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.
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.
Even as a young man, Apple cofounder Steve Jobs was fascinated by Eastern philosophies and religions, including Zen. When his son Reed became a teenager, Jobs marked the event by taking him to Kyoto to visit Zen temples and gardens.
But what is Zen?
Here is a definition from zen-buddhism.net, a site devoted to all things Zen: “Zen is not a moral teaching, and . . . it does not require one to believe in anything. A true spiritual path does not tell people what to believe in. Rather, it shows them how to think. Or, in the case of Zen, what not to think.”
The key thing about Zen, in other words, is letting go. It’s rising above the self, above logic and language, to grasp the meaning of life via intuition.
The physical expression of Zen philosophy can be found in Zen gardens, which consist of just a few stark and simple elements: raked gravel, rocks, and moss. Most of the normal elements of a garden have just been let go.
Surprising that the special brand of Steve Jobs leadership would have a connection to such a philosophy.
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.
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The Steve Jobs Leadership Style and Zen Sensibility
The Zen idea of simplification and minimalism were always part and parcel of Steve Jobs’s philosophy of product design. In fact, his biographer, Walter Isaacson, points out that the company’s first-ever marketing brochure in 1977 began with the rather Zen headline, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Later, when overseeing the interface design for the iPod music player, Jobs again insisted on extreme Zen-like simplicity and a human-centered design. He demanded that everything be doable within just three clicks.
That thought carried into not only products and services, but Apple Store interiors, which are as serene and uncluttered as a Zen garden. There are no piles of boxes, no checkout counters or cash registers. Instead, there are free-floating glass staircases, glass elevator shafts, no columns anywhere. Everything is built of wood and stainless steel. Even the storefronts are glass, admitting abundant natural light.
In Adobe’s State of Create: 2016 Survey, Japan (the home of Zen) was rated as the world’s most creative country. Clearly, Steve Jobs is not the only person to have found inspiration in Japan.
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.
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How (and Why) Storytelling Is a Necessary Job Skill
The Essence of Zen in a Design Thinking Mindset
A few months ago, I hosted a conference in Tokyo. One of the sessions was on design thinking—applying the methodology of a designer to complex problems outside of design. The panel included innovation consultancy IDEO’s Tom Kelley, the father of design thinking. He broke down design thinking to three components.
Empathy
Successful leaders employ empathy to understand team members’ needs, even if the people you’re dealing with can’t articulate those needs themselves.
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.
Experimentation
Successful entrepreneurs are happy to experiment with different things. They understand that failure is good for success if you learn from it.
Storytelling
The founder of Apple and others like him know that telling the right story brings your idea to life. That story is how you convince other people to give you their backing.
How does Zen fit into these things? It all has to do with letting go. But we don’t let go to create eternal emptiness. We do it to reflect, grow stronger, and make space for the new.
To be truly Zen, you must consider these three principles:
- Zen fosters a state of calm emptiness into which empathy can flow.
- Zen makes experimentation possible because it eliminates the fear of failure.
- Zen traditionally uses short parables to teach life lessons. Storytelling is an integral part of Zen.
Design Thinking in Action
The late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe stole the show at the Rio Olympics’ closing ceremony when he appeared as Super Mario to present Tokyo as the next host city.
That’s a great example of design thinking in action.
A prime minister who dares to put his dignity aside and dresses up as a video game character invites empathy. “He’s just an ordinary guy like us,” we think. “Plus he’s got the guts to try something that could easily get him laughed off the stage.”
By fitting himself into Super Mario’s story, he’s also being a storyteller who can communicate on a global level.
This out-of-the-box communication strategy generated a ton of media coverage. It was eccentric, but effective.
GLOBIS University introduced Design Thinking as a course in 2016, the same year as the Rio Olympics. Why? Because design thinking is a skill modern leaders—including business leaders—must have. With it, we may confidently solve problems without worrying about getting laughed at or failing.
But without a design thinking mindset, we can’t innovate. We can’t embrace Zen.
And every business leader could use a little Zen.
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