UPDATED - Ron McFarlandの Personal Journey (4-d): ロンさん、ローン返済完了！！

学費の高いアメリカの大学。ローンを組んで学費を賄う学生も多く、卒業時には借金が1000万円を超える人も珍しくはないそうです。

ロンさんの学生時代、学費は今よりも安かったとはいえ、親からのサポートを期待できなかったため、やはりローンを組んでいたそうです。

それをバイトで早々に返済。スッキリ！ウールワースや軍隊での仕事などなど様々な経験がその後のキャリア形成に大いに役立ったようです。

As Japanese is not an easy language, people really appreciated my effort, particularly the Japanese people who were poor English speakers. They regularly gave me encouragement while my average American friends and my own family thought I was crazy.

With working at Woolworth’s 48 hours a week, the Army Reserves and Japanese, I found it all a bit much. Importantly though, I wiped out all the college debts and was single at the time, so I decided to quit working for Woolworth’s and moved up to Oakland.

Sam Fisk, whom I lived with in the Roger Williams house in San Jose while at San Jose State, was living in Oakland and going to school in San Francisco. His house there had a spare room I could rent. So, off I went. Interesting, Sam was going to graduate school at San Francisco State University, and just when he graduated, he went to Hawaii to work. That was 1-2 years before I moved to Japan. The year after I moved to Japan, my mother visited me in Japan, and on the way back to California, she stayed with Sam in Hawaii for several months. After that, she bought her own condominium in Hawaii and stayed there for 13 years before moving back to California. I visited Sam in Hawaii many times over the years while seeing my mother.

In Oakland, I set up my language classes over in San Francisco and worked part-time for another person who lived in the house. He had his own business selling computer data input services. Basically, it was asking companies if they needed help getting various data into their computers. He hired ladies to punch in the data and took a commission on the services he could sell to companies. I did that direct selling for him too. I learned I enjoyed outside selling even though I did it for only around four-months. I only brought in one account, Macy Department Store in San Francisco. That experience would help me years later when I had to write a sales training program.

Ronさんのセミナーいかがですか。苦労の多かったRon-sanの青春時代やキャリア形成の話、特に何故日本に来る決断をしたのか、などを聴いてみたいですね。それとRonさんが楽しみにしている出席者と皆さんとのノミニケーション。年末にはできそうですね。

皆さんがおやりになっている勉強会などに出張し講演させていただきます。

ただし、Ronさんが住んでいる東京都大田区から日帰りできるところとさせてください。

もっとも台湾でも日帰りは可能ですが。

UPDATED - Ron McFarlandの Personal Journey (4-ｃ): 日本語学習を開始

1970年代前半、やはり日本は目立つ存在だったのでしょう。

After boot camp, I returned to my reserve unit as a company clerk, which angered the commander. So, I was assigned to drill sergeant school for two years. Believe it or not, by going through drill sergeant school and being a drill sergeant for about two and a half years, I learned how to teach. I didn’t like the subject-matter, and I was not a very good drill sergeant, but I did learn some things, particularly how to stand up in front of a group and teach as I mentioned.

In those days, my life was managing the store at FW Woolworth’s and going to Army Reserve meetings. I noticed at that time I still had a great desire to get into international business in any way I could. I always found myself in the stockroom reading the origins of the merchandise Woolworth’s was bringing in from Asia, particularly Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong. Business with China had not started in those days. That came years later. I was continuing to read business magazines and what the United States was importing and exporting worldwide. With the huge figures of products imported from Japan particularly to California, I decided to start studying Japanese. I was around 26 years old at that time.

I signed up for an adult education Japanese class right in San Jose. That was an interesting experience, because here I was in a class mostly of third and fourth generation Americans of Japanese descent who wanted (or were pressured by their direct parents) to learn the language to be able to talk to relatives back in Japan. They all kind of wondered why I was putting myself through so much pain to learn that extremely difficult language. In those days, I too found the language extremely difficult.

But a Chinese guy, Kwang Peng (above) encouraged me very much. He told me to just sit in the class and try to follow the lessons as best you can. He originally came from mainland China and then Taiwan. He comes from a highly educated family. I met him long after he had finished graduate school in advanced engineering. As I was not doing it for anyone except myself, I decided to flunk myself two times in the entry level Japanese class. I finally got an understanding of the material after the third time around in the beginning class. Classes after that became much easier for me.



Ronさんのセミナーいかがですか。苦労の多かったRon-sanの青春時代やキャリア形成の話、特に何故日本に来る決断をしたのか、などを聴いてみたいですね。それとRonさんが楽しみにしている出席者と皆さんとのノミニケーション。年末にはできそうですね。

皆さんがおやりになっている勉強会などに出張し講演させていただきます。

ただし、Ronさんが住んでいる東京都大田区から日帰りできるところとさせてください。

もっとも台湾でも日帰りは可能ですが。

UPDATED - Ron McFarlandの Personal Journey (4-b): グローバルリーダーに求められるモノは。

Although I was not particularly close to him my father, having worked for Bank of America for many years, set up appointments for job interviews throughout the bank in San Francisco. In one of those interviews the interviewer was so mean to me. He kept repeating that I do not nearly have the background to qualify for the type of position I was looking for. He said I would at least need a masters’ degree and a second language or specialty in a given country or region to even be slightly considered. So, I was destroyed by that interview, but it motivated me, and now I have both a master’s degree and a second language. I went back to San Jose to my rooming house completely dejected.

After some deliberation, I decided to take the first management job I could find as business management was my major at San Jose State, and for the time being I had to forget about all this international stuff and pay off student debt.

In San Jose, F.W. Woolworth’s needed store managers, and I was employed as a store manager trainee.

I started out in the stockroom checking in merchandise and putting them into stock or taking them to the showroom floor. I learned how to receive goods, compare them with purchase orders, and stock them in the most ideal location and how to monitor inventory control.

From there, I moved to the store sales floor. At that time, I was promoted to assistant store manager, and I managed half the store sales floor and another assistant manager had the other half. I learned on the sales floor how to keep the merchandise out on display and meet customers.

Several things I learned at Woolworth’s. One is that I enjoyed working with the public and interacting with a lot of different people. I also learned I had a knack with managing people particularly women for some reason. I guess it is because I grew up with women, my mother and sister. The more I learned, the better manager I became and the more respect I commanded in the store, in some cases more than the store manager himself. The store manager was not particularly easy to work for, so the assistant managers who covered the other half of the store kept quitting. Therefore, for most of my time there, I had to manage both the front and rear of the store. I had over 30 people I had to manage. That was very exhausting from me.

During those years, I was still in the Army Reserves. Therefore, I was not only learning management skills at Woolworth’s, I was learning how to teach and train people in front of a group in the Reserves as well. Right in boot camp the management and motivational techniques I learned in the US military were powerful. Their management was connected to competition among Army squads and building group pride. My company had three platoons with four squads each. One squad had about seven people, and I was a squad leader. I learned that a leader has to participate just as much as the rest of the quad, he cannot sit back and let everyone else do all the work, as respect will be lost. That is something that has held true in every company I managed in. Our squads would continually compete against each other in a wide range of very detailed activities and each platoon generated its own pride. With those techniques, we were all highly motivated even though none of us wanted to be there! About 90% of that company was reservist trying to stay out of the Vietnam War and just go home.



Ronさんのセミナーいかがですか。苦労の多かったRon-sanの青春時代やキャリア形成の話なども聴いてみたいですね。それとRonさんが楽しみにしている出席者と皆さんとのノミニケーション。年末にはできそうですね。

皆さんがおやりになっている勉強会などに出張し講演させていただきます。

ただし、Ronさんが住んでいる東京都大田区から日帰りできるところとさせてください。

もっとも台湾でも日帰りは可能ですが。



<ご興味のある地域を選んでいただた上で、出張報告をさせていただきます＞

UPDATED - Ron McFarlandの Personal Journey (4-a): ヨーロッパ旅行から帰国して。日本へと向かう心。

Ron-sanが第4章を更新しましたので、改めて第4章の頭から掲載します。

ヨーロッパから帰国したロンさん、心の中にあの映画と歌が・・・・・

Coming back from Europe I knew I wanted to get into the international business community in some capacity.
I sent out resumes to every American multinational corporation I could think of from international carriers to corporations with investments and partners worldwide.

I think that was the time when I started thinking about coming to Japan seriously.
Although my main reason from coming to Japan was to try to do business between Japan and the United States,
I was interested in Asia in general and Japan in particular when I was in high school.
That was the first time I start to learn how to use chop sticks. Also, I learned how to use an abacus around that time.

In my early years in high school, I saw the movie “Sayonara” with Marlon Brando on television.
It came out at movie theaters in 1957, but I saw it several years later. That movie made a great impact on me.

Also, the song “Sukiyaki” by Kyu Sakamoto was a big hit globally.
That was 1963, when I was a freshman in high school. I still love that song today.
I was shocked of his death in a plane crash my first year in Japan.

Ronさんのセミナーいかがですか。苦労の多かったRon-sanの青春時代やキャリア形成の話なども聴いてみたいですね。コロナも収束間近。是非、マスクなしで開催したいですね。それとRonさんが楽しみにしている出席者と皆さんとのノミニケーション。年末にはできそうですね。

皆さんがおやりになっている勉強会などに出張し講演させていただきます。

ただし、Ronさんが住んでいる東京都大田区から日帰りできるところとさせてください。

もっとも台湾でも日帰りは可能ですが。



<ご興味のある地域を選んでいただた上で、出張報告をさせていただきます＞