I was born in Japan when the country’s economy was shifting from a period of high growth to the one of stable growth. From my childhood till early 20’s, it was a common belief that as far as you work hard, you could have a good life without layoff, bankruptcy, and so on. In other words, people were comfortably relying on the established social system and the system appeared quite secure.
Since then, things have changed drastically. Today’s Japanese, especially the working generation, don’t have as much faith to the social system as we did 20 years ago. When you can’t rely on someone else, you tend to be more self sufficient.
In addition, Japanese infrastructure including telecommunication and transportation has been well established. With online research and shopping, people can get pretty much anything with the same time and cost spent for making a physical visit to a store or service if not less (greatly). You can buy things like that, which means you can sell that way, too.
Under such circumstances, more and more people are interested in starting their own business in current Japan. To meet this demand, business consulting is getting popular.
Say, 20 years ago, there were not many one-man businesses to begin with, and not they but larger corporations were commonly seeking professional business counseling. Now one-man business population is increasing, and many business counseling services are targeting that market.
What has been interesting me is that they emphasize the importance of your mind. They provide the detailed consultation not only about what you are doing but why, the psychological and spiritual mechanism behind. Without fixing the source of your decision making, your output won’t be better very much.
You probably have heard about the common traits of the most successful people. The principles, some say 5 and others do 7, 8 or more, are quite simple in a way; have a clear vision/purpose/principle, don’t care too much about what others think, have a focus routine/self discipline, don’t live in the past success/failure, etc.
It seems such an approach is quite standard in modern Japanese business counseling. And the counseling market is expanding. This means the statement to improve your personality and humanity as an important step toward a successful business is getting more and more recognized and accepted.
Whether in Japanese or English, all of them say about the social contribution and team work. You won’t go beyond a certain point if you are stuck within your own ego. You need to work on yourself first of all.
If we confidently believe the true understanding and compassion for others come back to them as a success, naturally we are encouraged to be more patient, respectful and open minded to others. If we become more patient and respectful, we will discover more pleasure of learning, recognizing, appreciating, trusting and contributing each other.
What if more and more businesses become like that? What a world it would be!
I believe the business from now on goes toward more society and people oriented.
Dream big and start from what’s in front of you. As a business owner, potential entrepreneur or customer, we can choose what we do. The business shouldn’t be just a mean to make money but a great tool to influence your society and the world.