For whom the president works? Part 2

Mr. Inamori raised the question “For whom does the president work?”.

However, Mr. Inamori said that presidents should work to fulfill their lives. So what can fulfill those presidents’ lives? Money, wealth, fame, or excitement, or something to fulfill their desires? Inamori said, nothing can ultimately fulfill presidents, unless they think about their own souls and spirits. Inamori continues, the tips to fulfill presidents’ lives are as follows:

This time we are going to explain from 3-5

3 Working to fulfill materially and mentally all of our staffs

Inamori said “ I have been working hard and keeping up my endeavors so far. Some say that it looks more than enough. Now it’s time for you to take a rest and go into your retired life. Some blame me for being a very greedy person because I have never got satisfied. Others complained about how ambitious I am as I have been driving our Kyocera people to achieve much higher goals. All of them are not correct, actually. All I have done so far is devoting myself to fulfill our duties. I have never thought of stopping my work. I should admit that my fear has been driving me to commit myself to management. I have always been afraid of not protecting our staff. With the fear for the future, I have grown our business, hired more people, amplified my anxiety, worked hard to develop new businesses/ products, then needed more people, strived much harder…. I have always been in such a growth spiral. However, I believe this is the management itself. Once I am satisfied as we are, we would never ever maintain our status quo. Simply because what we are today is the reflection of accumulated efforts we have made so far. Our future must be the reflection of our status quo, what we have been doing now. Therefore, we are not allowed to stop our growth, as the universe seamlessly has been growing. ”

4 Delivering selfless minds

Inamori demonstrated before to the top management team the following: to be the top management, all you have to have.

1 The first is for the president to make a strict distinction between public and private.

Do not confuse public and private.

There should be no injustice in personnel affairs: Assessment of human resource .

2 Second, president has infinite responsibility for the company

3 Third, the president injects all his personality and his will into the company

Recently, I have been having a sort of “enlightenment”. I have been open to the impartialness, selfless mind, or purified mind. I have gotten far from my insistence, my ego. Once I have got such a feeling, my affection has been transmitted to the people close to me, to those who have got good communication channels with me.

In Aikido, we have been working to realize this kind of impartial and no-self mind. We have been training to be enlightened to bring such peace and unified feelings.

5 Only altruism helps president

Inamori continued.

DDI, which was launched by Kyocera group, was the most disadvantageous entity compared to other new entities who tapped the tele-communication industry. Kyocera simply lacked experience, skills and resources. In spite of such adversity, we were able to deliver the top performance among those players. People often ask me why DDI could achieve such an impressive goal. I have always responded : only the unselfish motivation to help others, that was only one reason for us to succeed.

At the IPO, I gave employees the opportunity to own shares of DDI. However, even though I was the founder of DDI, I had no share of it. Of course I could, but in reality I never owned even one share. If I had had, I wouldn’t have been able to justify my impartial mind, how pure our motivation was. I believe the consequence of DDI would have been different.

I believe that the success of KDDI was its noble mission: for the sake of the world and for the benefit of others.

So what has driven the revitalization of JAL was the same selfless mind. It is my firm outlook on life that doing what is useful for the world and for others is the best act as human beings.

Of course, such altruism always accompanies self-sacrifice.

Many people feel sorry for my family as I have had little time to spend with them. But I have never thought I’m sacrificing my family. I feel that my mission is not a small, individual affection to protect my family or just myself, but an infinite love to fulfill all the employees and their families. In that sense, I now feel that my life has been fruitful, rewarding and the most precious one, indeed.

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

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