Winding Paths to Success

7Growth

In an era when professional self‐reinvention every few years is encouraged, staying at the same company until retirement may seem like an old‐fashioned concept. But it does not mean that you cannot have a meaningful career, rich with personal growth, within the walls of a single employer if new opportunities are in fresh supply. In fact, you benefit from the upside of lifetime employment, during which you can build an uninterrupted reputation within the company and a lifelong bond of trust.

Ryoko Nagata, a freshly retired lifer from Japan Tobacco, is one such story. Despite its name, Japan Tobacco is a conglomerate housing food and pharmaceutical businesses in addition to the core tobacco business. Her audacity to announce that she would prefer to stay out of the tobacco business during her recruiting interview set a theme throughout her 36‐year career at Japan Tobacco.

Lifetime employment is like marriage—it takes constant effort on both sides to sustain. Japan Tobacco always looked out for new environments in which Nagata could flourish, who in turn repaid the favor by acting as a reputed “fixer” in nontobacco businesses. For Nagata, each stage—from managing a frozen food poisoning crisis, leading the beverage business, to launching a CSR program at corporate headquarters—presented a new set of challenges, from which she learned the requisite lessons to take her to the next chapter.

Just as Japan Tobacco experimented with nontobacco businesses—for example, establishing ...