To avoid reducing everything to mere "how-to" solutions

December is already here.

When jingle bells ring through the streets, roast chicken is the usual fare on the dinner table. Yet for some reason, my family has always had simmered chicken.

As you can see, it's a dish where a whole chicken is simmered with vegetables. The seasoning is soy sauce-based. Where this recipe, which is neither distinctly Japanese nor Western, came from is a mystery, but the key point is the stuffing. We finely chop glutinous rice, onion, carrot, shiitake mushrooms, pine nuts, and liver to stuff inside.

However, getting it cooked to a plump, tender perfection is incredibly difficult. You'd think simmering it for a long time would do the trick, but then the outer meat becomes mushy and falls apart. Getting the balance right is absolutely crucial. I have a rough recipe written down, but the size of the chicken available at the butcher shop varies every year, and with only one attempt per year, it's hard to master the technique. So, this Christmas, I'm planning to rely on my mother's skills once again, as she celebrates her 88th birthday.

But enough digressions.

Looking back a bit on the year, "purpose" was once again a frequent topic in business circles. I heard talk like "Now is the time for purpose!" as the trump card to solve the long-term slump of Japanese companies and the changed relationship with consumers brought about by COVID.

On the other hand, I also encountered organizations that had put a lot of effort into setting their purpose, starting with the president, but after a while, they realized that nothing had changed, and they fell into a state of "purpose fatigue," so to speak.

Then there was "agile development." Instead of the "waterfall" approach, where development begins only after the overall plan for the desired program is finalized, there was a strong movement to adopt the "agile" method, which involves short, iterative development cycles that allow for flexible responses to customer requests and other factors. Come to think of it, design thinking also recommended "rapid prototyping" (*), so I witnessed cases where companies jumped into the market without sufficient preparation and ended up in a bind.

* = Rapid prototyping
A method used in the product development process, an approach that involves creating prototypes in a short period of time while considering issues and other factors.
 

Why does this keep happening?

In his book "Management by Intuition: Dynamic Management Theory Interpreted Through the 'Philosophy of Empathy'," management scholar Professor Ikujiro Nonaka, in a dialogue with philosopher Professor Ichiro Yamaguchi, stated the following:

It's often said that compared to the past, "how-to" knowledge no longer suffices, and that business professionals should now study the liberal arts. (Omitted)

However, even with the liberal arts—be it philosophy or history—if learning them becomes an end in itself, it ultimately becomes nothing more than how-to-style education. It won't become part of people's very being as they navigate life.

These days, design thinking is quite popular. It emphasizes solving problems through creative, designer-like perspectives rather than logical thinking. But isn't it possible that this too will ultimately be reduced to mere how-to? What's fundamentally needed here is a thorough examination of the essence of what education truly is and what it means for humans to possess intelligence. Yet, it seems to me that this critical awareness is particularly lacking in contemporary management studies.

("Intuitive Management: Dynamic Management Theory Interpreted Through the 'Philosophy of Empathy'" by Ikujiro Nonaka and Ichiro Yamaguchi, KADOKAWA)
 

This is a bit lengthy, but I quoted it because it's a very important point. For example, haven't we made setting a purpose itself the goal? Did we truly think through the relationship between an "exciting" purpose and objective methods like logical thinking or PDCA? Can a purpose even function without touching on the fundamental questions: "What is an organization?" and "What drives an organization?"

It's not just purpose, design thinking, or agile development—we've experienced countless buzzwords. And most were never truly understood at their core; they were reduced to mere how-to's and then forgotten. Isn't it time we stopped this unfortunate cycle?

I know this sounds like I'm making a huge, sweeping claim, but actually, right now, I'm working with colleagues internally to prepare a "new service to accelerate innovation within corporate organizations."

Instead of flaunting flashy concepts to appeal to novelty, we're tackling fundamental questions head-on: "What is an organization?" "What drives an organization?" "What is creativity, and at what points in organizational activities is it needed?" As a result, we're confident this is fundamentally different from previous efforts.

We plan to introduce this new service in our next column, coming in the New Year.

Enjoy!