n the master's programme of French prestigious business school L'École de management de Lyon (EM Lyon Business School), founded in 1872, there is a department of consulting. 29 French students from the same master course visited Tokyo. On the 17th of December, I rented a hall from DMM where one of their graduates worked at, and gave lectures on Japanese management and consulting in accordance with the following agenda.

1. Characteristics of Japan
2. Our consulting tools & techniques
3. Project cases
4. Our future
5. Q&A

For the topic of "Characteristics of Japan", I did not only focus on the characteristics of the Japanese management style, the industrial structure and the culture, but also touched on many aspects of the country such as the school education so as to give deeper insights. The next topic was "Our consulting tools & techniques". I introduced the macro environment analysis, the framework and analytical method of micro environmental analysis based on the consecutive steps of business strategy formulation, and the role definition to ensure the implementation of the formulated strategy. I covered organisational design including roles & responsibilities and balance scorecard (BSC). Based on the two topics above, in the "Project cases," we discussed the characteristics and needs of the Japanese companies' management and overseas operations. I requested them to think about what commonalities and differences they find between Japan and France. Lastly, in “Our future” section, I gave my personal views on how vendors, competitors, channels and markets should be understood after describing the current trends called VUCA* macro environment including geopolitics, economics, social culture, technology, and how the boundaries of the industries are steadily lowering.

The lecture provided to the curious and smart French students continued one hour longer than planned due to active discussions.

Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity