Know MC's People

My boss said them to me when I was assigned to CIMA ENERGY, LP, a natural-gas marketing firm that's based in the US. I was the first employee from MC's corporate staff section to be seconded to the company, so I figured that if I hoped to make a positive contribution, I'd first need to build trust with my new colleagues. However, just when I was preparing to do that, I was put in charge of restructuring the company's accounting and tax department. By that point, a number of senior officers had left, so I was being relied on to make a lot of decisions on my own, and after a while, I began losing confidence. So one day I asked my boss for some advice.
"If we allow ourselves to get bogged down on every single decision, we risk losing sight of our goals," he said. "What's important is that we ultimately achieve those goals, which is always the result of successive, big-picture-based decisions, regardless of whether each one of them is correct."
His words encouraged me to revisit how I was doing things, and I realized that when it comes to management and administration, no solutions are absolute. The keys are having your own approach to decision making and focusing on your goals. Once I was aware of that, I began addressing each decision by asking myself two questions, neither of which has anything to do with factors like culture or language: "What's the best way to grow the company's value?" and "What's fair?" Since then, I've been able to make firm decisions which I think have a good grasp of the long-term implications for the company. That experience has been very beneficial, not only in my career, but in my personal life as well.

The most rewarding parts of my job are being able to tackle the problems facing MC from a financial-market perspective and learning new things every day. The financial markets are globally connected and influenced by everything from national macroeconomic trends and financial policies, to politics, financial disclosures by private enterprises, and so on. Most of those influences have either direct or indirect impacts on MC's businesses. The financial products traded on global markets are evolving on a daily basis, and in recent years, progress in the digital-tech space has been hard to ignore. The only constant nowadays seems to be change itself.
MC's Finance Department functions as an "in-house" bank, positioned to understand both the financial markets and the company's operations, and capable of approaching diverse challenges from a financial point of view. It's exciting to me to think about using my work and business-school experience in Japan and the US to tackle new problems. I doubt it will ever be easy, but it certainly makes for rewarding and fulfilling work days.

MC's businesses are very diverse, but each of them is a mission to answer society's needs and solve its problems, whether directly or indirectly. The Corporate Staff departments are also involved in a lot of different businesses, so I'd like to use those connections to play my own small role in realizing an inclusive world, one where there are opportunities for everyone.
As someone from Corporate, my work has engaged me in the planning of different systems and I've even been seconded to one of our overseas business investments. I think that experience can help to raise the MC Group's value and lead to sustainable shared-value creation.
Reflecting on my career to date, I think the realization that I've benefitted the company by being proactive has been a source of motivation. I also like jumping into unknown worlds and different cultures, so for my next challenge, I'd like to test my problem-solving skills in a completely unfamiliar and unexpected environment.