Some "Zen" in management (a new thing)

“Profit should be the result, not the purpose of the business”. I love this idea.

I found it, of course, in a brief and intelligently written description about the Japanese approach to business, that Charles Handy developed for The BBC service some time ago. This is also the key idea that can be derived from the work of Kenichi Ohmae, the so called “corporate strategist”.

Ohmae lives in Tokyo, but he’s a global business consultant, adviser to governments and business entrepreneurs. Even though he has a doctorate in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technologies, his approach to business management is not based in unnecessary “scientificism” and avoids what I would like to call the “dictatorship of rationality”.

The man that “The Economist” selected as one of the five management gurus in the world, has published over 100 books, one of his famous title being “The mind of the strategist” (1991). Some Zen mentality in business management, perhaps.

This book rescues the idea that the key success factors of business do not come from strict analysis of numbers (a centered focus on the road you are) but from a process which is more instinctive and creative than rational (the alternative better roads). More intuition and less rationality.

I found it worth reading that the Japanese concentrate in three essential factors when deciding business issues:

1. What the customer will want (notice the concern for forecasting needs).
2. Has our company the competence and capacity to respond to the customer demands?
3. Can the business be profitable once the competition starts in the market (notice the importance of considering not only customers needs, but also competitors, which seems to be forgotten in many cases).

All this looks quite simple, doesn’t it? But many times simplicity is not so obvious.

The Japanese seem not to drown themselves in numbers. They don’t focus on profit, before making sure that they can deliver what customers want to receive (of course, the notion of client is complex if you consider that nowadays, it is not only the final consumer, but even all the stakeholders).

The Japanese concern is to be sure that they’ve got the idea of the proper product , the quality level required and the cost effectiveness that competitors can’t afford. Ok, you can say nothing new in management: Assuring budget, time and standards. But the difference is on the focus: only thinking on this first, the profit will come in.