Doodle Card

 

Change yourself first.
まず自分自身を変えよう。

 

Deep in one’s heart, no one wants to change anything—even in a business environment.

If you worked for a company as a consultant, you would sometimes face a weird situation: employees of the company do whatever they can do to prove the consultant wrong. They refuse to cooperate with the consultant, either aggressively or passive-aggressively. Even if the company clearly has a problem (or problems) to solve, it’s not rare that their employees become quite reluctant.

Why does that happen? Ninety-nine percent of the time, the management of the company (who requested a consultant to work for the company) is the root cause. They expect a consultant to change their employees and solve their problems, without changing themselves. They also expect their employees to work together with the consultant, without giving the employees any incentive for that.

Then their employees start thinking this way: “Wait a minute. We don’t have to change. We work really hard every day, and nothing is wrong with us. If there’s any problem with this company, it is the company’s management who needs to change!” And they figure out hundreds of creative ways to lead a consultant into failure because that’s one of the easy ways to prove the management wrong—and prove them right.

A consultant is an outsider. And as the old saying goes, an outsider often has the best perspective. But in order to use the outsider effectively, the management of the company needs to change their mindset before changing their employees and the company. They need to accept that they need to change themselves to make the company better, and also accept the outsider’s view—which is almost always uncomfortable—to be the better version of themselves and the company.

Even if you change yourself, others don’t always change themselves accordingly. But at least, your perspective changes as you change, and that gives you new ideas to make the current situation better.

Always change yourself first. That’s the only way to change the world around you.

 

 

Distance yourself from the unessential.
本質的でないものを切り離そう。

 

I don’t get along with a nationalist of any kind because of their hostility. Recently I’ve noticed that one of my old friends is now a Japanese nationalist, and I unfollow his accounts on social media.

It’s not an easy thing to do because he is my old friend, but I have to protect myself from the things that never inspire me. I’m responsible for making myself feel inspired all the time—for the sake of my clients and people close to me.

This world has too many noises. If we’re not well prepared, we easily get distracted by them. All we need to do is distinguish the essential from the unessential, and hack away at the unessential.

 

 

Enjoy nature.
自然を満喫しよう。

 

When we live without a feel of nature, we feel something is wrong. That’s probably because the ancestor of human beings lived in nature for millions of years.

Spring is a great opportunity to feel the nature. It gets warmer day by day. Flowers begin to bloom. And we notice that winter has finally gone.

Whenever you have a chance, go out and take a walk in nature. Forget all problems in your life and business for a while—say, even for 30 minutes—just focus on feeling the strength of nature. It can be a new source of inspiration for you.

 

 

Live with your own choices.
自分自身の選択と共に生きよう。

 

Choosing something is not so difficult. But it’s often quite difficult to keep living with our choice.

Probably you don’t like the consequence of your choice. Maybe someone close to you don’t want you to change. Or you might think you made a wrong choice.

No matter why it is, if you don’t like the choice you made in the past, choose again now. You can’t redo your life, but you can start fresh anytime you want.

If you don’t choose to live with your own choice, you can end up with being controlled by someone else for the rest of your life. And most likely, that’s even worse than living with your own bad choice.

 

 

Listen between the words.
言葉の裏を聴こう。

 

Even in a business environment, it’s not always easy to talk about money. Especially when we set a price for our product or service.

When it comes to pricing, it’s better NOT to ask our customers what they think is right. They might say, “Well, I would buy your product/service if you set a price of $____.” But if we followed their advice, they wouldn’t buy. That’s because they’ve “analyzed” the price that seems right, and they are no longer excited about our product/service—the most powerful driving force to let our customers buy.

It’s also difficult to talk with potential customers about their budget. That’s simply because they rarely disclose it. They might say, “My budget is flexible.” Nope, there’s no such thing. They just want to know how we set a price. Or they might say, “My budget is limited.” They might be just looking for someone who works very cheap. Run away from them unless you’re happy with that.

No matter what we talk, we also need to see what the opponent thinks or feels. It’s usually behind their words—and their words always have some clues. If you talk face-to-face with someone, you often can see more from their facial expressions than their words.

Every single conversation you have is a chance to practice. Don’t avoid having a conversation about hard things, like money or contract terms. Because that’s the most effective way to become a better communicator.