Termination of sales head

Today a very important guy in our business unit was made redundant.
One thing I have learned is no matter how important a person is to your organization, he or she should show trust and respect to his or her manager. A psychologist says people work only either out of curiosity or fear. People making their living just purely out of curiosity on a daily life must be happy people. People sometimes need fear or at least concern to do things. From that perspective, assigning authority or power to people is mandatory to keep order in a organization. I believe our leader made the right decision in the end though it could cost more.

2011 has begun with hectic lifestyle.

Happy New Year 2011!

This year has started with a busy but fruitful trip to USA.

Fiscal year for the company I have been working for starts from May and
now is the midst of finalizing top&bottom line plan for FY12.
To discuss FY12 financial plan of Cardiac Rhythm Disease Management business unit for Japan, I participated in annual planning meetings held at Minneapolis, where the company's HQ are located.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, I decided to do 3 things on top.
1. Taking US CPA exam
2. Hanging out with friends back in MBA who live in MN.
3. Heading out to Chicago and meet one of my friend now studying MBA at Kellogg.

I could not do only No.1 since finalizing slides for upcoming meeting took much more time.
Studying for USCPA has not been exciting. It has given me opportunities to learn about Accounting but it is time consuming and not interesting in that understanding rules and thought behind is what requires most. I have determined to get it done even before joining MBA and not taking exam has made me demoralized a bit because my life loaded with the determination to obtain it would continue longer. I obtained BEC back in April and it will be valid till Oct 2011. 3 more to go and I hope to get them done by Aug this year.

Hanging out with my friends, a couple, reminded me of the value of the global friend network I have built during my MBA program. Feeling I was so happy to feel not only that they had been much happier in Minneapolis but also that they seemed happy to know that I had been fine. Experiencing we are still connected with distance even without seeing for year and a half has made me happy.

After business meeting, I headed to Chicago, where my friend has lived for Kellogg MBA program. He and I joined the same company simultaneously back in 1999 and we have been good rivals and friends since then. He visited Durham when he applied for MBA programs including Duke when I was a student there. This time he was a MBA student at Kellogg and I was a MBA graduate. Through him, I found out he experienced very similar things in terms of interaction among people with different nations. First year he interacted with non-Asians equally with Asians but recently more with Asians, which was what I experienced 2 years ago. We observed the same reasons behind. Common interests. Americans love talking movies because talking movies is one of the most general conversation topic in the state. Just before Chicago, I hung out with local employees at pub and had hard time not participating in their conversation due to the lack of knowledge about their topics. We agreed this part is something we cannot get over soon and all we can is to be patient. So I had a chance to talk with Asians at Kellogg. Mostly Korean and Chinese, let alone other Japanese students. They were all interesting but one lady who attracted my attention was a Chinese, who was born in the US and went directly to college after junior high. I expected she must be smart and turned out more than that. We talked about being parents and asked what she would do after having a baby. She responded that it is hard to imagine being a mother without directly experiencing it. There are many things that turn out to be just "Beyond imagination" and being parent is definitely one of those. Yes. What she surprised me was the e-mail I received right after I came back to Japan. The e-mail revealed that even though she was born in US, she was once sent back to Taiwan, her parents mother nation and lived separately from her parents for a while due to financial difficulty, but now they are together in the US and she loves her parents. It ended with her belief that as long as both parents are happy, their children follow. She was still thinking about the question and thought out her belief, reflecting on her life. WOW. I have been happy to know that just one meeting may have significant influence on anybody, which is a great lesson I have learned from Chicago.

October End

Time flows. October has just ended.

Today, I have reviewed my learning in MBA to remind me of key concepts I should know from MBA study, and thought about the application to the challenges I have faced in my current job.

Learnings from Core Marketing and economics classes really didn't help because they were so conceptual. How could you calculate Marginal Revenue and Marginal Cost? Even with MR=MC theory for profit optimization, how could you apply this concept to industries such as Pharmaceuticals and Medical Device in Japan, where pricing is set by governments and it is changed every two years, historical average pricing to hospitals is considered as the base for next pricing? In marketing EVC concept is very important, but how you can quantify relative installment cost of your product, especially considering so many options from competitors's offering?

How can I tackle this? What I would do is to think out myself first and get them reviewed by the professors, who taught me those concepts. They should be interested how their teaching can help students solve problems they are facing after graduation.

Let's see how it works.

Challenge

On the one hand there is one guy in my office who sounds very confident, on the other hand there is another guy who sounds less confident. I believe people in general tend to trust people with confidence more than those without. But is it the right way to judge people? What if people with strong confidence demoralize people around them so that as an organization, confident people may create more negatives than positives in the end? If so, how do you identify the risks like this? That is kinda situation I am facing right now.

Lessons learned from Oct 2nd

http://www.justiceharvard.org/

Michael Sandel is a famous professor at Harvard Univ.

Now he has become famous in Japan due to the TV shows

of 12 of his classes about "Justice" by NHK in last spring.

Today I happened to see the last class of "Justice" and it reminded me of

the classes I went through at Duke MBA program.

There I have learned lessons which I can apply to a daily life.

1. It is important to understand types of rationale behind his or her argument before any judgement. Moral values and virtue, utilitarianism, purpose and goods, or past experience

2. Judging itself may lead to discrimination without any clear intention.

Good night.

After MBA ～ THE REAL LIFE

　数ある自己実現の選択肢を具現化する可能性を高めるために始まった2005年からのMBA留学準備活動およびMBA留学。2009年5月に卒業し、はや1年半。その間の経験を振り返り、次の2年、5年、10年に向けて、より具体的に考えることができる機会が作れるようになりました。これまでは、業界（ITから医療機器へ）および職種（営業から財務・管理会計・ビジネスアナリストへ）を変えたことによる両面での知識・経験不足を補うため、2010年6月くらいまで猛烈に働きました。そして最近になり漸く自分の仕事のOutputが安定してきました。業界・職種の双方を変えるということは、当初の想像以上に厳しいものでした。特に、思考プロセスが営業と管理会計とでは異なる（営業はどれだけ仮説→検証のプロセスをたくさん回すことにより不確実を確実と限界に換えて行きながら、顧客満足とそれに伴う売上を追求および計算していく仕事。一方、財務・管理会計は、日々の活動の結果蓄積した財務・非財務データを100％正確に捉え、多面的に分析し、そこから何が読み取れるのか、キーメッセージ・主要課題をデータをベースに特定し、それについての解決手段について、継続的に関係者とともに考え、解決に導くために影響を与え続けること）ので、後者のプロセスをうまくまわすためのMentalityを養成するのに、時間がかかりました。特にAttention to detailsの習慣ですね。習得に時間を要したのは。上の職種選択の背景として、顧客満足度（営業）と継続的な利益の捻出（財務）の両輪を回すために、他のすべての機能（人事、マーケティングなど）が必要になるのであり、経営のベースは、営業と財務だ、という思いがありました。この1年半、財務をやってきて、その思いは正しかったかと確信しております。PLとBSをみれば、おおよそ会社の状況については把握できます。そこからどこが悪いのか、その悪い点を改善しようとすれば、何を変化させる必要があり、それにより、収益・コスト構造はどう変化しうるのか、その機会とリスク・限界はどこになるのか、自問自答し、会社の改善の方向について、Optionを考案、提供し、事業の方向性について影響力、実行力を提供していくこと、これがファイナンシャルアナリストとして私がやっている仕事です。事業部長とベクトルが同じで、経営に関連するさまざまな課題（人事評価、在庫管理、代理店政策、文化形成、戦略）に対するInvolveが必要で、そのために日々自己研鑽が必要となります。勿論、これまでに培ってきた営業的な能力（社内政治の理解、本社（America）との調整、人間関係構築力など）もFullに必要となってきます。MBAで培った知識、およびそこまでに培ってきた経験、知恵、を上の環境において、さらに磨き、利益の向上（率および額？、ここはひとつ難しい選択ですが・・・。）に向け、付加価値を提供し続けていく、チャレンジングで楽しいです。また上司かつ事業部長が、日本人ではないので、英語でコミュニケーションを図ることが日々、必須になっております。英語でビジネス交渉力、実行力含め、己の知識・経験を増幅し、統合しながら、高度な課題を特定し、それに優先順位をつけ、事業の思考に好影響を与え続け、事業そのものの環境を発展的・効率的にし続けていくこと、これを肝に今ビジネスを楽んでいます。