Happy New Year.
I have been writing this column for the internal newsletter for a long time. Almost two years ago, the newsletter became electronic, and my column started to appear on the home page. Almost immediately (not surprisingly), readership increased. I sometimes get comments from people outside the company, which makes me happy, but also forces me to think more deeply on what I write about. I do not know how long I can continue, but I intend to keep on writing as long there are things I want to talk about.

Well, the introduction is already too long. The theme of this month's column is "encounters." Not encounters with humans, but with books. Last year I had many encounters with good books.

The first was "Straight from the Gut," by Jack Welch, followed by Tsuyoi kaisha ha koushite tsukure (How to Make Strong Companies), and Donna kabedemo toppa dekiru (Break Through Any Wall), by Koichi Hori. Then there was "Managing in the Next Society," by Peter Drucker. The best one was Unmei o hiraku (Cultivating Fate), by Tenpu Nakamura.

In general, company presidents are said to be stubborn, but in my case, luckily or unluckily, and I feel a bit embarrassed about saying so myself, I am flexible in thinking. Perhaps I am too flexible, and the employees may get annoyed.

For example, when something is good, I say so assertively. Concerning a certain project, until yesterday, I thought it was good, and said so. But today, I thought, "It could be better," and said so, too. I was only saying what I honestly thought.

As a result, I agree completely with the teachings of Tenpu Nakamura, and I can feel myself actually changing.

Books condense the author's knowledge and wisdom, so we have as many different imaginary experiences as we have encounters with various books.

This 2003 too, I am looking forward to encounters with different kinds of books.
Please introduce me to ones you can recommend.

This year, too, I hope you enjoy my column.

I lived in Hawaii for six years, so I speak English. However, I did not attend English conversation school or graduate school. I make grammatical mistakes, and my pronunciation is typical Japanese English.

By the way, I hear that the English spoken by Japanese is called Japlish. I forget where I heard this word. I was told at that time that there is Singlish (the English spoken by Singaporeans), and Chinglish (the English spoken by Chinese).

However, Singaporeans and Chinese, unlike Japanese, speak English unhesitatingly. They speak wrong English without hesitation and their pronunciation has strong accents.

As I have written in my column two or three times before, if we view language as a means of communication, people who speak Singlish or Chinglish are better than Japanese who insist too much on good grammar, or try to use difficult words, and squirm because they are unable to remember them. They are better because they are working hard to communicate.

Of course, it is better to be able to speak a foreign language correctly. However, if you focus too much to correctness, and neglect communication, you have put the cart before the horse.

Let's learn from this. Let's speak Japlish proudly, and not to be defeated by our mistakes.

We often know whether we like or dislike other people, but if you are asked whether you like yourself, how do you answer? Can you say confidently, "I like myself?" If you answer, "I don't like myself that much," I think you need to make changes in yourself so that you can say, "I like me!" But how many people are putting effort into making changes in themselves?
When it comes to other people, we say, "I don't like such-and-such a part," or "I don't like this part." However, when it comes to ourselves, we ignore what we do not like. I think that before we criticize others, we should put effort into making changes to ourselves so that we like ourselves more, and we can say, "I like myself."

I thought about "what is work?" anew. It seems there are two types of work.

The first is the work that is immediately before of us. In other words, the work we have to do right now, or, the work that satisfies the present needs.

The other, and this is important, is "work which satisfies the needs of the future." So, what are the needs of the future? To understand what these needs are, you need to have an image of the future.

"What do I want to be in the future?" or, "What will my job be like in the future?"
The work done to prepare for the future is "the work that satisfies the needs of the future."

Let's think about this for a bit. We are often tossed back and forth by the work in front of us, and in chasing it, we are kept busy. Also, in doing the work immediately before us, we often feel that everything that must be done is getting done. If this happens, we will be sure to regret it later.

Have an image of the future, and work towards it steadily, even in your private time.
Then there will be great pleasures in store for you.

My father, like many founders, invested his entire life in his work. As a result, after he retired, I saw that, mathematically, "father - work = 0 (zero)."

His fate struck me as too lonesome, so, I began to think that, for myself, I should put something other than "zero" after the equal sign. Life after retirement comes even to presidents of small or medium-sized companies. I was 49 when I started looking for that something.

First of all, it could not be a "pastime." A pastime is simply for self-satisfaction.
But self-satisfaction does not give you an essential full feeling, because true full feeling comes from the admiration of others.
Through my search for something that went beyond "pastime," I encountered "pottery." Every weekend I go to class, and I finish one piece, or something like that, after another. If I keep the good pieces, I will lose all my storage space, so at every opportunity I give them away to someone I know. Today, too, I turned the potter's wheel with the hope that some day, I would produce things that make people say, "I want to buy that." My secret dream is that in about ten years, my work will be treasured by someone.

One of my greatest pleasures is to see growth in my staff. I am so happy that an employee, who needed supervision, says, "With all due respect, . . . ," and not only is he/she objecting about something, but his/her objection is reasonable. When this happens, I praise them honestly, "Good idea! You have grown!" As I write this, I am thinking to myself that I should always praise things when I think they are good.

A person who becomes tops in his/her field through self-learning.

A person to whom I can give a rough idea of what he/she must do, who then comes back with a detailed plan, to which I say OK. This person then goes back and leads their department in implementing the plan quickly.

A person who, when I ask him/her what to do next, has an immediate answer, and whose advice is safe to follow.

A person who is positively influenced by the people just mentioned. Surrounded by such staff, I expect better experiences this year.

There are different levels of communication. Top level communication is about what is in your heart, but bottom level communication is only about meaning.

The best example of bottom level communication is what is seen in communication manuals. When we go to a fast food restaurant, the employees greet us with stock phrases. We feel no heart in their words.

We go to eat because we are hungry. However, if our hearts are filled in addition to our stomachs, surely we will return.

I wrote this to admonish myself should I speak like a communication manual.

If we are told, "I cannot trust you," we will be totally shocked, because it is an indictment of our entire personality. But how do we feel if we are told, "I cannot rely on your work?"
Of course, it is difficult to accept this, because it is an evaluation of the work we were asked to do. However, we might be told, concerning different tasks, "Your work is reliable." This is my interpretation of the difference between trustable and reliable. Actually, I know someone who is cheerful, sincere, kind, talks well, and loves animals, but cannot do well at their job. This person can be trusted as a human, but cannot be relied on in his job.

To be reliable, you have to keep your promises, achieve expected results, lead others, and "report, contact, and discuss" suitably.

A big task for everyone is to build relationships within the organization, both vertically and horizontally within the organization, and also with the people around us, where not only can others rely on you, but you can rely on them.

When I was young, my father often said, "Too much quibbling. Too much sophistry." I did not think I was quibbling. I thought I was making a logical argument. However, society calls even this thought quibbling.

Let's think about this for a moment. This quibbling-loving person has changed a bit. Recently, I have been saying often, "I am happy for no particular reason." I do not know why I became like this. However, quite a long time ago, I wrote, "Intelligence can surprise people, but cannot affect them emotionally." I wrote this because I wanted to say that, in the end, people are not moved by reason. For example, when I used to talk about praising others, I would use the psychological term, "positive stroke," make profound remarks, and then say, "Therefore praising is very important." Now, I say, instead, "When you are praised, you become happy, so let's praise more often."

There are many ways to deliver feeling, but the easiest to understand does not go through the brain, but sounds directly on the heart.

Different people have different interests and concerns. It is absolutely natural that when they read the same book, they find different parts interesting.

However, no matter how many books you read, there is no meaning to reading unless you ask yourself whether there is anything interesting in what you are reading, or if there are any parts you can learn from.

In particular, you should not read a book because everyone else is reading it. If you do so, you simply try to finish it, and no part of the book will resonate with you. If you read with the humble attitude of "What can I learn?" the parts you can learn from will jump into your heart.

By keeping such an attitude, we can enhance our sensitivity naturally.

It is reasonable to expect that if we put effort into something, the effort will pay off. However, nobody knows when it will pay off. We expect that greater effort will yield earlier results. At school, the more you study, the better your grades. In sports, the more you practice, the better the results. At work, in society, the harder you work, the more likely you are to be promoted.

Now the line "To everything there is a season" from the Bible crosses my mind.
We have no way of knowing when "the season" is. If you follow the "straight and narrow" (for Christians, truth) the time is sure to come. We can wait patiently, can't we?

Nobody is angered by praise. However, if we think we deserve praise, and do not get it, we feel very sad, the sadness grows, and eventually turns into anger. We usually feel that we have been ignored.

Because of this, at a certain point, I became aware of the importance of praise.

Executives in the company had told me that I was not good at praising. However, even though I am president, I like to be praised. But my employees might hesitate in praising me because it might be seen as trying to play up to me.

If that is the case, there is no possibility of being praised by my employees. Then who can praise me? When I look around, only my wife is left.

Because I wanted to receive praise, I told my wife to praise me on suitable occasions. In this way, I could get praise after I had forgotten about what I had done to deserve it.

So I started to think about who might praise me. Some of my close friends do praise me occasionally.

By the way, here is something I discovered. You would expect that brothers and parents are the most likely to praise you because they are relatives, but they never praised me.

I thought hard about the reason, and finally saw the answer.

I was not a lovable child, but I was very strong. When other children picked on me, I did not wilt, and did not run away. Even when I was left on my own, people did not worry about me because I was good at arguing, and my body was healthy. It seems that these are the reasons they did not praise me.

If a child is a bit more timid, and needs to be cared for, the child has to be praised if they have done something a bit well, or put in a bit of effort.

However, when I do well at golf, I would like honest praise.