Mogic thinks

Unexpected love of data

This may come as a surprise to you, since Mogic's appearance tends to show looseness and creativity, but we are quite fond of data.

My motto is "I don't have target numbers or plans, but I definitely accumulate data on results.

One reason may be that we have a large number of engineers who are strong in databases.

There is a dashboard of logs for all the various tools in the company (sales, marketing, projects, HR, finance, etc.), as well as regular meetings, mistakes, problems, and future projections, all normalized in a spreadsheet and kept for years.

If you use PowerPoint, Word, or e-mail, it will take a lot of time and effort to look back at what you did in the same month last year, so it is important to format your data so that you can skewer and analyze it.

We are also logging homemade games that are played in conjunction with in-house online chat to see how they are doing.

I wondered if it would be better to post real-time activities in the chat, or if having an event with prizes would increase the response by 170%.

There is also a lot of analog-like data, such as a photo gallery for every year since the company was established, a record of monthly events, articles about lectures held in the past, and a record of sweets ordered.

Isn't it tedious? But I never get tired of it.

I think it's probably because I like to try new things and I don't want to do something I've already done once in the past.

How to create a dollar cost averaging, branded service

One very simple investment method is the dollar cost averaging method.

According to Wikipedia, "One of the investment methods for financial products such as stocks and mutual funds. It is also called the fixed amount purchase method. When purchasing financial products, the funds are not purchased all at once, but are divided into equal amounts and invested regularly and continuously. This method is used for long-term investments to control risk and obtain stable income. If the dollar cost averaging method is used in a rising market, the average unit purchase price (as compared to the initial lump-sum purchase) becomes much higher, which has the disadvantage of reducing returns. It is not suitable for investments that aim for high returns on products that move rapidly because the timing cannot be precisely measured.

For example, instead of buying 5 products each month, it's like getting only what you can afford for 10,000 yen.

Of course, if the price per product goes up, what used to cost 5 for 10,000 yen may now cost 2.

If the product drops in price, you can reverse the process and get 8 for 10,000 yen.

Rather than buying all at once, we diversify the risk by spreading out the purchase period, so we can use it when the market is likely to rise in a moderate trend over the medium to long term.

We've been using this idea a bit wildly across the board to secure resources for creating our own services.

It is suitable for those who want to use their own funds to gradually make sales and develop their own brand of services.

Designing and developing programs for clients is directly related to sales, so it is the organization's highest priority resource allocation.

However, if we are a little greedy and want to create our own branded service at the same time, how should we allocate our resources?

During the initial launch period, you can devote a certain amount of resources to the branded service.

However, since client projects come and go in waves, we tend to repeat the cycle of "working on the service or not" in proportion to that, and eventually we tend to take things with a grain of salt, saying "we're not getting any results, so let's see what happens.

Therefore, we apply the dollar cost averaging approach here.

If you set up a schedule of how many improvements you should make each week, you will run out of time when you are busy and you will get stuck mentally.

If you buy books regularly, it's like piling them up when you're busy and suffering from the weight of them.

Control the number and difficulty of the tasks according to the amount of time you have left, not the number of pieces.

When I am busiest, I do very little.

When I have time, I usually do it.

We'll keep doing this for a long time.

The key is to never stop.

The disadvantage of this is that you have to closely observe the status of all members (not to mention their busyness, level of proficiency, blossoming potential, timing of life, etc.) before deciding on assignments, which greatly increases management costs.

If we can develop a method to compress even that, this will become one of the most reliable methods.

Computing power in one hand.

I once had a supermarket expert share with me the secret of their assortment.

I apologize for my vague recollection, but ...... said that it is not enough to only have products that sell well, but you must also have products that sell only occasionally, otherwise overall sales (number of visits to the store, number of purchases, etc.) will drop.

The products located around the perimeter from the entrance are the ones that sell well, such as vegetables, fish, meat, drinks, and bread, while the ones that do not sell well but are important are the seasonings and canned goods in the center.

I remember feeling that even though it was a supermarket made by people, it was kind of like an ecological balance.

It's not something that can be measured by a single measure of product sales, but rather a whole that is made up of various things that play their own roles here and there.

I would like to quote a hypothesis that touched on such an exquisite balance in the environment around us.

You live with 200,000 species.
Your home is an ecosystem. - You live with 200,000 species.
http://www.hakuyo-sha.co.jp/creature/never-home-alone/

He believed that the loss of biodiversity would also "hurt" the human immune system, causing it to malfunction.

The most direct stepping stone to such thinking was the hypothesis and series of studies that chronic autoimmune diseases are related to overly clean and hygienic living.

This "hygiene hypothesis" was first proposed by David Strawn, an epidemiologist at St. George's Medical School, University of London, in 1989.

omission (of middle part of a text)

Hanski, Hartera, and von Hertzen believed that exposure to a wide variety of organisms in the environment, in the house, and on the body must play some role in keeping the peacekeeping pathways of the immune system functioning properly.

Without the opportunity for such exposure, the immune system reacts by producing IgE antibodies, which cause inflammatory reactions to various antigens that are not actually dangerous, such as dust mites, chrysalis cockroaches, mold fragments, and even self cells.

If children are not sufficiently exposed to wildlife, the regulatory pathways will not play their role.

Allergies, asthma, and other problems - that's what they thought. It was an exciting hypothesis, but one that needed to be tested.
They thought...

The theory is that the body's immune system, which has been built on the premise of being in contact with a wide variety of living things, can be thrown out of balance by an environment that is too clean for its own good.

Whether this is really the case or not remains to be verified, but even so, I feel that the relationships between living things and between living things and their environment are often complex and difficult to understand.

There is a wide range of scales, from nano to meter, and the flow of time is also different.

We have been able to simplify and handle things that would otherwise be difficult to understand.

However, with the increasing computing power in our hands, tracing and deciphering intricate things will become the norm in the future.

Things that never change

Even with the Corona disaster, my impression from watching them during lunch break is that they are still doing what they like.

There were groups of people playing online games on the Switch, eating ice cream, enjoying conversation, reading books, making DIY desks, and putting up tarps on the roof.

Naturally, the rules for coronary infection control should be strictly followed.

There are many people who work short hours, so the time they go home varies, some go home on time, some work a little overtime.

People say that I've been busy lately, but I guess I feel busy compared to a few years ago when I used to spend two hours on a lunch expedition or play baseball at the park in the evening.

When I asked an employee who joined the company a year ago what he thought of the company, he said

"Lots of non-work related books and updates."
"We spend a lot of time, energy and money on non-work related things.
"The interior is often changed.
"Loose with time.
"Everyone in the company is looking in the same direction."
"Everyone goes home together.
"A culture of small talk."
"There's a lot of internal media, or history, or records."

He listed many of them.

I'm still trying to figure out how I should take it, but it seems that the atmosphere hasn't changed since ten years ago.

That's the weird thing about it.

Every week, we have a meeting called the Executive Officers Meeting, where only the executive officers and chiefs of management are present.

The board members do not participate at all, only the person in charge of the field.

In fact, I have never asked for this meeting to be conducted in this format.

Occasionally, I'll throw out a question about how to change the flow or mindset of the entire company.

There was no set agenda other than that, and they seemed to be talking about what they should talk about at this time.

As the number of people in the company increases and social conditions change rapidly, the methods that worked well in the past suddenly no longer work.

I'm hoping that the teamwork at the field level can quickly clear up such issues, but I'll leave that to their senses.

Later on, when I catch a glimpse of what they talked about at a management meeting where executives also gather, I can feel something.

Just like in a mystery novel, where mystery leads to mystery, there may be a "hidden cause" for seemingly unconnected events (see quote below).

The Brain Learns
This is how the brain learns
https://www.morikita.co.jp/books/book/3513

Inspector Gregory of Scotland Yard asks, "Is there anything else I should be aware of?

Holmes. - It was one of those strange dog things that happened at night.

Gregory - The dog didn't do anything at night.

Holmes - That's the weird part.

Sherlock reasoned that if the dog had spotted an outsider, it would have barked.

The fact that he didn't actually bark means that the culprit must have been a familiar person, not an outsider. ......

With this deduction, the great detective narrows down his search and then uncovers the identity of the real culprit.

You may be thinking, "What does that have to do with learning?" The point is that learning is also reasoning, just like Holmes is doing.

Learning, in short, is the process of identifying the hidden causes of a phenomenon in order to derive the most plausible model that governs it.

In the real world, however, observations rarely turn out to be true or false, and can only be indeterminate and probabilistic.

This is where the root of the work of Master Bayes and the Marquis de Laplace comes into play.

Bayesian theory teaches how to reason with probability, and what logical formulas must be applied when the data is not complete and probabilistic about whether it is true or false.
ーーー.

I believe that as long as everyone is able to sense the unusual and fluctuating nature of the world, we will be fine.

Novelty, good view, lots of greenery

We are looking for a property for a new office for our subsidiary.

I was looking for a place near Shakujii, but for some reason, I couldn't find anything that fit the bill.

As I look at the properties, I think to myself that it is at times like this that the images lurking in the back of my mind come to life.

If you list the many things that bother you, such as door knobs that are too round, the name of the property that just doesn't fit, the rooms that have a nice atmosphere but not enough windows, or the objects in the hallway that are different, you will be able to focus on what you are looking for from the opposite perspective.

As a result, what we were looking for was novelty, a good view, and a lot of greenery.

Generally speaking, an office is expected to have convenient transportation, brand name location, size, and IT facilities, but it was different.

Looking back, all of Mogic's past offices were designer properties, which everyone called "cool but cold in winter and hot in summer.

If I choose to use the same criteria as in the past, the people around me will probably disagree with me because of the accumulated knowledge (i.e. cold and hot), but I want to make it work.

Why can't we create a good "strategy"?

"What kind of vision or strategy do you have for the future? I am sometimes at a loss when I am asked, "What vision or strategy do you have for the future?

This is because although I have a direction that I would like to see happen, I don't put it together in a presentation document or have a presentation meeting.

There are many directions, such as "approach education first so that it can be useful around the middle of the 21st century," "help workers feel fulfilled in their work," and "give hope to the people involved.

There is nothing more detailed than that, so there is nothing to talk about.

In general, you need KPIs, strategies, tactics, missions, and visions, but I've come this far thinking that I don't need them.

Some may argue that since the organization isn't that big, it's okay.

However, I feel that it is a little different because even if an organization is small, it will struggle and when things go wrong, they will go wrong.

I found a sentence that fits such a bewilderment, so I'll quote it here.

The body in mathematics
The Mathematical Body
https://www.shinchosha.co.jp/book/339651/

When humans design artifacts, they decide in advance what is a resource and what is noise.

In the example of this circuit, each and every logic block is a resource for solving a problem, but electromagnetic leakage and flux would be considered as noise and would be eliminated as much as possible.

But that is only the designer's point of view.

In the process of bottom-up evolution, where there are no designers, anything that can be used is used without regard to its use.

As a result, resources are scattered throughout the body and environment, blurring the distinction between them and noise.

To what extent is the entity that is solving the problem, and from where is the environment, is unclear and intermingled.
I'm sorry.

There is another question that I often get asked and it bothers me.

"Why did you aim for diversity in terms of age and nationality? "Why did you aim for diversity in terms of age and nationality?

The answer is "I didn't set out to do that," but I'm afraid you'll be disappointed, so I'll give you a slightly more dressed-up answer.

This is the result of recruiting people who are comfortable participating in Shakujii, not as designed, but as a result of adaptation.

Do you watch the strategy you set up at a certain point become invalid over time, do you eliminate noise to justify your strategy, or is it a strategy that keeps changing in small increments?

I can't seem to create a good "strategy" because it's just too big for me to handle on my own, and there is a wide variety of information flowing all over the place.

365 starting points

When I was working in my twenties, people around me told me that when I reached my mid-thirties, I would have to start practicing management because I would reach the limit of being active in the field as a player.

In my thirties, I started a new company in a new field and worked in the field, and by the time I was in my forties, the world was talking about a 100-year life.

I think that the basis of the 100-year life era is to keep learning, explore new possibilities, and work for a long time.

From that point of view, it is okay to challenge new industries, occupations, sites, and management as many times as you want along the way, leaving aside the barriers to entry into different fields as a practical matter.

In fact, if I were to devote myself solely to management from the age of 35, I would continue to be a manager for 35 years, assuming the retirement age is 70, which would be quite constricting for me personally.

On the other hand, you may feel that it is a burden to keep learning and challenging yourself in new fields.

Some people may say that life is not all about trying.

Therefore, there is one recommendation that I tell my interns.

In the meantime, start one new thing a day, and look back on the record a year later.

It's not a bad idea to try it, because it gives you a little moisture every day.

You don't have to do anything fancy, just buy a sweet you've never had at a convenience store, try using a fork with your left hand, try a new service, or say a word you've never used before.

Still, a year's worth will give you a list of 365 items.

After doing so, why don't you think about it again?

If you have a list of 365 things, at least one of them can be a starting point for something new.