Episode #78: Michael King, President, SAS Institute

Michael King shared great insight into how to become a successful business leader in Japan. Mr. King’s arrival in Japan may have been accidental but this did not stop him from having a long and prosperous career within Japan that has lasted 22 years. Despite originally being from Ohio, he began to work in the Asia Pacific 25 years ago within APAC in Sydney Australia before eventually moving to Japan as the General Manager for Sterling Commerce as Japan was the hot spot for business action and opportunity.

His time at Sterling was integral as it was his sink or swim moment. With no experience of business in Japan and leadership skills, he quickly adapted to the environment around him and began to grow and develop his skills. Mr. King began to understand the importance of hard work ethic. His work increased ethic allowed him to understand the sales process better and interact with Japanese business.

Despite not knowing the language at first, he did study, but he realised it was not necessarily important to know Japanese when working in Japan. Mr. King learnt that as a leader of a team to succeed, he needed to learn how to listen to his team and read the non-verbal cues his team would send his way and thus, developing trust.

After his time at Sterling and later Borland he became the President of Citrix Systems for 7 years which reinforced the necessity of listening to the team and creating trust. Through his experience as a leader, he came to Citrix knowing how he can grow the company, which he succeeded in doing. After a stagnant 5 years, he formed a vicious and successful sales team which led to the acceleration of revenue growth. Through this team, he learnt to become proactive and lead rather than sit and take orders which allowed the team to create widespread awareness of who Citrix are.

After his time at Citrix, he spent a year at Autodesk using his previous knowledge to help them change their business model to allow them to grow and increase revenue. While at Autodesk he learnt more about managing large groups of people and bridging the gap between the expectation of headquarters and the channels. After his short but fruitful year at Autodesk, he began working at the Japanese company Rakuten.

While at Rakuten Mr. King developed a more intense understanding of working in Japanese business and leading a team of 1200 people as the CIO. Mr. King had become interested in what it would be like as an end-user which drove him to Rakuten in combination with working for one of Japan’s best CEO’s and businessmen Hiroshi Mikitani. Mr. King learnt a variety of lessons at Rakuten such as using data to optimise customer experience and developing new solutions to problems. His time at Rakuten was the gap to where he is now at SAS as the President. At SAS he strives to drive the engagement of his team and consumers.

Mr. King’s 22-year long career in Japan has taught him a range of valuable lessons that have helped him become the successful businessman he is today. He claims that in order to succeed in Japan you need to understand that accountability, listening, and trust are integral.