Kindness and strictness to achieve great good – Philosophy “Both extremes: the merit of great good and the sin of spoiling”

This time, Inamori* spoke about the above motto in Kyocera philosophy.

What Inamori said is quoted with “”.

“ Parents naturally love their children very much. However, just being loved does not mean they should be spoiled. The author’s parents, who raised him with no limbs, watched over him with love, no matter how much he suffered because he had no arms or legs, and made him do everything himself so that he would eventually be able to support himself. To those around them, this may have seemed cruel, like the actions of a demon. However, due to what parents have done to him, the child grew up to be a wonderful person.

In other words, this is a great good. There is a saying that “great good resembles cruelty.” Why treat a child without arms or legs so coldly? Parents’ actions may have been seen cold-hearted at first glance, however later on, it appeared that what parents did to him actually developed handicapped son’s wonderful personality. “

Recently, I have also learned how difficult it is to perform this great good. Based on my own experiences, I have thought about the process (stages) of performing a great good as follows.

Let me explain them one by one.

1. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes and identify his/her shortcomings

“ I recently saw an advertisement of the ODA (Official Development Assistance), which supports developing countries, that said, ‘We don’t give fish to people in poor countries. We do teach them how to fish, though.’ If you just give them fish, once they’ve eaten it there’s nothing left. It just makes them get used to taking things. Now, instead of giving them food, we need to think about teaching them how to feed themselves. We teach them how to do this.

Even if they are hungry and in trouble, they can just go into the river or the sea and catch fish using the method which the ODA taught them. The idea is that if they learn how to survive, they should be able to survive on their own. This is the “real good deed.” Giving fish and money is only a superficial good deed, and in the end it will make people dependent. In that sense, recently, charity work has also started considering what it really needs to help others. “

→ One of our staff members had a significant shortcoming in her capability. She did not fully understand the instructions that I gave, and instead of asking me to confirm, she made her own decisions and performed tasks that were completely different from those she was supposed to do. Those lack of communication and handling skills were her shortcomings.

I knew this staff member’s shortcoming to some extent from the beginning. Perhaps because of this character, she was only allowed to do simple data entry and checking tasks at her previous workplace. This is a significant shortcoming that will greatly affect her future professional growth and her interactions with others. I, as a president, really regret that I should have noticed this far earlier than two years.

2. Fix shortcomings thoroughly without compromising

” It may be a minor shortcoming, but if we leave it as it is, the whole organization will collapse, I must be ruthless and willing to condemn it. “

→ For the first year or so, I thought that the problem with her performance was fundamentally come from her own subliminal mindsets (so-called mental blocks), so the company paid for the expenses to help her gradually resolve the mental blocks. However, she avoided facing the core of the problem, which means her own mentality.

Furthermore, since I did not try to fix her mistakes head-on and thoroughly, which would have consumed a lot of time and energy on my end, I started changing my instructions to her. I broke the instruction down as much as possible so that she could understand and gave her instructions using pictures and visual images. This also took a fair amount of effort on my end. I do regret that I should not have made such an adjustment on my end as this resulted in leaving issues as they were.

Until now, she had not corrected her own shortcomings and had eventually controlled the people around her to adapt her way of doing things. However, my consideration never worked to correct her shortcomings at the end of the day.

3. Make a quick decision calmly

“ I’m sure you, business leaders, all have a compassionate side and a cruel side. Even though you care about your employees, you may have fired a lazy and irresponsible employee. You may think, ‘I always say that I care about my employees, but I suddenly fire them. What an inconsistent leader I am.’  “

→ I was telling to my staff every day, without hesitation, “This is your shortcoming. You are hiding your mistakes by acting like this. This is your flaw. Unless you fix this, you will not actually be fulfilled in your life.”

From her point of view, she may have thought that the president ,who had spoiled her so much up until then, had some bad thoughts and had changed. Still, I thought that I had to calmly cut off the bad relationship for the sake of the company and to fulfill my mission.

I hope that she will change because of this incident, but she decided to run away from our company within a week of being confronted with the facts: correcting her shortcomings. So, I think she will never change. However, this experience taught me an important point about conducting the greatest good.

* Mr. Kazuo Inamori, the founder of Kyocera, KDDI (one of the top tele communication companies in Japan) and the top of revitalization project of JAL. As a well-known Japanese entrepreneur, he has been sharing his experiences and management know-how with managements of small to middle companies in Japan.

Further queries or doubts, please email to ytomizuka@abrilsjp.com

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