Stories from the Top: The 8 Core Leadership Challenges and How the Best Executives Overcame Them

By Lance Tanaka

Focus on stories (42) from the top China executives, their challenges and how they leverage global best practices in a Chinese way to address them

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543975314

Book preview

Copyright 2019

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN 978-1-54397-448-5 (print)

ISBN 978-1-54397-449-2 (eBook)

Contents

Introduction

About the Author

Section One: The Eleven Foundational Principles

Principle #1: Focus

Principle #2: Leverage your Strengths and Passions

Principle #3: Know the Difference Between North and True North

Principle #4: Take Small Steps

Principle #5: Realize That Logic is Not Enough

Principle #6: Focus on Them

Principle #7: Build Win-Win Relationships

Principle #8: Understand How Motivation is the Foundation for Change

Principle #9: Be Clear

Principle #10: Use the MBTAM Framework

Principle #11: Leverage what performers want

Section Two: The Eight Common Challenges Of Global Leaders

Challenge One: Find your Purpose and Become an Authentic Leader.

Challenge Two: Get a Life and Take Control of Your Career

Challenge Three: Exercise Influence without Authority

Challenge Four: You Can Teach an Old Dog New Tricks

Challenge Five: Attract, Develop, & Retain Your Best People

Challenge Six: Forge a Change in Mindsets Throughout an Organization

Challenge Seven: Cultivate Executive Presence

Challenge Eight: Develop Cross-cultural Effectiveness

Final Thoughts

Bibliography

Testimonials

Introduction

Zhang Lu,¹ a managing director of a Fortune 50 company stared out the window at the city of Shanghai with a blank expression on his face. After an almost remorseful sigh, he said, Lance, I’m just worn out. My health is not so good, and I can’t seem to get my energy levels up from this low point.

Then he went on to give me a litany of reasons: "I can’t get my head above water. The stress of not feeling in control of my schedule—which seems to be under the control of clients, stakeholders, family and on and on—is a constant. With our rapidly changing business, we’re struggling to change our employees’ mindsets to be more empowered and innovative.

"Our employee turnover is fine, but what’s frustrating is that we’re losing some of our best people to the competition. People I personally brought into the business. It’s such a headache to get the cooperation from my cross-functional heads due to their different agendas.

On top of that, I can’t get my country managers to tell me what is really going on in their markets until it’s almost too late. But more than anything, I just don’t feel the passion for the business I once had.

My guess is Lu’s situation sounds familiar. As a consultant, I hear these kinds of frustrations all the time.

And it breaks my heart, because while it’s true that there is no easy solution, it’s also true that there is a solution. You don’t have to feel trapped and hopeless in your career.

I know because I’ve been there. I’ve felt that stress, that feeling that the problems are so big and systemic that you can’t see the end of them, that feeling that you’re doing all this for a family you hardly ever see anymore.

And I found a way to take back control of my life. I’ll tell you some of that story in the following pages as I share how I used the principles I’m going to share with you to focus on what is really important and become the kind of leader—and person—I wanted to be.

The Global Workplace Makes Leadership Harder—and More Important—Than Ever

I have logged over 16,000 hours of coaching executives in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, the U.S., and Europe, and let me first acknowledge that doing business in a global, digitally connected economy does bring a host of stressors to the workplace that are different than what leaders in similar positions had to deal with 20 or 30 years ago.

That said, in all my time I have learned that, regardless of industry, country, or position, leaders face the same challenges regarding their effectiveness in a global environment.

My M.O.: Simplicity and Focus Deliver Impact

I will share these challenges in short order, but first I have a confession to make. I certainly don’t possess detailed knowledge or experience in each of the industries of the executives I coach. I owe my success not to being the smartest guy in the room but to having found a very effective system for approaching problems.

In brief, I tend to look at simple solutions to sometimes complex issues. Instead of being comprehensive, I prefer to be focused. This is what my clients want from me: focused, practical, yet impactful ideas.

I believe Asia Executive Resource’s success in the leadership development business is in large part due to our ability to have a real impact on leaders. It’s our core DNA. Over the years, we’ve learned to achieve impact by taking the research, information, and methodologies out there and boiling it down to foundational techniques that are practical, focused, and immediately applicable to your career and life.

The Eight Challenges of the Global Executive

To that end, in this book I want to simplify the landscape of global leadership challenges by identifying the eight common obstacles that are behind all the other problems. They may not be what you expect, but at the same time they will probably resonate with you.

Find your purpose and become an authentic leader. Move from success to significance by being more of who you were designed to be.

Get a life and take control of your career. Focus on the most important things.

Develop influence rather than authority. Motivate people to want to follow you.

Prove that you can teach an old dog new tricks. Break your old, unproductive habits and create new ones at any age.

Attract, develop, and retain your best people.

Forge a change in mindsets throughout an organization.

Cultivate your executive presence. Get the message right so you can connect with and engage your audience.

Engage the broader culture. Become an effective global leader.

The Eleven Foundational Principles to Meet Your Leadership Challenges

I’ve coached executives for 18 years, and before that I had some 20 years of leading organizations, and I’m here to say that these challenges can be overcome. In fact, in my experience the most effective leaders are those able to live by certain foundational principles that help them address the eight areas of challenge:

Focus

Leverage Your Strengths and Passions

Know the difference between North and True North

Take small steps

Realize that logic is not enough

Focus on them

Build win-win relationships

Understand how motivation is the foundation for change

Be clear

Use the MBTAM framework

Leverage what performers want

Two Ways to Use This Book

This book is structured to walk you through an understanding of the concepts of both the challenges and the principles to overcome them as well as to show you, through real-life stories of global executives, what those challenges and principles look like in the lives of leaders. If this is your first time reading this book, I recommend you read it straight through like you would any other book.

You will notice that within any given chapter I will often point you to other places in this book. This is because many of these concepts intersect with one another. If it’s your first read, don’t worry about these too much; these are for your reference later.

If you are familiar with the ideas in this book, you can use it more like a reference manual. When you face one of the eight leadership challenges, go to that chapter and read the supporting principles to address that challenge.

In Part One, I tell stories from the top that illustrate the eleven foundational principles. I present each principle under three headings:

WHAT: A description of the principle

WHY: The research that supports it

HOW: Concrete and practical ways to apply the principle

In Part Two, I explain the eight common challenges faced by leaders as demonstrated with even more stories from the top.

Although we work with executives from all over the globe, the majority are Chinese and most are located in the PRC.

Note: Some company names have been withheld and most personal names have been fictionalized to respect confidentiality, the bedrock of executive coaching. These best-of-the-best companies are quite protective of how they are addressing their talent development programs and initiatives.

Additional note: I can’t help myself from shameless self-promotion. While this book aims to help you meet these challenges on your own, I will from time to time mention how we can assist you.

I look forward to helping you move from success to significance in being the leader you were designed to be.

---

1 I have fictionalized the names to protect my clients’ confidentiality.

About the Author

Lance, a Japanese-American was born, raised and educated in the US, but has spent much of his professional life living and working in Fortune Global 500 companies throughout Asia.

Executive coach

He is currently the founder and Managing Director of Lance Tanaka Group (LTG), a consulting company that provides executive coaching for the best of the best, working with the leading multinational and local companies in their respective industries throughout Asia-Pacific.

Since LTG’s inception in 2001, Lance has accumulated over 16,000 coaching hours of executives from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, U.S.A., and Europe. He has coached

Over 800 CEO, Partner, Managing Director, General Manager level executives from the top global firms

Best of the best global clients

Consulting: McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Booz & Co.

Investment banks: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered

Accounting: Deloitte, KPMG, Mazars, Grant Thornton

Law: Shearman & Sterling, Herbert Smith, Baker McKenzie, Clifford Chance

Funds: Blackstone, Blackrock, Alliance Bernstein, Baring Private Equity Asia

Real estate: Jones Lang LaSalle, Phoenix, Grosvenor

Automotive: Daimler, Chrysler, Volkswagen, Renault-Nissan

Hi-technology: General Electric, IBM, Lenovo, Lockheed Martin, Ebay, MTR, AT&T, UTC

Fast Moving Consumers Goods: Pepsico, Coca-Cola, Mead Johnson, SC Johnson, Kraft, Li Ning

Insurance: Prudential, SunLife, AIA

Pharmaceutical: Johnson & Johnson, Baxter, Eli Lilly, Merck

Universities: Tsinghua, Peking, Normal, Fudan, Sichuan, HKUST

Business executive

From 1997 to 2001, as Vice President of International for Nike-Cole Haan working out of Hong Kong, Lance restructured and set up new operations in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Korea, Italy, UK, Iberia, Greece, and France.

Lance held a number of senior positions in Pepsi-Cola International over a 15 year period

Managing Director of Pepsi-Cola and Salim Group Joint Venture in Indonesia

Vice-President of South Asia Pepsi-Cola out of Singapore

President of Pepsi-Cola and President Enterprises Joint Venture in Taiwan

Sales Director Tokyo Bottling Company in Japan

Lance’s heritage and professional experience has made him uniquely qualified to provide executive coaching in Asia and the world.

Section One:

The Eleven Foundational Principles

These principles are inter-connected and feed each other

They can be employed in combinations to address

the Eight Challenges for Leaders

Overview

Part One will show you how leaders embody and act upon the eleven foundational principles. For each principle, I will explain:

What it is,

Why it is important, showing research and the views of various experts, and

How to apply it in your business context.

I could easily write a book on each principle, but as an executive, you don’t have the time. Therefore, I applied the 80/20 principle and focused on key points that are practical and easy-to-apply immediately into your situation/challenge.

Principle #1: Focus

WHAT

The 80/20 (Pareto Principle²) ratio was discovered by Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian Economist in 1897. Looking at patterns of wealth and income in 19th Century England, he found that 20% of the population enjoyed 80% of the wealth. Pareto’s other finding was that this pattern of imbalance was repeated consistently whenever he looked at data referring to different time periods or different countries. The 80/20 ratio consistently shows itself in your world:

20% of the countries your company operates in generate 80% of your global sales

20% of your clients generate 80% of your profit

20% of the items you need to address in a project count for 80% of the results

20% of your people do 80% of the work

WHY

Being perfect in everything, trying to complete every task, handling every email/request, attempting to please everyone . . . it’s just not possible. Trying to do everything or to please everybody dilutes your focus on the most important 20% by shifting your energy to the urgent. This will negatively impact your results in short order. If your response is to work harder and longer, it only results in a work-life imbalance. Your results suffer and you suffer.

Steve Jobs took his top 100 people on a retreat each year. He asked them, What are the top 10 things we should be doing next? After much jockeying, the group would come up with a list of 10. Jobs would slash the bottom seven and announce, We can only do three.³

In other words, focus, focus, focus. Business has become so complex and demanding of our limited time and resources. So many issues to solve and urgent requests from multiple stakeholders to handle. It’s too easy to spread yourself thin and accomplish nothing. Better to put more energy behind the few things that will produce the most results.

Focus on Your Most Important Clients

There are a number of ways to distinguish yourselves from the competition. One of them is providing exceptional customer service, and one way to do this is to focus on keeping your most important clients happy.

Consider this: Deloitte China did a survey of their clients to determine what their clients desired from their service provider. Here’s what their clients told them they valued in a partner:

"Reputation of the firm