Biz Plan Contest

I was invited to the business plan contest hosted by MBA Solution Inc. as a judge last night.

Each participant presented a great business idea and plan.
All business plans showed high social contribution to the issue in Japan related to education, aging, employment, and so on.
No one planed a dot-com business pursuing IPO as people used to do.
I don't' really like the term "Social venture" but it seems booming in recent years.

I was very impressed with the first-prize winner. He provided really good presentation.
I liked his business vision and felt that I personally want to support this business to transform the educational system in Japan. I really would like him to make the business happen.

Label + Experience = Insight

There are two types of process to get deep insight.

One is that label (word) is first, and experience follows it.
The other one is that experience first and is labelled later.

For example, business theory without any related experiences is just like rumor.
Only substantial experience can make the theory to be deeply understood and insight.

On the other hand, a lot of experiences can be generalized by theory then
those can result in deep insight.

I often read Peter F. Drucker's books ten years ago when I was studying in a business school.
But, I think I did not understand them at all, because I did not have enough experience of management. Now, I understand Drucker much better, but I'm sure, ten year later, I will look back and think that my current understanding is not enough at all.

Experience is really crown jewel.

recovery..

I have been sick in bed due to hepatic dysfunction for a month.
Today, I went back to work.

It was the first time for me to lie off for such a long time.
During the time, I was bored so read a lot of books.
Usually, I read books related to business, management, and so on.
But this time, I was not interested in such topics so read the books about psychology, brain science, and mythology. It was actually really good opportunity to broaden my view of such areas.

Since I had good rest and got enough energy back, I'm now fully motivated to work on new projects. I thank everyone who helped me.

The Solutions Focus

Today I joined the workshop related to the solution focus.

One of the ways to apply the NLP to consulting service is the solution focus approach for me.

Before I learned NLP, I could understand why the Solution Focus Approach (SFA) works. But now I sometimes use this SFA in my consulting and always utilize it when I manage my team members.

SFA can be contrasted with Problem Focus Approach (PFA).
Traditional consulting approach to solving problems is PFA, where you analyze the problems, identify the root causes, and discuss how to solve them.
On the other hand, SFA looks for what you want to have happen (=solution) and find what has already taking you towards the solution, amplifying the useful things that are going on.

Especially for the problems related to human being, analyzing the problems does not always work. It tends to be discussion who is to blame. Cause of problem is not always linked to solution.

So, depends on the situation, using SFA as well as PFA is very important to my consulting service. I will pursue this multiple approaches to enhance my consulting service.

TEMOMIN

I had been working on translation last couple of months and just finished it this morning.
The book is about creativity written by British authors ten years ago. I hope it will be published by this Spring and many business persons will read it.

Due to the hard work, I felt very tired today,
so went to TEMOMIN, a nationally known chain store of relaxation salon.
Global Sport INC. runs the stores and has been aggressively expanding its business last ten years. Basically massage service used to be given by old acupressure therapists in Japan, but this company changed the custom, and started to use young people for it with lower cost.

Its competitors also started to hire young staffs. Moreover, some of them have opened the career colleges for therapy. This creates a virtuous cycle because the companies can get tuition money from the prospective staffs then easily hire young low cost staffs after their graduation.

Considering this, securing staff resources is the key factor for success, and the risk would be the maintenance of staff quality in this business. How can we apply this system for other business ?

Daruma

I visited the Kawasaki Daishi, a big temple near to Tokyo, to pray for happiness for the year.
Every year, I buy the Daruma doll which is round Japanese wish doll from Zen (maybe..)

There are a lot of Daruma shops around the temple. I bought a red one (red is typical color, but there are yellow, green, while, even gold currently). It's a little bigger than last year to achieve the bigger goal.

Dalma's eyes color is alway white. One eye is filled in with Block colore while thinking of a wish. Then, when the wish comes true, the other eye is filled in. Traditionally, the left eye should be filled in first and the right eye is left blank until the wish come true. So, I went home and enjoyed filling in the left eyes wishing my dream.

Mochitsuki

The music event that my band organized took place yesterday and was very successful.

4 bands including my band joined the event. Interesting thing is that besides music we did "Mochitsuki"
It is the event of pounding sticky rice to make a kind of rice cake, which is traditional new year event in Japan.

People pound the sticky rice stored in a kind of wood bucket with a wood hammer by turns.


The Japanese traditional event was took place in a club with live music and many foregners joins too. For Japanese, it looked really unusual, but all of us enjoyed it a lot.