Yoshito Hori speaks about leadership lessons with enthusiasm in a suit and tie
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Influencer Marketing

Expand your reach and engage with your target audience using this trending technique that blends celebrity endorsements with social media marketing.

Leading High Performing Remote Teams

How can leaders ensure that performance remains high in remote or hybrid-work environments?

Design Thinking

Learn the 5 phases of this problem-solving methodology and switch from technology-centered to user-centered thinking.

Reciprocity

Learn what reciprocity is and how it can motivate people and boost sales.

Gantt Chart

Invented in the early 20th century, the Gantt Chart is one of the building blocks of modern project management. In this online course, you'll learn how this tool can be used effectively to monitor progress and achieve your team's goals.

Navigating Change Successfully

The working landscape is continually shifting and being disrupted, so how to employees maintain a sense of stability? Listen to CEO and president of Carl ZEISS Japan Stefan Sacre share his expertise on dealing with change in organizations and entire industries.

Halo Effect

The halo effect is often leveraged for marketing and promotion. But as a type of cognitive bias, it can also have a subconscious impact on decision-making in the workplace. Learn why and (how to overcome it) in this online course.

Anchoring and Framing

Want to increase your confidence during negotiations? Master the principles of anchoring and framing to take your negotiation skills to the next level.

ZOPA and BATNA

Understanding ZOPA and BATNA will help you become a better negotiator, create more value, and feel more confident at the table.

Content Marketing

In this course, you’ll learn how compelling blogs, videos, podcasts, and other media can reach customers and drive sales. You’ll also learn steps for creating an effective content marketing plan, and some important ways to measure its impact and success.

Content marketing is a essential digital marketing strategy for companies looking to provide relevant and useful information to support your community and attract new customers.

Get started on your content marketing journey today.

Sustainable Innovation in Times of Disruption: Choices for a Better Society

There are opportunities for progress all around us. The key is to innovate on these opportunities sustainably.

To help identify most effective path forward, you'll need to gain a global perspective to these challenges in an open discussion. How can Japan and the world take action to create a more sustainable, innovative world? Where do you fit in?

It's time to find out.

Social Media & Digital Communications: Impact on Global Public Opinion

Social and digital media have dominated the communications industry for decades. But it's no secret that social media has the power to sway public opinion, and the way in which many companies use these platforms could be seen as manipulative.

What do companies need to be aware of when utilizing social and digital media? How can these mediums be used to better communicate strategically with the world?

Discover what top media and communications experts have to say.

Blockchain

Blockchain is one of the most captivating technologies out there. Learn what it is and how to make use of its opportunities in this short online course.

Mehrabian’s Rule

The 7-38-55 Rule, developed by Albert Mehrabian, suggests that effective communication relies less on the words we choose than on our tone of our voice, appearance, and body language. Learn how to put this theory to use for better communication in business.

Pareto Principle

Your time and resources are limited. Efficiency means learning to prioritize. The Pareto principle (also called the 80-20 rule) can help you identify the best way to use your time for maximum results.

Country Analysis Framework

Overseas expansion requires careful planning. The Country Analysis Framework can help you look beyond an industry-level analysis and reframe your view based on performance, strategy, and context. Try this short course to learn how it works.

SECI Model

The SECI model illustrates how knowledge is created and shared. Learn how to put it to use for best practices, and how the Japanese concept of “ba” fits in to broaden your perspective.

Johari Window Model

The Johari Window Model is a self-awareness framework that helps you better understand . . . you. Learn how its four quadrants can help you identify gaps between how you see yourself, and how others see you.

Sunk Costs

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CAGE Distance Framework

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Groupthink

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Deductive and Inductive Reasoning

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Critical Thinking: Hypothesis-Driven Thinking

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Critical Thinking: Structured Reasoning

Even a few simple techniques for logical decision making and persuasion can vastly improve your skills as a leader. Explore how critical thinking can help you evaluate complex business problems, reduce bias, and devise effective solutions.

Critical Thinking: Problem-Solving

Problem-solving is a central business skill, and yet it's the one many people struggle with most. This course will show you how to apply critical thinking techniques to common business examples, avoid misunderstandings, and get at the root of any problem.

How to Dream

Join globally renowned author and Columbia Business School professor Dr. Sheena Iyengar as she explains how to approach your dreams with a new perspective. Learn to reflect on what you long to accomplish and what stands in your way.

Logical Thinking

Logical thinking is at the heart of confident, persuasive decisions. This course will equip you with a five-point approach to more becoming a more logical thinker. Learn to classify ideas and distinguish fact from opinion.

Investing & Diversity: The Changing Faces of Venture Capitalists

Is the venture capital industry embracing diversity in investors? Watch global venture capitalists from around the world discuss the state of things and what needs to be done for a more inclusive future.

Servant Leadership

There's more to leadership than driving a team to profit. In fact, there's a word for looking beyond self-interest to prioritize individual growth: servant leadership. Try this course for a quick breakdown of what that is, how it works, and how it can lead to organizational success.

Organizational Behavior and Leadership

Ever wonder what makes a great leader? Whether your role requires leadership or not, understanding organizational behavior is useful for your career. This course from GLOBIS Unlimited can set you on your way.

Leadership vs. Management

Leadership and management are different skills, but today’s leaders must have both. Try out this course from GLOBIS Unlimited to understand the difference, as well as when and why each skill is necessary for motivation, communication, and value.

Strategy: Creating Value Inside Your Company

Have you ever wondered why certain companies are more successful than others? The answer is strategy: internal processes that control costs, allocate resources, and create value. This course from GLOBIS Unlimited can give you the tools you need for that strategic edge.

Strategy: Understanding the External Environment

To plan strategy on any level, you need to understand your company's external environment. In fact, your level of understanding can impact hiring, budgeting, marketing, or nearly any other part of the business world. Want to learn how to do all that? This course from GLOBIS Unlimited is the perfect first step!

Using Japanese Values to Thrive in Global Business

Japanese companies have unique cultural, communication, and operational challenges. But they also have values that have led to remarkable longevity. Check out this seminar to hear how these values help earn trust from overseas head offices and develop employees.

Turnaround Leadership: The Differences Between Japan and the West

What's the best way for leaders to communicate a shift in corporate strategy? How do you even know when it's time for such a change? This course explains how Japan might have one answer, Western companies another.

Conflict Management

Conflicts in the workplace are inevitable. But they can lead to positive outcomes if they’re managed well. Check out this online course for a two-step process that can help you manage conflict successfully.

Evernote Founder: How Tech Startups Can Break through in Japan

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Women Empowerment: Lessons from Cartier

How can women overcome gender inequality and reach their leadership goals? Cartier Japan CEO June Miyachi shares her secret in this special course from GLOBIS Unlimited.

Marketing: Reaching Your Target

Every company works hard to get its products into the hands of customers. Are you doing everything you can to compete? In this course, you’ll find a winning formula to turn a product idea into real sales. Follow along through the fundamentals of the marketing mix and see how companies successfully bring products to market.

Marketing Mix

Seeing good products into the hands of customers is no easy task. The marketing mix can help. It's a collection of strategies and tactics companies utilize to get customers to purchase their products or services, and is an essential part of the overall marketing process.

The Principles of Negotiation

With the proper skills and attitude, anyone can become a successful negotiator.  But first, you'll need to learn the basics to prepare for, assess, and respond to offers for the best results. GLOBIS Unlimited can help.

Negotiation: Creating Value

Want to create more shared value between yourself and your negotiation opponent? Discover how cognitive bias affects the judgment of others. Try this course from GLOBIS Unlimited to master the value of negotiation.

Finding Your Life Purpose with Ikigai

Ikigai can guide you in your quest for self-discovery. Listen to Japanese brain scientist Ken Mogi explain why and how.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Want to leverage Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as a leader? Try this short course to see how the theory can be applied in practical work scenarios.

Confirmation Bias

We all subconsciously collect information that reinforces our preconceptions. It's natural . . . but it does lead to a kind of flawed decision-making called confirmation bias. To become more objective and impartial, check out this course from GLOBIS Unlimited!

An Investor's Lesson to Entrepreneurs

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Managerial Accounting

Managerial accounting is a powerful way to measure progress, identify problems, and meet your goals. Check out this course to learn how data-backed decisions can help you run your business.

Finance Basics: 1

For a healthy mix of quantitative planning, evaluation, and management, you need solid decision-making. And finance is the secret sauce! Get the essentials of finance in this two-part course from GLOBIS Unlimited.

Basic Accounting: Financial Analysis

Want to compare your performance vs. a competitor? Or evaluate a potential vendor? Then you'll need to conduct a financial analysis. This course will teach you how to use three financial statements and evaluate financial performance in terms of profitability, efficiency, soundness, growth, and overall strength.

Career Anchors

What drives you to be good at your job?

Career anchors are based on your values, desires, motivations, and abilities. They are the immovable parts of your professional self-image that guide you throughout your career journey.

Try this short GLOBIS Unlimited course to identify which of the eight career anchors is yours!

Digital Marketing Psychology to Transform Your Business

How does digital marketing really differ from traditional marketing? How is social media changing things really? And what's going on in Asia?

Pyramid Structure

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Leadership with Passion through Kokorozashi

The key ingredient to success? Passion.

Finding your kokorozashi will unify your passions and skills to create positive change in society. This GLOBIS Unlimited course will help you develop the values and lifelong goals you need to become a strong, passion-driven leader.

AI First Companies – Implementation and Impact

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Technovate in the Era of Industry 4.0

Is Industry 4.0 is the next step of human evolution human civilization? Dr. Jorge Calvo seems to think so. Join him to learn how the past can help you set goals for an exciting future of digital innovation.

Technovate Thinking

Business leaders of tomorrow need to harness the power of technology and innovation. That means understanding algorithms and how they drive business results. Discover opportunities to make technology work for your competitive edge.

Product Life Cycle

Every product takes a natural course through the market—there's a how, when, and why customers adopt products at different stages. Check out this course from GLOBIS Unlimited to find out how a product you use every day is part of this cycle.

Logic Tree

Logical thinking is the most valuable asset any business professional can have. That's why logic trees are such a valuable tool—they can help you identify a problem, break it down, and build it back up to a solution.

MECE Principle

Using the MECE principle can help ensure you categorize without gaps or overlaps. Check out this course from GLOBIS Unlimited for a practical demonstration of how it works!

Upon completion of the World Economic Forum, I got into a car. I slipped out of my suit, took my necktie off, and unbuttoned my shirt. In the car, I changed into shorts and a polo shirt, and put on casual shoes. The change of clothes was in exactly the opposite direction from the switch I had made on my way from the Dar es Salaam Airport to the Forum the previous day. My talk at the panel discussion was a success. With the combined effect of the casual clothes, a feeling of achievement and a sense of release, I inadvertently tweeted, “It’s over! It went well!! The speech was well-received!!! I’m happy!!!!”

My destination was Bagamoyo, a city that faces the Indian Ocean. Until the 19th century, this port city had functioned as a center for Arab trade in African slaves. Captured Africans are said to have cried out, “Bagamoyo,” meaning “Leave my soul here,” as they left this place to slave markets in various parts of the Arab world via nearby islands of Zanzibar. My mood become bleaker, as I pondered about the lives that awaited those Africans sold into slavery.

After Arabs developed the city, Germans built a presidential office. The British took it over in 1916, in the middle of World War I. Bagamoyo was returned to the Tanzanian people following their country’s independence from Britain in 1964. I found the ruins of the slave center in the Arab period on the ocean front next to the site where a German custom house once stood. Local people were moving cargo onto and out of old barge-like boats on the beach, which looked as if it hadn’t changed for more than 100 years. In my head, the sight of the local people carrying goods across shallow waters overlapped with an image of the slave trade in old days. I found the sight depressing.

I walked around Bagamoyo. There were no other tourists. Disconcerted by the eyes of the local people, I returned to my car. We drove down the city’s main street (which was wide enough for one vehicle only). The name of the street was changed from “Kaiser Street” to “King Street” as the colonial masters were switched. Today, it is called the “India Street,” after the sea.

The driver turned the wheel towards the coast after moving slowly down India Street. Having found a stylish resort hotel immediately after the turn, I asked the driver to park the car and walked in.

After having negotiated with a hotel employee, I went swimming at the hotel’s private beach for a change. I put on my swimsuit and walked into the Indian Ocean. The water was warm, but it was unexpectedly opaque. The water was very shallow, and I couldn’t swim unless I walked out far from the beach. But the thought of going far and swimming alone offshore where the sea was deep was somehow worrying, so I swam the crawl in shallow waters. I could only do the crawl with bent elbows. It was a little uncomfortable, but I swam on. The turquoise African sky came into sight each time I breathed, by raising my head out of water. I felt great.

I looked around. Loading and unloading operations were still in progress on a shore nearby. Sailboats that looked like those used in ancient times were rocking in the water. These sights produced the illusion that I was looking at a landscape painting from the 18th century.

I kept swimming doggedly. It’s obvious that the sea was larger than any swimming pools on earth. I swam in the shallow waters up and down in parallel with the shore, because I was afraid to swim any other way. I practiced my routines for all strokes in preparation for a masters swim meet in July. I left the hotel after washing off the salt in a swimming pool. I had enjoyed my brief stay at the resort.

The car traveled straight back to Dar es Salaam from the hotel. At the beginning of the 20th century, Germans decided to relocate the capital of their colony from Bagamoyo to Dar es Salaam. I believe they wanted a port after all. After a long wait in a traffic jam, our car arrived at the exclusive Kilimanjaro Hotel facing Dar es Salaam Harbor.

After checking out of the hotel the next morning, I visited the National Museum of Tanzania. The 3.6 million-year history of Tanzania, which might more accurately be called the history of mankind, was on display, together with pictures from the slavery and colonial periods, and cultural objects from local tribes.

The footprints our ancestor left 3.6 million years ago were the oldest record of a human biped. The 1.75 million year-old skull of an australopithecine offered a clue to the search for our ancestors. Explanations for exhibits described how hominids evolved over the subsequent period, from Pithecanthropus to Homo Neanderthalensis to Homo sapiens. An explanation of contemporary humans said, “In the course of evolution, contemporary humans achieved dominion over all the animals on Earth through the strength of their civilization. However, they could fall from this position if they fail to respond effectively to the problems confronting the world.”

Makonde sculptures (ebony carvings) made by an artist called Huluka were being sold in a courtyard as souvenirs. I bought a pair of sculptures depicting a man and a woman for a bargain price equivalent to 700 yen.

Having left the museum, I headed for the airport. Many thoughts crossed my mind on the way. The first thing I recalled was what a hotel employee told me. He said the number of Chinese guests had been growing in number in recent years, although North Americans and Europeans still comprised the major customer base. Japanese cars had an overwhelming market share, but many electronics in Tanzania were from South Korea. Chinese companies were closing in on battling Japanese and South Korean firms at a furious pace. East Asian companies were fighting an economic war in the distant land of Africa as well.

During my bus ride to the venue of the Forum, I heard that Tanzania had an exceptionally stable government in Africa. I heard that the country’s founding father and first president Julius Nyerere adopted Swahili as Tanzania’s only national language and instilled in the hearts of his people the sense that they are Tanzanians first, before any tribal allegiance. These initiatives proved successful. Intertribal massacres occurred in neighboring Uganda and Rwanda. Kenya is also politically unstable. Meanwhile, Tanzania has experienced no civil war or tribal unrest. The country remained peaceful.

Tanzania is a country with many children. However, an average life expectancy is only around 45 years and AIDS is another serious problem. I heard that national literacy was about 70% and per-capita GNP was below 500 U.S. dollars. These figures made me think of the actual educational and economic conditions in the country.

But the Tanzanian people were exceptional warm. They greeted each other with the word, “Jambo,” and thanked people, saying, “Asante.” Communication in broken Swahili gave me a chance to interact with local Tanzanian directly.

I had had little contact with African people before. To be honest, I never had a great deal of interest in Africa in the past. This Tanzanian trip enabled me to understand and interact with African people for the first time. During the course of my trip, I began to understand the geographical relationships of African nations, the economic and political conditions on the continent, Africa’s diversity, its potential and its challenges.

I departed Dar es Salaam Airport and flew straight back to Tokyo with many fond memories. They included the feeling of being in the embrace of Mother Nature in Ngorongoro and Serengeti, my dialogues with elephants and hippos, the history of slave trade I glimpsed at Bagamoyo, the swim in the Indian Ocean, and above all, the panel discussion at the World Economic Forum on Africa.

(Postscript)
I have a policy of not taking photographs on my travels, because I feel that I become like a tourist being divorced from my subject the moment the picture is taken. I want to feel integrated into my surroundings at all times. I want to feel the place with my five senses and enjoy the emotions that arise within me.

Instead of photos, I take notes when I travel. I try to engrave the scenes in my mind, write about the sights and events that were impressive, and verbalize the emotions that seized me. These travel sketches serve me in the same way as travel photos.

I began using Twitter in place of notes on this trip. I converted moving sights and strong emotions into words as the impulse took me, and tweeted them using my cellular phone. Later, I sit in front of my computer, and turn those impressive sights and emotions into columns by joining my tweets. I think what I do resembles a process painters adopt; first sketching impressive scenes encountered in the course of their journeys on a piece of paper and painting it on a canvas in their studio later.

In any event, I’d like to thank you for completing the trip to Tanzania with me. I hope you will join me in my next column.

May 9, 2010
Yoshito Hori
Written on a flight to Kansai International Airport

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