>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.
I manage a crew of about 15 people, and we have an internal company directory. I was asked to list off my job responsibilities for my page, and the first thing I wrote was, "Ensure that my employees are happy."
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.
What you've written is a glowing self assessment. While it may be entirely accurate, it'd be enlightening to see what kind of feedback the employees in question would give you on the subject.
This appears to be PR. They have a reputation as a "black company." For the uninitiated, that means slave-like conditions: unpaid overtime, no weekends, and your supervisor might beat you... literally.
Also interested in citations. I am sure this article glorifies the ceo (it's bloomberg), but saying they are slave keepers sort of justifies a bit of substantiation.
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.
Links are already posted before I could offer them, but there doesn't seem to be anything much in English.
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.
Im really doubtful whether employees are actually happy working there. Never heard of Kyocera being anywhere nesr tge top of Best Places to Work surveys adressing employees satisfaction. This sounds like a big PR piece with no fact to support any claim.
> Never heard of Kyocera being anywhere nesr tge top of Best Places to Work surveys
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....
I work for a best place to work company and hr really go all out to address any concern that may hurt the survey. That said, best place to work doesn't mean your job is automatically awesome.
> It's all nonsense. As far as I know, there hasn't been a single, actual scientific study to determine "happiest/best company"
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 ?
Best Place to Work requires lodging an application and demonstrating your efforts. It's only valuable for medium-to-big-size companies for the PR fallout. Most companies don't bother applying.
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.
>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.
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.
>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.
Does shojin conflict with a modern office job in which you have many tasks and many responsibilities?
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.
"Regarding the cutting of 16,000 jobs, yeah, not grand"
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.
Yeah, but you may feel that framing because hacker koans are derived from actual buddhist zen koans, which take the format you find so familiar and reference as the hacker koan format.
> he printed a small book for each staff member on his philosophies, which declared that the company was devoted to their growth
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.
> [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.
So I don't think Kyocera is one of the top "black companies".
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).
To be fair, a lot can change in a decade, which seems to be what most results are centered around (a whistle blower from 1999 who wrote a book). But it isn't exactly ranked high by employees [0].
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.
A "black company" is one which abuses employees in such a manner as to shock the conscience of a Japanese salaryman.
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.
Tangentially, I keep seeing those figures, but can't figure out how it happens. I mean, how is there enough work for every single corporate drone to work 70 hours per week, plus an additional 20? What the heck is it that all those people do?
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.
It's not highest-and-best-productive work -- if you actually try that, like a stupid young American, you will quickly be taken aside and told to stop making your teammates look bad. You'll spend lots of time on meetings, meetings to schedule meetings, corporate rituals, meetings to discuss improvement of corporate rituals, reading the newspaper, and doing a solid 6 hours of work in a 14 hour day.
Fewer hours at work and no dress code are never on the table, I suppose... On another tangent, is there no japanese analogue to Scott Adams's Dilbert? People must be self-aware of the system, right?
I have no personal experience of working in Taiwan, but anecdotally, it has a Japan-esque work culture. Full-time employment at a traditionally managed Japanese company -- i.e. being a salaryman -- is, largely, not an experience I would recommend to someone I loved. There exist some startups or e.g. foreign-owned firms which would be far less odious options.
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.
It's worth noting that the term ブラック企業 is now a kind of buzzword and a general slander that carries little meaning. I can see why people like using it because the sound it makes in Japanese is mildly shocking and tarnishing.
Nope, it definitely carries a lot of meaning still. Many younger members of the japanese work force (those are the only people I can claim to have talked about this kind of thing to), have a pretty clear perception of what makes a "black company":
- 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
Well this is what I meant in an earlier post about most companies going from grey to black -- I think it's well understood that black companies have AT LEAST these issues (and I'm sure more that I don't know about), but this is definitely not the case at every japanese company I think...
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 :\
Shares are just tokens that can appreciate and depreciate in value (not unlike bitcoin). Price of shares usually has nothing to do with condition or more importantly future of the company. It depends solely on whim of people who have too much money and time and noting better to do with those.
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.
> Price of shares usually has nothing to do with condition or more importantly future of the company.
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 agree, to an extent. But I did get burned by this mindset...
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.
Yes, among many other factors that affect share price. In some forms of stock (e.g. MLP units) the daily share price change is even adjusted for subtracting the distribution.
> split staff into often tiny units that make their own plans
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.
Japanese people actually practice integrity. If they find a wallet on the street, they will make every effort to return it to its owner - with the cash still inside. If you let small groups of employees "do their own thing" it might actually result in increased productivity and improved moral rather than disintegration and widespread corruption. Japanese culturally enforce and reward conformity to this modality.
> 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.
But is that ethic and morality something that is impossible for other cultures to emulate or adopt? If so, why? I think "culture" is a dynamic thing, it's changeable. I think the evidence of this is abundant & widespread (See: most countries adopting western/hollywood culture since the 1920s).
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.
Generalizations are risky as always. I don't think it's clear that splitting employees into small, self-sufficient groups correlates to a dip in productivity regardless of whether any/all of the employees have "integrity" or not (if I understood you correctly, you're stating that splitting into small groups may not work if "integrity" is not present).
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."
I wish the article shed more light on actual practices within the company and measures they took to make employees happy. Without the details, the claim seems to be somewhat unsubstantiated.
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.
Yeah, that's Sannenzaka slope near Kiyomizudera. The reason your buddy took the picture and I can tell exactly where it came from is because that's just about the only place in Kyoto that looks like that. (Plus a few flatter bits around Gion/Pontocho that have been tarted up for tourists.)
Been travelling for half of my lifetime here.
Kyoto, and most places in Japan are hella clean.
One that shocked me the most was Manhattan and how dirty it was.
I once took the train from Tokyo to Kyoto. Shortly after arriving, I found myself deep in a bamboo forest within close walking distance from the train station.
What is a Buddhist "priest"? It certainly isn't a Buddhist monk. While Buddhism may be a big part of his life, using some made up title like that seems like just an attempt to make him seem somehow larger.
Japanese Buddhism has many "priests," who are noncelibate, typically married. They are trained in various rites and may officiate weddings and funerals and tend to temples. I don't know what this man does in his priestly capacities, but you don't seem to be very well informed about Japanese Buddhism. The translation "priest" is very common.
I am not well informed about Japanese Buddhism. My knowledge of Buddhism comes from having been a monk myself, ordained in the Theravada tradition.
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.
It's an imported title because it's a translation. I don't know the Japanese word. Yes, he is not a monk, and nobody has claimed that he is. I don't really understand your point in saying that his religious status is "made up" because he's not a celibate monastic.
My misunderstanding. It sounded to me like the story was trying to make him larger than life by throwing in the title of Buddhist priest. I wasn't aware of that title - I thought they were implying he is monk. That's what I was reacting to.
I have friends/acquaintances who are "Buddhist priests" in Zen traditions outside of Japan. They are semi-householder-ish, definitely not monks. However, they dedicate their lives to Buddhist service. They don't have children, but some are married or in relationships, mostly together with other "serious practitioners." They very definitely are not billionaires or CEOs -- and I am a little surprised at this story, which could definitely be clearer about what his priesthood actually involves.
Possibly interesting article by an American Zen priest:
"It’s a view that carries weight because of Inamori’s success."
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!
He also returned the company to profitability, and brought it back out of bankruptcy, without which it's very much possible that all of the staff rather than "just" 1/3 would have had to find new jobs.
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.
If one assumes that the 1/3 job losses were 'trimming the fat', I'd still argue that enforced liposuction constitutes bullying (if not outright assault).
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.
Seth Fischer, chief investment officer at [an investment fund], says this is an outmoded way of thinking and ignores the risk that KDDI’s business may founder.
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?
So his way to take care of the hen is to track its efficiency, give it a book telling it to be humble, and to fire it?
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.
Is Kyocera really doing well? I see less and less of Kyocera these days, and an amazon search shows knives and one budget Android phone. Are they big in Japan?
Never heard of a company where every employee works only when he or she wants, enjoys dividends, has a yacht in the Caribbean, and allows spouse unlimited shopping in Dubai.
He says exactly that if you read the article. His point is that you must take care of the employees because they produce the value. If you make short sighted decisions in favor of the shareholders, you could be killing the hen that lays the eggs, to use his metaphor. I don't see any reason why taking care of employees is in contrast to making a healthy profit. If employees are happy they will be more efficient and that will spill over into profits.
You rarely hear complaints of companies that have neglected their shareholders in favor of their employees, while the reverse is endemic. When the scales are overbalanced this badly, you need to give them a firm shove, not carefully add equal weights to both side.
The fact that you don't hear about it is largely because employees tend to be better at whining to the media when they don't get their way than shareholders.
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.
> The fact that you don't hear about it is largely because employees tend to be better at whining to the media when they don't get their way than shareholders.
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.
Not at all, you need money and a good sob story. Nobody cares about the sob story of the rich hedge fund which isn't making as much money as it could be, they want sob stories with blue-collar workers sitting at a kitchen table looking balefully into the camera.
> The fact that you don't hear about it is largely because employees tend to be better at whining to the media when they don't get their way than shareholders.
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.
> ...corporations having legally-enforceable fiduciary duties to shareholders.
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.
>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.