Love your work

Inamori encouraged his workshop members, most of whom are business leaders of small to middle size companies in Japan, that we should love our work to grow our business. He explained as follows.

“Guys, listen; it takes a lot of energy to get our job done. You always must drive yourself to keep generating such energy by pushing harder or encouraging yourselves. So, the best way to spontaneously encourage yourself is to love your work.

No matter what kind of work you do, if you devote yourself to it, you will have a great sense of accomplishment and self-confidence, then you will be further motivated to take on to the next goal. By taking this approach, I have loved my work even more. I could take any effort  and you guys also will be able to achieve great results. When you find yourself with enthusiasm towards your work, you would be able to accomplish a truly wonderful goal.

I realized this through my experience. Since the Kyocera foundation, I have always found that my passion towards my work has allowed me to achieve such great goals. So, with no doubt, I think loving my work is really important in my life and work. ”

Mr. Inamori also shared his episode: he decided to quit the first company he entered since it was a poor and non-performing company. But actually, he could not leave as he failed to prepare documents to change his jobs. Inamori continued.

“Therefore, I changed my mind and thought, -Keeping complaints looks like spitting in the heavens; the negative results will eventually come to me. Anyway, I shall devote myself to my work. – Since then, I’ve been devoted to research on fine ceramics. Interestingly, I started getting good research results. Now I feel that I loved the company, I loved my work, so such attitudes have made me as of today.

Ever since I made Kyocera, I’ve been working hard from early in the morning to late in the evening. Once before, our neighbor asked my wife “What time does your husband come home?” I also had letters from my parents who got worried about me. They wrote “Work less otherwise, you can’t stay healthy. I knew how they found my lifestyle, but as I loved my work very much, I had never nor got tired. In addition, this also encourages me to make a lot of improvements. The proverb said that -Loving your work is the shortest cut to become a master. Loving work is so effective. – I think that loving your work is the most important thing in order to accomplish your goal. ”

Even if you like your job, it can be difficult to actually conduct this in your daily work practice. Moreover, we often have stress in our work, and some may think they work simply for money or their families. I sometimes find myself stressed with my work. Sometimes I don’t want to do my work due to its difficulties or troubles. Under such a situation, I have encouraged myself to love my work. Below are tips of how I managed to like my work even under difficult circumstances.

I will explain one by one.

1 Pay attention to what I have, – to value what I possess-

Comparing others always discourages people from working with passion.
People may think the following: “His performance looks poor but is getting a higher salary than I do. It’s not fair.” Looking around and envying others may cause the feeling that you are missing something. When people start thinking they are missing, they may also feel they are not happy. With such feelings, people can’t love their work. If you try to focus on what you have, you don’t have to look for what is missing. Rather, you can be more conscious of using what you already have than what you lack. I have been encouraged to think as follows.

I have experience.
I have networks.
I can write and release messages.
I have energy.
I have my family.
I have staff who can help me.
Every time I find the above, I find myself to be fulfilled and tears come to me.
I think it is very important to be aware of what we have.

2 Consider the mission and impact of your work

Since the founding of Kyocera Mr. Inamori has been enthusiastically talking to Kyocera staff about the mission of the work and significance of each work.

Let me tell you an example of my company.

One of the assignments that I am trying to contract is the public land price survey. We, real estate appraisers, have conducted that survey and delivered land prices once a year. We  investigate the land price and release our opinions on values. What is the significance of this work? Widening roads, building squares and new stations, or other infrastructures are public works. Land condemnation is needed to carry out public works. In order to acquire lands, we need correct, accurate and impartial benchmarks of land price. The system of public land prices survey has been used for building up such infrastructures and actually helped to promote city urbanization. Then, with this land price announcement, Japan’s wonderful infrastructure such as roads and railroads have been created. Infrastructure system in Japan has been unique and the most advanced in the world. We are involved in this process and this process will be able to export to the world. I would like to talk about it with our staff with passion. By doing this, I hope that the staff will like the work.

3 Seek the ingenuity (improvement)

Personally, I don’t like routine work because it is boring. Some people find repeating the same thing day after day to be a torture. But I think we can make it less painful. The key is daily improvement. Mr. Inamori often talks about cleaning as an example.

“Even for cleaning, you should not repeat the same practice every day. Each day, you should try something new. For instance,

How about sweeping the floor from this side today?

Why don’t we sweep the floor from the other side tomorrow?

Shall we use this equipment the day after tomorrow?

Next, let’s change the detergent.

By repeating and accumulating small ingenuity, every day, we can find progress and improve the level of ingenuity.

Progress and improvement will allow us to be fond of our work.

Mr. Inamori said “When I decided to stay at that company, I started thinking about ingenuity. So, it encouraged me to make work a little better, more efficient. Little by little, I had become an efficiency driven R&D engineer. “

To love your job, we should be aware of what we have, think about the significance of our works, and we should accumulate our ingenuity.

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

News Letter subscription is here