Mogic considers

Have a party with croquettes

Since moving to its current office, Mogic has held 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.

The party was not held on the rooftop this time, but from the basement to the 2nd floor, but the number of people was too large, so we switched to inviting 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 output of your members.

There are many types of member outputs.

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 your 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, requiring 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 members of your team 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.

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.

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 will be meaningless if the learners are not prepared.

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.

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.

-----
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. (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," he exclaimed.

This was over 20 years ago now.
-----

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.

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.