Why I hate desperate seniors? How to tender good resource in a company

Recently, I had a big discussion with young entrepreneurs. They all said that seniors in Japan would waste a lot of precious resources in Japan and getting rid of them would be a drastic but the most efficient remedy for Japan’s recovery.

 

The conversation allowed me to think whats’s wrong with them and how we can change those troublesome resources to a good and precious one.

 

The followings are the five most distinctive reasons why younger generation hate the seniors: supervisors, managers, or top management in a society.

 

 

Let me explain one by one.

 

1 Old fashioned

Needless to say, they have some success patterns and unintentionally follow those patterns even though that becomes too old fashioned. For instance, under Showa era, long working hours, drinking with supervisors at bars, and demonstrating their Loyalty were requirements for them to get promoted. Now those younger loyal staffs are in the senior positions and naturally require their staffs the same sacrifices as they did. This is a negative and unproductive cycle indeed.

 

The remedy would be “Shock therapy “. This would not bring any positive outcomes unless the industry itself requires to maintain traditional or treasure inherited values. The current COVID-19 looks a good example. Old fashioned seniors are forced to use technologies, stay at home, communicate remotely, and not to physically control their staffs. So when some drastic event happens, we may consider it as an opportunity to change seniors mindset and attitudes to more up to dated.

 

2 Taking high salary, no-correspondence to their performance

“The more I work, the more I lose, I am just staring at my palm….”

It was a poem made by Takuboku Ishikawa, a proletarian worker in later 19^th century.

He was a migrated worker from Tohoku region to Tokyo, even though work very hard he felt, due to the living costs, he could not afford to live in Tokyo, what’s wrong with that…

That’s the meaning.

When I was working for JP consultancy company,

among 30 staffs, 5-8 were seniors, no sales guys,

and around ten youngers top sales guys, I was a part of them,

then other 10-15 were ordinary sales guys and administrative staffs.

I was always wondering how come I have to feed them?

If they get higher salary than I do, please perform better and bring actually the assignments to us.

I was exhausted and always thinking of that.

Remedy for this: create a link between the reward and responsibilities. This mindset somehow looks biased. We may mislead that only smart, clever, and capable people can live in the world. Everyone in a world has some function and responsibility. There should be reason to be. For instance, a new-born baby himself/herself brings a lot of value to others, even though they have not created any numerical outputs. Thus, when we think about the function of each creature in the world, we will be able to get out of such traps: work hard as you get paid.

 

3 Super-conservatives

Another annoying action that seniors have taken is negative, discouraging comments when it comes to something “new”. From my experiences, when it comes to new ideas/ approaches, market practices, unless they were forced from the central government, the seniors’ response had always been negative. This hampered change, innovation, and growth of a company.

 

Remedy for that is taking them as “whistle blower”. Mr. Inamori, Kyocera chairman said, business should be developed optimistically, analyzed pessimistically, and conducted optimistically again. Each phase, he used different character of staffs. Thus, senior guys’ function should be limited to analyzing phase only and we have to respect their opinion to identify potential and invisible risks.

 

 

4 Caught by prejudice/ discrimination

This is another headache. Women can’t be trusted, should not be promoted as they can’t commit themselves to works. Staffs with some feature to be looked at carefully in terms of their actions…. All those attitudes had been more seen when I worked for Japanese company than I did for non-Japanese companies. This is not limited to seniors and every generation may have this kind of prejudice.

 

Remedy: accept their uncomfortableness, not justify their position. This is important and smart action to those kinds of discrimination. We may be open to their opinion, we don’t have to agree with their position BUT, we can say “Oh, you feel very uncomfortable with that guy…”. Only this kind of acceptance is enough to avoid conflict and create the harmony. This is the tip that I learned from Aikido.

 

5 Nostalgia, spreading the virus of “Good old days syndrome”

Those senior guys love to tell “Good old days” and try to bring us back such a working environment even though youngers have never liked that. They unintentionally spread such atmosphere and discourage innovation driven by younger generations.

 

Remedy: Some times, clear separation or shock therapy may work. In a workplace there can be a clear separation between nostaligian or guardian vises anarchists. Each one heads to the opposite direction and no interaction but at least can stay healthy in their mental wise.

 

So summing up, the reason why seniors are not welcome in current work place and its remedies are as follows.

 

 

Now I realized that why I hate those seniors.

 

After analyzing my mental, I found out that I have a fear to be a person whom nobody finds valuable. Therefore, I work hard and demonstrate how valuable I am. As I tender seniors and have compassion toward them, I would be able to treat my own traumas.

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

News Letter subscription is here