Managers in their 40s: President of Asahi Glass

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In the same year, Asahi Glass built a new factory in Taiwan to produce the same glass for liquid crystal displays. They copied the production line that had been painstakingly created in Yonezawa and installed it there. They also sent a support team from Yonezawa, from the people who operated the line to the managers. However, one of the employees who was sent there said, "Are we sending salt to the enemy?" Taiwan has lower labor costs than Japan, is cost-competitive, and will become a strong rival to Yonezawa. Such a feeling of unease was spreading throughout the factory. So they repeated the same thing to everyone.

"No, our enemy is not the Taiwanese factories. It is the major remove background image American glass manufacturers and our Japanese competitors. If Taiwan were to falter, our company and Yonezawa would falter too. That's why we must do whatever it takes to make Taiwan stronger. And Yonezawa must always stay one or even two steps ahead of Taiwan."

If I had time, I would walk around the plant and write comments on the reports on improvement activities posted on the bulletin board. If there was someone nearby, I would ask them various questions. I once heard this from a boss at the facility technology research institute in the Keihin area, where I lived until my early 40s. When you explain a policy to a subordinate, normally only 70% of it gets through to the other person. When it gets through to the second person, it gets another 70%, so it's reduced to just under half. It keeps decreasing from there, so you have to check at the end to see if it really gets through.

The Q&A sessions around the bulletin board were a test of this teaching. If he did not receive the answer he should have received, he would call in his superiors and scold them, saying, "You haven't properly communicated the instructions you gave to the field." He also had his subordinates report to the department head when, what, and how they had been discussed, and what they had decided to do, and then have them report it to him. If anyone said, "I can't do it because I'm busy with work," or "That's nothing to do with me," he would say, "We don't need you here. I want you to leave."

I wanted to unite everyone's thoughts. It was essential to move forward with a unified vector. That's what I thought. So I came up with another idea. I approached the head office and asked them to make the 10 or so members of the technology development team who had been supporting us on business trips my direct subordinates.

As is the case in other companies, the development team and the manufacturing team did not get along well. Even when the development team had a good idea and wanted to test on-site, the manufacturing team would not cooperate, saying, "We can't stop the line for testing." There were many cases where the leaders of both sides did not try to understand the other's situation. So, we put the two under the same roof and even swapped the leaders of both sides.