Change begins with small steps. What 44 techniques revealed: How to move large corporations.

ONE JAPAN, a practical community gathering corporate volunteers primarily composed of young and mid-career employees from large corporations, released its new book " The Ultimate Guide to Hacking Large Corporations: Read This When You're Wondering Why Your Company Can't Change! " (Diamond Inc.) on November 2, 2021.

This book, which could be called the culmination of ONE JAPAN's five-year journey, compiles 44 amazing techniques devised by 3,000 people across 55 companies to realize their "desired actions" within large corporations. Web Dentsu Inc. News will present the publication's aims, background, the passion behind it, and the perspectives gained from gathering these techniques over several installments, featuring guests.

This time, we invited Mr. Kazumitsu Kambara, Deputy Representative of ONE JAPAN and the book's planning and production supervisor, along with Mr. Tatsuya Hirohata, the editor in charge from Diamond Inc. Masahide Yoshida, a member of Dentsu Inc. Youth Research Department and affiliated with ONE JAPAN, conducted the interview.

Practical Techniques to Push "Corporate Executives" Forward: Down-to-Earth, Hands-On, and Super Practical

Yoshida: I'd like to ask both of you: Why publish a book focused on large corporations now? And what is the value of working for a large corporation in today's era?

Kambara: ONE JAPAN is a practical community launched in 2016 by 120 young and mid-career professionals from 26 large corporations. It's a group of people who, in environments where it's difficult to challenge new things or pursue innovation, chose neither to leave their organizations nor to conform to them, but instead to change their organizations. Since its inception five years ago, its activities have grown significantly, now encompassing 55 large corporations and over 3,000 members. With accumulated insights and achievements from these activities, we felt this was the right time to share them. Our initial motivation was to compile the essential, practical techniques of people genuinely acting on the belief, "Let's seriously change large corporations!" and present them to the world.

Hirohata: When Mr. Kambara first approached me, the phrase that immediately came to mind was the all-too-familiar lament: "Our company just can't change..." I intuitively thought that if people sighing like that could actually transform their companies, Japan might just change.

Then, when I actually looked at the "techniques" ONE JAPAN had collected, they were all, to put it bluntly, "down-to-earth and gritty" things like "explaining what you want to do using the language your boss normally uses." But they were incredibly practical and surprisingly unarticulated areas. I thought that if we gathered a lot of these, we could create a book unlike anything else out there.

Yoshida: In recent years, media has frequently discussed Japan's economic stagnation and the poor performance of large corporations. Some young people, in particular, are even proclaiming that "big corporations are finished." What was the aim behind choosing large corporations as a theme at this specific moment?

Hirohata: I often cover startups, so I've seen their unique speed and transformative momentum up close. But I've also witnessed countless instances where things really shifted, or had massive societal impact, when startups partnered with large corporations. That's precisely why I believe that if large corporations truly mobilize, society will absolutely change. The significance of compiling these seemingly minor yet reliably effective techniques – ones that make corporate employees think "I could do this too" – is immense.

Kambara's Technique: The "Survey" for Tripartite Benefit
Using awareness surveys as a catalyst, boost each individual's motivation to participate in organizational activities, and leverage that collective impact to drive change within the company and society.
illustration: Takanobu Murabayashi

Whether large corporations, startups, or student groups, launching initiatives requires the skill of "how to move things forward."

Yoshida: Working on organizational culture reform, I often see a disconnect between vision and daily operations – a "that's that, this is this" separation. Frontline staff are focused on delivering immediate results, not grand visions. Even when exposed to high-level concepts from business books, they struggle to see how to apply them or what to change. The "small techniques" gathered in this book might bridge that gap. When people hear "transformation," they often imagine tackling something huge and monumental. But meeting diverse individuals through ONE JAPAN has shown me that daily, small actions are crucial. Sometimes, simply nurturing the strengths you already possess can lead to surprising change.

Kambara: Even if you say "Move the company! Change the big corporation!", each company operates in different industries and sectors, with completely different organizational structures. The "techniques" honed within them might not work elsewhere, and frankly, they're often the kind of things you wouldn't want to share with others. They're a kind of "trade secret." But the greatest uniqueness of this book is that it elevates these techniques to a level where anyone can apply them at other companies, and furthermore, it shares them openly, revealing both company names and individual names. It's not "Mr. A from publicly listed company XX Inc."—it's real people sharing their actual "big company hacks."

Yoshida: It's incredibly concrete, isn't it? The concept of a "large corporation" itself is abstract, right? What exactly is this "our company" in "Our company can't change"? That crucial part remains unexplained. ONE JAPAN's approach seems to be tackling that in a concrete and cross-cutting way.

Hirohata: In large organizations like corporations, when people say "our company," they often mean just "our department" or "our team." It's like a frog in a well. Sometimes the amazing person you think is outside "our place" is actually just a little further out, or the person sitting next to you turns out to be the key person for change. When you think about it that way, things really start moving from the smallest actions.

Kambara: I agree completely. Whether it's a large corporation or a startup, to achieve anything, you need to engage people and get them moving. And the more significant the impact on society, the more often you'll need to mobilize the entire company. You could say this book explains how to do that. It's a collection of techniques on "organizational logic and how to move it" that will be useful not only for those feeling stuck in large corporations but also for people in startups and students.

Yoshida: On the other hand, I imagine some students might wonder, "Why are these people so focused on changing big corporations? What's the point?"

Hirohata: It's true that if you see changing large corporations as the end goal, you might feel that way. But the people featured in this book aim to change society beyond just changing large corporations. Naturally, one person cannot change society alone, so coordinating interests inevitably occurs regardless of an organization's size. I think the specific methods for overcoming these challenges are information that, surprisingly, hasn't been articulated much until now.

Yoshida: I see. So while the book uses large corporations as its subject matter, it's essentially about the interpersonal dynamics revealed through that context and how to solve complex systems problems.

Kambara: For students, I think it would be helpful to read it by applying the concepts to things like "how to run a club" or "how to change an athletic association." In that sense, it's a book with lessons for everyone (laughs).

Yoshida's Technique: Mini-Company
By creating and operating small teams modeled after companies, you gain diverse perspectives and a higher vantage point. Once you acquire a broader view, it becomes easier to freely express your own thoughts and ideas.
illustration: Takanobu Murabayashi

Reclaiming the Individual's "Subject" Hidden Within Large Corporations

Yoshida: Finally, could you share the key points you focused on when creating this book?

Kambara: I believe we're now in the era of by-name, meaning the era of the individual's name. But even looking at a single SNS account, for example, large corporate accounts are often run under the company name or department name, obscuring the person behind it and their face. That's precisely why I wanted to make it clear what the "people inside" large corporations actually think and how they tried to tackle things.

Hirohata: What we focused on this time was always asking during interviews about the background behind why someone had to create that particular skill. What were they struggling with? What were they striving for? What kind of skill emerged as a result? And what kind of change did it bring about? Digging deep into that often revealed how it actually aligned with the founding principles of their company or overlapped with the company's stated vision. Personally, I found it fascinating to observe this dynamic from a bird's-eye view: how something originating from an individual becomes a company's strength and ultimately connects to broader societal change.

Yoshida: Listening to both of you, I felt like the era when large corporations were optimized machines is ending, and we're returning to an era centered on people. The stories where skills born not from officially created company methods, but from situations where individuals had no choice but to invent them, led to corporate transformation – clearly, the individual is the protagonist here.

Hirohata: Conversely, you could also see it as individuals having been hidden behind corporate anonymity all this time. The cases gathered here show individuals reclaiming their sense of "this is what I want to do" while demonstrating these seemingly minor skills. Precisely because the subject – "Who is using this skill?" – is clear, there is learning and empathy born from it.

Yoshida: That really clicks for me now. I suspect the true nature of "big company disease" is the loss of the subject. When things get decided by phrases like "that's how it's always been done" or "it was decided by upper management," or by reading the room and unspoken expectations, it's a state where there's no subject—just mechanisms driving things forward. We could see these 44 stories as attempts to reclaim the reins with clear intent.

Kambara: It's also significant that the ones speaking as the subject aren't "influencers" or "opinion leaders," but precisely the mid-level and younger staff on the front lines. To use a somewhat nostalgic analogy, they're the "stars on the ground."

Yoshida: Indeed, the assumption that only celebrities or successful people can express opinions is a form of illness. Anyone, regardless of their position, should be able to say, "This is what I want to do," or "This is how I want to change the company." This book encourages each individual to become the subject of their own story.

The Ultimate Guide to Hacking Large Corporations: For When You're Struggling with "Why Can't Our Company Change!" is now available! Details here.