Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs

・ Still due to the pandemic and the long strict border control of Japan, much less foreigners are allowed to come to Japan.Many foreign students who were already enrolled in Japan are now going to other countries, giving up on Japan.

・ The majority of the Japanese still tend to have the mindset of “Tell me what to do” instead of “This is how I can contribute.”. In order to push the Japanese out of this passive comfort zone, some burning platform is needed that is burning enough for them to take different actions.

・ One of the powerful stimulus for many corporate Japanese employees would be to be thrown out of the currently company and have to live as a self-employed or entrepreneur without joining any company. By having to be totally independent to deliver value and earn money, people are forced to think and act differently for survival. Even if they still work in a big company, they should have more mentality of being an independent vendor and entrepreneur. Then they will be able to add much more value to the current company and be no longer afraid of losing jobs .

・ What many Japanese are still missing is some fundamental way of working in the English environment. As Japanese workers are extremely good at following a given manual, follow it and execute it perfectly, if they are given a kind of practical manual on how to effectively behave in English interactions, such a manual will serve the Japanese as an external stimulus as it will force the Japanese to think and act differently in meetings not only in English but also in Japanese.

・ External stimulus has to be stronger than the domestic peer pressure and inertia in Japan. Role models are always powerful external stimulus. Female leaders who are successful and happy on every facet of life and male leaders who are totally different from salarymen and living their own dreams are so inspirational for many Japanese people. But the challenge is that there are still not so many people like that in the Japanese corporate society.

・ At the end of the day, change has to be self-driven. In the West, female leaders and ethnic minority leaders first had to fight on their own with their self-motivation before their efforts created massive social movements. So external stimulus could work as encouragement for Japanese professionals to strengthen their determination but the initial spark of strong desire to live a life as they want to live has to happen inside the heart of each individual.