100,000 copies sold in one month! The book written by the first doctor of business administration of the University of Tokyo, who tells us that love, loneliness and old age are “made of management”.
It is bringing misery to individuals and society. ……
A new book, “The World is Made of Management,” which overturns the management concepts prevalent in the world, is selling well.
Published in January of this year, it has sold over 150,000 copies so far. The author is Associate Professor Shunpei Iwao of Keio University’s Faculty of Commerce. He is the first PhD in business administration in the history of the University of Tokyo, and is regarded as a hope in the business administration world.
In the introduction to “The World is Made of Management,” Dr. Iwao asserts, “Everyday life is full of management.
Everyday life is full of management.
He defines “management” as follows.
The original definition of management is “the creation of a prosperous community by reexamining the nature, significance, and effectiveness of intermediate goals and means toward the ultimate goal of value creation (i.e., making others and oneself happy at the same time), and eliminating conflicts that prevent the realization of the ultimate goal.
Under this concept of management, everyone is a party to managing his or her life. (From “The World is Made of Management,” Introduction)
However, how many people realize that they are managing their own lives?
We interviewed Dr. Iwao.
Dr. Iwao said, ” When people hear the word ‘management,’ only a few people probably think of the original meaning of the word, which is to realize the happiness of the entire community while resolving conflicts through value creation.
In Japan today, there is an assumption that value is finite, and everyone is exhausted from trying to compete for that finite value. I had a hypothesis that this “finite value thinking” is causing business failures and bringing unhappiness to individuals and society.
If we do not change this thinly spread thinking, everyone will become poor. I became convinced of this and wrote this book with the aim of reorienting the concept of management.
The new book written by the up-and-coming management scholar quickly became a bestseller. Dr. Iwao has received comments from female readers and people who do not read management books very often, saying that they found the book interesting.
I wanted this book to be widely read, so from the beginning, I emphasized that it should sell for a long time rather than just be a fad and sell explosively, ” he said. However, in order to sell for a long period of time, you also need to have an initial burst of energy.
In fact, we changed the incendiary sentence in the obi once. When the book was first released, it was “Why are bosses incompetent? but after it sold over 100,000 copies, it was changed to “Everyone is a manager for life! Since it has sold over 100,000 copies, we have changed the title to “Everyone is a manager for life!
If you are aiming for a hit only this year, “Why is your boss incompetent? would have been more suitable because it was catchy and eye-catching. In fact, after the Obi was changed, sales slowed down dramatically.
But our goal was not to be catchy enough to be accepted only this year, but to be “a book that will change the way 10 million people think in 50 years,” even if they have to borrow it from the library to read it. To achieve this major goal, we sacrificed short-term sales, and at a stage when the number of people who misunderstood the book was increasing due to the inflammatory tone of the obi, we changed the subtitle to accurately convey the contents of the book and put the brakes on it all at once.
Can we consider this kind of trickery as part of management?
In a sense, it could be said that how we disseminate the book’s content to the world is also part of management.
The “everyone is a manager in the workplace” mentality that existed in Japan during its period of rapid economic growth.
National management, school management, hospital management, home management, sound management, and integrated management. …… Looking around, Japanese society is full of “XX management. Despite this, management tends to be equated with “corporate money-making.
The reason for the rapid loss of original management in Japan is that the appreciation of the yen and deflation during the Heisei era increased the value of money, which should have been a mere means to an end, and people have been driven by the means of money, neglecting the goal, which should have been human community. (From “The World is Made of Management,” “Conclusion”)
In this book, Dr. Iwao makes this point.
One of the reasons for the loss of original management in Japan was the Plaza Accord of 1985, when the yen continued to appreciate in value both domestically and internationally.
After the Plaza Accord, the combination of low interest rate policy and domestic deflation created a situation where rich people invested in land that could be used as collateral and borrowed money again using the land as collateral, creating a situation where money could be made by throwing oneself into the world of money creation. This was the so-called “bubble economy,” and in the true sense of the word, business management was in fact losing money all the time.
As a result, the company fell into a situation where its mind was dominated by investment and finance, rather than by attracting people and creating new value. I see that a few years later, when the bubble burst, we entered a world where the rich, a few years behind the common people, actually lived or died depending on how skillfully they managed their money.
On the other hand, how was it before the Heisei era? Did people in the Showa period understand the true nature of business management?
In the manufacturing industry, which supported the Japanese economy during the Showa period, management knowledge was distributed thinly and widely in the form of QC circle activities (small group improvement activities), and management was practiced in which people played a leading role in value creation. For example, the Kyocera Philosophy and the Toyota Production System are the same in this sense.
In Japan during the Showa period (1926-1989), many manufacturing companies, including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), engaged in QC circles and improvement activities. Even outside of the manufacturing industry, there was a sense of “everyone working in the workplace is a manager,” at least during Japan’s period of rapid economic growth.
A country that had no oil or other natural resources in the first place had to recover from a burnt-out wilderness to become the world’s second largest economy in just 20 years or so, so there was no choice but to extract abundant value from the oil field that is the human brain.
However, we entered deflation just as the awareness that everyone was a manager in the workplace was slowly spreading. So in the Showa period, there was probably not a majority of people who thought that everyone was the manager of their lives.
Reiwa and Parody: Reexamining the Meaning of Management
The Reiwa era is returning to the high-growth-era economy of a weak yen and inflation. There is a growing realization that “the lack of human resources, rather than money, is bringing about a crisis in business management. Reorienting the concept of management is truly the issue of the day. (From “The World is Made of Management,” “Conclusion”)
It has been 40 years since the original concept of management was lost. It is precisely because of this urgent need to reorient the concept of management that Dr. Iwao has brought out “The World is Made of Management. In order to “make the book widely read for a long time,” Dr. Iwao even created the “Reiwa and cold-hearted” style of writing, which he says is modeled after the Showa era frivolous style typified by Makoto Shiina.
The book consists of 15 chapters, including “Family is Made of Management,” “Work is Made of Management,” and “Old Age is Made of Management. After highlighting the fact that lack of management brings misfortune and tragedy in every aspect of life, the book provides solutions.
Let me quote from the book.
For example, after a week of overconsumption of salt and sugar, you find yourself craving for ramen and order “more flavor, more fat, less vegetables, two extra slices of pork and extra bowls of noodles. (Omitted).
Eating a heavy meal after dieting causes blood sugar and blood pressure to rise sharply, placing a heavy burden on the blood vessels. Thus, the blood vessels become battered, which leads to the following diseases. (omitted).
When a person falls ill, he or she loses not only the cost of medical treatment but also the income that would have been earned if he or she had been working healthy.
From this point on, the failure of health-related management becomes not a comedy but a tragedy. (omitted).
Health is management. To create the value of health, we must remove the barriers to health. (from “The World is Made of Management,” “Health is Made of Management)
This book is written in the style of a “Reiwa cold-comedy essay,” so even though it is a management book, you will find yourself smiling and nodding along with cynical laughter as you read it, drawing it back into your own life.
We have taken advantage of the power of literature to convey the idea that everyone is a manager in life.” It is not enough to present data, facts, and logic in an objective way to get readers to reconsider their concept of management. In order to change people’s thinking, I needed a literary method that would allow me to enter the reader’s subjective viewpoint.”
As you will see when you read the book, Dr. Iwao has a considerable knowledge of literature. The subheadings in the chapters of this book are all “made up of parodies,” which he says were “created by referring to existing literary works, film works, and philosophy books.
《” All Boring on Rye: The “Poverty Trap” of Unclear Purpose 》 (J. D. Salinger, “The Catcher in the Rye”)
Remnants of the Stomach: “Too Much of a Good Thing” in the context of health (Kazuo Ishiguro, “Remnants of the Sun”).
The Masked Accusation: The Disease of Ranking Supremacy Among Scientists ” (Yukio Mishima, “Confessions of a Masked Man”)
(Yukio Mishima, “Confessions of a Mask”). It is also fun to compare the subheadings with the reference works lined up at the end of the book.
When I was a student, I joined a literary circle called the Mita Literature Jukujyuseikai and wrote literary works, which were critiqued by Professor Anna Ogino at a joint review meeting with the Keio Pen Club.
For the subheadings, I chose works that were not just a parody, but were related to the content of the piece. For example, the subheading “Farewell, Management-Hating Otona” is a parody of Makoto Shiina’s “Farewell, Obaba of Kokubunji Bookstore,” but I chose it as a subheading because it matches what I am trying to say. The style of this section is also in the Showa era frivolous style.
It is not difficult to imagine the considerable effort that must have gone into this book. Literature lovers will be delighted every time they encounter the ingenious devices and contrivances scattered throughout the book.
Unfortunately, I feel that the book does not reach a sufficient number of book lovers and literary types. The mere mention of the word ‘management’ is likely to put off people who read literary works and philosophy books. I tried to make the title in the style of an essay, but I don’t think it is easy to get people to pick up the book, perhaps because they have the assumption that it is a kind of business book. ……
I write in both the Introduction and the Conclusion that this book is about rethinking the concept of management. I hope that as readers read this book, they will think, “Is this management?” I hope that readers will start reading it slowly. I hope that readers will start reading it slowly.
I am sure that by reading this book, the reader will develop the awareness that he or she is a participant in the management of his or her own life.
Shumpei Iwao is an associate professor at the Faculty of Commerce, Keio University. D. in Business Administration from the University of Tokyo. He has served as a councilor of the Organization Studies Association of Japan and as a board member of the Japan Society of Production Management. He is the author of “Why Do Japanese Companies Discard Their ‘Strengths’? (Nihon Keizai Shimbun Publishing), “Kaizen” that Generates Innovation (Yuhikaku), and others. Co-author of “Hajimete no Operation Keiei” (First Time Operation Management) (Yuhikaku Stadia).
Interview and text by： Sayuri Saito
