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Starting and building

Kazuo Inamori

The multiplier

Kazuo Inamori (1932–2022 · Kyoto) — The multiplier.

Starting and buildingThe industrial ageThe multiplier

What actually happened?

In 2010 Japan Airlines went bankrupt and the government asked a man of seventy-eight to run it. He took the job and no salary. The first thing he did was not to cut staff. He called the senior managers together and asked them what they were working for. Nobody answered. He told them: for your families, for the passengers on your aircraft, for the society you belong to. A year later the airline posted the largest profit in its history. The route-by-route accounting mattered too, but the silence in that room is where it started.

The formula for a life

The result of life and work equals way of thinking times enthusiasm times ability. Ability and enthusiasm run from zero to a hundred. The way of thinking runs from minus a hundred to plus a hundred, and it is the only factor carrying a sign. Direction beats speed because multiplication carries the sign.

A top performer who grabs credit and pushes blame down computes to a large negative. His ability is amplifying his direction.

Six ways of improving

Work harder than anyone, stay humble, reflect daily, live in gratitude, do good and act for others, and do not brood on troubles. Six items, all pointing at one thing: taking the self out of the centre.

Run the six as a checklist before sleep. Was I lazy today? Proud? Did I reflect, thank anyone, help anyone, or worry pointlessly?

Amoeba management

The company is divided into the smallest units that can keep their own books, each with its own revenue, cost and profit, updated daily and visible to everyone in it. What it produces is not better reporting but ownership: at that size a person can see his own hand in the number.

A team that cannot see its own revenue and cost line has no way to feel responsible for either, whatever the poster on the wall says.

Acting for others is the better strategy

Is my motive pure, is there any self-interest in it: the question he put to himself nightly for six months before founding a telecoms company. Over a single round self-interest wins. Over a repeated game, the trust earned by letting the other side win first outruns it.

The founder who takes no pay and gives shares away earns real trust. If the numbers are still wrong, that trust only makes everyone pull harder into the iceberg.

How do I use it today?

Before sleep, run the six briefly: did I work hard, stay humble, reflect, give thanks, do something for somebody, and refuse to brood? It takes a minute, and its value is not the score. It is that the questions are all about direction, and direction is the only factor in the formula that can go negative.

Deep read

The way of thinking is a multiplierAnd it can be negativeAbility and enthusiasm can only be positive; direction cannotPure motive, no self-interestSix months of asking before he startedEvery night he asked whether he wanted the applause

Read alongside

Chu ShijianBoth are about running one thing properly to the end. Inamori starts from the motive and the way of thinking; Chu Shijian starts from the written standard and pay tied to quality. Charlie MungerTwo versions of character as a business input. Munger treats reliability as a way of not being stupid; Inamori puts it in the formula as the one factor that can turn the answer negative. Konosuke MatsushitaInamori heard the dam lecture in person and never got over it; the difference is that Matsushita keeps his margin in the structure, Inamori keeps it in people and accounting. Ren ZhengfeiTwo eastern versions of the company as a practice: Inamori binds people with an ethic of doing right by them, Ren drives them with self-criticism and a sense of crisis — one uses good, one uses fear. Zhang YimingTwo kinds of extreme seriousness: Inamori is driven by an ethic he treats as almost religious, Zhang Yiming by a refusal to let anything stay vague.

Further

Chu Shijian Taiichi Ohno Duan Yongping Warren Buffett Miyamoto Musashi Zeng Guofan Konosuke Matsushita Ren Zhengfei Nietzsche Viktor Frankl Fukuzawa Yukichi

Lines to keep

Respect the divine and love people.

Work is the best training.