Have both boldness and meticulousness

This time, Mr. Inamori shared his opinion on the above topic. He mentioned the following:

Inamori’s words are quoted as “”.

“Boldness and meticulousness are contradictory, but to complete your responsibility, you should integrate these two extreme characters. Having both extremes does not mean” being moderate”. Just like weaving a sheet of textile, the warp is the boldness, the weft is meticulousness. By weaving both, you can prevent failure. It is difficult to combine boldness and meticulousness from the beginning, but by always keeping in mind various situations throughout your work, you will be able to integrate these two extremes. Sometimes we, leaders, should be extremely compassionate while we show ruthlessness and fire employees. In other words, we unintentionally show our emotion while maintaining rationality and sensibility. Namely, boldness and meticulousness, humanity and ruthlessness, rationality and emotionality, the extreme qualities of each should be harmonized in one person. When staff describe the top leader of a company, “ Our president is a mild and gentle guy”, I feel that the management of that company is not going well.

The reasons why Inamori stressed above are as follows.

1 Lack of human resources in start-up entities

2 Segregation of duties (sales, manufacturing, finance, etc.)

3 Holy behavior in ordinary lives

Let me explain one by one.

1 Lack of human resources in start-up entities

“For example, Honda Motor Co., Ltd. succeeded in managing a company with Soichiro Honda, who was able to make a wonderful engineer to develop a business from scratch. Honda had Takeo Fujisawa, who supported Honda as a trusted non-family. Similarly, Matsushita Electric has a combination of Konosuke Matsushita and Shintaro Takahashi, who also filled Matsushita in terms of business administration. In the case of Sony, it had been led by Masaru Ibuka, an engineer, and Akio Morita, who is good at sales. Those pairs of two top management are the key for a company to be well-developed. In other words, it is difficult for one person to have both extreme capabilities, so it is necessary to have a great staff member who can fill in the area where the founder has less expertise.

However, this is not the case for small businesses. It’s not easy to find such a good assistant in a small business due to a shortage of human resources. Therefore, in small and medium-sized enterprises, you, the top executive, must have the two extreme capabilities that conflict with each other. Even though he is not very talented as a small business owner, he is required to have such a high level of capability. This is not the ‘nice-to-have’ qualification as a management but the one that you must have.”

2 Segregation of duties (sales, manufacturing, finance, etc.)

This means that you need someone to direct each major division of the company.

I think that top leaders need the right arm who can support them and fulfill their responsibilities.

Mr. Inamori also talks about human resource development.

“While the company is small, the management can see everything for themselves, but as the company grows and grows, it becomes more difficult to see the whole thing by one top management. So, as the scale of Kyocera grew, I needed a partner who understood my thoughts, was as capable as I was, loved the company, and worked hard for the company, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises. It’s not easy to find such a person in our company. Every night when I was alone, I often remembered the story of the Chinese Monkey King. If I pull out a bunch of my hair and breathe, I could make a set of my copies. Then I could ask, ’You look after this manufacturing department’ and ‘You look after this sales department.’ ‘ God, give me the power to make such a miracle like the Monkey King!!” It sounds ridiculous but around that time, I was always thinking about that. “

→ In other words, I thought that the manager himself had to play various roles until he trained human resources in a company.

3 Holy behavior in ordinary lives

“I have a contradiction. Many times I was worried, ‘Which is the true me, the one who was so bold or the one who is scared, which one is true ?’ Although I was very kind to my staff on a daily basis, at one point I was the leader who fired staff ruthlessly. I asked myself how come you could be harsh to that staff, at the same time, I responded to myself: no, this would kill our company if we retain that guy. I had been wondering which one was the real me. I could not figure out the answer myself. I was gradually losing confidence in myself. Speaking of such worries to employees, I lost the credibility of the management, so I was worried alone in agony. At that time, I found the words of American writer FS Fitzgerald. ‘First-class intelligence is integrating two extreme characters at the same time and can work them systematically in a person.’ Be bold when you should be bold, and be meticulous when you should be meticulous. Knowing this, I was relieved, ‘Oh, even if you have the opposite nature, it’s not a contradiction.’ “

Mr. Inamori says that it is difficult to combine these contradictory characters.

“I have been doing my best to deliver such intelligence. What I told you is very important as a top management. I would like you to understand it and conduct it as the business practice.”

→ There is a word ” Holy behavior in ordinary lives”. I think it means having these two extremes. I know this is not easy but through the experience, as a top leader, I think I should understand how important it is to integrate those two characteristics in one person.