A conversation with Tsubasa Nakazawa on impact, AI and the future of SME productivity
By Pauline James
Malaysia’s Thirteenth Malaysia Plan (13MP) 2026–2030 outlines ambitious goals to strengthen economic resilience, improve public service delivery, and drive value creation through digital and technological advancement, including expanded 5G coverage, increased AI adoption, and a highly digitalised public sector.
As the nation enters the first year of 13MP, national priorities are shifting, beyond basic digital adoption towards sustainable, outcome-driven productivity.
For Malaysian businesses, particularly SMEs, the question is no longer whether to digitise, but how to ensure digital transformation actually delivers measurable impact rather than complexity, burnout and diminishing returns.
To explore this critical inflexion point, we spoke with Tsubasa Nakazawa, Managing Director of Kintone Southeast Asia, a subsidiary of Japanese software provider Cybozu. Kintone is a no-code platform that enables organisations to build custom workflows and business applications without heavy reliance on IT teams. Nakazawa works closely with SMEs across Malaysia and Singapore to implement practical, human-centric digital transformation strategies.
In the interview, he addresses the biggest misconceptions about productivity in hybrid work environments, the hidden cost of the “Toggle Tax,” the risks of digital overload, and why Malaysian organisations must rethink their approach to AI, workflows and performance measurement in this era.
The Hybrid Work Misconception: Visibility Is Not Productivity
Hybrid work — a flexible work arrangement that combines traditional in-office work with remote, off-site work — is now embedded in the modern workplace. However, Nakazawa believes many companies still misunderstand what productivity looks like in this environment.
“What I sometimes hear is that people are looking to visualise productivity with members working from home,” he said. Managers worry “whether they are online, whether they will respond quickly and sometimes feel that members are being unresponsive and may feel suspicious about that.”
But visibility is not a value.
“Being always online is not what connects directly to productivity enhancements,” he explained. “Rather, it’s about enabling members to increase impact in creating a situation where impact can be created.”
That initial mindset shift, from monitoring activity to enabling outcomes, is, in his view, foundational for Malaysian organisations striving to meet productivity ambitions.
The Leadership Mindset Shift: From Activity Monitoring to Impact Ownership
For Nakazawa, moving beyond “looking busy” is not simply about setting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) — it requires a deeper leadership mindset shift.
As operations digitise, he noted that productivity can become distorted by convenience. “It’s easier to set up meetings using video conference tools like Zoom. You can easily make docs using generative AI,” he said. Because tasks are easier to initiate and execute, “a lot of tasks that may not always be directly related to impact… can potentially grow in number.”
The result? Employees appear active — but activity does not always equal value.
“But a lot of the tasks being performed are not directly tying into impact or outcomes,” he stressed.
The mindset he referred to is one that equates responsiveness, visibility and tool adoption with performance. In many SMEs, particularly those still early in their digital maturity journey, leaders may rely on multiple disconnected tools — spreadsheets for tracking, chat apps for communication, separate systems for reporting — believing that more systems provide better oversight.
Often, this stems from practical concerns: budget limitations, limited in-house IT expertise, or simply adopting tools incrementally over time without an overarching workflow strategy. Each new tool solves an immediate problem. But collectively, they create fragmentation.
Nakazawa argued that leaders must shift away from this reactive, tool-driven mindset and instead adopt what could be described as impact ownership.
“It’s very important… to first visualise and identify which tasks are connected to impact. Then identify the measurable outcomes for those tasks and set those as KPIs,” he explained.
From a leadership perspective, this means focusing teams on shared, outcome-based targets rather than monitoring individual activity. He said, “Leaders should embrace this principle of focusing on measurable impact and sharing those targets with their members and convey to the whole team that these are team-wide targets that are meant to focus on overall impact rather than on micromanaging individual members.”
It also requires discipline — reassessing whether a meeting is necessary, whether a document adds value, and whether a new tool truly simplifies work or merely adds another layer of complexity.
This shift — from supervising activity to designing systems for measurable impact — naturally leads to a deeper question: if multiple disconnected tools create more visibility, why do they often reduce performance?
That is where the hidden cost of digital fragmentation becomes impossible to ignore.
The Hidden Cost of the “Toggle Tax”
One of the most overlooked barriers to sustainable productivity is the “Toggle Tax” — the cognitive strain and time loss caused by constantly switching between fragmented digital tools.
Nakazawa observed this challenge widely among Malaysian SMEs.
“Many such companies use many different tools for their operations, such as spreadsheets or chat tools for communication needs,” he said. “Switching between these tools often can lead to toggle taxes and also to a time loss and waste of time.”
The consequences extend beyond lost minutes.
“It also creates issues during handover, for example, if a member leaves the organisation, which can lead to more errors and overall loss and decrease in overall performance.”
In a competitive regional marketplace, these hidden inefficiencies accumulate — quietly undermining resilience and long-term growth.
The Always-On Culture and Its Unsustainable Costs
The push for digital responsiveness has also contributed to an “always-on” work culture, with employees logging in early and remaining connected late into the night.
Nakazawa acknowledged the pressure this creates.
“It can create pressure for members, which is something that can also affect you when you are supposed to be off work and relaxing for your family,” he said. If sustained, “this pressure is allowed to build up, can eventually lead to burnout, which can where you see a very sudden, dramatic decrease in motivation.”
While constant availability may appear productive in the short term, he warned of long-term consequences.
“While always requiring members to be always on, can perhaps lead to a temporary boost in productivity in the short term. In the mid to long term, it decreases focus, can decrease engagement, which eventually leads to decreased productivity.”
For organisations seeking sustainable growth, such a model is fundamentally misaligned with long-term value creation.
Why One Platform Matters More Than More Tools
While a new system may improve one isolated function, employees rarely perform just one task. “While adding a new tool can appear to increase the productivity of one specific task,” they still manage multiple responsibilities across departments and workflows. Each additional platform increases the number of places they must search, recall and cross-check. Over time, this fragmentation introduces not only inefficiency, but “learning costs on the organisation.”
For Nakazawa, productivity is not about optimising individual tasks in isolation — it is about reducing friction across the entire workflow.
This is why Kintone advocates what he calls “a one platform oriented model where you not only put your data on that one platform, but also all of your workflows and your communication as well.”
In other words, information, processes and conversations should not live in separate silos. When everything operates within a unified environment, teams no longer waste energy remembering where something was stored or which tool was used to manage a task. The system itself reduces switching costs.
Ultimately, he stressed, “it’s not about how many technologies you adopt,” but about “having smarter, more streamlined or consolidated technology choices.”
This idea— simplification over accumulation — sets the foundation for tackling one of the most common challenges facing Malaysian SMEs today: app sprawl.
Fixing App Sprawl Through Incremental Change
For companies already dealing with siloed systems and app sprawl, Nakazawa advised a measured approach.
“Do not try to overhaul or change everything, all processes, all at once,” he cautioned. Instead, organisations should “focus on the task that can have the highest impact from being improved, or the task that creates the most stress or workload for members.”
This incremental model reduces disruption.
“By having this incremental approach, you prevent the kind of stress and extra work… which is something that is inevitable when you change tools or change processes.”
Equally critical is collaboration. Leaders should “include gain input from the members from the employees who would use the new tool,” working together “to make work easier.”
A Simpler, Smarter Path Forward
Nakazawa’s message was clear: digital tools are powerful enablers, but only when they are aligned to measurable outcomes and embedded within streamlined workflows. When adopted without strategy, they risk creating fragmentation, fatigue, and diminishing returns.
The path forward lies in simplification.
By consolidating systems, focusing on impact over activity, and empowering teams to work within unified digital environments, SMEs can build productivity that is not only measurable but sustainable.
True digital transformation is not defined by how many tools are deployed — but by how intelligently they are designed to reduce friction, strengthen collaboration, and enable meaningful value creation.
