The International

THE first thing Takumi Shibata did upon taking the top job at Nikko Asset Management (Nikko AM) in 2013 was to meet every single employee working in the Japanese asset manager's Tokyo headquarters, all 500 of them. He met some of them one on one. Meetings in groups of five or eight proved the most enlightening, recalls Mr Shibata, Nikko AM's president and chief executive officer. For one, middle managers would not be able to exaggerate their performance in front of their own team.

Through group meetings, body language can be read, and assumptions tested on which divisions were working and which were not.

"It's not what they say. It's how they behave," he says. "I quickly realised that people don't necessarily talk especially when they have complaints," he adds, noting he would later try to institute a culture of escalating problems up the command chain early.