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Tokyo, Japan
Ron McFarland has been working in Japan for over 40 years, and he's spent more than 30 of them in international sales, sales management training, and expanding sales worldwide. He's worked in or been to more than 80 countries. Over the most recent 17 years, Ron had established distributors in the United States and throughout Europe for a Tokyo-headquartered, Japanese hardware cutting tool manufacturer. More recently, he's begun giving seminars in English and Japanese to people interested in his overseas travels and expanding business overseas. You can find him on LinkedIn.
Authored Comments
I just saw the movie, Finding Forrester (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QGCBH_2Dck) which I have seen many times. Looking at the three community cultures #1, #2 and #3 above, I viewed it though a different lens. If you see, the movie, think of Jamal being in culture #1 in his neighborhood, #2 in Forrester's home and #3 in his new high school. It offers dramatized food for thought.
While learning and writing about this "introducer-in-chief" concept, I got to thinking about two types of introductions, one personal and the other virtual. Personally, I live in three physical communities, the Japanese-speaking only world whom I spend well over half more day with, the bilingual Japanese-English world and the English-speaking only world. I have started actively introducing appropriate people to each other, then set back and watch these people interact with each other. I could really feel the power of this activity.
Also, there is the virtual world. I'm now reading the book, Homecoming, THE PATH TO PROSPERITY IN A POST-GLOBAL WORLD By Rana Foroohar. She talks about websites that introduce and build local communities. With distributed solar/wind energy, distributed 3D printing, distributed crowd-sourcing and other technologies becoming common, these thinking pattern #4 communities will expand greatly in the years ahead. Keep your eyes open for them in your area. If you are excited about them as I am, you could even start a purpose directed community in your area. Believe me, local community building is rewarding on its own.