Launching in Japan,
starting with people and systems.
The first question most foreign companies ask about Japan is who to hire. I start a step earlier, by mapping the market and the people in it. Organization design, sales channels and sales teams, technology organizations, and the few key hires that hold it together. Over ten-plus years I have built teams from zero in Japan several times, and I write about it in Japanese, English and Chinese.
No guessing. This is the order I work in.
Tap a stage to open that part of the methodOne ruler for people and organizations
Fit is never an average: I look at the weakest layer. What an organization diagnosis finds about how a company really works becomes the context layer when I assess a person.
Person and role, matched in the same four layers. The verdict takes three steps
Example: a candidate whose patterns rate only AverageStep one: veto items
Does the core hit a veto item?
Veto items are written per role, in advance. Never decided for the first time in the interview.
Step two: four layers
floor of drive and values
behavior under pressure
ability, experience, skills
person plus workplace
Step three: the five-level verdict
No weighted average. The weakest layer sets the verdict.
If the weak layer is equipment, it can be trained. Patterns set the ceiling, so check first whether one step up is realistic.
Draw the maps first
Before listing competitors, draw one map of where the money flows and one of where people move. Only companies that compete for the same customers or the same people go on them. The numbers show that neither map lets you take on everyone.
Two maps before any list of companies
In numbers, you cannot sell to everyoneMarket map
where the money flowsJapan has roughly 3.375 million companies. As one bar:
Small businesses
2.853 million
84.5%
Sales setup 1
Mid-sized
about 500,000
15.2%
Sales setup 2
Large
10,364
0.3%
Sales setup 3
Three tiers, three sales setups. Prices, channels and the people who sell all differ, so one company going after all three at once fights itself for resources.
Small and Medium Enterprise Agency, number of SMEs and small businesses, as of June 2021. Mid-sized is SMEs minus small businesses.
Talent map
where people moveEach requirement you add halves the pool (the estimate in the article)
Around your company sit the ring that competes for the same function, the ring of neighboring functions, and the far ring. Decide how far out to go, and which requirement to relax, before you hire.
Circle area is the share of the pool, outer to inner, in the same order as the table. From the estimate in A talent map is not a list.
Column guides
One page per column: the main conclusions, and which article to read first.
- 01Launching in Japan
How foreign companies actually get started here: sales channels, agents, setting up a base.
- 02Organizations & Hiring
Designing the organization, making the key hires, running the hiring process. Worked through with cases and models.
- 03Japan by the Numbers
Reports that read Japan’s labor and talent markets from public data.
- 04Career
What experience is worth, changing jobs, and how work is shifting. What I see from the hiring side.
Latest articles
- 01Why AI-Written Text Is So Easy to Spot7 min
Five frequent ChatGPT users misjudged 1 of 300 articles. 379 of 454 words that surged in 2024 abstracts were style words. What gives AI prose away, ...
- 02Using AI for Competitor Research: Give Every Number a Trail7 min
Only 51.5% of AI search sentences were fully backed by their citations. A five-column worksheet that ties every competitor number to its original ...
- 03Why Japan's Recruiter Fees Run 30 to 35% of Salary8 min
Japan caps recruiter fees near 7% of salary unless the agency files its own schedule. Filed schedules say 30 to 40%. The FY2024 average was ¥1.03m ...
Reference: What a Japan entity must file each year
All articles →Get new articles by email.
One email a week with what I published that week. Unsubscribe any time.