Leave everyone better than you found them.

My purpose is to make the world a better place and leave everyone better than I found them. I learn and synthesize knowledge, then give back by sharing it — so others can unleash their full potential.

Fabian Hoshino — Associate Partner at EY Strategy & Consulting Japan, leading Work Design & Performance Enablement delivery for foreign-capital companies. My work comes down to one diagnosis: is this a resourcing problem, or a work design problem? Evenings, I build the systems that keep me honest.

The story

I studied East Asian economics and have concerned myself with Japan's labor market for over twenty years — first in recruitment, providing flexible resourcing to foreign-capital companies in Japan. Somewhere along the way I had to admit we weren't solving problems. We were throwing people at them, hoping the new hire wouldn't resign the way the predecessor did. In large part, the system itself was broken.

So I drilled deeper, and what I found was friction — between people, processes, and systems. Siloed tools, outdated processes, information copied and pasted from system to system and person to person. Nothing flows. Work fills up with low-value tasks that keep people from doing their best work and living up to their potential. We spend half our waking hours at work; it should be an environment where we thrive.

Japan sharpens the stakes. With a shrinking workforce, output = people × productivity has only one lever left — and technology alone won't move it. When employee engagement sits at 6% (Gallup), new tools simply don't get used. Engage people first, design the friction out, and you get a virtuous cycle: people genuinely enjoy their work, and companies grow because of it. Not milking people for productivity — a win-win. That is what I have been working on for the last three years.