[Dialogue] Dai Tamesue × Keiichi Higuchi, Part 2 Understanding the past leads to future leaps forward.

Continuing from last time, former professional track and field athlete and current versatile coach and commentator Dai Tamesue, along with Keiichi Higuchi, Communication Design Director at Dentsu Inc. CDC, discussed the potential for sports to contribute to addressing various societal challenges.

 

[Applying Sports Motivation Management to Corporate Activities]

Tamesue: I think the idea that sports motivation design could be applied to organizations is definitely plausible.

When people engage in sports, their motivation broadly falls into two types. There's the "goal-oriented" type, where people strive to achieve something, like winning or getting results. Then there's the "passion-driven" type, where people simply love the activity itself and do it because they enjoy it.

Goal-oriented people will grit their teeth and push through until they achieve their objective, but once they succeed or decide "I can't do this anymore," they can snap off completely. On the other hand, those driven by passion can keep going until they get bored because they love it, but they won't push themselves to the absolute limit, facing pain and suffering every day, just because they enjoy it.

That's why, among professional athletes, I think those who can effectively manage both within themselves are the ones who can sustain a demanding athletic career for the long haul.

Higuchi: Is there much research on motivation management like that in the world of professional sports?

Tamura: No, I think individuals experience it intuitively, but it hasn't been systematized. It's something I started rethinking after retiring.

Higuchi: In the business world too, various organizations and teams are starting to adopt strategies for managing people's work. But so far, I feel like most methods are short-term focused. Even when they talk about long-term, it's mostly about stacking small goal achievements and rewards to sustain motivation. I don't see a systematic approach from a mid-to-long-term perspective.

When it comes to considering how people grow and engage with their work over the medium to long term, I think sports have a distinct advantage in that area.

Tamura: A medium-to-long-term perspective is crucial, right? Without it, direction becomes unclear.

You see athletes who are relentless but somehow "unfocused." They're always giving their all, but it feels reactive or ad hoc. In sports, it's crucial to set both: a long-term goal, even if it's vague, and short-term goals because relying solely on the long-term makes it hard to push through each day.

Also, I believe not only future outlook but also history is quite important. If you don't grasp your past history and timeline—being able to frequently look back at how far you've climbed—you can lose your bearings.

Higuchi: Reflecting on the past, you say. That's an interesting perspective. In business, we're always focused on the present and future, rarely discussing the past... But really, the present is a continuation from the past, leading into the future. So even when planning for the future, we should think within that timeline.

【Without new ventures rooted in our core DNA, there can be no growth】

Tametsu: I believe how we perceive the past changes how we see the future.

This might be a bit of a leap, but when our bodies receive some kind of stimulus, there's a slight time lag before our brains process it. Just as the light from a star we see now is actually light from tens of thousands of years ago, I think we judge future events based on memories that are established with a slight delay within us.

Higuchi: I see.

Tamese: Talking with athletes, I notice something: athletes who think they "failed" at the Olympics and those who think they "gained valuable lessons" have completely different visions of the future.

So, paradoxically, I think changing how you perceive past events is quite effective in the sports world if you want to change your future. Often, when you only focus on the future, you end up working within a fixed image that lacks continuity.

Higuchi: That's a really interesting point. In business, with the competitive and market environments changing so rapidly these days, there's a strong tendency to think, "Without exploring through non-linear thinking, there's no growth." Even when launching new ventures, companies try to start something completely detached from the past.

But this approach rarely works. What's frightening is that new ventures conceived this way end up looking remarkably similar across companies. The tendency for future perspectives to become fixed without considering the time axis is the same in the world of athletes.

Tamesue: That's right. If you don't look back at your own past, you simply can't develop your unique strengths or achieve breakthroughs.

Higuchi: For companies too, I believe that no matter what kind of business they start, it won't succeed unless it incorporates the company's DNA. If there's something along that DNA's extension line that can create added value not yet offered to the world, that could become a new business. So, to achieve that, you really have to look back at your past, unravel your DNA from your company's achievements and culture. Without that, whatever you create next is unlikely to succeed.

But in the kinds of projects I'm called in for, they often try to cut that off and move forward. So the first thing I talk about is the past. I often say that unless you start by figuring out where your DNA lies, there's no answer.

Tametsu: Is that so?

Higuchi: People are often shocked when I say that if you think about the future or new ventures without looking at the past, you'll just end up resembling other companies. But that's the reality. It's surprisingly hard to realize that the value lies precisely in the uniqueness of your own past.

It comes down to discerning what you inherently possess, and then using that as the foundation to map out your growth model along a specific timeline. I feel this principle holds true whether you're an athlete or a company.

Tamesue: If we could systematize the approach to the timeline for growth using sports as a subject, it seems like we could extend that to the business realm too.

(Continued in Part 3)