This time, Inamori* spoke about the above motto in Kyocera philosophy.
What Inamori said is quoted with “”.
“When you run a company, if you make decisions based on fundamental principles — asking what is right —management actually becomes simple. … In that sense, a business leader must cultivate tannryoku — inner fortitude.
When we speak of fortitude, of course knowledge is necessary for corporate management. However, whether you have knowledge or not is not such a big matter. What is truly necessary is kenshiki —discernment. In other words, elevating what you think into discernment.
Anyone can simply possess knowledge. But when you elevate that knowledge to the level of conviction —that is discernment.
Yet even if knowledge has risen to conviction, that alone is still not enough. A manager, a leader, needs tanshiki.
Tanshiki is the combination of fortitude and discernment.”
(Quoted from the Inamori Digital Library)
I have read this passage many times in the past.
But I now realize that I hardly understood it at all.
If we cannot put it into practice, then no matter how much we study, no matter how eloquently we speak about it, it has no meaning.
Recently, in the management of our company, I made a very serious mistake.
It was truly shocking.
Each day, I am rebuilding my mental state and regaining composure step by step.
However, because of this major failure, I believe I have, for the first time, understood what tanshiki truly means.
The concrete steps to cultivate this tanshiki, the combination of fortitude and discernment, are as follows:
1 Clarify the purpose and meaning of your life.
2 Thoroughly identify your anxieties and fears.
3 Quantify them, define clear standards, rules, triggers, and thresholds, and execute with discipline.
I will now explain each point in greater depth.
１ Clarify the purpose and meaning of your life.
Inamori’s Words
“When you try to reach a conclusion based on fundamental principles — asking what is right — you are often told, because of various entanglements, ‘No, President, it’s not that simple.’For example, when you are involved in matters such as land acquisition, people may say, ‘There are community issues to consider.’And so you end up incorporating all those conditions. In doing so, you stop asking what is truly right or what the fundamental principle actually is.”
(Quoted from the Inamori Digital Library)
→ My Comment
Since founding my company, my goal up to this point had been to feel secure myself and to satisfy my own desire for self-importance.
I now realize how foolish that was.
I had not seriously reflected on what I should dedicate my life to.
I would now like to set my ultimate life goal as this:
To contribute to world peace through real estate.
As an aside, I sometimes sense that even President Donald Trump may, in his own way, hold a similar aspiration.
２ Thoroughly identify your anxieties and fears.
Inamori’s Words
“Such situations arise because the leader fails to act with courage.
They occur precisely because courage is lacking.
In order to make truly excellent decisions — decisions that uphold fundamental principles — courage is required.
Without courage, one cannot make the right judgment.
Courage is indispensable.”
(Quoted from the Inamori Digital Library)
→ My Comment
This is where I truly failed.
I did not make my anxieties concrete.
I did not clarify what exactly I was afraid of, what specifically would hurt me, and quantify those risks in numbers.
I failed to analyze how even slight changes in economic conditions would affect me.
Despite this, I believed I was managing my business properly because I was looking at the numbers.
But in a world where circumstances constantly shift, once the economic environment changes drastically, it is already too late.
In truth, I believe all of this stemmed from a single instinct:
the desire not to lose,
the desire to compare myself with others and remain in a place that felt safe and secure.
My decisions were driven not by principles, but by self-protection.
３ Quantify them, define clear standards, rules, triggers, and thresholds, and execute with discipline.
Inamori’s Words
“In other words, knowledge that has been elevated to conviction, combined with fortitude, is what we call tanshiki — and it belongs to the person who can actually put it into practice.
If you let a knowledgeable person speak, they can talk endlessly and eloquently. However, their knowledge has not risen to the level where it can be executed.
When knowledge is elevated to conviction, it rises further to become discernment. Yet even then, it may still not be translated into action.
Only when discernment is put into action does it become tanshiki.
And that fortitude is, in fact, courage.
A lack of courage stems from valuing oneself too much.
When one reaches the point of not caring whether one is ridiculed or despised, courage naturally emerges. ”
(Quoted from the Inamori Digital Library)
→ My Comment
The indispensable condition for taking action toward a goal is precisely this:
to establish clear standards and rules.
Until I experienced this major failure, I did not truly understand its importance.
It is because standards and rules exist that we are able to act.
Even if we believe we understand, even if we believe we are learning, we cannot act if we lack clear criteria for judgment. Once we create clear standards, we are compelled to act. And when we act, we inevitably face the risk of failure.
That is why I kept my criteria ambiguous and avoided action — falling into a negative spiral.
I now clearly understand that such a spiral occurs when our standards are not tied to concrete numbers or to higher-order goals.
It was a painful experience. Yet it was an invaluable one — essential for making my life better.
In summary, I have realized that what a leader truly needs is this:
to hold a lofty vision in one’s heart,
to quantify even the smallest anxieties and fears,
to transform them into standards and rules,
and to connect them directly to action.
* 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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