Japan Needs More Alien Leaders: Episode #334 The Leadership Japan Series

Japan Needs More Alien Leaders: Episode #334 The Leadership Japan Series

Interview with Aki Kubo CEO of Tag

Dr. Greg Story: Greetings Japan fans! In today's show, we're going to have an interview with Mr Aki Kubo, who is an old friend of mine and very experienced Japanese businessman. He's worked for foreign multinationals his whole life, and he now runs a company called Tag. It will be a very interesting interview.

His ideas about what Japan is lacking in the leadership area is quite enlightening. So, I look forward to hearing about that very shortly.

Today we are talking about why Japan needs more alien leaders. So, let's hear what Mr Kubo has to say on that subject.

It's my great pleasure today to welcome Aki Kubo, the CEO of Tag here in Japan. He’s an old friend of mine, and I'm very interested to get his views on leadership as this is one of Japan's top business interviews. So welcome Kubo san. 

Aki Kubo: Thank you for having me. 

Dr. Greg Story: So, let's begin. Tell us a little bit about your background and your work experience. A lot of people might not know the company Tag or what you've done. So, let's flesh it out a little bit. 

Aki Kubo: I joined McCann Erickson mechanics and it was a joint venture. 49% of the company was owned by Hakuhodo, which was the second largest advertising firm in Japan. So, I started my career at McCann, and then we have Shandwick. Then Ogilvy & Mather, and now Tag. So, throughout my carrier, I have never worked for a Japanese company all my time either in Japan or anywhere else. I never worked for a Japanese company. I did have Japanese companies as clients, but I myself was never employed by a Japanese company.

So, that is my career to date. Talking about my company Tag, it’s actually a kind of a unique marketing execution agency. We are similar to traditional advertising agencies, but we are focused on marketing execution. We do not do any kind of intangible brand-building. But we do focus our service onto very tangible marketing operation offerings, which give you an immediate impact to your bottom lines for this year. So that's the time it's about. 

Dr. Greg Story: What would be an example of that in a practical application?

Aki Kubo: The big marketing companies are very busy, they work all day and night. Sometimes they have to bring home their laptops and work during the weekend. The reason they are so busy is because they have to do so much outside of their core workload.

For example, many operational jobs such as reporting, negotiations, project management, cost control, all those sorts of things. Our operators on site take over all of these operational jobs so that the marketers can really focus on what matters for them as marketers. Thins like brand building or omnichannel strategy and those core things. Why? Because we take over all the non-core things. That is our business model.

Dr. Greg Story: Ah, okay. And what caused you to choose McCann Erickson as your first employer? 

Aki Kubo: Actually, to be honest, I did apply to several similar companies, but McCann was almost the only company who chose me.

So, I didn’t have much choice. But I must say I was very fortunate that I could start my career at McCann. It is a great agency and still love it. Often, I think that if I started my career at a Japanese company, I would have a very different career today. That's what I believe.

Dr. Greg Story: Yeah, I'm sure that would have worked out quite differently. If we think about leadership in Japan, you were working in foreign multinational companies in Japan, and then abroad. Where did you work abroad? 

Aki Kubo: I worked abroad twice and studied abroad twice. The first location was actually Amsterdam, in Holland. That was in my early thirties. That was during my time at McCann, and my client was actually Canon. They had a big European headquarters just outside Amsterdam. That was where my client was located and there were many Japanese expats there.

The headquarters in Amsterdam had some challenges in terms of communication. So, they asked somebody to come and help them to facilitate the communication, and that was my first assignment. It was a kind of pan-European campaign coordination. It was a very interesting experience that I had. 

Dr. Greg Story: And where else were you?

Aki Kubo: Towards the end of my career at McCann, I was the executive vice president in London, as well as the account director for one of our big multinational clients. My family lived in London, but I lived in an airplane because I was traveling all the time. But again, that was a very good experience, to be honest.

Dr. Greg Story: Wow, that’s fascinating. I'm sure when you were working in Europe and working in Japan for Gaishikei companies/multinational companies with Japanese clients, you got to see a lot of contrast between leadership styles of Japan and foreign countries.

When you moved from Japan to the Netherlands and started working in that environment, what were the sort of things you noticed about the leadership differences between how they were working in Europe and how you were used to working in Japan? 

Aki Kubo: There are a couple of significant differences in terms of the leadership in Japan and the rest of the world, particularly in the West. We often say that leaders are different from managers. Actually, many of the leaders in Japanese companies are not really leaders, they are more like managers.

Managers are expected to manage, but they are not particularly expected to lead the change. That, I think is the fundamental difference. Often the leaders in Japanese organizations come from the organization, whereas a new leader in the West often comes often from the outside.

So naturally, they have no bias. Whereas the inhouse leaders often have some sort of bias, or whatever you want to call it. I think that is very different.

Dr. Greg Story: Sontaku there means anticipating what other people want and then creating that situation.

Aki Kubo: Yeah, then trying to cope with the hidden agenda, if you will. That's what Sontaku is about.

Dr. Greg Story: So, the question for a lot of people would be, okay, if all of these managers are managing in Japan, then who's doing the leading, where is the leading getting done?

Aki Kubo: One of the challenges of this country, among many challenges that this country is confronting is slow progress and the time that it takes to make decisions.

Therefore, we are facing low productivity. Some of the old Japanese companies have recently been bought by the Chinese. Those companies are now coming back and regaining the moment and growing again. If you look closely at why the change is happening, it often comes from the change of the leadership.

The Chinese leaders make much quicker decisions and have a shorter decision-making process. Traditional Japanese companies have a consensus-driven decision-making process. That is a fundamental challenge for this country, I guess.

Dr. Greg Story: Did you find, therefore, that in Europe, in some of the companies you've worked in where you've got non-Japanese leaders, that they are much quicker at decision-making, more dynamic, more aggressive. What did you find? 

Aki Kubo: Well, it’s actually my belief that the Japanese companies in Europe and also Japanese companies that have headquarters in Japan need more outside leaders. So, we need more aliens, actually. We need more foreigners who are free from all this bias. They’re hired as change agents to continue what has been done over the years. It’s really time for us to think about what a new leader is about.

Dr. Greg Story: And when you talk about those biases that Japanese managers will have that maybe a foreign import wouldn't have, what would those biases include?

Aki Kubo: The people here do not appreciate radical change, as we all know. So, often you are told to appreciate kind of a status quo and slow changes as opposed to radical change. If you are fully aware of what your direct report wants, that is naturally a bias that you have to appreciate. When you come from an organization where you have been working with your colleagues over the years, you really understand what kind of corporate culture and DNA that the company has. So, you need a leader who is free from all that bias.

Dr. Greg Story: And given your exposure to different ways of leading, particularly while working for a foreign multinational company, how have you approached leadership?

Aki Kubo: So, Tag was my fourth company as managing director. I was MD of McCann International and MD or CEO of Weber Shandwick and country head for Ogilvy & Mather. Now I'm managing director for Tag. So, of those four companies, I joined three of them at the top of the organization.

At McCann, I started my career as a junior, so I was not free from all the bias, but at the other three companies, I joined at the top of the organization from the outside. So, I was able to do a couple of things. The first thing was that, upfront, I made it very clear what I wanted to do and the game plan that I had. I also tried to achieve an early victory, if you will, to demonstrate that the new leader is really a leader as opposed to just a new guy coming in. You see what I mean?

Dr. Greg Story: So that you had some credibility with the team.

Aki Kubo: I think that’s very important, even in Gaishikei companies, the people sort of expect new leaders to come from inside the organization as opposed to bringing in somebody from the outside. That's the nature of Japanese people.

Dr. Greg Story: It must be quite difficult, not just in Japan, but anywhere, when you come from outside. There are people inside who probably think they should be the leader and then suddenly you turn up. So, I'd imagine that's a rather tricky balance to get these people to follow you, when they actually think that they should be sitting in your chair.

Aki Kubo: Exactly, so it’s hard to get everybody to buy in from day one, naturally. So, you need to identify, say, out of 10 direct reports that you have, try to identify two or three who might appreciate you as a leader. Then once you get the buy in from the people who are willing to work with you, you leverage their intelligence and insight to materialize what you want to materialize.

Dr. Greg Story: In the case of foreign multinational companies, sometimes when presidents are brought in with a change agenda, there are still a lot of vested interests inside the company. And when staff don't want to have any of that change, they try to sabotage the new leader. They'll go directly to the headquarters and say, this new guy who doesn't know Japan, doesn't know the clients, doesn't know the market, he's doing this, and he's doing that. Just complaining all the time and creating trouble. 

What about in the Japanese version? Because I mean, you're mainly dealing with Japanese staff here, but as a Japanese person, did you ever get those sorts of occasions where people were trying to undercut you?

Aki Kubo: Yes, that is always a risk. I must say I have experienced a kind of similar situation, to be honest. As a newcomer from outside, you should be aware that you are perceived as an alien.

Dr. Greg Story: Even though you’re Japanese. 

Aki Kubo: I'm the local talent. But the leader or country head for multinational companies in Japan, I believe, has a very strong role as an interface.

So, the headquarters either in New York or London or wherever, really do not understand what's going on in a marketplace like Japan. But at the same time, many of your local teams do not understand what the global agenda is either. So, as a leader, you have to act as an interfaced and convey what’s going on in Japan to your headquarters and get their concurrence. At the same time, you let your people know what the global agenda is about, and why the global strategy is moving in a certain direction as opposed to another direction. That is a very important role and is probably more important than any other market because of the unique homogeneous society of Japan.

Dr. Greg Story: Those efforts to push back often include some dirty tricks. There don't seem to be any rules, or the rule book is even out the window. Anything goes, you know, because people feel threatened by the change. Did you have such experiences like that?

Aki Kubo: Some, but not very serious, to be honest. Again, the only thing that you can do is to demonstrate why you are here and why you are appointed. And as you pointed out, you have to demonstrate your capabilities and gain credit from your team, as well as your headquarters. That is very important.

Dr. Greg Story: Of course, you have direct reports, but there's also people down the bottom too. So, one of the issues of leadership is that we may set the course for the organization. We may believe that we're communicating the changes throughout the organization through our direct reports. But as you mentioned before, with managers, often they're like a concrete layer. They absorb all the knowledge and information from above, but they don't like to pass it down. I don't know whether it’s to keep power or whatever but they don't intend to pass it down to the people at the bottom.

So often we think of the top. Everyone knows why we're doing this. Everyone knows the importance of this, but sometimes they don't know because they're not being told. What has been your experience with this issue?

Aki Kubo: Yes, that sometimes happens. Therefore, I think it’s important that you have direct contact with one or two levels below. If you speak only to your director reports, you might fall into that trap that you just described. So, it is important. You have to have that contact one or two levels below. Then you can check what your strategy is. 

I think it is important to have regular town hall meeting. I do that at Tag. At Ogilvy, I did town hall meetings once a month. You cannot expect that your strategy or your message will always be communicated across the organization, so the meetings are important.

Dr. Greg Story: People sometimes say that going out and drinking with the staff after hours is a good way to go about it. Is that something that's been important in your leadership, or not?

Aki Kubo: Not really. Well, sometimes I go out for drinks. You do need to have a healthy relationship with your organization, but at the same time, you should be free from bias. If you get too close to your people, you will often be subtly biased. So, you need to be cautious of that.

Dr. Greg Story: In modern organisations we often have a matrix. So, you may be the functional country head, but there are individual reports who are actually reporting dotted line to you and full line somewhere else outside of the country. That seems to be making leadership quite a tricky exercise. In the past where we didn't have that, what has been your experience with some of the challenges of matrix leadership?

Aki Kubo: I see some risk with matrix organizations like Tag. But I see more benefits of such a management style, to be honest. Because the marketing and communication is increasingly complicated and complex. You may be familiar with one of the specialties but cannot be a specialist in all service categories that we are delivering. So naturally, you must rely on subject matter specialists on that. If that's the case, you have a really strong specialist group.

Your subordinate reports professionally to that subject matter specialist or expert, and geographically, they report to you. I think that is the healthy structure and you have better channels to provide higher quality service to your customers.

So, yes I am fully aware of what you're talking about in terms of the risk as a leader, but I see more benefit of the matrix organization as opposed to risk.

Dr. Greg Story: It always surprises me about Japanese big companies that the president often doesn't have that much power. Instead, the division heads inside the organization have got tremendous power and the presence of the head, but really not the leader.

Aki Kubo: The managers, their job is just to acknowledge and approve what the team is coming up with, right. That is the role. They hardly ever meet their customers and are hardly involved in day-to-day operation. They are pretty much hands off as opposed to hands on, which makes you a manager and not really a leader.

If you want to be a strong leader, you really have to be hands on and you really have to understand what's going on. Otherwise, you cannot create the innovation. So, I think that is the fundamental difference between leaders and managers.

Dr. Greg Story: One of the things I noticed when we used to do engagement surveys in Japan is that they’d be doing them globally. So, you'd get sent to the hub, usually in Hong Kong or Singapore, and they'll have all the regional people there and they'd be showing the global results of the engagement surveys. Invariably, APAC scores would be the lowest globally, and invariably Japan would be the lowest in APAC. What's been your experience with these sorts of very low scores? For occasion? 

Aki Kubo: Yeah, that is my experience too, to be quite honest with you. I try to understand where it comes from. There are a couple of reasons. One is that the middle and junior people are often sort of disappointed about the slow change in the organisation and they are not given any authority to do something different.

I would say that the high number of seniority-driven organisations, as opposed to the low number of meritocracy organisations is one of the reasons. Sometimes if you are a junior, no matter what kind of ideas you come up with, your manager will still say no all the time. Let’s just stay with what we’ve been doing before. 

So, there are many things that discourage talented people, to be honest. I believe the quality of Japanese wildcards are quite high relative to the group of standard people, but there are many ways to discourage or disappoint these kinds of people.

Dr. Greg Story: Why is it that the managers are discouraging juniors having a little bit of a chance to have some authority or lead a project or do something new? What is the fear of the new that's driving people to suppress that?

Aki Kubo: The performance evaluation is basically deduction principle, as opposed to point principle. So, if you take risk and do something that goes well, then that’s good, but sometimes it doesn't go as well, and if it doesn't go as well, your points will be deducted. 

Dr. Greg Story: When you say your points will be deducted, what do you mean? 

Aki Kubo: If you take risks and to do something well, then you will gain points, that is the Japanese points principle, ‘Katenshugi’. And that is the way to fast track your career, but you are often expected to just behave like everybody else.

If you do something wrong, your points will be deducted. I suppose if you do something, extraordinary, then you gain the points. It’s called misapplied equality. Akubyodo.

Dr. Greg Story: Akubyodo is misapplied equality? Okay. That's a new word for me.

Aki Kubo: Many of the Japanese organisations try to manage the people in the same age and same generations. So, you are not supposed to do something extraordinary or something different. They just expect you to behave like everybody else does.

That is the fundamental thing that makes people very conservative. You don't have to do anything particularly unique or particularly new. If you do have an idea and it goes well, then okay, you might be appreciated                    by management, but most organisations do not appreciate foreign and unpredictable behaviors. Therefore, the managers and their teams are expected to behave in the same way.

Dr. Greg Story: So, the upside for innovation is not too great, and the downside of failure is huge. Therefore, people think it’s better to just keep going along the safe route. 

Aki Kubo: Exactly. People do not want to take risks, but the younger generations are starting to take more risks. The problem is that their senior managers are more conservative. They do not want to take risks, and that is the way to discourage younger people. 

Today, many new graduates who have joined tier one Japanese companies, within three years, about 30 percent of that young talent leaves their company because they do not see a future career in such a traditional and conservative organisation. 

Dr. Greg Story: What about in your case? In your company, you must have mostly Japanese staff. There's bound to be young people who've got ideas or want to try something. Yes, there might be a risk of failure, but how do you approach that here at Tag? 

Aki Kubo: I always encourage my people to take risks and it’s perfectly fine for them to make a mistake. I don't like them not taking risks and not to challenging new things. I always encourage them to go ahead and give it a try. Sometimes you make it, sometimes you don't make it, but that's fine. But accepting the status quo and standing still is not an option. That is the kind of message that I keep delivering.

Dr. Greg Story: I guess the real crunch comes when a person does make a mistake because often people may say that at a rhetorical level, but then they blow up when a mistake is made and get really upset. So, how do you actually show the credibility of that support when they do make a mistake? How do you handle mistakes? 

Aki Kubo: So, when people are taking risks and unfortunately, it doesn't work, they come to me. We do investigate what the root cause of the problem is. Then we try to share the learnings from that instance and why it didn't go so well. But then that’s the end of the project. And from that point onwards, all of the learnings from the mistake will be shared and we will make sure that the second time around, we will succeed as opposed to failing. That’s what we usually do.

Dr. Greg Story: So, there's no impact on their performance assessment to get a negative mark for failing in a project or something like that? 

Aki Kubo: I always warn them at appraisal time that if they are not taking risks, that is something I don't like. I mention it to them that they should be much braver, and I encourage them to take more risks in the future, as opposed to standing still and being conservative. Doing the same thing again and again is not good because the world is changing very quickly, so you cannot afford to stand still.

Dr. Greg Story: Your company has got this approach and your competitors probably have the older and more conservative, steady as she goes, don't make any changes type of style. So, I'm imagining that if you're encouraging this innovation environment inside the company, you will be winning against your competitors because your people will be trying new things without fear. They’ll be experimenting, learning, getting more motivated, and staying with the company.

They know if they go somewhere else, the money might be better, but they'll have no power and no chance to express themselves. Are you finding that it's helping you in that competitive environment with your competitors, and is it also helping you to retain people?

Aki Kubo: Yes. I’ve found that there is no such thing as a stable place anymore. Even when you work for a big company, you never know what is going to happen. So, as a professional, you have to create your own personal brand, as opposed to relying on your company’s brand. I think that is a very different mindset and one that is essential moving forward.

We previously talked about generalists as opposed to specialists, but you have to design your career yourself and as not rely on your company to design your career. That is a very important element for young people moving forward. 

Dr. Greg Story: In the West, that idea would be a very accepted and standard idea. You are responsible for your own career. You have to create your personal and professional brand. You have to seek advancement inside the company.

Have you seen a change here in Japan yet where people are starting to understand that they have to take responsibility? They have to build their personal brand. They can't rely on being with the same company for 40 years. Do you think that is changing? 

Aki Kubo: Not as quickly as it should be, to be honest. That's my view. A lot of young people are inclined to think that way. But the older generations still rely on their company's brands, which is unfortunate. I keep telling youngsters that they have to design their own career, as opposed to expecting the company to create a great career for you. Quite often the companies will give you a first mission when you join them after school. You might be a salesperson for five years, then the next five years you will be in the factory.

If you are working for manufacturing companies, the next five years you might be doing administration. Then the next five years in finance. Then maybe HR and maybe procurement, and then back to sales again. So, you will know everything about the company that you work for. But from the outside perspective, you are nobody. You have no specialties. You are not a sales professional. You are not marketing professional. Certainly not a procurement professional. Instead, you are a generalist.

So, you should design your career. If you find that marketing is the speciality that you want to be in, then you should not stay at the same company. If they ask you to move from marketing to sales, you should stay in marketing and move to another company. That way, you create yourself as a marketer.

As you said, that is the mentality in Western countries, but here it is still not the case. People are so afraid of leaving their company and getting out of their comfort zone. There is not enough risk taking.

Dr. Greg Story: I've asked you a number of things about leadership. Is there something I should have asked you about that I've forgotten to ask? 

Aki Kubo: Maybe a couple of things. I think that acquiring good tier one local talent has been always the challenge for Gaishikei companies in Japan. Many people prefer to work for Japanese companies, as opposed to Gaishikei companies or foreign capital companies.

But given all the changes that we just mentioned, I think it is probably a very good opportunity for Gaishikei companies because many people are questioning whether the traditional Japanese companies are best for career development.

So, I think it is a good opportunity for non-Japanese companies to acquire local talent. I also mentioned earlier, the senior people who are conservative and don’t want to appreciate any radical change. One or two levels below them are much more willing to try something new. Try to get in direct contact with these people. They might not be the best English speakers, but they still appreciate if you come to them. If you do that, then they will be much more open to talking to you than you’d think.

One last thing is also something I mentioned earlier, but this country needs more game changers. We need more fresh perspectives, as opposed to traditional conservative managers. We need more aliens, more gaijin, more open and fresh perspectives.

So, please stay here and develop your careers in this market. That is your best benefit and the best benefit of your organisation and the country as a whole.

Dr. Greg Story: So, if we were going to give some advice to someone who is coming to Japan or they've only been in Japan for a short time, what are the three pieces of advice you would give them as a leader in Japan?

Aki Kubo: I do not expect you to come out behave like locals, because there are many local people. You don't have to be a local, you have to be the interface, as I mentioned earlier. But you are also the game changers. Some people try to behave like the Japanese do and go out  for drinks and karaoke, but that is not what you have to do.

You should be pushing yourself as the game changer because that is what you are there to do. That's the first thing. The second is to be mindful that the company needs a person like yourself. Don’t think of Japan as a stepping stone for your career. Instead of staying in Japan for three or five years and then going back home, please try to commit to a longer period of time in this market to be a real leader for your organisation. Japan needs foreign leaders with different and unique perspectives. That is very important in a homogeneous society like Japan.

Uh, Japan as one of the stepping stones for you, Kelly, is, um, so stay here for three years, maximum five years, and go back to us or go back to England or go to the, another better place, pre strides to, um, commit a rongeur the town in smart kit and tried to be a real, you know, the, uh, the leader, uh, for your organization in this market.

Dr. Greg Story: Yes, that's really good advice, thank you very much. Well, we've had a really fascinating conversation today. I feel like we've gone very deep on seeing how Japanese companies work, the potential they have to change what they're doing and to grow.

I'm sure that if we followed Kubosan’s advice around getting game changers employed and giving people the opportunity to grow and to experiment and to innovate, that the whole country will move forward much faster than it has done to date and will secure a place for itself in the future. So, I'd just like to thank Kubosan once again. Thank you very much for a fascinating conversation.

Aki Kubo: Thank you very much for your time. 

Dr. Greg Story: So, that concludes today's episode on leadership for Japan's top business interviews. I look forward to joining a for our next show.

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About The Author

Dr. Greg Story

Your Corporate Coaching And Training Guy

President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Author of “Japan Sales Mastery”, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years.   He is also the author of the new book “Japan Business Mastery” aimed at business people who are new to Japan and want to know more about how things work here.

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year plus veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, he publishes articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, and daily releases his videos and podcasts.  

For podcasts and videos: 

Mondays THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show podcast &

THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show video

Tuesday “THE Leadership Japan Series”

Wednesday "THE Sales Japan series"

Thursday THE Presentations Japan Series"  

Friday THE Japan Business Mastery Show &

THE Japan Business Mastery Show video.  

He is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

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