#Japan #Tokyo #local engagement #Disciplina #Community Talent

Transforming Communities through Inquiry

Disciplina, a Tokyo-based firm specializing in DX consulting and talent development, has recently launched a groundbreaking program aimed at enhancing community involvement among women, seniors, and students in municipalities across Japan. This initiative, titled the Community Talent Development Program, is designed to facilitate sustainable local participation and retention.

Understanding the Program

Departing from traditional training methods that often end in mere completion, Disciplina’s program is rooted in achieving tangible outcomes. The core of this initiative revolves around inquiry skills, which focus on effective problem setting instead of merely learning to use digital tools. Participants will engage with frameworks such as design thinking and job theory to deeply understand the real challenges faced by their communities and businesses from the customer perspective.

This aligns closely with the role of a Designer as defined in the Digital Skills Standards, ensuring that participants develop a comprehensive understanding of customer needs and the experience design process. Furthermore, the program supports participants in implementing their solutions within a business context, adopting the perspective of a Business Architect to translate these challenges into actionable KPIs and short-term project collaborations. The overarching goal is to convert learning into immediate workplace applicability, guiding participants through pathways toward entrepreneurship, employment, and long-term stability.

Key Features of the Program

Disciplina's Community Talent Development Program is distinguished by five notable characteristics:

1. Completion-Oriented Training: This approach counters the typical 'one-and-done' mentality of many training programs by establishing clear performance indicators, such as employment and retention rates, and committing to on-going support until those outcomes are achieved.

2. Focus on Inquiry Skills: The program places a strong emphasis on the ability to discern what needs to be addressed. By utilizing design thinking and job theory frameworks, the program provides a seamless pathway from issue identification to the implementation phase required of professionals known as Business Architects and Designers in the DX space.

3. Inclusive Approach to Participation: Rather than selecting a small group of individuals to represent the community, the program aims to inspire behavioral changes among the majority, often considered the lower 80%, thus lifting the overall community capabilities.

4. Business-Focused Talent Development: The curriculum fosters a transition from a 'task-oriented' mindset to one that encourages voluntary initiative, thereby cultivating individuals who can lead within their business environments.

5. Proven Expertise with Corporations: Leveraging extensive experience gained from training programs conducted for large enterprises in diverse sectors such as textiles, information communication, and automobile parts manufacturing, Disciplina translates that know-how into a format suitable for municipal deployment.

Three-Step Approach for Sustainable Collaboration

This program adopts a structured, phased approach aimed at achieving community self-reliance:

• - STEP 1: Experiential Workshop (Free of Charge) — A simplified workshop (3-4 hours) will be provided at no cost for municipal staff and local stakeholders to experience the program’s potential impact.

• - STEP 2: Comprehensive Programs for Citizens (3-12 months) — Targeting women, seniors, and students, the program will conduct in-depth reskilling and career development utilizing real-world challenges as its foundation. The objective is to support participants towards employment and community integration, with success targets of 90% completion rates and 30-45% employment/community participation.

• - STEP 3: Establishing A Self-Sustaining Community Lab (From Year 2 Onward) — A Community Problem-Solving Lab will be established to transition to a sustainable operational model driven by corporate sponsorship and autonomous community management.

Disciplina’s Vision for Future Talent

In the age of AI, Shingo Yamamoto, CEO of Disciplina, firmly believes that the most valuable asset that only humans can create is the ability to pose quality inquiries. “We aim to provide more than just knowledge of tools; we want to cultivate independent individuals who view their community’s future as their responsibility, who are able to identify fundamental issues and generate new value,” he states. According to him, the increase of such individuals within communities is paramount for both industrial promotion and the creation of personal fulfillment for residents.

Disciplina, through its unique approach of ‘Thought Transformation Programs’ grounded in both advanced theoretical and practical methodologies, seeks to cultivate a workforce that can effectively set quality problems in the AI era and facilitate meaningful behavioral transformations and sustainable organizational processes.

For more information, visit Disciplina's official website. To contact, visit your inquiries page here.