Abstract

Currently, many Japanese companies are suffering from the "three major diseases" of over-planning, over-analysis, and over-compliance. This is because companies have adapted too much to the analytical management methods of the U.S. style, and as a result, they are unable to find the meaning of their own existence. The middle and front lines are stressed out and exhausted because they are too busy following instructions from the head office, which has no knowledge of the field. This is the current situation of Japanese companies. On the other hand, there are not a few cases where the frontline has been revitalized and each employee is working with vigor and enthusiasm, achieving innovation and great results. What these cases have in common is that there is a place where the company and its customers, the top management and their subordinates, and the employees and their subordinates can "meet" to create a connection, and the "empathy" that arises there is the driving force that creates new value.

In the U.S., Satya Nadira, CEO of Microsoft, who achieved a V-shaped recovery and led the company to the world's No. 1 market capitalization, advocates " Empathic Management" and "Empathic Leadership" that position "empathy" as the most important concept in management.
Another commonality is the "storytelling strategy," which is not the U.S.-style analytical strategy of analyzing the market environment and the company's internal resources to find the optimal positioning in the market, but rather a strategy of questioning the significance of the company's existence and making the best decision each time to realize the vision of the organization and achieve success. This is the "storytelling strategy" that we practice to achieve success.
Narrative strategy is able to achieve results even in the face of high volatility and uncertainty because it responds to and adapts to ever-changing circumstances. This is why narrative strategies are gaining attention in management studies overseas.

What kind of management is required to create empathetic management? What are the conditions for promoting storytelling strategies?
This book extracts the essence of how empathetic management and storytelling strategies have made it possible to achieve great results from a selection of 30 cases that were featured in the series "The Essence of Success" in Works magazine from 2015 to 2007.

Author’s Information

Ikujiro Nonaka
Professor Emeritus, Hitotsubashi University
Born in 1935. After graduating from the School of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University, worked at Fuji Electric Manufacturing Co. and received his Ph. D. from the University of California, Berkeley. His publications include "The Essence of Failure" and "The Essence of Strategy" (both co-authored).

Akira Katsumi
Journalist
Born in 1952. After dropping out of the Department of Liberal Arts at the University of Tokyo, he worked as a freelance journalist, writing mainly on the fields of economics and management. He is an expert in corporate organizational management and human resource management.