Happy New Year to you all. No doubt you greeted the New Year with all manner of thoughts swirling around in your head. But if we concentrate too much on uncertainty and instability we end up in a bad mood. So here I'd like to change the mood as we kick off 2010.

Several years ago a book called Blue Ocean Strategy (Japanese Edition) was published and sold quite well. In this book, markets where there are many rivals and where one spends all one's time competing on low price are called "red oceans," while markets where there is no competition - which is where one ought to be doing business - are called "blue oceans." This is all very straightforward. But what I thought was interesting was the idea that these blue oceans are not located in a great distance from red oceans but lying right beside them. This is a valuable hint. For small- and medium-sized enterprises in particular, investing large amounts of money on research and development is practically impossible. However, knowing that there is a beautiful blue ocean right next door makes one think that one can make a go of things as long as one is prepared to tax one's ingenuity.

Having built up a range of unique products and services, we here at Obun Printing are familiar with the exhilaration of swimming in a blue ocean, but even so, we still encounter situations where we have to swim in a red ocean. You could say that with one leg we're stirring a red ocean while with the other we're dabbling in a blue ocean. Or to put it in printing industry terms, if you mix red and blue you get purple. So, perhaps we're actually drifting around in a violet ocean.

However, there's no doubt that the proportion of blue is on the increase. At any rate, we're currently considering development proposals under 24 topics, with a considerable number of new products and services due to see the light of day in 2010. Maybe this year we can attach a flipper to the leg dabbling in the blue ocean to give us some extra propulsion.

Best wishes for the New Year.

Postscript: This is the 120th installment of the Thoughts on Management column, which has been going for ten years now. It is thanks to you, the reader, that it has continued for so long. I'd like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude once again. At present, around 700 individuals regularly read this column, and I hope it continues to attract a following. I humbly ask for your continued support.

Monthly senryu:
Turning purple into a bridge leading from red to blue

Since May 2008 I've been dispatching a "weekly message" to employees. The contents are organized by topic; including different perspectives on things like values, branding, and thoughts on management. I've also been sending messages featuring the following themes:

• Essence series that stresses the importance of capturing the essence of things
• Sharing the Fascination series that highlights the appeal of thinking and growing
• My personal thoughts on the questions in Peter Drucker's The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About your Organization, and
• Corporate Culture series that stresses the importance of creating a good corporate culture

Given that I'd be held in contempt by my employees if they felt there was nothing unpredictable about the themes addressed or nothing fresh about the way I approached them, I'm always pretty tense when I write these weekly messages. In the Essence series I posed the question: what is the overwhelming difference between printed matter and other forms of media? Unfortunately, very few people came up with the kind of replies that I hoped for. In the case of non-print media, both contents and a means of reproducing them are required. Or to put it a different way, with printed matter the contents themselves form the medium.

It is with this sole desire of exchanging ideas with employees in an effort to encourage them to think, to consider the essence of things as a matter of course, and to open their eyes to the appeal of this approach and the value of knowing the essence of things that I continue to dispatch these weekly messages.

Monthly senryu:
The fascination of thinking is awakening to the essence of things

Last year I paid a lot of money to attend a certain seminar, although I ended up dropping out after just three days, having attended two of the six classes that make up the course. I'd like to summarize the things I became aware of as a result of this experience.

The theme of this seminar was "improving coaching skills." I confess I harbored a slight feeling of antipathy towards the use of the word "skills," but seeing as I hadn't done much in the way of real study for quite a while, I decided to go along and see what it was like. Halfway through the first day I started feeling something wasn't quite right after all. The reason for this was that, as I had expected, there was far too much emphasis on "skills."

Having said that, although "coaching" is something I've hardly studied at all, I routinely try to guide my employees towards solution strategies in the context of everyday conversation not by force but by encouraging them to think for themselves, so by attending the seminar I thought I might be able to brush up these skills. "Coaching" is a method of guidance whereby people are led in such a way that they themselves actually become aware of solutions. The aim is to make the subject aware. To put it bluntly, my approach is that as long as the goal is achieved, I'm not too fussy about the method. Although having said that, someone has come up with effective methodologies for this kind of thing as a result of years of research, so it probably pays to know about these.

Incidentally, this particular "seminar" adheres to such procedures or methodologies to an unnecessary, even extraordinary, degree. The thing I found most dissatisfying was that the overly inflexible approach meant that there was no attention at all given to "thinking," which is something I've always regarded as more important than anything else.

Inspired by this experience, I began to think even more about this subject. Why is it that I was so critical of this seminar? Looking back on it now, I think perhaps it was an overreaction to the fact that the lecturer not only had an affected manner of speaking, but also spoke in a quiet voice, and that I generally didn't fancy the conceited way he talked.

As a result, I came to a kind of conclusion that thinking is the most important thing after all, that the method adopted, or in other words the skill element, is the last thing to be considered, and that it's fine if the method differs slightly from person to person.

The fact was, however, that I had to inform the lecturer that I was dropping out before the end of the seminar, and so, mindful of the need to give a convincing reason, I gave the matter even deeper and broader thought. And the thing that came to mind as I thought about this was the approach of Kyocera founder Kazuo Inamori: "Maximize sales and minimize expenses" (I've diverged from the original topic slightly but bear with me for a moment).

Nothing could be truer than this. This is a real "theory," I thought. However, unless one knows how to maximize sales and how to minimize expenses, it's about as useful as the proverbial "rice cake in a picture." After thinking about it some more, I realized that answering these questions required "know-how." It's not enough to simply carve out new territory in an existing field. One way to maximize sales is to develop a new product and enter a new field. And this is a good example of "know-how."

Furthermore, with regard to the minimization of expenses, "know-how" includes more than simply encouraging in-house production and negotiating reductions in outsourcing and material costs; it also includes things like knowing how to lift productivity and reduce the amount of raw materials used. And once one has considered all the options and worked out what needs to be done, one then needs to decide how to implement this knowledge in order to gain the maximum benefits, which is where "skill" is required. Even if one knows what to do, this knowledge is meaningless unless one can actually do it. In other words, knowing something in general doesn't necessarily equate to being able to do it. Unless one has the "skill" to implement it, even if one has developed some amazing "know-how" it will all be in vain. This is why "skill" is so important.

So, the first thing is to "think," and then to be "aware" of things. After this one should be able to "think deeply and broadly" and "systematize." You could say that this is what is actually meant by discovering "theory." However, this is simply a principle, and so in order to decide how to act, one needs to discover "know-how." Thinking repeatedly about what kind of thing "know-how" is leads to the discovery of actual "know-how." And after honing the "skills" required to ensure this "know-how" leads to results, implementing these "skills" should gradually bring huge benefits. At least this is how I see it.

I've gone on far too long, but the main point is "to discover theory and know-how, but also to acquire the skills to implement these later on." Rather than seminars to teach people skills, what we really need are seminars to teach people "how to think," but these seminars don't exist. Maybe the people in the seminar business should give this some thought.

Monthly senryu:
Thinking leads to the discovery of theory and know-how
Know-how only produces results when one has the right skills

As I did at this time last year, I am posting the text of my remarks to employees at a morning meeting at the start of 2010 (January 12).

Happy New Year. In my speech at this time last year I said that 2008 would be a year that would go down in history. The reason was the Lehman Shock. There is no doubt that the global economy suddenly worsened, and while initially it was said that the impact on Japan was slight, we ended up with a situation in which even Toyota, which prided itself on being number one in Japan in terms of both sales and profits, plunged into the red after posting record sales and profits the previous year. This trend continued into 2009, with the whole world affected by the economic slump. In Japan, while great hopes were placed on the Hatoyama administration after the historic defeat of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, problems including the breaking of election pledges as laid out in its manifesto, dubious political contributions from private individuals, and the relocation of the US military base at Futenma have seen the approval rating for the Hatoyama administration worsen from around last month, fuelling a sense of distrust and unease.

So what can we expect in 2010? Unfortunately, I cannot see either the economy, society, or the global environment improving. In light of this, I can state categorically that if Obun Printing simply relies on the market at the macro level or on existing customers at the micro level, we cannot expect greater than average results.

The only way Obun Printing can distinguish itself from the competition is its own efforts. This means making the effort to add healthy companies to our client list, which means focusing on displaying to these clients our overwhelming appeal. It also means being able to offer exceptional products and services at attractive prices.

Fortunately, in the areas of both emotional value printing and online publishing, this year we can look forward to even more new technologies, materials, products, and services being developed and seeing the light of day than last year. The number of customers using our online business card service is steadily rising. Product lineups and sales volumes for other products and services are also increasing (such as evidenced by the development of color variations and value-added products for our rewritable paper lineup, the expansion of our range of book cover designs and sales channels, and the increase in demand for novelty products).

The varnish printing seminars held at the end of last year were also extremely popular, so much so that there have been requests for more. In short, one could probably say that 2009 laid the foundations for rapid progress in 2010. In addition, new services and technologies will be added, putting us in an even stronger position.

In light of this, I think you will understand the potential for growth through our own efforts. However, the size of the economic pie is still shrinking and prices are still dropping due to deflation. The extent to which we can minimize the impact of these factors is another important theme. The value of our work to date will decrease in the midst of price competition. Accordingly, we must strive for even further cost reductions. This may be unspectacular and even, to be honest, unenjoyable. But unless we go about it properly, although we may still have our own products and services, we will not survive.

Looking ahead, in the coming year the focus will be on striving to reduce costs with regard to existing work and taxing our ingenuity in an effort to be more proactive with regard to new work. I look forward to your continued understanding and cooperation.

Monthly senryu:
Originality is something all our employees create together