Mogic considers

Handling of Invisible Assets

This is especially true for IT-based businesses, which cannot hold the product in their hands.

Once the power is snapped off, there is nothing but people, desks, and office floors.

However, when the power is turned on, many things become possible. Marketing, branding, accounting, design, development, etc. start working with people.

We build up invisible assets little by little, day by day, such as how to proceed with projects to create our own services, how to brand our company, and how to train newly hired interns after they are hired.

Some people will want results and will not be patient because they cannot see them, and others will have difficulty understanding what assets are being managed and how they are generating returns.

In order for this to become clear to the member, I still think it is necessary to take some time and tell them, "Look, it's because the invisible assets are spinning" when they start to feel "a sense of why things are getting a little easier" or "a sense of why the results are coming in little by little".

The greatest education is to speak vaguely once a week.

Are you working? This is a title that might make you say, "I'm working," but it is true.

For a long time, we have had an hour once a week to talk vaguely with those who have joined us, from high school students to those in their 60s and older, although the timing has been back and forth.

There is no specific theme. We ask the participants to talk about topics or issues that caught their attention at the time, and then expand the conversation from there.

Generally, there are subjects such as feedback MTGs, interviews between supervisors and subordinates, or discussions with mentors, but we are not looking for any such rigidness.

As for the stories that have come up in the past, they really vary from "Why is it that fire does not shift, but people's hearts do?" to "What does it mean to make money?" to "Why is it that we never run out of problems?

I think the most important thing is what the person you are talking to is "feeling urgently" at the moment, so I play around with various angles of the conversation.

But for some reason, it is strange that it is often the most memorable experience of the day.

Rock Climbing of Ideas

When promoting ideas, we often create "branches of thought" by writing down more and more associations on paper together.

Circles and lines like mind maps are well-known tools for generating ideas, but they are used differently.

Several people will each create a branch of thought, and at the end, everyone will look at all the branches of thought and figure out where the members connect to each other and where the team as a whole is more blank.

By doing so, we dare to discard the parts we "think about too much on a daily basis," find new challenges in places we have not thought about, and use them as footholds to climb up again.

I call it rock climbing of ideas, because I can't see the end at all, but for some reason I get the feeling that I am climbing.

Perhaps it is the same as rock climbing, but people who are not used to it seem to have a fear of continuing to climb at first.

We change the way we make each time according to the characteristics of the service or product.

When I was explaining this to someone who had just joined the company, I realized something, and that was the fact that Mogic changes the way it creates its services and products according to their characteristics.

I didn't realize it because I was proceeding casually, but I didn't dare to make it a standard flow.

For example.

In one project, the producer decides the functional requirements, but the screen design, including management tools, is entirely led by the engineer.

The customization of LearnO (e-learning) for a project was designer-driven from the design concept.

A client's service is led by requirements definition on the sales side.

The second version of the portfolio to be released in the near future will be designed by a designer who, after spending more than 8 months discussing the concept and design taste, will start from the list of functions without a screen blueprint.

or something like that.

Why is this happening?

I am always thinking about the best way to achieve the goal of the service or product, and who in which position made the starting point, and how to achieve it.

This seems to be the case.

It is a strange thing in terms of standardization of flow, etc., but I think it is something very important to do.

Have a party with croquettes

Since moving to its current office, Mogic has hosted an annual event called the Croquette Party every June.

To begin with, we wanted to do something on the rooftop of the office since it is always free to use.

One evening, as usual, we were talking about the next delicious thing we wanted to eat, and the idea was born to put a pile of croquettes on top at the beginning of summer and just eat croquettes all around with a beer in hand.

IT companies often have a pizza party, but I felt that it was a bit too Americanized, and if you value the Japanese spirit, you should have a party with croquettes.

We have held a croquette party on our rooftop for the third time this year, inviting our partners and freelancers who have been our regular customers at Mogic.

From this year, the party was not held on the rooftop, but from the basement to the 2nd floor, but the number of people was too large, so the invitation was switched to mainly people in the Shakujii neighborhood. We are not sure how it will turn out next year, but we plan to try again with a new purpose.

I feel that one of the best parts of running a company in the Shakujii area is the fact that what started as a casual conversation about croquettes one evening has become a place to connect people in the community.

What arises in reviewing outputs

Creating leadership with teamwork has a lot to do with how well you can return reviews to the quality of your members' output.

There are many types of outputs for members.

Design, proposals, systems, accounting documents, daily conversations, discussions at meetings, email reports, etc.

The person who organizes everyone needs to give full consideration to which outputs to point out and at what time.

Even a good review or advice may not reach the recipient at all if the timing is wrong.

Judging by the sound of that person opening the door to the office on a morning of heavy rain, do you start talking?

Are you going to say exactly what you want to say from the beginning of the regular meeting?

Do you ask them to take some one-on-one time and start talking over soft-serve ice cream in the park in the evening?

I think that is very important.

I feel that how we can improve the quality of our reviews depends on how well we can see the other person.

Let's start with a small story.

In a project meeting, the first step is always to have the facilitator give a few minutes of "small talk" at the beginning of the meeting.

A small story is surprisingly difficult to tell, and it requires you to set your own theme, and to have a beginning and end, from a little preamble to an ending.

The content of the small story itself could be anything.

But naturally, something about the person's life in these days comes through in that small talk.

What did you feel, what did you delight in, what did you question in the time leading up to that meeting?

If you continue to go to meetings without being aware of what is going on, you will find yourself at a loss on several occasions, and the members of the meeting will laugh at you.

I hope that the week of having to make small talk will build up and train me to live consciously in the present.

Dealing with Complexity

What I feel every day is that the situation around me and the challenges that arise are becoming more complex and more difficult every year.

It would be easy if there was a clear demarcation between complexity and simplicity, or if some alert (warning) went up when the boundary was crossed, but the opposite is true: the inability to know where complexity and simplicity begin and end makes the problem difficult.

One thing we do know is that more people make mistakes in situations and assignments of increased complexity.

It also tends to continuously increase the number of mistakes made by many people.

Considering the enormous increase in data volume from now into the future and the fact that IP addresses will be assigned to everything, it is inevitable that the situation will become more complex than usual.

So, how do we as an organization deal with the complexity that looms in the future, and how do we deal with it in the years ahead?

Whether the complexity is handled by one talented person or a team, we continue to explore the latter.