Conde House Japan– Author –

【The Great Tohoku Eearthquake was like the end of the world】 At the moment, I was in the building of the Ministry of Finance in the middle of Tokyo and thought I was going to die, staring out a window. Street lamp posts widely swang li...

【Speed and quality are not trade-off】 Leap before you look. Haste makes waste. These are famous ancient proverbs, meaning opposite to each other. It seems a speed-vs-quality issue has been long bothering us human beings. Speed, however...

They always bring up a gap in wages between large companies and SME in order to claim the low productivity of SME, but I think the cause and effect are reversed in their argument. Large companies in a better position in competition pay more salaries to their employees. Their better salaries make them look better in productivity. I've worked for large companies before and found SME are more desperate to increase productivity because it's a more serious life-or-death issue for SME.

【Japanese chopsticks are unique】 One of the difficulties I have to face when going abroad is table manners. Among other things, it's difficult for me to eat without chopsticks. How can you eat a lettuce salad only with a fork? I'm alwa...

【Karoshi, death from overwork】 It's very difficult to summarize this problem briefly because it is so deep-rooted. Are you ready to gaze into abyss? The Japan government has started frequently using the word "Work style reform" since 2...

【A hardship destined for Japanese workers】 You won't read to the end of this article because the average human attention span is down to only eight seconds. It's one second shorter than that of goldfish. I remember I read many articles...

Spending money seems as difficult as making it because we are likely to make a decision emotionally rather than rationally. Let me share an interesting paper by Harvard psychologists. "Money can't buy happiness. This sentiment is lovely, popular, and almost certainly wrong." One of the coauthors, Daniel Gilbert started the paper with such a sensational introduction, proposing the eight money principles to guide our spending.

【Don't be fooled by survivorship bias!】 The headquarters of our company is in Hokkaido, the northern most area of Japan. The area is still the kingdom of brown bears. When I was a kid, my father often took me to rivers deep in the moun...

【Super optimism】 Innate optimism is the most important quality required for a leader. This is the biggest lesson I've learned from the current (third) president. I joined this company just after the start of his administration since 20...

【A great successor】 The Matrix Reloaded, Blues Brothers 2000, Speed 2, etc. These movies prove it's very difficult to surpass the great originals. On the contrary, there're some good exceptions such as Terminator 2 and The Hustler 2. T...