Читать книгу The Ikigai Journey - Francesc Miralles - Страница 9

1st STATION

SHINKANSEN

“Bullet train” thinking

Before the train sets a course towards new horizons, let us look at the origin of the concept around which this adventure revolves. To do so, we will go back in time a quarter of a century to look at a man named Jack Welch.

Maybe you are not familiar with the name of General Electric’s chairman from 1982 to 2001, a man considered one of the best executives of the last century. Under his leadership a system was introduced to review employees’ objectives and tasks on a quarterly basis, which is still used to this day in most medium-sized and large companies.

His system worked reasonably well until he realized certain departments were starting to become less efficient.

What was going on?

The path of least resistance

On closely observing the operating processes, he realized the employees in the various departments were filling in their quarterly objectives sheet proposing incremental improvements and even trivialities. In other words, they would write down easily achievable objectives which they were sure of reaching by making as little effort as possible. What is popularly known as the path of least resistance.

Radical Change

Incremental Changes

Incremental vs Radical Omelette

An incremental change is one that adds a little improvement to something that already exists. For example, whenever it was that the first Spanish cook had the idea of adding sliced fried potatoes to the omelette, he managed to change it into a potato omelette. The omelette already existed, and the incremental improvement came from adding potatoes to it.

The radical improvement took place much earlier, when the first individual decided to break an egg, beat it and fry the result. Something that had not existed until then—the omelette—had been born. Unquestionably this was a culinary revolution.

We have all experienced it sometime; when a project’s main objectives have already been achieved, we then relax and do just enough to keep everything working. Let’s face it, we humans are lazy by nature, but if we want to better ourselves and reach new heights, we have to fight against complacency and lack of vision.

This is not restricted just to business matters. The path of least resistance also thrives in a variety of areas, such as:

• Looking after our body and personal health.

• Our relationship with our partner and/or children.

• Managing friendships and free time.

• Intellectual, artistic and even spiritual goals.

Whether out of laziness or because of the fast pace of our lives, we end up eating and sleeping in the same way, until our body gives us a serious warning, or we become stale with our partner until a crisis is provoked, and so on in all areas of our lives.

From time to time we make little adjustments and improvements, like the employees with their quarterly reviews, but they are just band-aids that fail to change the situation in any meaningful way.

It is not always a matter of laziness. Sometimes we are simply busy maintaining what we have devoted so much time to building, and we have neither the time nor the energy to take it to the next level.

Or perhaps true change scares us?

Mikawa’s secret

Jack Welch agonized over this problem, which is so typical of the human condition: how to motivate employees of the divisions that were already working quite well, so that they would take risks and keep on innovating?

He would find the answer on a trip he made to Tokyo in 1993.

On this trip he met Eiji Mikawa, the chairman of General Electric’s Japanese subsidiary and a specialist in medical technology.

Welch was impressed by the speed at which they introduced changes, outperforming the rest of General Electric’s divisions; the Japanese subsidiary had been launching the best and fastest TAC (computed tomography) machines in the world onto the market for years.

Mikawa explained to Welch the secret that inspired the book you are holding:

“If you want a train to go 10 km/h faster, you just add more horsepower to the engine. But if you need to go from 150 km/h to 300 km/h, you have to think about many other things.

Do we need to change all the tracks and make them wider? Do we have to change the suspension system?

Do we need to make the passenger cars more aerodynamic?

You have to think differently—outside the box. You won’t get a new train with a few modifications. You need to start from scratch with a whole new way of thinking.” ^*

A seemingly impossible assignment

To find the origin of this eye-opening concept, we have to go back to the year 1958. In the midst of the post-war economic miracle, the Japanese government issued direct orders to JR (Japan Railways) to find a quicker way to connect Tokyo with Osaka.

A few months later, the JR engineers presented a proposal for a train that would travel at an average speed of 100 km/h. This was a breakneck speed for the time and, had this first project become a reality, it would have resulted in one of the fastest trains in the world.

However, the JR executives’ response to the engineers was utterly unexpected:

“We need a train that goes twice as fast.”

The engineers were utterly astonished, and said it was absolutely impossible to achieve that; a 200 km/h train belonged to the realm of science-fiction movies.

The executives replied that they could spend as much money as they wanted since the government had given them carte blanche for that seemingly impossible project.

The Shinkansen effect

The engineers came back a few months later with a new proposal that implied a comprehensive change in all aspects of the future train. To achieve such an outrageous speed, they would need to:

• Change the shape, height and width of the railway tracks that had been used up until then in Japan.

• Spend a large part of the budget on making tunnels to cross the mountainous area around Mount Fuji.

• Completely redesign the concept of “a train” that people had at that time in order to come up with a lighter and more aerodynamic one and thus overcome air resistance.

Essentially, it would have been enough to carry out one or two improvements to gain 10 km/h, but to double the speed you had to change everything and approach this mode of transport with an entirely new way of thinking.

This radical change, this Shinkansen effect, is widely used in engineering and business, but we can also apply to all the “divisions” of our life.

To come back to the engineers’ “almost impossible mission,” in 1964—just six years after the government had thrown down the challenge—the first bullet train in history was inaugurated for the Tokyo Olympics.

Achieving a milestone that caused astonishment around the world, the Shinkansen connected Tokyo to Osaka at more than 200 km/h, cutting down the journey time between the two cities from six hours forty minutes to three hours ten minutes.

The innovations that came about through the development of the first bullet train in history would revolutionize train transportation on the entire planet for decades.

The first step towards that great breakthrough, the benefits of which are still visible today, came about when an entirely new way of thinking was adopted.

Shinkansen: The Bullet Train

The term shinkansen (新幹線) literally means “new trunk line.” The Japanese word is made up of the characters 新, “new,” 幹, “trunk” and 線, “line.” At the time of its inauguration, in 1964, the train called Hikari (The Light) covered the new trunk line route between Tokyo and Osaka, becoming the first high-speed train in history, reaching a speed in excess of 200 km/h. Both the Hikari train and the Shinkansen line came to be widely known abroad as “the Japanese bullet train.”

Shinkansen thinking

Eiji Mikawa was fond of talking about how “bullet train thinking” was applied to everything in his company. For example, if the directors in one of his divisions told him they were planning to reduce costs by five percent, he would ask them to think of ways to reduce them by fifty percent.

Jack Welch was so impressed by Eiji Mikawa’s approach that he imported the philosophy and applied it to General Electric, where he asked all his employees and divisions to add “bullet train objectives” to their quarterly reviews.

This is one of the main reasons why General Electric has remained competitive and continues to innovate, even though the company was founded more than a hundred years ago and has hundreds of thousands of employees.

“If you have an objective you think you are going to reach in ten years, the best strategy to make it happen is to think about how you can manage to reach the same objective in one year.”

Peter Thiel (Silicon Valley investor)

The companies or people that set “bullet train objectives” tend to end up standing out in our society.

For example, Elon Musk resolved to undertake what was in many people’s view the “crazy idea” of building rockets capable of taking off and landing; with his private company Space X he duly accomplished in less than ten years something that NASA had not managed to do in over fifty years of research and development.

Elon Musk has also designed the hyperloop, a land transport system that could reach speeds of 1200 km/h and, as a personal bullet train objective, he aims to send the first human to Mars. Will he accomplish it?

And what about you? In which area of your life do you want to apply the Shinkansen effect?

Set Your First Shinkansen Objective

For a dream or aspiration to deserve this label, it has to be seemingly impossible to achieve. If you feel you can achieve it relatively easily, it cannot be classed as a “bullet train objective.”

Visualizing seemingly impossible goals helps you to think laterally and to get rid of old ideas or processes.

Don’t be scared to write down your Shinkansen objectives.

Do you want to fly your own helicopter? Write it down.

Do you want to travel to Alaska and see the aurora borealis? Write it down.

Do you want your family business sales to triple? Write it down.

Do you want to direct a film? Write it down.

We insist on the writing it down part because the first step to achieving a personal milestone is as simple as writing it down.

Get started now:

My number 1 Shinkansen objective is:

Of course, just writing something down is not going to make it happen. Next, write down ten initiatives you will undertake to make it easier for you to accomplish your first bullet train objective. State the action, how you will do it and when you will start:

What you will do How you will do it When you will do it

1. —————————————————————————––––––

2. —————————————————————————––––––

3. —————————————————————————––––––

4. —————————————————————————––––––

5. —————————————————————————––––––

6. —————————————————————————––––––

7. —————————————————————————––––––

8. —————————————————————————––––––

9. —————————————————————————––––––

10.—————————————————————————––––––

For example, if my number 1 shinkansen objective is to give a speech in front of a thousand people, my action list could be as follows: buy books on how to speak in public, meet speakers who can give me advice, watch YouTube videos of speakers I admire, record myself practicing on camera and watch myself on the computer screen, prepare a simple talk for some local event with a small audience as practice, join a public speaking course, enroll in theater classes to overcome stage fright…

The Uruguayan coach Mario Reyes recommends specifying what we will do in each one of these actions, how we will do it and when we will start. For example:

What you will do	How you will do it	When you will do it
Read books about	Ask for guidance in a	Tomorrow at 2.30 pm
public speaking	specialized bookshop	on my work break

Once you have specified the ten actions, each one of them with its what, how and when, sign below this sheet, making a binding commitment to yourself and put it someplace you can see it during your daily routine.

Once signed, there is no turning back.

The bullet train will have started rolling.

Notes

* From the book Jack Welch speaks: Wit and Wisdom from the World’s Greatest Business Leader.