Mogic considers

'We can build the company the way we want to.
We will do what we believe in, even if it is different or unusual.
Because what we can believe in is surprisingly rare.
Yes, we have been searching for it in a truly honest, straightforward, and sincere manner.

Representative Director Yoichi Yamane

March 30, 2016

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 an 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.

December 07, 2015

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.

April 22, 2015

Profiling a business

Many people think of criminal psychology when they think of profiling, but in general terms, it can be described as "a method of determining the characteristics of people who act based on the results of an exhaustive analysis.

What is profiling a business?

Business is the flow of selling services or goods to someone in the future that is yet to be seen.

What if "someone in the future that we can't see yet" could be predicted 100% at this stage?

It makes it very easy to do business.

But, of course, we cannot predict 100%.

However, if you ask who has an advantage if there is a person who can see only 10% of the future or a person who can see only 30% of the future, it would be the latter.

So how can there be a difference between 10% and 30%?

And is it possible to make that kind of difference in business? I ask the question.

Perhaps what makes the difference is a matter of awareness of whether or not people are thinking in a way that allows them to see what ordinary people cannot see, and we believe that it is possible to practice this in business through teamwork.

April 03, 2015

Before training, consider a place where people want to learn on their own.

As the number of internal members has increased over the past year, we have been thinking about teamwork and education.

It is also becoming an important issue for e-learning system providers.

One important question is: When do people most want to learn for themselves? One important question is when do people most want to learn for themselves?

Even if the training curriculum is rich and advanced, it is meaningless if the learners are not prepared for it.

The image of training = boring classes tends to prevail, and it is possible that you are just taking a course without that "preparation".

First, it is easy to create a desire to learn and a sense of challenge when one is placed in a new environment that he or she has never been in before.

For example, if you have been in charge of accounting for many years and have recently been put in charge of human resources, you will still have to catch up somehow.

The same is true when they enter their 30s and move from player to managerial positions.

Therefore, it will be necessary to design changes in the environment that will make people want to learn spontaneously before education.

If education is to take root in the company over the medium to long term, we believe it is important to create repositioning = formal and informal changes in the environment.

July 03, 2014

Division of labor and communication issues

Communication is not necessary if the work can be completed by one person.

However, communication is essential for two or more people to work together.

The question is: Is communication only about conveying information? Is it enough to communicate information?

One of the ideals is to be able to activate the other person's brain at the same time as conveying information.

I am quoting from a sentence about productivity that was mentioned by Lifenet that I thought was exactly the same thing.

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A long time ago, I attended a lecture by a Swedish scholar on improving labor productivity, and he exclaimed that the only way to improve labor productivity is through the cerebral activity of employees, and that the only requirements for the cerebral activity to be lively are (1) fun and excitement, (2) facing a completely different organization or culture, such as M&A, and being surprised (stimulated), and (3) concentrated work in a short period of time. There are only three requirements for the cerebrum to be active: (1) to have fun and be excited, (2) to be surprised (stimulated) when faced with a completely different organization or culture, such as M&A, and (3) to concentrate on work in a short period of time.

This was over 20 years ago now.
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In a "company," a place where many people work at the same time, if communication itself can be designed to be "(1) fun and exciting, (2) surprising (stimulating) in the face of a completely different organization and culture, as in M&A, and (3) focused on work in a short period of time," it will semi-automatically improve productivity. We are testing daily the hypothesis that this will lead to an improvement in productivity.

May 08, 2014

Productivity is not about working overtime.

As a general rule, Mogic prohibits working on weekends and holidays, and tells its employees not to work overtime during the week.

The reason is clear: "We want to keep improving productivity.

Suppose you work overtime and work twice as many hours in a day. Production would double.

However, it is not possible to work twice as hard the next day. Thus, the continuous improvement in production disappears in one day.

Since we want to improve productivity as much or as little as possible each day, the time to produce is fixed = during business hours.

This way it is possible to measure how much more can be done in the same amount of time each day, and how many new things can be generated.

How much more can you get done in the same amount of time each day than you could yesterday?

I believe we must ask the tough questions every day.

May 07, 2014

Marketing Opportunities

There is the creation of personas, deciding how to target them, and testing responses.

We don't do that form of marketing; we try to market opportunities.

What is marketing an opportunity?

I believe this is a way to capture in real time the unimagined "opportunities" that suddenly arise and emerge in the rapidly changing distribution channels of information.

While it is important to strategize and create materials once a year or once every few months, we need to rethink whether such a time-lagged approach is really optimal.

May 07, 2014

When working with a team of designers and engineers

When we first approach you, we rarely make specific requests.

Can you describe the Art Deco idea of a certain building in Manhattan, reinterpreted and expressed in the modern age?

May I ask you to express the borderline between the 20th and 21st century lurking in the nightscape of Shanghai in your design mockup?

Can you redefine the spatial expression of ikebana-like gaps once again in terms of the difference between Japanese ikebana and Western floral management?

This is a vague request.

We believe that such challenges make people take it seriously.

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