My opinion this week(99):
To get information delivery capability
The year 1999 has just started. Three nine looks very fortunate even if
it is not three seven. January 4th is the day when all Government offices
and business firms start their work. It is a common practice in Japan that
leaders and/or presidents of organizations express their views and opinion
on their business practices and on the basic philosophy to follow to conduct
business throughout 1999 and in the future. They are not just ordinal salute
at the new year meeting but include a lot of informative ideas on business
and economy in the new year. I usually pay the utmost attention on them
every year.
Many business firms are still in a trouble conducting reform of their
business after the so called bubble economy. They have to continue such
reconstructive efforts. It is natural for any businesses to keep
conducting such reformatory actions, but the problem is that not much
fruits have not been acquired yet from those efforts.
Yes, more of the change, not to be expressed by such terms as reform,
improvement, and reconstruction, but such as some fundamental stance or
change of consciousness, seems to be necessary. What is necessary to make
basic change is a mind of each human being. The mind for organization they
belong. The mind for each men's jobs. The mind for their life style they
stick with. In Japan life-time employment system is about to end. But
a number of people still rely on the organization they belong. That is
a common stance of people. That's no good.
Unemployment rate has finally reached to 4.3% in Japan which has exceeded
that of the U.S. It will go up higher and will possibly reach to 2 digits
level in next few years. Any Japanese business executives who once gurantee
to employ people for life-time cannot say such optimistic words any more.
The economy of mass-production and mass-consumption is over. The structure
of the state economy will change drastically. In along with such structural
change, many of those conventional works and technologies will become
obsolete soon or later.
All business firms are in a position to conduct structural change. Business
must be run by a new idea and a new method. The works which each business
firms ask their employees to do will be entirely different from those in the
past. Under such circumstances, what business firms would say to their
employees? Is it necessary for them to say "we will help you to get new
skills and technologies and find new jobs for you" ? I don't think so.
The Ministry of Labor is offering a lot of training programs for those
employees who lost jobs today. That's a very conventional approach, I may
say. People should train by themselves. No firms and no government offices
should not pay too much care for them.
What is the most important skills and capability as a business people
in this information and global society? Having a good knowledge about PC
and in Internet is, of course, one important capacity. Every people try to
learn how to use PCs and Internet. They are important skills, for sure.
However, according to my belief, the most important skills which lacks for
ordinal Japanese business people are the capacity to deliver information to
others by themselves.
Needless to say, the capability to collect and to analyze information
is important. But not many people understand and recognize the importance
of the capability to deliver information in such world as Internet.
Generally speaking, most Japanese are very weak in this respect. They
believe that the information is the thing to collect and to accumulate.
Scarcely they say something by their own words. They scarcely provide
their original information to the communities. They keep collecting
information and do not contribute to the community they are in by providing
information originated by themselves.
I believe that it is not the way for them to live in this global society
which is informationalized to the fullest extent.
1999/1/9
Tadashi HAYASE
My opinion this week(100):
Continuity is a source of a power
This "My opinion this week" have reached to one hundred. It was February ,1996
when I started to write this column in my Home Page. So it lasts over three
years now. Frankly speaking, it is very tough work to write one opinion in a
week, regardless the quality of their contents. If it is a newspaper company,
such work, for example, writing an editorial is shared by some number of
writers. So that is a kind of routine works for newspaper firms.
Another example is writing column such as "Tenseijingo" of Asahi and
"Syunjyu" of Nikkei. The writers of those column must work hard in keep
writing one message by one theme everyday. This is of course a tough work
also. However, those writers are also supported by a number of staffs of
newspapers companies to check some facts and statistics concerning what they
write about. In the case of personal writing as like my case, there is no such
support at all and every works are to be made by the writer themselves. In this
respect, I am quite satisfied with those result which I have done so far.
Writing that kind of message one in a week itself is not so difficult for me.
Since I have participated in forums of PC communication network or in Web
forum like BizTech Forum, for many years, I can write up such message in 30mi
minutes or so provided that the theme of opinion is definitely there. The
question is a theme to write about. Every weeks, I am annoyed with what theme
to write about. I try to specify the theme by reading newspapers, by watching
TVs and by talking with people, and so on. But to decide the specific theme
is the most difficult portion of writing "My opinion this week". Once the
theme is specified, there will not be much difficulty any more to prepare
"My opinion this week".
When it comes to a kind of theme, they tend to become similar each other
as a result. However, some constant effort is necessary to change some view
points and to relate them with some recent topics and so forth. Such works
are done to update Home Pages of my own done during my off-time. But this kind
of efforts and works help to perform my business works at office. Needless to
say most of office works are concerned with writing reports on many issues and
preparing presentation on a number of problems. Such capability which I gained
to make Home Page is contributing greatly in performing various business works
at offices.
To keep writing "My opinion" is tough, of course. But it now become a part
of my life and of my enjoyment to satisfy with the sense of attainment.
There is a proverb that means as this. "Continuity is a source of a power."
I quite agree with this proverb. However, if such writing work is something
like a dairy or just some personal note, no such consistency might have
attained. Because they are for Home Page which are opened for any assessors
in Internet, I can force me to keep such consistency as a result.
This is. I may say, one other important advantage to have Home Page in
Internet for any Internet participants.
1998/1/16
Tadashi HAYASE
My opinion this week(101):
High risk, high return
Coalition Cabinet by the Liberal Democratic Party and the Liberal Party has
just started. I wonder how mass media and people of Japan evaluate this
coalition. One of TV stations showed the result of questionnaire by people on
how they support this coalition and two parties participated in this coalition.
Both gained the affirmative votes and both improved the supportive rate. So
I guess that there was a certain support for the coalition from the people of
Japan. The evaluation by mass media are various, but there was a certain
positive support on this specific coalition compared with the past coalitions.
The comments from the other non-ruling parties except the Liberal Party on
this coalition are naturally very negative. All criticized that the coalition
has been made just to obtain more seats in the diet. However, I personally
evaluate this coalition has some advantages compared with some of those
coalitions which had been created in the past several years. I would like
to provide some positive evaluation from the points that how and why they have
been created.
The point to be evaluated is their efforts to clarify the differences of
policies of two parties. They discussed the difference of policies of two
parties concerning national security issues such as dispatching the Self
Defense Force to PKF of UN, abolition of Government committee members for
diet sessions , the appointment of Vice Minister, reduction of number of
Cabinet members from 20 to 18, and reduction of 50 diet members of the House
of Representative elected from the national constituency.
Under this big recession, financial deficits, the need for administrative,
legislative and financial reform, the nation must make every efforts to
improve economy to the great extent. In order to make this happen, Mr. Ozawa,
the leader of the Liberal Party asserted that a comprehensive political
leadership must be established to replace the control by bureaucrats in the
past years. Those agreement reached between two parties is the reflection
of Mr. Ozawa's strong belief. I do welcome and appreciate the move at this
time hoping that a strong political leadership will be established to cope
with the present difficult situation in this country.
The next day after the coalition Cabinet was born, Mr. Noda who was
appointed to the Minister of Home Affair from the Liberal Party made a very
interesting comment at the press conference. " Since The Liberal Democratic
Party is so big organization that they put much more emphasis on the stability
rather than the reform. They are so called a low risk low return party. On the
other hand, the Liberal Party is so small that they are recognized by people
only by showing some good result by presenting some good policies. They are
so called a high risk high return party.
Yes, that is right. What is the most important for the country at the
present is a speedy action to make structural reform. The coalition between
the Liberal Democratic Party and the Liberal Party is said to be the coalition
between two conservative parties but they are now the most desirable form of
coalition which will be able to attain the most drastic reform necessary for
this country.
1999/1/23
Tadashi HAYASE
My opinion this week(102):
Misunderstanding about word-processor
Using a word-processor and PC for writing purpose is becoming very popular.
90% of new year-cards I received this year was the one prepared by word-
processors or PCs. Addressing of most of cards was also made by those kind of
equipment. Some were printed very neatly and some were not printed nicely
having a kind of big letters and sticking out zip code printing are, etc. I
personally don't care at all for such kind thing because I believe the
contents are more important than how they are printed, at any rate.
But I am surprised to know that there are still many people who believe that
writing new year cards and personal letters should be done by hand without
using word-processors, which is impolite in a way. One typical example is the
old man whom I met in a party the other day. He seemed to believe that it is
quite impolite to write personal letters by using a word-processor. According
to this old man , using word-processor to write business letters or business
documents is all right. But, when it comes to personal letters, those letters
written by word-processors look very mechanical and lack some warmth and
sincerity of human being.
I did not specifically make any comments on what he said at that time. But
I would like to say something now. There were many argument of the same
kind when word-processors and PCs appeared in the market place 10 years ago.
Such argument existed among those people whose occupation is writing sentences.
What they assert is that using those equipment for business purpose is fine but
not for personal letters. Furthermore, some good sense of rhythm is destroyed
if those equipment are used to write sentences. That kind of mechanical
characters printed by word-processors is easy to read but lack some
personality and human touch.
Today such kind of arguments do not exist so much any more, for a lot more
word-processors, PCs and e-mails written by those equipment are being used
frequently in Internet or other business scenes by people. Any of those news
writers in newspaper or magazine firms write their reports with word-
processors. Otherwise, their reports will not directly be taken into their
publications. Most of business people must write their business documents to
circulate them in the networks of their firms. They cannot ask their female
subordinates to put their hand-written documents into documents written by
word-processors any more.
Nevertheless, there still exist many people who understand that a word-
processor is the equipment which make a rough hand-written document into
a neat printed document. That's wrong. A word-processor is an equipment
which process words and to creat good sentenses. It is not just like a
typewriter. In other word, a word-processor is an idea processor. It is an
idea processor by making all sort of trials and errors possible. Printing
sentences in a neat way is just a part of their function.
A word-processor is still misunderstood very much in this respect. If it
is misunderstood only by an old man as I mentioned about, that is no problem.
But that's not all. I still see many managers in business who write their
business documents by hand and let their female subordinates to write them
by word-processors. I would like to warn them that they could not live in
this digital business society any more unless they could prepare all of
business documents by themselves using word-processors or PCs.
1999/1/30
Tadashi HAYASE
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