The Japanese have always loved fresh fish. But the waters close to Japan have not held many fish for decades. So to feed the Japanese population, fishing boats got bigger and went farther than ever.
The farther the fishermen went, the longer it took to bring in the fish. If the return trip took more than a few days, the fish were not fresh. The Japanese did not like the taste.
To solve this problem, fishing companies installed freezers on their boats. They would catch the fish and freeze them at sea. Freezers allowed the boats to go farther and stay longer. However, the Japanese could taste the difference between fresh and frozen, and they did not like frozen fish.
The frozen fish brought a lower price. So fishing companies installed fish tanks. They would catch the fish and stuff them in the tanks, fin to fin. After a little thrashing around, the fish stopped moving. They were tired and dull, but alive. Unfortunately, the Japanese could still taste the difference. Because the fish did not move for days, they lost their fresh-fish taste. The Japanese preferred the lively taste of fresh fish, not sluggish fish.
So how did Japanese fishing companies solve this problem? How do they get fresh-tasting fish to Japan? If you were consulting the fish industry, what would you recommend?
How Japanese Fish Stay Fresh:
To keep the fish tasting fresh, the Japanese fishing companies still put the fish in the tanks. But now they add a small shark to each tank. The shark eats a few fish, but most of the fish arrive in a very lively state. The fish are challenged.
Have you realized that some of us are also living in a pond but most of the time tired & dull, so we need a Shark in our life to keep us awake and moving? Basically in our lives Sharks are new challenges to keep us active and taste better...
The more intelligent, persistent, and competent you are, the more you enjoy a challenge.
If your challenges are the correct size, and if you are steadily conquering those challenges, you are a conqueror. You think of your challenges and get energized. You are excited to try new solutions.
From India, Hyderabad
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41The farther the fishermen went, the longer it took to bring in the fish. If the return trip took more than a few days, the fish were not fresh. The Japanese did not like the taste.
To solve this problem, fishing companies installed freezers on their boats. They would catch the fish and freeze them at sea. Freezers allowed the boats to go farther and stay longer. However, the Japanese could taste the difference between fresh and frozen, and they did not like frozen fish.
The frozen fish brought a lower price. So fishing companies installed fish tanks. They would catch the fish and stuff them in the tanks, fin to fin. After a little thrashing around, the fish stopped moving. They were tired and dull, but alive. Unfortunately, the Japanese could still taste the difference. Because the fish did not move for days, they lost their fresh-fish taste. The Japanese preferred the lively taste of fresh fish, not sluggish fish.
So how did Japanese fishing companies solve this problem? How do they get fresh-tasting fish to Japan? If you were consulting the fish industry, what would you recommend?
How Japanese Fish Stay Fresh:
To keep the fish tasting fresh, the Japanese fishing companies still put the fish in the tanks. But now they add a small shark to each tank. The shark eats a few fish, but most of the fish arrive in a very lively state. The fish are challenged.
Have you realized that some of us are also living in a pond but most of the time tired & dull, so we need a Shark in our life to keep us awake and moving? Basically in our lives Sharks are new challenges to keep us active and taste better...
The more intelligent, persistent, and competent you are, the more you enjoy a challenge.
If your challenges are the correct size, and if you are steadily conquering those challenges, you are a conqueror. You think of your challenges and get energized. You are excited to try new solutions.
From India, Hyderabad
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Hello,
It is a very nice story with a valuable lesson. Japanese are famous for innovating many new things. One example is when the Americans went to space, there was a problem with writing using a pen because the temperature was so low that the pen could not write. They conducted extensive research and worked on it for years to find a solution. Eventually, they developed a pen that could write in low temperatures.
What the Japanese did in response to this issue was ingenious: they took some pencils and used them for writing. 😊
Regards,
Prof. Nivedita
From Germany
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It is a very nice story with a valuable lesson. Japanese are famous for innovating many new things. One example is when the Americans went to space, there was a problem with writing using a pen because the temperature was so low that the pen could not write. They conducted extensive research and worked on it for years to find a solution. Eventually, they developed a pen that could write in low temperatures.
What the Japanese did in response to this issue was ingenious: they took some pencils and used them for writing. 😊
Regards,
Prof. Nivedita
From Germany
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Dear Prof. Nivedita,
Your example is an excellent one. It's always true in our life that we do not identify the resources available within our hands' reach; instead, we break our heads to find new and unidentifiable resources to complete a job, as Americans did.
Regards,
Chinna
From Ireland, Dublin
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Your example is an excellent one. It's always true in our life that we do not identify the resources available within our hands' reach; instead, we break our heads to find new and unidentifiable resources to complete a job, as Americans did.
Regards,
Chinna
From Ireland, Dublin
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Hello! THat story was class, some thing similar to : the finest of steel comes through deadly fire freeing itself from all volatile impurites! best regards Jeevan
From India, Pune
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From India, Pune
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It is a good story. It really has a very important lesson for all of us to learn. Just to note, the story which Prof. quoted - I think it was the Russians and not the Japanese. Maybe I am wrong, but I don't think the Japanese ever ventured into space.
Regards,
Praveen
From India
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Regards,
Praveen
From India
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Thanks, Mallet, for sharing this wonderful story. I got some more information on Japanese Management, so I thought of sharing it with you all.
JAPANESE MANAGEMENT - SOME FACTS ABOUT JAPANESE MANAGEMENT
The culture of Japanese management, so famous in the West, is generally limited to Japan's large corporations. These flagships of the Japanese economy provide their workers with excellent salaries, working conditions, and secure employment. These companies and their employees are the business elite of Japan. A career with such a company was the dream of many young people in Japan, but only a select few attain these jobs. Qualification for employment is limited to the men and few women who graduate from the top thirty colleges and universities in Japan.
Placement and advancement of Japanese workers are heavily based on educational background. Students who do not gain admission to the most highly rated colleges only rarely have the chance to work for a large company. Instead, they have to seek positions in small and medium-sized firms that cannot offer comparable benefits and prestige. The quality of one's education and, more importantly, the college attended, play decisive roles in a person's career.
Few Japanese attend graduate school, and graduate training in business per se is rare. There are only a few business school programs in Japan. Companies provide their own training and show a strong preference for young men who can be trained in the company way. Interest in a person whose attitudes and work habits are shaped outside the company is low. When young men are preparing to graduate from college, they begin the search for a suitable employer. This process has been very difficult: there are only a few positions in the best government ministries, and quite often entry into a good firm is determined by competitive examination. The situation is becoming less competitive, with a gradual decrease in the number of candidates. New workers enter their companies as a group on April 1 each year.
One of the prominent features of Japanese management is the practice of permanent employment (shushin koyo). Permanent employment covers the minority of the workforce that works for the major companies. Management trainees, traditionally nearly all of whom were men, are recruited directly from colleges when they graduate in the late winter and, if they survive a six-month probationary period with the company, are expected to stay with the companies for their entire working careers. Employees are not dismissed thereafter on any grounds, except for serious breaches of ethics.
Permanent employees are hired as generalists, not as specialists for specific positions. A new worker is not hired because of any special skill or experience; rather, the individual's intelligence, educational background, and personal attitudes and attributes are closely examined. On entering a Japanese corporation, the new employee will train from six to twelve months in each of the firm's major offices or divisions. Thus, within a few years, a young employee will know every facet of company operations, knowledge which allows companies to be more productive.
Another unique aspect of Japanese management is the system of promotion and reward. An important criterion is seniority. Seniority is determined by the year an employee's class enters the company. Career progression is highly predictable, regulated, and automatic. Compensation for young workers is quite low, but they accept low pay with the understanding that their pay will increase in regular increments and be quite high by retirement. Compensation consists of a wide range of tangible and intangible benefits, including housing assistance, inexpensive vacations, good recreational facilities, and, most importantly, the availability of low-cost loans for such expenses as housing and a new automobile. Regular pay is often augmented by generous semiannual bonuses. Members of the same graduating class usually start with similar salaries, and salary increases and promotions each year are generally uniform. The purpose is to maintain harmony and avoid stress and jealousy within the group.
Individual evaluation, however, does occur. Early in workers' careers, by age thirty, distinctions are made in pay and job assignments. During the latter part of workers' careers, another weeding takes place, as only the best workers are selected for accelerated advancement into upper management. Those employees who fail to advance are forced to retire from the company in their mid-to-late fifties. Retirement does not necessarily mean a life of leisure. Poor pension benefits and modest social security mean that many people have to continue working after retiring from a career. Many management retirees work for the smaller subsidiaries of the large companies, with another company, or with the large company itself at substantially lower salaries.
A few major corporations in the late 1980s were experimenting with variations of permanent employment and automatic promotion. Some rewarded harder work and higher production with higher raises and more rapid promotions, but most retained the more traditional forms of hiring and advancement. A few companies that experienced serious reverses laid off workers, but such instances were rare.
Another aspect of Japanese management is the company union, which most regular company employees are obliged to join. The workers do not have a separate skill identification outside of the company. Despite federations of unions at the national level, the union does not exist as an entity separate from, or with an adversarial relationship to, the company. The linking of the company with the worker puts severe limits on independent union action, and the worker does not wish to harm the economic well-being of the company. Strikes are rare and usually brief.
Japanese managerial style and decision-making in large companies emphasize the flow of information and initiative from the bottom up, making top management a facilitator rather than the source of authority, while middle management is both the impetus for and the shaper of policy. Consensus is stressed as a way of arriving at decisions, and close attention is paid to workers' well-being. Rather than serve as an important decision-maker, the ranking officer of a company has the responsibility of maintaining harmony so that employees can work together.
Cheers,
Archna
From India, Delhi
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JAPANESE MANAGEMENT - SOME FACTS ABOUT JAPANESE MANAGEMENT
The culture of Japanese management, so famous in the West, is generally limited to Japan's large corporations. These flagships of the Japanese economy provide their workers with excellent salaries, working conditions, and secure employment. These companies and their employees are the business elite of Japan. A career with such a company was the dream of many young people in Japan, but only a select few attain these jobs. Qualification for employment is limited to the men and few women who graduate from the top thirty colleges and universities in Japan.
Placement and advancement of Japanese workers are heavily based on educational background. Students who do not gain admission to the most highly rated colleges only rarely have the chance to work for a large company. Instead, they have to seek positions in small and medium-sized firms that cannot offer comparable benefits and prestige. The quality of one's education and, more importantly, the college attended, play decisive roles in a person's career.
Few Japanese attend graduate school, and graduate training in business per se is rare. There are only a few business school programs in Japan. Companies provide their own training and show a strong preference for young men who can be trained in the company way. Interest in a person whose attitudes and work habits are shaped outside the company is low. When young men are preparing to graduate from college, they begin the search for a suitable employer. This process has been very difficult: there are only a few positions in the best government ministries, and quite often entry into a good firm is determined by competitive examination. The situation is becoming less competitive, with a gradual decrease in the number of candidates. New workers enter their companies as a group on April 1 each year.
One of the prominent features of Japanese management is the practice of permanent employment (shushin koyo). Permanent employment covers the minority of the workforce that works for the major companies. Management trainees, traditionally nearly all of whom were men, are recruited directly from colleges when they graduate in the late winter and, if they survive a six-month probationary period with the company, are expected to stay with the companies for their entire working careers. Employees are not dismissed thereafter on any grounds, except for serious breaches of ethics.
Permanent employees are hired as generalists, not as specialists for specific positions. A new worker is not hired because of any special skill or experience; rather, the individual's intelligence, educational background, and personal attitudes and attributes are closely examined. On entering a Japanese corporation, the new employee will train from six to twelve months in each of the firm's major offices or divisions. Thus, within a few years, a young employee will know every facet of company operations, knowledge which allows companies to be more productive.
Another unique aspect of Japanese management is the system of promotion and reward. An important criterion is seniority. Seniority is determined by the year an employee's class enters the company. Career progression is highly predictable, regulated, and automatic. Compensation for young workers is quite low, but they accept low pay with the understanding that their pay will increase in regular increments and be quite high by retirement. Compensation consists of a wide range of tangible and intangible benefits, including housing assistance, inexpensive vacations, good recreational facilities, and, most importantly, the availability of low-cost loans for such expenses as housing and a new automobile. Regular pay is often augmented by generous semiannual bonuses. Members of the same graduating class usually start with similar salaries, and salary increases and promotions each year are generally uniform. The purpose is to maintain harmony and avoid stress and jealousy within the group.
Individual evaluation, however, does occur. Early in workers' careers, by age thirty, distinctions are made in pay and job assignments. During the latter part of workers' careers, another weeding takes place, as only the best workers are selected for accelerated advancement into upper management. Those employees who fail to advance are forced to retire from the company in their mid-to-late fifties. Retirement does not necessarily mean a life of leisure. Poor pension benefits and modest social security mean that many people have to continue working after retiring from a career. Many management retirees work for the smaller subsidiaries of the large companies, with another company, or with the large company itself at substantially lower salaries.
A few major corporations in the late 1980s were experimenting with variations of permanent employment and automatic promotion. Some rewarded harder work and higher production with higher raises and more rapid promotions, but most retained the more traditional forms of hiring and advancement. A few companies that experienced serious reverses laid off workers, but such instances were rare.
Another aspect of Japanese management is the company union, which most regular company employees are obliged to join. The workers do not have a separate skill identification outside of the company. Despite federations of unions at the national level, the union does not exist as an entity separate from, or with an adversarial relationship to, the company. The linking of the company with the worker puts severe limits on independent union action, and the worker does not wish to harm the economic well-being of the company. Strikes are rare and usually brief.
Japanese managerial style and decision-making in large companies emphasize the flow of information and initiative from the bottom up, making top management a facilitator rather than the source of authority, while middle management is both the impetus for and the shaper of policy. Consensus is stressed as a way of arriving at decisions, and close attention is paid to workers' well-being. Rather than serve as an important decision-maker, the ranking officer of a company has the responsibility of maintaining harmony so that employees can work together.
Cheers,
Archna
From India, Delhi
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True about Japan……….. most of them are not born innovative like people tend to think but they constantly seek to be innovative.
From Sri Lanka
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From Sri Lanka
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Dear Mallet,
The story was an interesting one. This shows that the Japanese always want the best, and if they don't get it, they will innovate new procedures to obtain it. It is true that we also sometimes feel tired and dull, which does not allow us to keep up with the competition in the world.
I agree that we must always be active and generate innovative ideas. Only then can we be sure to succeed with flying colors.
Warm Regards,
Nithya
From India, Madras
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The story was an interesting one. This shows that the Japanese always want the best, and if they don't get it, they will innovate new procedures to obtain it. It is true that we also sometimes feel tired and dull, which does not allow us to keep up with the competition in the world.
I agree that we must always be active and generate innovative ideas. Only then can we be sure to succeed with flying colors.
Warm Regards,
Nithya
From India, Madras
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I did ask everyone about the Shark that keeps them running...But none of them replied... What are the challenges an HR faces on a everyday basis? Regards, Mallet
From India, Hyderabad
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From India, Hyderabad
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Dear Mallet,
It's a really nice lesson to keep oneself on pace to face challenges. However, sometimes people may not accept shocks because they create unhealthy environments too. Healthy competition exists where you are not afraid of others but where an individual wants to prove himself/herself that he/she is worthy of it.
With Regards,
Om Prakash
From India, Vadodara
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It's a really nice lesson to keep oneself on pace to face challenges. However, sometimes people may not accept shocks because they create unhealthy environments too. Healthy competition exists where you are not afraid of others but where an individual wants to prove himself/herself that he/she is worthy of it.
With Regards,
Om Prakash
From India, Vadodara
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