Mirai Industry sells electric installation devices, plumbing equipments, and gas engine generation facilities among other 18,000 kinds of products, most of which have a patent.images
Philosophy of Akio Yamada, 81 years old, Founder and the current Director and Senior Advisor of Mirai Industry (Mirai means future in Japanese)
and lesson of
“Experiment, Experiment, Experiment” from the Grateful Dead
“To make customers happy, I have to ask my employees to work harder. To encourage employees to work hard, I have to please them.”
(Akio Yamada)
The shortest working hours in Japan [8:30-16:45]
Must not work overtime
140 holidays a year
40 paid holiday
3 years of maternity leave
High salary [$7.5 million/yr. for a common clerk at the age of 65]
Mandatory retirement at the age of 70 [65 in Japanese law]
No layoff
Overseas travel for all employees every 5 years
No part-time/ temporary workers… among other things
“Human beings will never commit an injustice if they have been given freedom.”
Employees must not report, contact, and consult with their boss. Mr. Yamada believes that employees will stop thinking if they always ask for opinions from their boss. In fact, each employee is responsible to decide whether or not having a business trip. Employees establish new offices throughout Japan without asking Mr. Yamada.
The self-assessment system in a corporate cafeteria
No Human Resource department because Mr. Yamada believes that HR is a waste of money and time and that those who are doing the actual work should decide who and how many to hire. Mr. Yamada has never touched on this matter.
“Business will never be profitable if doing the same thing with other successful companies. Employees should make mistakes hundreds of thousands of time but should never make the same mistake twice.”
Improvement-Suggestion-System: Employees will get a reward of $6 for any suggestions or comments. They will be rewarded before they say anything. In other word, the content does not matter, but the action (suggesting) is important. If the content is good, the amount of rewards will be $330 at most.
The Grateful Dead: Experiment, Experiment, Experiment
The Grateful Dead did so much experimentation and improvisation and did not become conservative and stop doing them, which resulted in placing the Grateful Dead into a new category, Jam Band. Similarly, Mr. Yamada encourages employees to challenge the current state without a fear of making mistakes. Rather, he incentivises such actions with $6, which may be a part of reasons why the company has the happiest employees in Japan and has a patent on most of the products. Although Mr. Yamada’s philosophy of freedom does not directly relate to Be Yourself lesson, where the authors point out to trust employees and set loose guidelines for blogs or social medias, with the philosophy employees contribute to the company by establishing offices.
“Not until I got a business card, did I realize the existence of a new office in other cities. Well, my response? Just said ‘Congratulations!'”