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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
Wonderful article and thoughts. I have been struggling with this concern for contributors' value the past few days, and your comments answered a lot of my questions. Knowing the expectations of contributors up front could provide a guiding light to keep them motivated and inspired. Thank you very much.
Here in Japan, stand-up morning meetings are all over the country. Some are productive. Others are just ritual. When I worked for Isuzu Motors (General Motors part owner at that time), GM had a 45 minute cut-off policy. All participants could walk out of the meeting after 45 minutes. If the content could not be handles within that time, there were too many topics to address.
You mentioned attendee number. That too is extremely important. Too often people are invited out of respect only.
Having a "referee" is a great idea and another key factor to success. I'm hoping in global chats (as well as vitual meetings) there is someone monetoring those discussions as well.
If we think of the cost of a meeting (average hourly wages of participants X number of participants), they can be extremly costly. We have to make sure they are worth it.