When I talk with Japanese restaurant managers, most of the topics of conversation are about "people. We can't hire. They quit too soon.
The restaurant companies I have founded in the past have created an environment where employees can have fun and enjoy their work with dreams. Of course, it was not created by me alone, but by the founding members and executives.
The restaurant industry in particular is not popular among both new graduates and mid-career workers. The list goes on and on.
Even in such an industry, people kept coming and were able to be hired. Some might say that times have changed. It's not like it used to be.
Is that really true?
The corporate entity called a company has various personalities.
Just as the shape of any substance changes when viewed from above, from the side, or from below. The same is true of a corporation.
I think it is important from what angle you look at your company and how you present it.
In the case of the food and beverage business, is it sufficient to simply say that the company's business is the food and beverage business? What is it that the company wants to convey and accomplish through food and beverage? I think this is important.
This is also true of the company's philosophy, but I think it is important to work together with employees to create the true meaning of the company's existence.
Even if a company pays a high salary and spends a lot of money to hire new employees, if the company is not attractive, the employees will quit soon after joining the company.
For example, the cab industry is not a popular occupation.
What kind of company is your cab company? We have 200 vehicles in Tokyo, we are the second largest in our industry, we pay more than our competitors, and we offer seven days off per month.
None of these are connected to the individuals who work for the company. It is necessary to connect each individual to the company, not to the company as a whole and to the individual as a whole.
What is the purpose of a cab company?
Have to do ? Want to do ?
Creativity cannot be brought out from a job that has to be done. Ingenuity and creativity are born because it is a job you want to do.
Which is your "to do"?
It has always been the case when I look back on my work.
When you are doing the work you love, you can give 120%. It is also true that not all the work you are in charge of in your company is work you love.
What do you do then?
A state in which you are connected to your management philosophy and what you want to do. This is important.
Everything in this world depends on communication between people. This world is a society led by people, for better or worse. With time, we will come to understand how important communication is.
The methods and tools of such communication have changed.
We talk in person, on the phone, by letter, by e-mail, and on social networking services. Even though the tools have changed, the important things remain the same. It is precisely because we live in this day and age that letters are sometimes very moving.
On the other hand, because of the simplicity of SNS, it is fair to say that many sensitivities have been lost through SNS communication.
On the train, 80% of people, young and old, are playing with their smartphones. What smartphones have changed in people's lives is significant.
In that sense, Steve Jobs was right. It would be very difficult to suddenly lose something that has come so far into people's lives and on which people depend.
But I think what we have lost by doing so is also very significant.
When you read imagination books, even if it is the same sentence, each individual has a different image in his or her brain. No two are the same.
The information coming from a cell phone is the same as that on TV, so it is uniform. Stimulate the brain with the same thing, and everyone will have the same image.
I can't help but feel that the number of imaginative people is steadily decreasing.
People spend a great deal of time on their smartphones. What did people do when they didn't have smartphones? Reading books. Talking to people directly. Time to think about various things. On the other hand, I suppose there is time made possible by the convenience.
On the other hand, there is the time made possible by convenience. Only correct information is input, and only correct decisions are made from that information. People no longer need to make decisions and explain the reasons for them to themselves and others. This is because they can only judge the right things as the right things. However, these judgments are based on past results and data, and are not future-oriented.
It is said that people make a variety of choices 9,000 times a day. Coke or Pepsi, or orange juice? Whether it is right or wrong, like or dislike is also a criterion of judgment. What if, according to the past, we delegate to a machine the 9,000 choices that humans make in a day? Would you ask your phone every time? "Which is better? Which is better?"
Memory, personally, is definitely going away. Memory is only declining when everything is stored in a machine. Personal phone numbers, passwords, people's names, things I used to remember, I can't remember anymore.
As IT and AI increase the number of things that machines are good at, I wonder what the value of human beings is. It would be sad if AI is the destination of the decline of all human abilities.
Machines are better at making decisions in the stock market and business management without human emotion.
But if we imagine a society where IT and AI are the mainstay, what kind of society would it be?
A society where everything is decided by IT and AI. What to do about wars? How to launch rockets? Analyzing the past data...
What are human beings? Where are we headed?
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