classes that will more properly mirror the demands of the business world.

Warren Bennis remarked about the need for leaders to show respect, the starting point for all forms of communication. All three speakers hit home on themes that Drucker had promoted—the customer, the importance of the human element, and the social purpose of any organization.

On Saturday, November 9th, Jim Collins was the featured speaker. Powerful and eloquent, Jim walked us through his thoughts on Peter Drucker and pointed out that for Peter, his next book was always going to be the best; at age 65 he was only a third of the way through the 39 books that he would ultimately write. He urged students to form their own “board of mentors” who would advise them throughout their careers. Widely viewed as the “Drucker of the 21st Century,” Jim was at times teacher, then philosopher, but perhaps most importantly, a master communicator.

Prominent Japanese businessman Masatoshi Ito had a friendship with Peter Drucker that lasted decades and culminated in the naming of The Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont University. I’ve known Mr. Ito for ten years and had the opportunity to have lunch with him on Saturday. Originally, we had planned a quiet lunch to include his son, Yasuhisa, in Claremont. However, I was told of a change in venue on the day of the event:

“Mr. Ito wants to have In-N-Out Burger.”
And so, we ended up at the storied West Coast fast-food chain.

Mr. Ito is one of the most respected business leaders in Japan. He is 85. His curiosity for knowledge, his desire to learn, and his eagerness to experience everything first hand—these are the traits of leadership that have kept him sharp. Upon arrival, he walked in, looked up at the menu and asked, “What is the best selling item on the menu?” (The Number 1—a Double-double with soft drink and fries, according to the guy behind the counter).

We spent the next 45 minutes talking about the speakers, what they represented, about society, and about the future of the US and Japan. We talked about Covey, about Collins, about Rick Warren (founder and senior pastor of the megachurch, Saddleback Ranch), and about Blanchard. We talked about In-N-Out Burger and its business model. He asked probing questions. And then he listened.

Drucker Week was a special week. We heard Drucker’s words through great speakers such as Collins, Blanchard, Covey, Handy, etc. But for me, the final word I heard from Mr. Ito would be the one that remains in my memory.

“Oishii…” (Translation: Yummy hamburger)

Joseph Lee is an adjunct professor at the Graziadio School of Business and Management and Peter Drucker & Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, where he teaches a course on management consulting. Read his blog at joe-lee.com/blog1.html

After a year of blogging on the old site, I was shocked to get a message from Yahoo that they’ve decided to shut down their blog site. I pride myself in being just technically saavy enough to get in trouble, so this switch was a tremendous challenge for me. (why, I just started twittering a few months ago, and figured that no one really cared what I did, so I stopped).

Yahoo had provided all sorts of tools for me to copy the content of the prior site so that I could “transport” it to the new site. I did that “transporting” 3 times, and I still couldn’t figure out what happened to the 2 MB worth of blogs. At least, Yahoo promises that the old blog-site will still be up, even though I couldn’t post their any longer.

I got all sorts of traffic data on the old site, and I will need to figure out how to do the same on this new one. You can teach an old dog new tricks, but usually, only once.

Speaking of old dogs and new tricks, I was almost moved to tears watching Tom Watson airmail that putt from behind the green on the 18th hole at Turnberry. At 59, he gave us all hope. But the dream was not to be. His post-melt-down news conference, however, was surprising for me. Instead of the “I did all I can, and if someone told me I’d be in second place on Thursday, I’d be happy” comment, he was brutally honest about how disappointed he was. “Hurt to the gut” I think, was what he said, or something to that effect. “I had it in my grasp, and let it go.” Now that’s the sign of a winner. Even at 59, his competitive juices flowed.

Tom Watson is a champion because he can feel that way. But more important, he is a class act because he managed to go through this disappointment without cussing (at least, not in public), without slamming a golf club (something for Tiger to learn), without feeling sorry for himself, and without telling anyone that being #2 was ok. It wasn’t.

If everyone in America or the world behaved like Tom Watson, this world will be a pretty special place. Tom wanted to be remembered by people as, “hey, that Tom Watson guy was one heck of a golfer.” Well, he’s one heck of a human being.

But I still hate Yahoo.

July 7th is called Tanabata in Japan. It is a romantic day, falling on the seventh day of the seventh month (used to be lunar months) when two lovers in heaven, Orihime and Hikoboshi, separated by a river (the Milky Way), are given a chance to meet once every year. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanabata)
We’ve watched so many stars pass away this past month, starting with the amazing Farrah Fawcett. Her presence was felt so strongly that until I read she was in Charlie’s Angels for only one season, I thought she left after four or five seasons. And within hours of her death, we heard that Michael Jackson was carried into a hospital with cardiac arrest. News of his death seemed so surreal.
I grew up with these stars, but I wonder what makes us want to spend a whole week in front of the TV for one star, while another one is forgotten so quickly. Do we remember those that we choose to, or are we force fed to remember by CNN? Michael Jackson was certainly great, but was he Princess Diana great? Did his moonwalk surpass the deeds of Mother Teresa? Did he change the musical world more than the Beatles? Or is this weeklong mourning a fabrication because the 24-hour news channels had nothing better to do?
Who are we to know that his death might have also caused the demise of the next Iranian Revolution, the precious media minutes now sucked up by the Hoover-powered vacuum cleaner of his star power? Why is it that the greed of Joe Jackson and Michael’s lawyers and relatives is so much more important than the coup in the Honduras, the unrest in Iran, the violence in China, the nuclear arms pact with Russia, the survival of GM, and the health care of 60 million uninsured Americans?
We celebrate his music, but I haven’t heard a single person tell us that he or she would want to become “like Michael Jackson.” There’s a Japanese saying that the genius and idiot are separated only by the thickness of paper. The genius of Michael Jackson resided neither in his music nor his dancing, but in his ability to “shock” us. This same trait scared us, for who else will dare dangle a baby from a balcony window or carve up his true face with the knives of deception.
On the week-end of the tragedy of Farrah, who’s inner beauty and strength matched the forever image of her pinup poster, and of Michael, who’s inner talent was never a match of his eccentric exterior, the stars of the sports world aligned with Roger Federer laying claim to the title—best tennis player ever—and Tiger Woods winning his 68th tourney. But the lingering image of the day was Tiger Woods signing and handing over the winning golf ball to a veteran who’d lost his limbs dedicating his life to make everyone a little bit safer.
And if there ever were to be a Requiem for Stars, perhaps it should be given to those who made a difference, those whose influence on society was so positive that we will remember July 7th not only as a romantic day for people living in Japan, but for everyone in the world wishing to be inspired.
Now, let me set my DVR for tomorrow’s Michael Jackson Memorial Service.

Joseph Lee is an independent consultant and executive coach. He is also an Adjunct Professor at both the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management and Pepperdine’s Graziadio School of Business and Management where he teaches second-year MBA courses in Management Consulting. In addition, Mr. Lee is also an author, writing International Business Thrillers, including his debut novel The Sky Burns Red (赤く燃える空) which was published in Japan. A sequel is scheduled to be released fall, 2009.

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