International Business Communicators:

International Business Communicators Monthly Meeting: Ghidrah Takes a Seat at the Table

Date: Friday, September 24th, 2004 Time: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Michael K. Kato

Description:
Ghidrah is a three-headed monster, who is the star of a 1964 Godzilla movie. If he were a corporate training or HR manager given a seat at a meeting of the board of directors of a major international corporation based in Japan, his three heads would be saying three different things.

The first head says, "We teach our employees well." The second head says, "We Test, Measure, and Certify what the employees are taught." The last head says, "We know that the important things that are taught are directly reflected in Performance and Return on Investment." The Board of Directors, being concerned, as is customary, with the bottom line, would ignore the first two heads on Ghidrah, speaking only to the third head. "How," they would ask, "are you doing just that?"

Most people who are in the work in HR or Corporate Training capacities are likely to have been invited to few meetings of the Board of Directors. Fewer still are likely to have a seat on the Board. Why is this so, when a company's greatest assets are its people? Too, the collective knowledge and ability to acquire it is a company's lifeline.

Is it that the people on the Board do not value their human capital or management of the knowledge in an enterprise? Or is the issue more that they do not understand or care of what we speak; we do not speak in the language they think in and use to manage the enterprise. A company is in the business of making a profit, to win against the competition, to innovate, and to grow. To be recognized and consulted, the people who manage Human Capital and Corporate Training must speak of profit and competitive advantage, ROI and reduction of cycle time.

The purpose of the presentation will be to examine some of the language that is missing from the Corporate Training glossary and to propose some clear methods to present the ROI of training. The discussion will focus on some of the ways to attract and maintain the attention of the Board, to secure strategic budgets, and to be invited to a seat at the table.

About the Presenter: Michael K. Kato is a bilingual Japanese American consultant who has been working in the ESL, Corporate Training, HR and HC services, and IT fields for his entire career spanning the past 20 years in the United States and Japan. Having lived in Japan since 1987, Mike has been in front of classrooms in corporations, consulted with Japanese schools, companies, government bodies on the development of international educational programs, written and edited a variety of publications on foreign study, language education, and international business, and worked on a wide variety of Web-based training and HR applications. Over the past few years, he has worked as a Learning Consultant both for Thomson-NETg (a e-Learning provider) and independently. Mike is currently working as an independent Learning Consultant and is focused primarily on business development consulting for a communication productivity tool for a venture company.

Organization: International Business Communicators

Cost: RSVP Deadline September 22nd; 1000 yen for food and drinks

Venue: Oxford University Press Showroom, Edomizaka Mori Bldg. 1F, 4-1-40 Toranomon, Minato-ku, Tokyo

Location: Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolis, Japan

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