From Whiskey to Wi-Fi: Tabist CEO Ryota Tanozaki's Career of Bold Transitions

Summary

Chief Change Officer Podcast Episode Summary

Episode Title: From Whiskey to Wi-Fi: Tabist CEO Ryota Tanozaki's Career of Bold Transitions
Host: Vince Chan
Guest: Ryota Tanozaki, President and CEO of Tabist
Release Date: December 23, 2024

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of Chief Change Officer, host Vince Chan delves into the intricate career journey of Ryota Tanozaki, the President and CEO of Tabist. Ranked among the Global Top 3% on Listen Notes and leading in multiple categories on Apple Podcasts, this show aims to empower listeners with transformative insights from accomplished leaders.

Vince introduces Ryota as a business professional deeply influenced by Japanese culture and equipped with a rich background in management consulting and strategic leadership. Their shared experience as MBA classmates at Chicago Booth sets the stage for an in-depth conversation about career transitions, leadership resilience, and strategic execution.

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Ryota Tanozaki’s Career Journey

[05:29] Ryota Tanozaki:
Ryota begins by outlining his career trajectory, starting at Tantori, a beer and waste manufacturer, where he honed his skills in sales and marketing. Seeking to expand his strategic and execution capabilities, he transitioned into management consulting, dedicating about 12 years to this field. Post-consulting, Ryota pursued an Executive MBA at Chicago Booth, aiming to gain a global perspective and elevate his professional network.

[07:25] Vince Chen:
Vince contrasts Ryota’s path with the conventional trajectory of MBA graduates, highlighting Ryota’s unique blend of corporate and consulting experiences before stepping into executive roles.

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Insights from Management Consulting

[08:56] Ryota Tanozaki:
One standout project Ryota shares involved acting as COO for a struggling department store in a rural Japanese city. Frontier Management Inc., a consulting firm, tasked him with revitalizing the business amidst declining populations. Ryota emphasizes the pivotal lesson he learned:

"Building strategy is totally different executing strategy. So in order for us to execute strategy as a manager, as a leader, you have to always consider people."
— Ryota Tanozaki [08:56]

He underscores the importance of engaging and motivating employees to ensure successful strategy implementation.

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Pursuing an MBA: Motivation and Impact

[10:50] Vince Chen:
Vince probes into Ryota’s decision to pursue an MBA at a critical juncture in his career.

[11:10] Ryota Tanozaki:
Ryota explains that while working on the Frontier Management project, he feared his career might stagnate in a rural setting. This insecurity propelled him to seek global opportunities and enhance his strategic capabilities, leading to his enrollment at Chicago Booth. He sought not only to climb the corporate ladder but also to "acquire business network outside Japan" to embrace broader challenges.

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Embracing Career Transitions and Overcoming Insecurities

[12:41] Vince Chen:
Vince reflects on the ubiquity of career changes across different life stages, emphasizing the importance of embracing change proactively. He describes Ryota’s sense of insecurity as a "positive sense of crisis" that drives growth and opportunity.

[15:26] Ryota Tanozaki:
Agreeing with Vince, Ryota shares his excitement about building teams and businesses, transitioning naturally from consulting to the corporate world. He highlights the necessity of embedding technical skills and digital experiences to stay relevant, which guided his moves to Trans Cosmos and later to Facebook Japan.

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Handling Setbacks and Successes: The Role of Perseverance

[18:00] Vince Chen:
Vince acknowledges Ryota’s notable achievements while recognizing the underlying challenges he has faced, prompting a discussion on Ryota's approach to managing both highs and lows.

[18:38] Ryota Tanozaki:
Ryota attributes his resilience to perseverance, stating:

"If you want to build something great or if you want make a great thing, perseverance is quite important."
— Ryota Tanozaki [18:38]

Despite unforeseen challenges, such as the shift in his role at Trans Cosmos and the impacts of COVID-19 on Tavist, Ryota maintained a steadfast commitment to his mission and vision.

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Leadership and Fostering Resilience in Teams

[21:12] Vince Chen:
Vince differentiates between personal resilience and fostering resilience within a team, seeking Ryota’s strategies for cultivating a resilient organizational culture.

[22:15] Ryota Tanozaki:
Ryota outlines three key strategies:

1. Sharing Mission and Vision:
   By clearly communicating the company's mission—to provide technology for small and medium-sized hotels and Ryokans—Ryota ensures that employees find intrinsic motivation beyond competitive salaries.

2. Providing a Clear Strategy (Pathway):
   Ryota emphasizes the importance of a well-defined strategy that addresses clients' true problems, thereby enabling the team to understand "why we can win, why we can realize our mission."

3. Leading by Example:
   Demonstrating commitment by actively engaging with partners and potential clients, Ryota shows his team the practical application of the company’s strategies, enhancing trust and alignment.

"Mission, vision and strategy and execution by leader are quite important for a startup to get their employees to be motivated."
— Ryota Tanozaki [27:10]

These approaches collectively foster a culture of resilience and proactive engagement within Tavist.

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Educational Endeavors and Leadership Development

[30:10] Ryota Tanozaki:
Ryota discusses his role as a faculty member at Globis University, where he teaches Marketing and Strategy. He believes in realizing the potential of people by not only leading by example but also by training and nurturing his team. This dual role enhances his leadership capabilities and reinforces his commitment to continuous learning and development.

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Influential Books and Resources

[31:16] Ryota Tanozaki:
Ryota recommends two pivotal books that have shaped his professional journey:

1. "Innovate Glimmer" by Clay Lisanson:
   This book transformed Ryota’s understanding of how small and medium-sized enterprises can compete with large corporations by focusing on innovative strategies.

2. "High Growth Handbook" by Elad Gill:
   A vital resource for building and operating startups, this handbook provided actionable insights that Ryota implemented at Tavist, including documenting personal strengths and weaknesses to foster transparency and growth within his team.

"I just write down everything about me and share that kind of note with my employees at Tavist so they can learn okay, who is Ryota? What kind of strengths he has, what kind of weakness he has."
— Ryota Tanozaki [31:16]

These readings underscore Ryota’s commitment to strategic innovation and transparent leadership.

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Conclusion and Key Takeaways

In this enriching episode, Ryota Tanozaki’s journey from sales and marketing roles to leading a tech-driven hospitality company highlights the importance of strategic flexibility, perseverance, and resilient leadership. His experiences demonstrate how embracing career transitions and fostering a motivated, resilient team can drive organizational success even amidst unforeseen challenges like global pandemics and industry disruptions.

Key Takeaways:

• Embrace Change Proactively: View career transitions as opportunities for growth rather than setbacks.
• Strategic Execution Requires People Engagement: Success lies not just in formulating strategies but in effectively executing them with a motivated team.
• Leadership by Example: Demonstrating commitment and actively engaging with stakeholders inspires team resilience.
• Continuous Learning: Leveraging educational resources and teaching experiences can enhance leadership skills and organizational growth.

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Notable Quotes:

• "Building strategy is totally different executing strategy. So in order for us to execute strategy as a manager, as a leader, you have to always consider people."
  — Ryota Tanozaki [08:56]

• "Perseverance is quite important for leaders to build a great company or make a significant positive impact on the society."
  — Ryota Tanozaki [20:02]

• "Mission, vision and strategy and execution by leader are quite important for a startup to get their employees to be motivated."
  — Ryota Tanozaki [27:10]

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Transcript

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[Vince Chen]

Hi everyone. Welcome to our show. Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change, progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. We fly all the way from US to Tokyo, Japan. I've always felt a special connection to Japan. My first trip Overseas with my family took us to Osaka, Nagoya and Tokyo when I was just nine years old. Later, during my first year at Yale MBA, I joined the first ever study trip to Japan, where 15 of us explored Japan's business culture, visiting companies like Shiseido, Toyota, ntt, docomo and the Japanese government, including the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. I even wrote a paper about the Japanese economy and banking industry after the trip. Between 2017 and 2019, I've been involved in ACTAC Japan, an international conference on the future of education technology, where I've been featured as a speaker for three years. As a business professional, I'm always amazed by Japan's culture of craftsmanship and its blend of tradition with modernization. And as a traveler, I can't get enough of the Japanese hospitality. In this episode, I'm talking with Ryota Tanosaki, the president and CEO of Tavist who is innovating the Japanese hospitality industry. Ryota and I were MBA classmates at Chicago Booth. Since graduation, he's faced some fascinating yet unexpected career transitions. For those unfamiliar Tavist Originally part of a joint venture with SoftBank in 2019 with the headquarters in India, it was rebranded and localized as Tepist around 2022, with Ryota stepping up as the CEO. Tebbi means truffle in Japanese. As you can imagine, as successful as his appointment sounded, this appointment came during a very challenging time. The postponement of the Tokyo Olympics game and the COVID situation, both of which rocked the travel industry. Over the next 20 minutes, Ryota will share not only his own career transformation, also how Tapist has evolved during an incredibly challenging period for travel. I'll attach the press release about the company's background in the show notes for those interested, without further ado, let's welcome Ryota Tanosaki.

[Ryota Tanosaki]

I want to hear my career and after that maybe you will ask some of the details for transition timing. Yeah. First, after college and I joined Tantori, a beer and waste manufacturer, sales and marketing especially after a five year journey at Santu Li, I decided to move toward management consulting firm because I wanted to cultivate not just sales and marketing capability but also strategy building capability and also executing it. After that I joined several management consulting firms and spent around 12 years. After that I decided to pursue Executive MBA in Singapore at Chicago Booth. After coming back from Singapore to Japan, I got an opportunity to manage e commerce business under BTO company called Trans Cosmos. After working for Trans Cosmos for 10 months at the moment, Facebook reached out to me. Why don't you become a head of Client Solution Manager at Facebook Japan. So that position is like playing a role of the CEO corps at Facebook Japan. So collaborating with country manager to develop strategy and then execute strategy. So that kind of role. And I spent four years at Japan. I transited from Facebook to Oyo hotels and it's then and I changed the name from Oil Japan to and Tavist. So I have been here for four years at Tavist. So that's my career.

[Vince Chen]

When I was starting out, a lot of my friends heading off to business school with big dreams of becoming CEO one day. The plan always seemed pretty straightforward. Get an MBA first, then join one of the biggest consulting firm, McKinsey BCG to tackle a bunch of business challenges across different industries. Then maybe at some point they launch their own business or start climbing the corporate ladder somewhere big. Become the CEO, cfo, CEO somewhere for them, MBA first consulting mix. But you kind of flipped the script a bit. You spent five years in one of the biggest corporations in Japan in a functional role in sales and marketing, then went into management consulting and stayed there for over a decade. Later pursued MBA to get, I would say, some kind of extra edge. Now, before we jump into your experiences at Tavist, I'm really curious about your consulting days. Could you tell us about one of those projects, maybe one that stands out as particularly memorable or that gave you some deep insights?

[Ryota Tanosaki]

One of the memorable projects that I experienced was at Frontier Management Inc. A Tandara consulting firm. That project I played a role of COO department store located in a very rural area in Japan. Because of declining population in the rural city, they were struggling to increase revenue because they wanted to turn around their business. They invested a lot of money and lent a lot of money from banks to build new shopping mall next to their existing department store. Frontier Management was hired by biggest bank, biggest lender to the company to turn around the company. That project was quite challenging. However, it was quite fulfilling because it was the first moment where I not just built a strategy, but also execute a strategy with employees of that company. So at some moment I learned. So building strategy is totally different executing strategy. So in order for us to execute strategy as a manager, as a leader, you have to always consider people. Because unless people are engaged with strategy and motivated to execute a strategy, company cannot move forward.

[Vince Chen]

I spent two years with you in Chicago Booth as classmate, yet I've never asked you the next question. I'm going to ask you now and you give me your honest answer. What actually triggered you to get an MBA at Chicago Booth at that point in time?

[Ryota Tanosaki]

Frankly speaking, in fact, at the moment when I was engaged with that project at Frontier Management and at the department store, I felt concerned that, oh, my career could last in a rural city and my entire career ends. So that was my concern at the moment. I started thinking, why don't I leverage what I experienced so far globally, gradually thinking I want to challenge more. I want to challenge not just in domestic cities in Japan, but also globally. And then I consulted with my boss, the president of Frontier Management Inc. About the opportunity to work globally. At some moment, my boss was considering to develop the office in Singapore. They provided me with the opportunity to start developing the global office in Singapore. Of course, I grabbed that kind of opportunity. But at the same time, I wanted to pursue MBA concurrently because I wanted to up the corporate ladder and I wanted to acquire business network outside Japan.

[Vince Chen]

Ryota, as you were sharing your story, I did a quick Google search. Actually three searches in about 10 seconds. I typed in change career at 30. I got about 2 billion results. Then I searched change career F40. I got over 1 billion results. Finally, I entered change career at 50. I found over 1.5 billion results. So altogether, roughly 4.5 billion results in 10 seconds. About change Career. I haven't done any other keyword searches. I'm sure if I go deeper, I will find more interesting insights. So what does this search mean? It shows that at certain stages of our lives, a certain age, we are either compelled or forced to change careers or we have a strong desire for a change. In today's job market, I would argue that we should embrace this change and be prepared to initiate the change on our own terms. In your case, you felt insecure. Some might call this a midlife crisis. I prefer to see it as a positive sense of crisis or a constructive insecurity. Why is it positive? Because feeling insecure drives you to take action. It pushes you to to improve your security, it increase your chances. You fight for better job prospects. You move out of your country, you move out of your comfort zone. You went for an MBA degree. You network with people from different industries and countries. This expands not only your horizons, but also your opportunities. Turning your sense of insecurity into a positive force in your life. Would you agree with my assessment?

[Ryota Tanosaki]

Yes. At Frontier Management, I realized that I was quite excited about building team and building business. Not just building the great strategy and letting clients execute it. So that was my transition moment. It was quite natural for me to transit from consulting world to a clothesline world. At that moment, social digital marketing was quite important for corporation to accelerate their growers. And also e commerce platform was prevalent like Shopify and others. I just considered, okay, I have to embed more technical skills and digital experiences through my career. So I chose Brand Cosmos and then Facebook. So that's my intention at the moment.

[Vince Chen]

You talk a lot about business strategy. That has been a major theme in your career life. Would you say you are equally strategic about every career move you've made so far?

[Ryota Tanosaki]

But at France Kosov, so it was not strategic. Right? Because it was only for 10 months and unfortunately I decided to toward the face of the big course. In reality, before joining Trans Personal Zyso, my role could be to build new e commerce company in Japan. But reality was that I was to manage a port of companies or e commerce companies located in Southeast Asia. Big words transfer, of course, bought a variety of e commerce companies located in Southeast Asia. So they were struggling and then decide to divest some of them. So that was totally different from my expectation. So I just started looking for another opportunity. So that was not my intention, but maybe it was strategic, but it was unfortunate for both of me as well as PRAS customers.

[Vince Chen]

How do you handle both setbacks and successes? People looking at your career might say, wow, you're incredibly successful. But we all know that behind every success there are tons of challenges you've overcome. In fact, a lot, a lot of challenges, a lot, a lot of setbacks to support one instance of success. What is your philosophy for managing both the ups and the downs?

[Ryota Tanosaki]

Yeah, the great question, perseverance is quite important. At France Cosmos, what I expected was totally different. I pursued different journey just after 10 months work at Franz Cosmos. But I always think if you want to build something great or if you want make a great thing, perseverance is quite important.

[Vince Chen]

So what you're suggesting is managing both the highs and the lows, the setbacks and successes really comes down to perseverance, right? I remember when you moved from Facebook or Meta to Tapist, which was called Oyo Oyo, originally from India, a travel tech company. That was a fairly tough period of time. It was no joke. Tell me, how did you tap into your perseverance to navigate a company through the early days of COVID then the Tokyo Olympics postponement, and then now back to what we might call normal.

[Ryota Tanosaki]

Three months after I joined Tavis that I placed Covid and then I had to lead restructure actually in terms of organization, in terms of the contracts with customers. At the same time, I had to build new mission, vision and strategy. At the moment, our Investors, especially SBKK Softbank Telecom Corporation decided to make a local executive leadership that which is me four years at the past so I didn't expect I continued to work for Taoist for such a long time because Covid lasted for three years, right? So it was quite tough. But I always believe so. Perseverance is quite important for leaders to build a great company or make a significant impact make a significant positive impact on the society. I'm here right now you use the.

[Vince Chen]

Word perseverance and often leaders like to use an other buzz word, resilience. I totally get the concept as I've had to practice resilience myself over many years. But as a company leader, how do you impart this mindset, this resilience to your team? I'm not talking about operations or technology resilience. I'm talking about people, the human beings around you. You might be incredibly resilient yourself, but if your team doesn't share that sense of resilience, it won't be reflected in the team, in the culture as a whole. Then the word resilience would just be a buzzword. So what's your approach to fostering resilience when it comes to being, building and managing your team?

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[Ryota Tanosaki]

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[Ryota Tanosaki]

Yeah, with this quite a challenging situation, what I did was mainly three things. The first one is I always shared our mission and vision with team members in terms of compensation. So we are not that great in comparison to Facebook, Google, Amazon, you name it. It's a global company. At the same time, we have to so as a leader, continue to motivate them to work for a startup. So like Tavist. So in order for us to do that, we have to give them another reason about why they continue to work for Tavist or continue to work for a startup. So one of the reasons is mission and vision. So our mission is to provide technology for small and medium sized hotels. Ryokan to Slijke. That mission is quite fulfilling and quite engaged with our people. When our team members visit rural cities and visit some of the local small hotels, they cannot integrate technology with their location. They see that kind of situation. In reality, if we can provide technology with them, they can thrive with less people. They also have a difficulty of hiring people because Japan. Japan is facing the declining population, right? It's there is a huge issue of labor resources. They think the situation in a real life, they embrace that kind of mission into their heart and blood. They are motivated to work for Taoist.

[Vince Chen]

So that's about the intrinsic motivation, the sense of mission, the sense of action, what else?

[Ryota Tanosaki]

Secondly, the important thing is to provide a strategy, clear strategy. They also are quite smart. So we have to let them understand why we can win, why we can realize our mission. So what kind of things are quite different against competitors? So we have to find out true problems our clients face. And we have to be focused on that kind of problem. And then we have to provide a strategy, share strategy with stakeholders, of course, including the employees.

[Vince Chen]

What you call this strategy, I would say is a pathway. You or the investors have the vision you execute it, but the people around you, they follow you. So in order to follow you. Yes, they have a reason that intrinsic motivation you've mentioned. But then you tell them, well, that's how we're going to do it. You call the strategy, I call it pathway. Then you engage stakeholders, the employees, of course. One of them investors, partners, customers, is a multi stakeholder development and management process. What's your third thing?

[Ryota Tanosaki]

And the third thing is leading these by examples. One of the strategy is to acquire, of course acquire many partners, partner hotels and ryokans. I quite often visit local cities to meet some of the potential clients. And then I myself grabbed several facilities through teaching to them why we are here and then how we can help them thrive in the rural city. So then they gradually think, okay, Realtek, is that why don't we do the same thing with this strategy? They could be convinced more. So mission, vision and strategy and execution by leader are quite important for a startup to get their employees to be motivated.

[Vince Chen]

Yes, that is leadership by example. I would also like to see this as you getting closer to your customer. You really want to learn about the situation, the problems. And then you show to your staff how you win accounts, how you solve problems. If they're smart enough, they observe how you do it and then they follow. They take some of your best insights, the best lessons, and then execute is also a kind of quality management so that you can train up your staff to deliver. Let's extend on this topic of leadership, for example, leader. One kind of leader which I admire is called servant leader. You lead by surfing. Another kind is you lead by coaching. So some of the best leaders I've worked for in my career life, they coach me on the side, made me become a better person, better leader. Now I know that outside of office work, you teach marketing, social media strategy at one of the business schools in Japan. Share with me about your teaching experience as a faculty member.

[Ryota Tanosaki]

Yes, I'm teaching at a globalist university, Marketing and strategy. My customers. So my students come from a variety Japanese and very established corporations. My career vision is to realize potential of people. Leading by example is quite important. But you cannot do everything. You have to create a great team. So training, gating and nurturing them is also quite important. Not just at Globis but as a Tavist. That's the reason why I teach not just as a Globist at university, but also at Tavist as well.

[Vince Chen]

Leaders are like coaches, right? They're always helping others to learn and grow. Speaking of which, are there any books or resources that really changed the game for you. Maybe something you recommend to our listeners to help inspire them just as much as it did for you.

[Ryota Tanosaki]

Yeah, yeah. Two books that I want to encourage people to read, especially business people to read. So first book is from Classic Books of Innovate Innovate Glimmer written by Clay Lisanson. The reason why I chose this book is because it is quite transformative for me because even the products are focused on small and medium sized customers can win over the great products or great companies with large corporations. So that is quite counterintuitive, but that's happening. So that kind of concept still is distilled and the toughest strategy. I believe we are now focused on providing our technology to small and medium sized hotel and Ryokan, but eventually our products will permeate not just a small and medium sized company but also large corporations. So that kind of paradigm sheet has already started. The other book is the recent book but I learned a lot because it is first time for me to build a company and run a startup at Taabist. But I learned a lot of things from this book. So Hike was Handbook written by Elad Gill. He is quite a famous investor in Silicon Valley and he discussed with several entrepreneurs and executives about how to run a startup, how to operate a startup, how to build a corporation. So I learned a lot from this book. So especially one of the things that I exactly did based on this book was to write down the note about how to read Ryota. So I just write down everything about me and share that kind of note with my employees at Taoist so they can learn okay, who is Ryota? What kind of strengths he has, what kind of weakness he has.

[Vince Chen]

I haven't actually read the book High Growth Handbook myself, but what you just said reminds me of something I do fairly often. I'm not big on texting or using social media because I prefer writing things down by hand. There's something about the process of writing. It involves a lot of thinking, reflecting and analyzing. By the time I've written something out, I've already worked through a lot of the information in my head. And I also find that even if I haven't figured out the problem, this process of writing as I'm doing it, the answer comes through more naturally. Speaking of which, remember in our Leadership Capital class taught by Linda Ginzel, the social psychologist at Chicago Booth, she talked about how our brains can trick us into rationalizing or justifying our thoughts too quickly. She suggested that to think clearly, we should write things down, not just to type it out, actually write it down by hand in its rawest form. That way you can come back to it later, maybe a day or even a week later, and see exactly what you were thinking at that time. It really helps you work through your ideas and find solutions. Clayton Christensen yes, he's been my favorite author for the longest time. Sadly, he passed away around the start of COVID That book you mentioned, the Innovator's Dilemma, is absolutely incredible. But there's another one of his that I love, which is how will you measure your life? I highly recommend it to all my listeners, no matter what role you're in or what job you're doing. Anyways, thank you so much for your time today, Ryota. I'm really looking forward to our next conversation. I hope it won't be over a virtual setup next time. Instead, let's aim to be sitting next to each other enjoying some beer and good food in Tokyo. Thanks again.

[Ryota Tanosaki]

Thank you, Vince. I quite enjoyed it. Thank you for having me.

[Vince Chen]

Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, don't forget, subscribe to our show, Leave us top rated reviews, check out our website and follow me on social media. I'm Vin Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.

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[Opzelura Advertiser]

Now these new glasses. Total vibes.

[Walmart Advertiser]

Buying new glasses has a new look. Welcome to your Walmart. Valid prescription required.

[Rakuten Advertiser]

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