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Leading High Performing Remote Teams
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Design Thinking
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Gantt Chart
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Navigating Change Successfully
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Anchoring and Framing
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ZOPA and BATNA
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Content Marketing
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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
Want to expand overseas? The CAGE distance framework can help ensure you're constructing a solid global strategy in four areas: cultural, administrative, economic, and geographic. Learn how to leverage useful differences between countries, identify potential obstacles, and achieve global business success.
Groupthink
Groupthink refers to group pressure and the perception of consensus which together lead to ill-formed decisions—or even unnecessary risks. Learn to identify the warning signs of groupthink and apply countermeasures in this online course.
Deductive and Inductive Reasoning
Solving problems with the best results means using two types of thinking: deductive and inductive reasoning. In this online course, learn to form a broad premise, make observations, and form conclusions from different perspectives.
Critical Thinking: Hypothesis-Driven Thinking
Anyone can come up with a good idea. The real challenge is putting that idea into action. In this online course, explore how to form compelling, testable hypotheses and bring ideas to life in your own organization.
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
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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
Entrepreneurs have the power to transform societies for the better. But how do you attract investors to start or grow a business? Or to sell one? Check out this seminar for the answers to these and more, straight from a master venture capitalist!
Managerial Accounting
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Finance Basics: 1
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Basic Accounting: Financial Analysis
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Career Anchors
What drives you to be good at your job?
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Digital Marketing Psychology to Transform Your Business
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Pyramid Structure
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Leadership with Passion through Kokorozashi
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AI First Companies – Implementation and Impact
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Technovate in the Era of Industry 4.0
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Technovate Thinking
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Product Life Cycle
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Logic Tree
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MECE Principle
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If you’ve ever studied economics (or even if you haven’t), you’ve probably found yourself asking some basic questions about the premises of economic theory: Are people naturally self-interested creatures? Do resources really flow freely?
While these questions are hardly unfamiliar, most of us don’t dedicate our lives to answering them. Far more often, we wonder for a moment, then forget about them and move on, or at least pretend to accept what the experts tell us. And as long as we believe in them, economic practices seem to work the way they’re supposed to.
In the same way, there are several premises which shape our modern society: People are born lazy and cunning, so we need to be disciplined. People are panicky and aggressive, even cruel, so we need strong leaders to control us.
Our sweet faces are a thin veneer—hit it with a pebble, and our inner brutal, selfish nature is set free.
This idea, actually called veneer theory, is widely, almost unconsciously believed throughout the world. But Rutger Bregman challenges its bleak premise in his book, Humankind: A Hopeful History.
Bregman is a Dutch historian and journalist who gained world recognition for his previous book, Utopia for Realists, and more recently confronted a Davos panel about inequality, insisting we need to talk about “tax avoidance and the rich not paying their fair share.” The video went viral, but the suggestion was not well received by some.
In Humankind, Bregman raises another radical idea: “most people, deep down, are pretty decent.”
From Homo Sapiens to Homo Puppy
Bregman uses his new book to investigate how we came to believe ourselves selfish and evil. To do this, he uses his career strengths as a historian and journalist.
As a historian, he digs into human history from biological evolution to the major philosophical arguments.
As a journalist, he reassesses misinterpreted research and events that may have impacted this negative view we hold of humanity.
The flow of the book follows a series of questions that many of us have pondered: Are we born evil? If we are not innately evil, why do we keep believing we’re bad? Why do good people sometimes do bad things? The philosophy and history of these questions may seem overwhelming, but Bregman expertly uses anecdotes make the read both entertaining and accessible—not to mention convincing.
The book is divided into five parts, starting with arguments from philosophers Thomas Hobbs (“the pessimist who would have us believe in the wickedness of human nature”) and Jean-Jacque Rousseau (“the man who declared that in our heart of hearts we’re all good”). Unsurprisingly, Bregman sides with Rousseau.
To illustrate the anti-violence of human nature, he looks to the process of human evolution. Homo sapiens, he says, survived the severe competition on earth not because of their intelligence or physical strength, but because of their ability to learn and socialize.
As Bregman puts it, “If Neanderthals were a super-fast computer, we were an old-fashioned PC with Wi-Fi … We were slower, but better connected.”
We’re hard-wired to be social, and strongly care what others think. We show emotion with expressions, such as blushing. These allow us to trust each other and cooperate. With such a friendly nature, Bregman renames our species “homo puppy.”
Good and Evil and Their Merits
So if we’re so friendly, why do we believe we’re evil?
To address this, Bregman reassesses several iconic social science studies and well-known events that have been presented to support the veneer theory.
Two of these were the famous Stanford Prison Experiment and the murder of Kitty Genovese.
In Stanford’s study, two groups of students (“guards” and “prisoners”) were confined to a simulated prison environment for several days, during which intense psychological breakdowns and aggressive behavior were observed. But recent research has uncovered that the experiment was flawed and the analysis biased. Not until 2001 was a similar experiment conducted by the BBC, which had quite the opposite findings.
The 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese became the catalyst for a theory known as the bystander effect. In the aftermath of the incident, the media reported that nearly forty people witnessed the attack, and none called the police. But Bregman’s research shows that, once again, the facts are far from what the media would have us believe. No one witnessed the whole attack, at least two called to the police, and one person actually ran to help—even held her as she lay dying.
In short, the media tends to sensationalize human evil, but Bregman determines that “in emergencies, we can count on one another.”
This leads to another key question Humankind sets out to answer: “If people are born good, why do some people turn bad?”
Bregman argues that this the other side of the friendliness coin. We homo puppies can feel empathy, and that leads us to divide the world into “my side” and “the other side.” Empathy works as a spotlight, making us blind to the perspective of our adversaries.
Bregman admits that it also makes us the cruelest species on the planet.
But there’s good news: there is evidence that we avoid being cruel at all cost. The only members of our species who do not hesitate when it comes to cruelty? People in power. The more distance we create between us and our fellow humans, the easier it is to become shameless and less attentive to others. Bregman cites the medical term “acquired sociopathy” to describe the traits of people in power: they’re messy eaters, they don’t blush, and they mirror others less.
Bregman concludes that, “In our society, shamelessness can be positively advantageous.”
What Our History Means for Our Future
If we can reject the premises of natural human selfishness and cruelty, what alternatives are we left with? Is it possible to change our society with a new understanding of who we are?
Bregman introduces several unique examples for how it could—and does—work: an education system in the Netherlands that embraces the creativity of each child, a business organization without a hierarchy or managers, and a true democracy process of full participation in small towns in Venezuela and Portugal. It is easy to raise doubts and criticize, but the point is that finding a new way is possible. The choice to look for it is ours.
Some might find Bregman’s Humankind optimistic. And yes, as the title promises, it’s full of hopeful stories and facts about human nature. It makes us feel good despite today’s global climate in which the powerful take advantage of a pandemic and people become ever more divided on important issues, often leading to brutal attacks.
But optimism is not Bregman’s intention.
Rather, he aims to challenge the preconceptions that shape our modern civilized society. To do that, he shows us alternatives. We don’t need to suffer through a society in which so many of us feel something is going wrong. There is more to life than competing against each other until the entire planet is consumed.
The challenge—and the choice—comes with great responsibility. We can no longer use the excuse that humans are selfish, evil animals. Bregman disproves that myth in Humankind: A Hopeful History. There are other paths for our society to choose from. And we can find them if we’re brave enough as a species to turn away from a flawed interpretation of our history and look toward a better future.
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