December 31, 2017 2018 New Year’s Message from Japan Intercultural Consulting

It’s been another busy year here at Japan Intercultural Consulting and as always we are grateful to our clients for giving us the opportunity to assist them with their cross-cultural training and consulting needs.

We continue to see strong interest in our Working Effectively with Japanese seminars for non-Japanese working for Japanese companies or interacting with Japanese customers, partners and investors. Many clients are also asking us to provide Working Effectively Globally courses that cover a range of cultures. We are also seeing strong demand for our e-learning sessions from clients wishing to complement their live sessions with additional content.

With sexual misconduct in the news, we’ve had high interest in our sexual harassment and discrimination prevention programs, and have also launched a Japanese language e-learning on the topic to prepare Japanese who are being assigned to or visiting the United States.

This past year we’ve also conducted many team-building sessions aimed at fostering communication and action planning in cross-cultural teams. We’ve also done special human resource consulting projects helping clients with specific challenges in areas such as engagement and retention.

I personally have spent a lot of time in Japan this past year. I’ve continued my collaboration with Microsoft helping Japanese organizations change their cultures in order to more easily adopt Agile and DevOps. I’ve also done a special series of customized seminars on Cross-Cultural Management for one of our Tokyo-based clients, training over 300 of their key managers.

I’ve been busy with my writing too, publishing two books this year in Japanese. One is on speaking more sophisticated English — it became a big bestseller and has already gone into its 6th printing. The other is on how Japanese companies can learn from Silicon Valley. I also started a new column for the Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun while continuing to write for the Asahi Shimbun, Newsweek Japan’s website, and Teikoku Business Saizensen. In English I did an article for BBC Capital on workstyle reform in Japan.

2018 is going to be off to a busy start, as I’m headed back to Tokyo to present on Servant Leadership at Regional Scrum Gathering Tokyo and conducting change management workshops for the management teams of two clients.

We very much appreciate everyone’s support and enthusiasm for our work during this past year, and look forward to serving you in 2018. Best wishes for a very happy New Year!

Rochelle Kopp
Managing Principal
Japan Intercultural Consulting

January 1, 2018

Japan Intercultural Consulting is an international training and consulting firm focused on Japanese business. We help clients increase profitability and employee engagement through improved communication and working relationships in multicultural environments. By working with us, our clients are better able to achieve their business goals. japanintercultural.com