The Presentations Japan Series

It seems logical that any presentation we are giving is ours.  Well, that is sort of correct, but what I am talking about is making it reflect your style and personality.  When you talk to people abo…

I get this question quite often: “should I follow the logic of ‘when in Rome, do as the Romans do’ with regard to doing business with Japanese companies?”. Their question is usually related to how to…

Storytelling in business is an open field.  In most facets of commerce, the field is crowded, established foes are entrenched behind high protective walls and as far as you can see it is all red ocea…

Remembering Ex-PM Shinzo Abe As A Communicator

Like everyone, I was so shocked that Japan has lost such a prominent, global representative of the country to assassination. I wrote this original art…

Imagine an experienced, senior executive from a name brand major company giving a one minute introduction of the company, while holding a piece of paper, reading the introduction to the audience.  Wh…

Recently I have been coaching people on their presentation skills.  It is always amazing to me how some small changes can balloon into major improvements.   If these things are so simple, then why ar…

I am just back from a highly pointless presentation.  The bureaucrats who run the Tokyo Metro subway system and the Tokyo Government Planning Division were presenting on their plan for a new subway l…

The request has been made to give a talk on a certain subject.  The date and time are fixed and now the work begins on the preparation.  Here is how not to do it!  Start with plundering previous slid…

Self-awareness, self-belief, self-direction, self-discipline – there are a host of these “self” aspects to who we are and often related to who we are not.  If you grew up with a silver spoon firmly i…

How good is your Mongolian?  Well, I don’t know even one word in Mongolian, but I learnt a powerful lesson about presenting and communicating, when grappling with this language recently.  I am a Mast…

The rule in business is to stay clear of religion and politics, because you risk alienating a chunk of your audience who hold different views to you.  That is clear and sensible. What about other poi…

I sometimes read about certain celebrities, historical figures or leaders who are described as being better presenters with small groups or being better presenting to large groups.  I wonder what the…

We think of our presentations as something we give to an audience physically in the room with us or these days, maybe to an audience trapped in tiny little boxes on the computer screen.  Media interv…

I discovered the journalist Simon Kuper, when I started subscribing to the Financial Times newspaper (FT).  I have a number of go to columnists in the FT and he is one of them. I like his intelligenc…

When we are asked to give a business presentation, we may imagine we are the hero, arriving on our white charger, to rescue the audience from their woes.  We may come armed to the teeth with research…

Until a number of weeks ago, I had only vaguely heard of Volodymyr Zelenskyy.  I read he was an actor who played the role of the Ukranian President in a television drama production and then turned th…

It is a tricky balance to be clear, concise, articulate and also plausible.  I was thinking about a podcast interview I heard by a titan of industry.  He had obviously been trained in how to handle t…

I was sitting in the lecture theater, as usual in the front row, so that I could catch everything that was being said. University was a big deal for someone who climbed out of the trench and put the …

I was recently asked to be interviewed by a University senior for a project he was doing on communication in business.  I don’t know if I was a good choice.  After I left High School, I was working f…

Kata, the way of doing things and Kanpekishugi or perfectionism are wonderful traits in Japan.  Everything works well and as expected. Things have an order here and there are certain ways of doing th…