TRANSOM — Building Confidence in Organizations
Sustaining real collaboration in organizations.
Transom is a Tokyo-based organization development consultancy serving Japanese and global organizations. We work across organizational transformation, leadership development, strategy education, and governance. As the Japan license manager for Clear Leadership®, we bring dialogic organization development into Japanese organizations.
🏆 HR Award 2026 (Japan) — Books Category Winner
Clear Leadership. Sustaining real collaboration and partnership at work.
By Gervase R. Bushe / Supervised and Translated by Yoshiko Zoet-Suzuki Published by Shogakukan · September 5, 2025 · Japanese Edition
Transom manages the Japan license for Clear Leadership® and brings the Clear Leadership programs to organizations across Japan.
Why now
Japan has widely adopted 1-on-1s and psychological safety in recent years. Practitioners face a common wall: dialogue that doesn’t work, honest concerns that don’t surface. Clear Leadership addresses this wall directly — with the Four Selves and Learning Conversation practices — as the skill layer beneath psychological safety. Adopted at the Keio Business School EMBA program since 2021.
The Four Selves and the Experience Cube
Four interconnected skills, practiced through one tool.
- The Aware Self — Awareness equals choice
- The Descriptive Self — Making Me understandable to You
- The Curious Self — Park reactions; listen through
- The Appreciative Self — Amplify what you want more of
The Experience Cube — Observations, Thoughts, Feelings, Wants — provides the discipline for keeping these distinct in conversation. Together, the Four Selves shift teams from politeness, avoidance and friction to honest, productive working relationships.
Program structure
A 2-4 month behavioural change journey. 9 facilitated sessions (3-4 hours each).
- Phase 1: Exploration — Sessions 1-4. Understanding interpersonal mush / The Aware and Descriptive Selves
- Phase 2: Application — Sessions 5-7. The Curious and Appreciative Selves / Learning Conversations
- Phase 3: Integration — Sessions 8-9. Integrating all skills / Creating collaborative team patterns
Designed for: executives, senior directors, HR and OD leaders, change agents. Format: open enrollment or in-house cohort (8-14 participants) / Japanese, English, or bilingual delivery. We customize program structure to the organization’s situation and objectives. Program costs, format, and schedule are shared during initial inquiry conversations.
Transom’s role
Transom manages the Japan license and serves as the primary provider for Clear Leadership® programs in Japan, delivering foundational skills in collaborative leadership, strategic thinking, and Dialogic Organizational Development to corporations, academic institutions, NPOs, and NGOs. We authorize Japanese-language certifications for professional facilitators and internal corporate trainers, and welcome inquiries regarding custom corporate training and in-house transformational capacity building.
Contact UsTransom Services
Delivered by two principals with a network of certified partners, Transom provides services in four key categories that enable organizational transformation. These can be deployed as custom corporate programs, lectures for corporate executive programs, or integrated directly into leadership team offsites.
🌐
Organizational Transformation
High-impact executive solutions tailored to identify sub-optimal organizational patterns from a systemic (Barry Oshry) perspective and to align systemic transformation with enterprise strategy. We embed targeted intervention sessions and leadership offsites within broader, co-designed engagements focused on long-term discovery and change. By diagnosing relational friction and decoding hidden system dynamics during these key checkpoints, we partner directly with leadership teams to co-create unified operational roadmaps, ensuring that broad enterprise strategy can find better alignment with baseline execution.
🎯
Leadership Development
Elite, credential-driven programs designed to accelerate the strategic capacity and emotional intelligence of senior executives and enterprise cohorts. Anchored by official Clear Leadership® Certification Programs, our methodology combines intensive one-on-one executive coaching with systemic team coaching frameworks and advanced occupational psychometric assessments. We provide senior leaders with the concrete behavioral skills required to dissolve interpersonal noise and sustain real psychological safety under corporate load.
📋
Strategic Formulation and Advisory
High-altitude executive solutions bridging the gap between strategic intent and flawless execution for C-suite and senior teams. Delivered across specialized pillars — Strategic Diagnostics & Business Model Innovation, Structured Executive Communication, Customer Lifetime Value Maximization, and Advanced Operations Architecture — we bypass pure theory to actively partner with leaders. Through intensive coaching and hands-on advisory, we co-create concrete strategic initiatives based on real organizational data. This framework is featured within the Keio Business School (KBS) EMBA program and is available via Transom as collaborative training and corporate consulting projects.
🏛
Governance & Corporate Strategy
Specialized, high-altitude advisory services addressing the complex dynamics, alignments, and administrative priorities of corporate boards and executive committees. We provide expert guidance on board architecture, stakeholder alignment, and governance frameworks, alongside high-level business advisory for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and unique corporate turnarounds. We partner directly with chairpersons and corporate directors to manage risk and protect enterprise assets during critical transition periods.
Principals
Yoshiko Zoet-Suzuki
Co-founder & Principal Consultant · Tokyo Translator, Japanese edition of Clear Leadership
Clear Leadership® certified trainer- PhD (Exp), Université Paris-Saclay
- MA Organizational Psychology, Birkbeck College, University of London
- Adjunct Professor, Keio Business School EMBA
- Visiting lecturer: Hitotsubashi ICS, Yale Global Network MBA, Osaka Metropolitan University
- Member, NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science (USA)
- Executive Coach / Strategic OD Consultant
Dr Elvin Zoet
Co-founder & Principal Consultant · Tokyo
- PhD, Utrecht School of Governance
- MScBA, Rotterdam School of Management
- Experienced CEO, COO, VP (APAC) — consulting, investment banking, internet
- Adjunct Professor, Keio Business School EMBA
- Visiting lecturer: Hitotsubashi ICS, Yale Global Network MBA, Osaka Metropolitan University
Teaching strategic tools and leadership at Keio Business School MBA/EMBA program for 5 years since 2021.
Global Reach
Clear Leadership is delivered by certified facilitators in 10+ languages worldwide.
- Keio Business School — Japan
- Monash University Business School — Australia
- Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS — Singapore
- Roffey Park Institute — United Kingdom
- Simon Fraser University, Beedie School of Business — Canada
Transom collaborates with certified consulting partners globally to deliver senior leadership programs for multinational organizations.
Our Consulting Partners
North America
Partner profile coming soon
Dr. Joachim Schwendenwein
20+ years global systemic transformation consulting Former Senior Facilitator, Stanford GSB MBA Program Specialist in strategic alignment & executive coaching PhD Organization Consulting, University of Kassel
Elar Killumets
Full-system consultant & change master Specialist in dialogic OD & corporate adaptability Focuses on silo dissolution & performance alignment Organizational dynamics researcher, Tartu University
John Matthews
Co-founder, Institute of Executive Coaching and Leadership (IECL) Elite leadership coach & senior facilitator 11,000+ hours executive delivery experience ICF Professional Certified Coach
China / APAC
Partner profile coming soon
Bill Lewis
Senior performance advisor & corporate consultant Based in Singapore covering the APAC matrix ecosystems Specialist in enterprise growth & cross-border leadership Expert in aligning local operations with global metrics
About Transom k.k.
Transom k.k. is a Tokyo-based organization transformation consultancy. Co-representatives Elvin Zoet and Yoshiko Zoet-Suzuki have partnered with corporate clients for over 20 years across Japan, Asia Pacific, Australia, China, Europe, and North America.
Transom collaborates with an international network of consulting partners, including Joachim Schwendenwein (Austria/Germany), Elar Killumets (Northern Europe), Bill Lewis (Singapore / Malaysia) and further partners in Australia, North America and China, and maintains a direct partnership with Prof. Gervase Bushe, author of Clear Leadership, to deliver senior leadership programs for global organizations worldwide.
Our approach: Organizational transformation and change begin when leaders confront their own experience, thoughts, feelings, and beyond. Strategy, dialogue, and culture all stem directly from human connection. Grounded in both theory and practice, academia and fieldwork, our mission is to sustain an organization’s innate capacity for self-directed evolution.
Contact Us
For Clear Leadership implementation, strategy education programs, organizational transformation support, or other services. Start with a discovery conversation. Even a brainstorming-style exchange is welcome.