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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
It really does take courage to not invite people to meetings, but I think this is very important. Here in Japan flooding a meeting with observers can weaken accountability greatly. You just can't figure out how is in charge of what.
Keep up the courage of only asking key, accountable people to meetings.
I read your article on the qualities of sharing, collaborating, and being transparent with much interest.
One thing I’ve been struggling with the past few days is how the value created is shared after all the hard work of exchanging information and collaborating on a given project is successfully completed.
With that thought, I started thinking about the expectations of each member within the team that is working on a given project.
Imagine five types of individuals that may impact on the success of a project, whether it be software development or any innovation for that matter.
#1 – Employee: This person is working on the project because he was assigned it by his superior in the company, or he proposed this project and management gave him the go-ahead. He of course is a salaried employee and is in the organization chart.
#2 – Vendor employee: This is an individual from an outside company that has certain expertise that is not within the company. This expertise is only for the one specific task, so the company would rather out-source it, than try to do it all in-house. A formal agreement is written up as to what is to be achieved by him (or his company) and what the compensation is.
#3 – Freelancer: This is an individual that is self-employed. He has a certain expertise and offers it for some direct compensation or incentives.
#4 – Volunteer: He does have valued expertise, but is really not so interested in direct compensation for this project. The value to him is more indirect. It might be a general belief in the cause. It might be for his own growth and learning. It might be to build a network of collaborators with specific expertise. It might be for image, status or testimonials for a different cause. Right now, this is pretty much where I am.
#5 – Intruder: The above four are the key contributors to the project. (Although there may be more that I have missed.) All other individuals I am calling the “Intruders”, as these people have no interest in the project and/or have none of the expertise required that could contribute to the project’s success. They may be there for image only. If they are in the group, they could greatly weaken it. They should be politely asked out if need be.
With a clear understanding of what each member wants to gain from being part of the project (as well as what each can contribute), I think the desire to share, collaborate and be transparent will greatly be enhanced.
I’d love to have your thoughts on this.