[Thoughts} Shock from Developing Countries

From today, I would like to write about my experience and learnings from Executive Program for Leadership Development which I participated as a facilitator this month. That experience was really a “Shock” for me. In the end of Edo era (Tokugawa Shogunate), black ship from the US came to Japan and Japanese people forced to realize the existence of “world” by its powerful cannon attack and by the size of the ship. My experience in EPLD course was similar to that experience caused by black ship 200 years ago in Japan.
First of all, I will write an article titled “What we can learn from them”. In that article, I will summarize what is their strength and what we can learn from these talented leaders.

After that, I will change my viewpoint to their perspective and point out what they can learn from us. By writing this article, I will be able to find out what is the strength of Japanese, Japanese organization and Japanese way of management.
Developing countries are not only target for ODA, or not only they are competitors, but also they are the partners to whom we can tell about what we have learned in the experience of rapid economic growth. We can share our knowledge how to manage organizations with harmony, how to continuously improve productivity in manufacturing industry.
By doing so, we are able to see the new style of globalization where Japan and these developing countries cooperate with each other and learn from each other.

At the end of the series of articles, I will conclude them by writing “Then our actions are....”. How Japan and Japanese should act in order to make this world to be a better place, I would like to express my thoughts.
Kazuteru Kodera