When No One Is Looking

The world is certainly changing. Some change is a bit scary as what is was once abnormal is later considered normal. However, we are of the opinion that most change is good. Change in an enterprise (or corporate environment) should be founded on the facts of the current business process and making it better. For example, if you service hundreds of customers per day (like AINEO), then how can you make life easier for both the customer and your team? That is what win-win business is all about. Looking at both sides of the coin, and making sure something makes sense for both your customer and yourself. People respect.

With the advent of technology, the internet is forcing people to be more transparent. In the old days, companies could say things and no one would notice. There days, you can’t be a hypocrite (thank God!) by saying one thing and doing another. You will be found out. A large public relations (PR) firm was caught this year doing a fake web log (blog) for a fake customer of Walmart. They were quickly found out. The executive of that company (Edelman), quickly apologized and talked about how bad that was(link). Not shortly there after, the same president was apologizing for doing the exact same thing.

Thanks to the business AINEO is doing, people can no longer blur the truth. CEOs from large firms are now maintaining blogs that tell you exactly how things are. The president of General Motors (GM), who is going through major difficulty is telling people in his blog that ‘its not been an easy year’. This type of transparency was unheard of 5 or 6 years ago.

I recently purchased a book that my teenager wanted. It was a book on how to study and do well in school. I flipped through it an say one statement that said, ‘Honor is doing what is right when no one is looking’. Of course, there are some dishonest people out there. We do our best to avoid them like the plague. But it is also important to do what is right when no one even knows. The word is going to get out, so why bother compromising or even lying when you can do the right thing and look your customer in the face and say you’ve delivered the best product or solution for their needs.

Working hard and working smart is honorable. Honor pays because we all like to work with people who do the right thing whether or not we are looking.

Let’s do the right thing. The world will be a better place for us all.

© 2006

A Tribute to Kaoru Suzuki

November 2006 showed the passing of a great man. Mr. Kaoru Suzuki was a great guy, with spunk, desire to learn new things, and a great leader. I was very sad to hear that he has left this world. He was a great manager to me at RICOH when I just came to Japan out of University. He put up with my developing Japanese years ago, and I tried to understand his interesting English. The point was he made the effort to develop his English.  I am not sure if he ever got his English straight but thanks to him my High School and University Japanese got practical applications very quickly.

He was a great man, that I would see a couple times every year that always had a great greeting (aisatsu in Japanese). He was a great role model for me and our whole team. He taught us how to do business with honor.

I’ll never forget working until mid-night on a proposal for improving a multinational bank’s operations until the last train until midnight. I put a note on his desk saying I would be coming in at 930AM the next morning. As a great Japanese boss, he acted very angry with me for coming in 30 minutes late (even though I usually came to work an hour early every day) the next morning. I’ll never forget my surprise at getting in trouble, and always wonder if he really was mad. If he was mad, it probably disappeared pretty quickly when the bank put their confidence in us to deliver the solution.

Mr. Suzuki, we will miss you! I hope that I will see you again someday.

Watch Out For Watchguard!

We installed a Watchguard firewall (Firebox) at our Tokyo offices some time back.  We were very happy with Watchguards speed of configuration and purchased a maintenance agreement with the box.  We decided not to renew the maintenance agreement, and started to have considerable trouble with the system.  Dropped connections to the internet were the main problems.  We had installed the exact same hardware at a customer site.  Most of our customers really become good friends as we work closely with them to make sure their technology enhanced their business opportunities.

However, the Watchguard box did the same things that our out-of-service agreement box had done.  We took a third box that was out of the extended and discovered the same trouble.  The AINEO SE conclusion was that Watchguard had built a ‘Sony Switch’ type of ‘feature’ into their system that rendered the system inconsistent once you stopped paying maintenance contracts.

We replaced both boxes with another firewall and haven’t had a problem since.  It is coming on two years since we have had these issues, but I would hate to see someone else experience the same troubles as it is embarrassing to recommend something only to see it cost your company and your friend’s time and money.  I hope they have fixed this by now but I would not risk it again.  Our conclusion, watch out for Watchguard!Â