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CONSULTANT

About the Consultant

This page was translated from Japanese by AI. If anything is unclear, please refer to the Japanese version.

EXPERIENCE

Cross-cultural management consultant

Maeda Koichi | Representative, HI Cross Management

At Waseda University, I majored in Oriental history and studied the workings of human society. After working in publishing and web development in Japan, I spent 13 years from 2013 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, as the head of the overseas subsidiary of a web development company, working on everything from establishing the company to building the organization and running the business. Right after the company was established, I started by building an organization of more than 30 Vietnamese employees, and was responsible for creating internal career plans, legal affairs, finance, HR, recruitment and payroll, information security, and setting up the work environment and rules. In web development projects with the Japanese company, I monitored communication between Japanese and Vietnamese team members and provided advice, corrections and support as needed.

While living in Vietnam, I also served as a director of a Cambodian subsidiary. Visiting Cambodia several times a year by a six-hour bus ride each way, I managed a mixed team of Japanese, Cambodian and Vietnamese members as the de facto on-site manager from the time the company was established. In Bangladesh, by contrast, I never visited and managed remotely from Vietnam through a local manager. While balancing the circumstances of the companies in Japan, Vietnam and Bangladesh, I was involved in budget management and setting up operational rules. I have also supported the management of an office in Dalian, China.

I also married my Vietnamese wife in Vietnam, which has given me the opportunity to experience a different culture not superficially, but through everyday life.

  • Management experience across multiple countries and regions

    Through my involvement in Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Dalian, China, I have experience running local subsidiaries, managing remotely and supporting coordination between companies.

  • Organization building, HR and evaluation

    I have operated recruitment, training, evaluation and pay systems, and built organizations.

  • Management accounting and business administration

    I have personally handled finance, management accounting and budget management.

  • Information security

    At the Japanese and Vietnamese companies, I was in charge of building and operating information security systems, establishing rules and training employees.

  • IT system development and cloud management

    I have hands-on experience developing web systems and managing and operating cloud environments, including PaaS and IaaS.

  • Establishing and running local subsidiaries

    I was involved in management for 13 years from establishment in Vietnam, and from establishment to liquidation in Cambodia.

  • Coordination between the Japanese head office and local subsidiaries

    In addition to reporting to and coordinating with the Japanese head office, I monitored exchanges between Japanese and Vietnamese members in web development projects and provided advice and corrections as needed.

  • Use of LLMs (AI) and digital transformation

    I built an environment for searching company regulations and operational rules in employees' native languages, and have used generative AI in web development, interpreting and translation.

PHILOSOPHY

"Intelligent kindness" and management

I believe management is “intelligent kindness.” Kindness is not leniency.

The management scholar Peter Drucker wrote the following in his book Management:

Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.

— P. F. Drucker, Management (Essential Edition)

The word "manage" derives from the Latin manus (hand), meaning to guide by hand or to hold the reins. It means neither holding people down nor leaving them to their own devices.

Understanding and respecting the other person's position and circumstances, and reconciling them with business needs. That leads to efficiency that draws out people's performance, and to sustained employment. This is not leniency; it can be called "intelligent kindness."

Understanding also cannot be one-way.

If you expect foreign employees to follow Japanese business practices, Japanese managers also need to put their own culture, rules and expectations into words in a way the other person can understand. "They'll pick up on it" or "they should understand" does not get the message across. On the contrary, you may even fall into a loop of "But I thought I told them..."

To convey your intentions to others, you must first understand them.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. That is true. But what if the unique culture and rules of that "Rome" have never been conveyed to the person?

Even the same words are received differently by different people. All the more so when the other person has a different native language.

However, Japanese managers and foreign employees busy with their daily work have no time to carefully analyze the other person's position and the background to their thinking. That is because understanding someone's background requires considering many things together, from social customs and national laws to differences in impressions arising from language. You may also struggle to judge whether something is an individual difference or a cultural one.

A cross-cultural management consultant helps in exactly these areas, which require knowledge and experience different from your core business.

LANGUAGES

Languages

Japanese

Native language
Reading and writing
Native
Speaking and listening
Native

English

Reading and writing
Working proficiency
Listening
Possible if spoken slowly

Reading and writing are fine. I can follow spoken English if people speak slowly.

Vietnamese

Reading and writing
Working proficiency
Listening
Word by word

My reading and writing are good enough for work. My listening is at the level of catching individual words. At the local subsidiary, I handled day-to-day work in Vietnamese without going through an interpreter or English.

Vietnamese language support

Interviews, native reviews and narration in Vietnamese are handled by a native Vietnamese speaker with experience in Japanese-Vietnamese business interpreting and translation.

Contact

Consultation and Contact

Feel free to contact us. The first consultation is free, for about 30 minutes.

Go to the contact form