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Plug into power

People who think they
are powerless should ask
themselves a few questions

The gap between the plethoras of good ideas many employees have for how to improve their organizations, and the number of these ideas, which actually get implemented, is maintained by a self-imposed shackle of powerlessness.

"If I ever suggested XXX to my boss, I could kiss my career goodbye."

"I'm just one voice, what can I do!"

"They won't listen to any new ideas."

Without denying the fact that others will resist change, seldom does the "powerless one" step back and ask themselves the question: "Am I tapping into a source of power that will connect with the other person and influence her/him to join with me in converting my idea into action?" This question will lead to five sub-questions and issues.

» Do I have any expertise that can be brought to bear? Is there anything about my formal education, my documented experience, publications, hard data, and the like that might fuel my attempts at influence?

If the answer is "Yes." and the issue is one that is open to logical debate, then Expert Power may be one of the influence ingredients you can call upon as you formulate an influence strategy.

» Are there any powers I can get delegated to me? When Sean Connery knelt before the Queen of England and she touched his shoulder with her ceremonial sword, she gave him a healthy dose of Referent Power. When and if it was useful, he and others could refer to him as Sir Sean Connery. People who particularly respected British Royalty would attribute a higher level of esteem and power to Connery as a result.

References from respected others that accompany a job application are meant to serve a similar effect. As is networking with other like-minded colleagues who may have an easier time selling your idea than you might. As is "reference" to the fact that "the boss suggested I come and ask you to help me on this project." The abusive use of this source of power is the well-known "name dropping game" that characterizes highly political organizational environments.

» Do I have direct control over things that matter -- currencies of value -- to the person I need to influence?

If so, and if I'm prepared to use them as negotiating chips, then what is traditionally called Reward and Punishment Power may become an element of your influence strategy. The key word, of course, is the word "and." Because if you're not careful, playing a trump card can result in either winning the trick or getting over-trumped.

» This brings us to the issue of Positional Power. The obvious facts are that some people have it and others don't, and that some people have more of it than others. The less openly acknowledged facts about this source of power are two:

One, it is "nothing personal." It wouldn't matter whether you, I, or anyone else reading this article were named the CEO of Corporation X, we'd inherit certain positional powers. And, two, when used in its most abusive forms -- kicking butt, taking names -- it will at best, yield grudging compliance, and require virtually no skills at all!

I am not saying that being a CEO requires no skills. Quite the contrary. Specifically, because of the power the position carries with it, being a boss requires an extraordinary combination of both intellectual and emotional skills. These are personal sources of power. They are not bestowed or inherited from a written job description. They are earned. They can learned. They are what underlie any degrees of the personal Expert Power and Referent Power we may enjoy,

The rubber meets the road in the power game when we add the element of Positional Power into this mix.

No one would argue that 'being a good subordinate is hard work and it can be risky. But few would see that being a good boss is hard work and it's risky.

"Why risky?" you wonder? Because the power to abuse position works two ways. The danger of the boss over-using it is no less than the danger of the extent to which others blindly bow to positional power.

To emphasize the point we made in the earlier article, the bridge between a source of power and its potential for influence is a relationship between two or more people. The vehicles, which transform power into influence, are the relationships between human beings making similar conscious choices. Abusive uses of power, therefore, are reflections of abusive relationships between people.

Japan offers market
for online sales

It didn't work out for eBay,
but others are making a go of it

Looking back, it is hard to figure out exactly what eBay was thinking when it entered the Japanese market in 1999.

Long the darling of online auctions in the United States, the company moved aggressively into Japan, despite the fact that Yahoo! held an impressive 95 percent market share.

In 2002, after being trounced by Yahoo!, the company admitted defeat, closing its doors and pulling out of the market altogether.

At about that same time, upstart Rakuten Ichiba -- the name means "optimistic marketplace" -- was just getting started. Rakuten, the brainchild of Harvard MBA Hiroshi Mikitani, is now in a neck-and-neck race with Yahoo! for Japanese consumer's online eyeballs.

Neilsen//NetRatings, which offers popularity ratings for both sites, estimates Yahoo!'s traffic at 30.6 million unique visitors in November 2004. Rakuten is in a close second at 22 million for the same period.

Despite the popularity of these sites, it isn't easy for online surfers in Hawaii to buy from them.

Even people who speak the language find that the sellers are reluctant to ship merchandise out of the country.

"Many sellers have never tried to sell to overseas customers and thus tend to avoid the unknown," says Philbert Ono, a Maui-born entrepreneur living in Tokyo.

Ono runs PhotoGuide Japan, an online auction agent in Japan. PhotoGuide is a go-between for international buyers who want to purchase items from Yahoo! or Rakuten. The company acts as a proxy, purchasing an item on the buyer's behalf. The company's fees are between 10 percent and 20 percent of the purchase price.

Rinkya.com, another proxy agent, provides a similar service for international buyers. The company translates buyers' questions into Japanese and then translates the sellers' answer into English.

The company relies on a network of bi-lingual Japanese housewives working from home to run the system.

"In the future, we also would like to hire handicapped people who cannot leave their homes," says Heather Russell, the company's chief executive.

Selling through the online sites can be a great opportunity for Hawaii.

Yuko Akiba, who moved to Hawaii four years ago from Japan, regularly sells products on Yahoo!'s Japanese auction site.

"I sell a lot of movie-related collectors items," she says.

Akiba buys the products locally and sells them to bidders online.

"Even with postage, it is still cheaper than what they can get in Japan."

Akiba estimates she makes between $500 and $1,000 a month from her online transactions.

Of course, all business is conducted in Japanese.

Two local companies provide auction assistance for the U.S. market, Wesellthings4u Inc. and AuctionTurn.com.

Wesellthings4u will help you sell your product on the Japanese auction sites.

"A lot of our items go to Japan from the U.S. eBay site," says Tiffany Tanaka, the company's president and CEO. "But if a customer wants to sell things on the Japanese sites, we can help them with that too."

Tanaka estimates that 10 percent of the company's eBay buyers are located in Japan.

Matthew Lucas at AuctionTurn recommends using eBay.

"Most buyers on the Japanese auction sites expect to make a direct deposit into a Japanese bank account," Lucas says. "If you don't have an account, it is hard to sell."

Like Wesellthings4you, AuctionTurn will help you sell your items on eBay.

Lucas estimates that more than 25 percent of buyers are coming from Japan.