Episode #96 Ignore Your Business School Advice

Academic studies of business are important sources of case studies, theories and new research. All great stuff. Some areas though are definitely behind the times and that is in the area of imparting information to an audience. The bleeding of the executive summary from the written document, into the way business conducts meetings is a guaranteed formula for tears before bedtime. Find out why very shortly

Welcome back to this weekly edition every Tuesday of "THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show"

I am your host Dr. Greg Story, Your Corporate Coaching and Training Guy, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and best selling author of Japan Sales Mastery. We are bringing the show to you from our High Performance Center in Akasaka in Minato-ku, the business center of Tokyo.

Why the Cutting Edge?

In this show, we are looking at the critical areas for success in business in Japan. We want to help advance everyone’s thinking so that we be at the forefront, the Cutting Edge, of how to flourish here in this market.

Before we get into this week’s topic, here is what caught my attention lately.

Japan has been concerned about having too many of its eggs in the Tokyo basket. There has been a move to relocate central govern offices out of Tokyo, revamping universities outside the capital area and government grants have been extended to promote local industries in rural areas to attract companies to move their headquarters out of Tokyo. This has pretty much been a total failure. In fact Tokyo’s population grew by one hundred and forty thousand last year. The number of firms who have taken advantage of tax incentives to move their headquarters out of Tokyo has been insignificant. Only the Cultural Affairs agency is moving to Kyoto. Despite all the rhetoric, all the rest of the bureaucracy is staying put. In other news, a Health Ministry survey in two thousand and fourteen counted one point one million workers who considered themselves depressed. This was up from four hundred thousand in nineteen ninety nine. More recent surveys pin about ten percent of the people in companies as suffering form depression. Finally, of the one thousand five hundred foreign detainees who were held in prison as of june last year, six hundred and four were asylum seekers. The number of asylum seekers accepted into japan was just forty two. There were ten thousand four hundred and ninety three applications for asylum.

This is episode number ninety six and we are talking about Ignore your Business School Advice Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.

Avoid this advice at all costs, “State your conclusion first and then explain the reasoning behind it”. I am sure many have heard this dubious gem about how to persuade live business audiences. It is well intentioned but atrocious advice. Driving this effort are the dual objectives of clarity and brevity. Admirable outcomes for any business meeting. However, if you actually want to dissuade people concisely and quickly, then go for it.

The “conclusion first” advice is a natural reaction to lengthy diatribes, wandering aimlessly around business subjects, driving bosses crazy. The senior leadership are thinking, “I wish they would get to the point”. So the standard advice is state your conclusion up front and then add the evidence. The written word though is different, but here we are talking about oral business presentations.

“Conclusion first” sounds quite logical and reasonable, except it doesn’t work very well when it comes to persuading an audience. If you are just imparting information then it is probably fine, but if you are seeking agreement on a course of action, then expect low rates of success.

If we put up our action recommendation, before the evidence, we are asking for trouble. When there is no context, the audience cannot judge fairly. Your bold, naked conclusion instantly comes under silent assault from a room full of armchair critics and skeptics. They now tune you out. They are totally focused on why what you just said is rubbish and won’t work. This, by the way, is when they are supposed to be absorbing your rationale. Instead, they are no longer listening to you and are concentrating solely on negatives.

The Japanese language, like some others, gives us a good clue on fixing this problem. The verb is at the end of the sentence and so while we are absorbing content, we don’t know if the sentence is describing something in the past, present or future. We also have no idea if it is positive or negative. This prevents the listener from jumping in and cutting us off. They have to suspend judgment about the content. This enables us to explain the reasoning, then bring up our recommendation rather than the other way around.

Find out more when we come back from the break

Welcome backStart with evidence, proof, facts, data, expert opinion but wrap it up in a short story. This story should have a few defining guideposts – time, place, people and emotion. We try to capture our audience’s attention by helping them to see the scene in their mind’s eye.

For example, “I caught up with our client CEO Ben Smith in Tokyo after Thanksgiving. We were meeting in their wood paneled boardroom, on the 46thfloor of their office in Toranomon Hills, listening to feedback on the programme and I was getting nervous”. That introduction takes about ten seconds. No one is going to stop us and say, “Greg, will you get to the point”. We have mentally pulled them into the story, taking them to a place they either already know or can easily imagine. They can visualise the people and the scene. They are also hooked by curiosity – why was I getting nervous, what happened next, etc?

We now have their complete attention, as we explain the problem or issue at hand. We bring in strong evidence with context. We provide our experience, our rationale, our logic and reasoning inside the story. We next state the action step we recommend. This is done in one brief sentence and we immediately tag on the benefit of taking the action. The chances are high that the listeners, hearing the facts and context we have introduced, will jump right ahead of us. They will race to the same conclusion we have reached, before we even have a chance to articulate it.

Better to bridge to your conclusion, while others are already mentally agreeing with it, than having to fight a rearguard action from the start. This approach allows us to more easily persuade others to take the action we are proposing. This is the real world of business not varsity. Try and it and enjoy the results.

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You might also enjoy my podcasts. Look for the Leadership Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series and The Sales Japan series wherever you get your podcasts.

In episode ninety seven we are talking about Typical Technical Presenter Big Mistakes. Find out more about that next week.

So Yoroshiku Onegai Itashimasu please join me for the next episode of the Cutting Edge Japan Business Show

We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!