The Buddhist Priest Who Became a Billionaire Snubbing Investors
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
>After taking the CEO role without pay, he printed a small book for each staff member on his philosophies, which declared that the company was devoted to their growth.
>"Company leaders should seek to make all their employees happy, both materially and intellectually," Inamori said.
I'd take a pay cut to work at a place like that. Enjoying your work, feeling like you will be taken care of, and being able to grow and develop are huge "benefits" that aren't easy to find in many jobs.
ETA: Regarding the cutting of 16,000 jobs, yeah, not grand. But the article isn't clear on why, and if anything it's implied they were efficiency cuts. Man does it suck to lose your job, but 33% is better than 100% and companies really shouldn't have that much bloat.
There is a stark contrast in the morale, work ethic and quality of work that my crew has compared to most other areas in my company. Treating my employees like people, being empathetic, supportive, open-minded and pushing them to grow and learn has done wonders. They love their jobs, they feel appreciated, and I have a lot less stress and worry than most other managers at my facility. It really doesn't even require that much effort on my part, other than being willing to listen when they need me to, and to make sure I'm guiding them down the right path. The rewards are so worth it.
It sounds nice, though.
Citations please.
edit: ddellacosta posted some Japanese links for our international audience. Also, to be clear it isn't that farfetched of a claim, but certainly contradicts the article.
Please note that I'm not claiming any specific knowledge of specific conditions, only of their reputation in general The examples offered were simply examples of what makes a "black company." You're always free to quit, it's just that Japanese society will punish you for that.
I've never seen one of those surveys that were actually legit, though. They use completely subjective factors to measure & determine happiness or "best". To me, the whole thing is a lot like the Academy Awards where it's basically a fake award without any scientific rigor.
I remember one year, I think it was 2005 or 06? Verizon Wireless was one of the "happiest" places to work. The reason they were rated so high? Because the researchers weighted one factor more than any of the others. That factor was how the company treats mothers, and expectant mothers (maternity leave). They weighed that particular metric insanely heavy. Basically, if you weren't catering to mothers even slightly during that particular year, the survey would have completely ignored your company even if you had the happiest workers.
It's all nonsense. As far as I know, there hasn't been a single, actual scientific study to determine "happiest/best company". It's all hogwash. I think this piece has more scientific rigor behind it than those "best places to work" surveys because his results are actually measurable and quantifiable. On the other hand, you can't quantify something as subjective as happiness anyways, by definition. Everyone has their own opinion of what happiness is....
Believe what you want. There's not scientific study for about everything that matters in life, yet there's stuff that is common sense enough it does not need to be demonstrated.
The companies who apply for this kind of surveys are confident in the first place that they are not treating their employees poorly, and that fact alone makes it more relevant than all these other companies that don't even both measuring how they are doing.
Back on the subject, Kyocera is a very traditional company, and if you want scientific demonstration that they are not saying bullshit, when you don't have it either, so what is your point exactly ?
Have you never worked in a company that's on those lists? It's highly encouraged (wink, wink) that you help them out with high marks.
The place was a nightmare.
And, yes, not only were you encouraged to give them high marks, they actually built a front-end to the survey system used to track who had and had not submitted a response and setup HR conversations with anyone that gave them less than a top score.
I actively avoid companies on those kinds of lists.
The company was very proud of "teamwork". There were "teams" everywhere. Every employee was expected to be on at least 3. As a senior engineer, I was on 5, not including the actual project team I was assigned to. Things like "data architecture team" and "API review team" and "future engineering team" or "testing web services team". These teams would meet at least once a month, often weekly.
In spite of, or, more likely, because of, all these teams existing, there was actually very little team work. Lots of turf wars and internal politics.
The review process was silly. Your manager gave you 5 goals and you had to come up with 3 goals for each team you were on. You had to select two peers to rate you on your 5 goals, as well as 2 members from each team for your team goals. So, basically, you just did horse trading to give each other 5-star reviews ('hey, I'll give you all fives if you give me all fives, cool?'). This consumed an insane amount of time. Even though I was only there for 3 months, I had to go through this process twice.
Management was also completely ham fisted. They wanted to improve QA. So they gave notice to everyone in QA and told them they could reapply for their jobs. They literally made them all clean out their desks and then come in the next day with resumes in hand to interview. As if they had never worked there. Anyone not "rehired" by the end of the week was given severance.
There were some positives. They had on-site day care and a decent (for the time) vacation package. They also had a liberal education reimbursement plan that only had a 1 year lock-in.
Yes, twice. And I can clearly see why they stood out. (Never participated myself in such surveys).
True, does not mean your job is awesome, but it means that you are usually not treated like shit as an employee.
2) Yes and the fact I felt it was relevant to say that might mean I work for some place with a large number of employees too hmmm?
So would I, but I've noticed that the only really reliable marker of how well you'll be treated is salary (compared to market average).
So it really only makes sense to chase the money.
It's almost always the employers that offer you concrete benefits, contractually enforced promises and cash that will end up taking care of you and treating you with respect anyway.
The companies that tout vague platitudes (good working environment, friendly coworkers, good work/life balance, no bullshit) above concrete benefits (pay, hours, holiday, free lunches) are usually the shittiest employers in that market.
That makes one of us.
>When Inamori talks about making employees happy, he doesn’t mean they’ll be putting their feet up. His brand of happiness comes from working harder than anyone else. It’s infused with the Buddhist idea of “shojin,” elevating the soul through devotion to a task.
That's nice and all, but not if it comes at the expense of employee leisure time or pay.
It seems to be a little more prevalent in Japan but it happens in the west too (Goldman Sachs allegedly uses them to great effect, for instance).
I can instinctively understand the idea if I were cutting wood or doing some other manual task, but I am having trouble picturing myself at work being able to get in to the right mindset if I have multiple moving pieces in every hour of the day.
Ya see, Buddhism is all about losing the non-essential. Everything is an illusion, everything is impermanent. Especially your job security. Upon receiving their pink slips, many were enlightened.
See also git koans: http://stevelosh.com/blog/2013/04/git-koans/
Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5511863
Your feeling like you will be taken care of might not be warranted.
I recall coming across how the share of profits which gets paid out to labour varies across American industries. Finance stuck out. The supposed heart of capitalism anomalously distributes more to labour than to capital.
Life is about making trade-offs. Companies that put customers first will have to make trade-offs in terms of the employees and communities they work with. Companies that put employees first will similarly make sacrifices.
Huh...and here I thought Kyocera had a reputation in Japan for being a terrible place to work.
(sorry, no luck finding links in English, but search for 京セラブラック企業) and you get a fair number of links.
https://www.google.com/search?q=京セラブラック企業
EDIT: (ブラック企業 = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Company_%28Japanese_term...)
"happy" is being used unconventionally.
> [Inamori's] brand of happiness comes from working harder than anyone else. It’s infused with the Buddhist idea of “shojin,” elevating the soul through devotion to a task.
At the very least, anecdotally, they haven't made the lists mentioned by some of my friends. Generally I found that the "black"est companies in Japan happen to be the ones that pay the most (that aren't foreign held).
IMHO, most "pure-bred" Japanese companies vary from a shade of gray to black. A lot of the things that are part of work life there would be probably pretty off-putting to us, starting from recruitment (during college).
Also may want to explain what ブラック企業 means. I can take an educated guess but I'm not 100% certain I'm right.
[0] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://...
Normal company: Work Monday to Saturday, Sunday off. Black company: two Sundays a month off... but you have to work on them anyhow
Normal company: 70 hour workweek involving 20+ hours of paid overtime. Black company: the overtime is uncompensated ("service" overtime)/
Normal company: underperforming employees are ostracized or criticized. Black company: underperforming employees, or performing employees, are subjected to "power harassment" or physical violence.
Incidentally, salaryman loyalty counsels that one's own company is never a black company... I mean sure, there might be some disreputable firms in Tokyo, but we are just going through a crunch period, Tanaka-buchou is well-known to be demanding, that project is over budget so sacrifices must be made, etc.
Many Japanese salarymen of my acquaintance would identify the core underlying sin as "failing to uphold the company's end of the bargain all of us know we're making" and would say "It's mostly a thing at tiny SMBs who don't have the economic resources to consistently treat employees correctly."
If it isn't completely obvious, I have strong reservations about salarymanhood as a system and how the discourse of "black companies" is designed to and functions as insulation for that system.
Not trying to be derisive, I'm just genuinely curious if it's actual work, or if they clock in, spend 5 hours playing Fate/GO and 5 hours adjusting the spreadsheet a bit.
Is this a stereotype fuelled by the black companies, or is it largely accurate?
Living in Japan is wonderful. A++ would totally immigrate again. A substantial portion of my present happiness is having created a job which means that I am 99.8% insulated from Japanese megacorps.
- Unreasonable hours
- Distinct social pressure to not leave before your boss
- Non-optional drinking after work
- Absurd drinking rituals (ex. when you cheers, your cup must be below the more senior employees, a senior employee's cup near you should never be less than 80%)
- Threat of being randomly reassigned to a distant town if you get on someone's nerves
- list goes on...
I think one of the only exceptions I know of is Nikon, I've heard they don't have such strict/crazy practices. Trying hard to think of more exceptions, but I can't, so maybe you're right :\
He simply is an excellent manager. He cut 1/3 of the workforce and began tracking hourly efficiency (presumably to the benefit of the company).
That he's a Buddhist priest is not central to the story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism
It was very popular in the 70s when Japanese business was totally a thing.
The Japanese are probably reading something loosely related about Tim Cook and the shareholder-indifferent culture at Apple.
Idea that the company should be managed in a way that would raise the price of shares is silly. Trading shares is a game and what company does after making shares available for purchase serves only as random seed for share price.
There are two parts to stock market. One is providing capital to companies. Selling shares is a way to do that. But not many people would buy shares because growing companies is risky and slow business. It would be only as attractive as buying shares just for the dividend. Thus we need a twist to make things more interesting so that people will act against their own interest. Proven thing that makes people part with their money is a lottery so we change shares into sort of token that players can trade between themselves. Heard behaviors provides the necessary randomness and the thrill. And that's how and why of stock market.
Attempts to further sync the game with the reality are stupid, harmful and unnecessary.
A plummeting share price makes it easy to accumulate the stock and use the voting power to orchestrate a takeover of the management. Keeping your company's market cap high enough to avoid a takeover is a real thing. Beyond that, you're right, small moves in price mean nothing for the company short term.
I owned a non-trivial amount of MSFT back in the 90s, and they had never paid dividends. Instead, their share price seemed to be linked to the tech bubble and their own popularity. I bought as part of that herd mentality. Eventually, though, I realized that their share price was really not bound by anything concrete, so I sold. A month later, they paid out a big dividend. I missed out on a decent payday.
The problem is this just doesn't work in some countries. It is as much about Japanese society and culture than the CEO that even makes this possible to begin with.
> And in which countries?
Well I'm not sure there are many countries that can compare to Japan's homogeneous cultural ethic, it really is unique in many ways.
I often see a similar argument from gun nuts. You show them that Japan has a ban on guns and that they have zero hand-gun related deaths annually, show them that they have among the lowest crime rate in the world, and they use the excuse of "Oh, it's a different culture. It's not comparable". That's nonsense logic to me. All it means is we also need to change our culture too, then. Sure, it's another factor to consider, but that's all. It's not a roadblock.
I put integrity in quotes because the very concept is pretty nebulous, especially when crossing country boundaries. But, I can concede there's at least a general understanding of the word, and I can't say that's what motivates people to do good work/be productive.
At the very least, it's not the only carrot, and you're completely forgetting the stick (which of course, is discouraged these days, but it definitely has it's uses).
Here's a nice quote from Akio Morita (Sony co-founder):
"In my view, profit doesn’t have to be so high, because in Japanese companies our shareholders do not clamor for immediate returns; rather they prefer long-term growth and appreciation. Of course we have to make a profit, but we have to make a profit over the long haul, not just the short term, and that means we must keep investing in research and development."
Can't say the same thing for USA.
Ah yes, that old trope. This is what people think Kyoto looks like: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02657/kyoto_2657...
But it's a city of 1.5m, and this is what it actually looks like: http://nward.com/myworld/places/japan/214.jpg
As far as the "old trope" they aren't entirely wrong. From top floor of HQ you should be able to see the hills and temples above the city.
[0] http://youinjapan.net/kyoto/higashiyama/kiyomizudera_night_h...
https://tokyokawaiietc.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/kyoto-sce...
I would assume Kyoto is just like any city. However, my buddy did say he was amazed by the cleanliness of the city, so I think your picture is slightly exaggerating what Kyoto actually looks like.
But there are some comparatively green hills around it.
I do know about these "priests" having wives. That means they are not monks since celibacy is one of the foremost precepts of Buddhism. Other aspects of being a "householder" also preclude Inamori from being a monk.
Based on your description it seems like the priest title is imported from other religions.
Possibly interesting article by an American Zen priest:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildfoxzen/2010/08/what-the-hec...
This bloomberg sentence fits well to my understanding of many businesses: their leaders don't use their brains, they follow the crowd. The author does a puzzling thing: he asks us to follow the good example but then wants to point out the special approach of Inamori. What is the advice? Follow Inamori and do what too many businesses do (follow, don't think)? Or do something original (and don't care about what everybody does)?
And what about statistics? Here is a report about one single success that worked and its leader tried to make his employees happy (perhaps both things are unrelated, tbp). That does not carry any weight, until there is a meaningful statistics about the success of leaders who did it like this. Currently, it is just another success story.
Even the hen-egg example is broken and the author did not see it. Take it literally: do we care for hens? No, we torture them until they die early, take all their eggs and make a good profit. The hen is dead? Get another one, she'll lay eggs too. The farmers who care for their hens are the ones in trouble: they have to compete with much cheaper eggs. And who really understands or pays for quality? A minority!
At first glance that looks an awful lot like bullying the hen
It's perfectly possible he could have managed without, or with fewer, redundancies, but pointing to redundancies as evidence he's not thinking of staff is short-sighted.
It sucks to have people lose jobs, but the solution to that is not to have companies hold on to unsustainable amounts of staff to the extent where they are at risk of failing.
The decision to cut the workforce may have been the right one but since the thrust of the article was the effectiveness of his philosophy I think it's only fair to highlight how it was applied.
You get paid a dividend as your risk premium, and you're free to express your apprehensions by shorting the stock if you don't buy into the CEO's strategy, or simply selling it and buying something else. What gives you the right to demand any particular level of return on a stock?
Well, possibly that was the semi-subtle point of the article -- that he says one thing, but here's a read-between-the-lines lack of evidence that it's more than talk.
Blackberry (formerly known as RIM) has a revenue of $3+bn. Not doing really well.
The American landscape is littered with many large companies which have gone bankrupt by giving in to all their employees' demands at the cost of profitability. The big airlines, for instance. And the carmakers.
That would seem to violate everything we know about public relations, i.e. it's a whole lot easier to get your voice heard when you have money.
The fact that you don't hear about it is, rather, because shareholders have voting rights to control important decisions, including board selection, and the board supervises management, as well as corporations having legally-enforceable fiduciary duties to shareholders.
So, if a company is not adequately representing shareholder interests, they have more efficient mechanisms available to correct that than "whining to the media", as a result of which, management is generally responsive to demands that come from a substantial fraction of the shareholders in ways which they may not be to employee demands.
This depends upon the state. In Delaware corporations, directors and officers owe fiduciary duties to the corporation and shareholders. See Buttonwood Tree Value Partners LP v. R.L. Polk & Co., C.A. No. 9250-VCL. The difference might seem moot to laypeople, but is incredibly important for those real people acting as officers and directors who are directly involved in corporate governance activities.
The employees should be accountable to the management, and the management in turn should be accountable to the board which in turn they should be accountable to shareholders and believe it or not the General Assembly of shareholders can push for a vote of no confidence for the management and kick them out and elect a new board.
That's how accountability, transparency and good corporate governance work. If you see any reluctance, hesitation, or outright objections from management, that's a sign that there's something wrong with them and they're hiding something.
Also, his anti-shareholder rhetoric could jeopardize his mission as a CEO of the corporations he presides over as it would limit his option of raising capital on the open market esp in times of need because if you treat your shareholders like that and someday you that you need to finance a new project by tapping the equity market through issuing new shares, rest assured the existing shareholders will make you pay for every bad word you said about them while potential ones would be very skeptical of your intentions and ability to deliver due to your awful politics.