The Night I Got Lost in Tokyo

Remember those giant paper maps we used to wrestle with in the car? I had no idea that one humiliating night in Tokyo would teach me everything I needed to know about modern leadership.

I’m stepping off the plane at Narita Airport, exhausted from a 14-hour flight, clutching this crumpled paper map with hotel directions I’d scribbled down in a panic before leaving home. The map was in English, which seemed smart until I remembered I was in Japan.

My cab driver took one look at my directions and said something in Japanese that I’m pretty sure wasn’t a compliment. He spoke exactly three words of English, and none of them were going to get me to my hotel.

What happened next was two hours of pure torture. We drove around Tokyo in circles while I watched the meter tick higher and higher. He’s getting frustrated with my useless map. I’m getting panicked about being lost in a city where I can’t even read the street signs. We both knew where we wanted to end up, but we had no way to get there together.

I finally made it to my hotel at 2 AM, exhausted, embarrassed, and about $200 poorer than I should have been.

Fast forward fifteen years. I’m getting off another international flight, but this time I just pull out my phone, tap my hotel into Google Maps, and show it to the driver. Forty minutes later, I’m checking in. No stress. No confusion. No drama.

Same destination. Completely different journey.

That experience has haunted me ever since, not because of the money or the embarrassment, but because it perfectly captures what I see happening to leaders every single day.

For years, companies ran on what I call “paper map leadership.” The big bosses would lock themselves in a conference room once a year, map out the entire plan, and hand it down to everyone else. “Here’s where we’re going. Follow these exact steps. Don’t deviate.”

When things changed, and they always do, these leaders would just keep following the same old directions, maybe scribbling a few notes in the margins. Market shifts? Stick to the plan. New competition? Stay the course. Technology disruption? We’ve got our map, we’re fine.

Just like my Tokyo nightmare, they’d eventually get somewhere, but the journey was painful, expensive, and often led to the wrong destination.

I watched this play out with a manufacturing company I worked with. They’d been crushing it for decades with old-school leadership. Their CEO was proud of his five-year plans that never changed, no matter what. “We don’t chase every shiny object,” he’d say. “We stick to our guns.”

But while they were sticking to their guns, their competitors were eating their lunch. The market was shifting faster than ever, but this company kept following their outdated roadmap like it was gospel. They’d commit to a direction and refuse to budge, even when it was obvious they were heading straight into a dead end.

When we started working together, I’ll be honest, it was tough. These were successful people who’d built their careers on detailed planning and flawless execution. Asking them to embrace constant change felt like asking them to abandon everything they’d learned about leadership.

But once they made the shift, everything changed. Instead of waiting for annual planning meetings, they started listening to their customers, their employees, and their market in real time. Instead of rigidly following predetermined plans, they began making quick adjustments based on what they were actually seeing and hearing. Instead of all decisions flowing through the executive suite, they empowered people on the front lines to make course corrections when they spotted problems or opportunities.

The results blew everyone away. They didn’t just regain their market position, they leapfrogged their competition. But what really struck me was how much happier their people became. Instead of feeling like cogs in a machine, employees felt like they actually had a voice in where the company was heading.

The cost of sticking with paper map leadership in today’s world is heartbreaking to watch. I’ve seen brilliant companies miss game-changing opportunities because they were too committed to their original plan to pivot when something better came along. I’ve watched talented people walk out the door because they were tired of being told to follow directions that clearly weren’t working anymore. I’ve seen resources poured into dead-end projects because admitting the plan was wrong felt like admitting failure.

Here’s what kills me about all this: paper map leadership worked great when the world moved slower. Many of today’s senior executives built incredible careers mastering that approach, and they have every reason to be proud of what they accomplished.

But just like my crumpled Tokyo map became worthless the moment road construction changed the route, leadership styles that can’t adapt to changing conditions are becoming liabilities instead of assets.

The leaders who are thriving today have learned to think like GPS systems. They stay locked on their destination, their core mission, their values, their long-term vision, but they’re constantly adjusting their route based on real-time feedback from the world around them.

So here’s what I want to ask you: When you look at how you lead, do you see paper maps or GPS?

Are you still plotting your course once a year and expecting everyone to follow it no matter what changes around you? Or have you built systems that let you navigate dynamically, adjusting your path while staying true to your destination?

Because here’s the truth that took me years to fully understand: In today’s business world, your destination might stay the same, but your route is going to change constantly. The question isn’t whether you’ll face unexpected detours, it’s whether you’ll be ready to navigate them skillfully or whether you’ll end up driving in circles, watching the meter run while everyone else finds their way home.

The choice is yours. But the old maps aren’t going to cut it anymore.

The Future is now

Jesus (Jes) Vargas is the Principal at DPMG Corp in Sacramento, CA. Jes and his team consult, coach and mentor business leaders in areas such as strategic planning, leadership development and Lean Thinking deployment. If you are concerned that there is not enough long-term strategic thinking going on in your organization, Jes can help. Call Jes at 916 712 6145. Or you can email him here.