Konosuke Matsushita
When it rains, open your umbrella
Management by the obvious
Matsushita's management writings and question sessions
Asked for the secret of management, he answered in six words. Why the almost dismissive answer is the hardest one to follow.
What actually happened?
Somebody asked Matsushita the secret of management. His answer: when it rains, open your umbrella. There is no trick to it. Do the obvious things in the obvious way, without exception: pay your suppliers, collect what you are owed, close the books daily, fix the product until it is good. Listeners were often disappointed, and he insisted that was all of it. In the slump of 1929, warehouse full and everyone urging layoffs, his move was just as plain: not one employee dismissed, production halved, the whole workforce out selling stock. Months later the inventory was gone.
Hunting for a secret is avoidance of the basics
People who ask for the secret usually want a way round the things everybody knows and nobody does daily: collection, inventory, quality, keeping your word. Six words close that road off. What looks like mastery is the obvious, executed without exceptions.
A stalled company shops for methodologies while its delivery slippage and collection cycle have not improved in three years. The rain never stopped and the umbrella never opened.
The hard part is opening it while standing in the rain
The counter-examples happen daily: knowing you should chase the invoice and not chasing it because the client matters, keeping a line alive for pride, producing while the inventory towers. Between the simplicity of the principle and the difficulty of the act sit luck, face and habit. Six words treat those three.
Receivables ninety days past due with no collection process started, because the relationship is important. That is standing in the rain arguing the umbrella is ugly.
The umbrella of 1929 covered what would not move
Handling a crisis is entirely about choosing what varies and what does not. He varied output and job content, and did not vary employment itself. Putting people in the fixed column is what let a whole workforce switch to selling without hedging. Management by the obvious includes judging what is obviously untouchable.
Write the list of what will not move in a downturn, the core team, the quality floor, the promises made. Everything else is negotiable, and the clearer the list, the faster you turn.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: you are shopping around for the clever move that breaks the deadlock.
Ask first: are the obvious things, collection, delivery, quality, keeping our word, being done here without exceptions?
Where it goes wrong: using there is no secret to dismiss all method and all innovation; or reading open your umbrella as drifting with the weather until you cannot tell which way you are facing.
Lines to keep
When it rains, open your umbrella.
Not one employee dismissed. Production halved. Everyone out selling the stock.
Same situation, other people are asking
It isn't that I lack resolve. I have two, and they fight.I understand every word of it and I still don't move.I've practiced for months and can't tell which part I'm doing wrong.Knowing it hasn't once been enough.I know better and still don't do it · all 10 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.