Ryota Tanozaki
Appearances
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
Three months after I joined Tavis, I faced COVID. And then I had to lead a restructuring. So in terms of organization, in terms of the contract with customers. At the same time, I had to build new mission, vision, and strategy at the moment. Our investors, especially SBK Gasol Bank Telecom Corporation, decided to make a local executive leadership, which is me. four years had passed.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
So I didn't expect I continued to work for Tavist for such a long time because COVID lasted for three years, right? So it was quite tough, but I always believed. So perseverance is quite important. For leaders to build a great company or make a significant impact, make a significant positive impact on a society, I miss it right now.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
Yeah, with this quite challenging situation, what I did was mainly three things. The first one is I always feared Our mission and the vision was team members in terms of compensation. So we are not that great in comparison to Facebook, Google, Amazon, you name it, the 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.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
So in order for us to do that, we have to give them another reason about why they continue to work for a tapestry 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 and ryokan. to like that mission is quite fulfilling and it quite engaged with our people.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
When our team members visit rural cities and then 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 that in Japan is facing the declining population, right?
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
It's there is a huge issue of labor resources. So you paint the situation in a real life. They embrace that kind of mission into their heart and blood. They are motivated to work for Tavist.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
Secondly, the important thing is to provide a strategy, clear strategy.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
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 employees
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
And the third thing is to lead by examples. One of the strategies 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 pitching to them why we are here and how we can help them thrive in a rural city.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
So then they gradually think, okay, Ryota did 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.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
Yes, I'm teaching at a global university marketing and strategy. My customers, so my students, come from a variety of 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.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
So training, educating, and nurturing them is also quite important, not just at Globist, but at Tavist. That's the reason why I teach not just at Globist at university, but also at Tavist as well.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
Yeah, yeah, two books that I want to encourage people to read, especially business people to read. So first book is from classic book, so Innovate, Innovate Limer written by Clay Lee Stanton. The reason why I chose this book is because it is quite transformative for me because even
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
The products 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 in the Tavist strategy. I believe we are now focused on providing our technology to small and medium-sized hotels and ryokans.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
But eventually, our products will permeate not just a small and medium-sized company, but also large corporations. So that kind of paradigm shift 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 Carbist. But I learned a lot of things from this book. So Hike was Handbook, written by Elad Gil.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
He is quite a famous investor in Silicon Valley. 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 Realtor. So I just write down everything about me and share that kind of note with my employees at Tadist.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
So they can learn, okay, who is Ryota? What kind of strengths he has? What kind of weakness he has?
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
Thank you, Liz. I quite enjoyed it. Thank you for having me.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
I want to share my career. And after that, maybe you'll ask some of the details for transition timing. Yeah, first, after college, I joined Tantori, a beer and whiskey manufacturer, sales and marketing, especially. After a five-year journey at Tantori, I decided to move toward Malagren Consulting Farm because I wanted to cultivate not just
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
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 the Chicago Booth. After coming back from Singapore to Japan, I got an opportunity to manage e-commerce business under a BTO company called Transcosmos.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
After working for Transcosmos for 10 months, At that moment, Facebook reached out to me, why don't you become a head of the client solution manager at Facebook Japan? So that position is like playing a role of the CEO at Facebook Japan. So collaborating with a country manager to develop strategy and then execute strategy. So that kind of role. And then I spent four years at Japan.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
I transitioned from Facebook to Oyo Hotels. And then I changed the name from Oyo Japan to Tavist. So I have been here for four years at Tavist. So that's my career.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
One of the memorable projects that I experienced was at Frontier Management Inc., a Tamnara consulting firm. That project, I played a role of COO, department store, located in the 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.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
They invested a lot of money and then lent a lot of money from banks to build new shopping malls. 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
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
where I not just build 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 strategy, company cannot move forward.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
Frankly speaking, exactly at the moment when I was engaged with that project at the 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.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
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 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.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
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 a business network outside Japan.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
Yes. At Frontier Management, I realized that I was quite excited about building teams 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 consulting world.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
At that moment, social digital marketing was quite important for corporations to accelerate their growth. 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.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
But at France Cosmox, so it was not strategic, right? Because it was only for 10 months. And unfortunately, I decided to tour the face of the big horse. In reality, before joining France Cosmox, I thought my role could be to build a new e-commerce company in Japan. But the reality was that I wanted to manage a pot of companies or e-commerce companies located in Southeast Asia.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
Because Transcosmos 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 strategy, but it was unfortunate for both of me as well as PressCosmos.
Chief Change Officer
#203 Ryota Tanozaki: From Pouring Drinks to Pouring Innovation into Japan’s Hotels
Yeah, that's a great question. Perseverance is quite important. At Transcosmos, what I expected was totally different. I pursued a different journey just after 10 months of work at Transcosmos. But I always think if you want to build something great, or if you want to make a great thing, perseverance is quite important.