Organizational problems occur in the 'space' between people. Empirical rules from Koji Asano of 'THE TEAM'

“When things aren't going well in an organization, people tend to look for the cause in a specific individual, but organizational problems often occur in the 'space' between people.”

Koji Asano has worked as an organizational HR consultant, handling everything from organizational transformation for companies to product development and investment.

What did he learn from his past experience of struggling when he couldn't manage the team he led?

Asano:In my eighth year after joining 'Link and Motivation' as a new graduate, I became the youngest executive at the time for the organizational HR consulting division for small and medium-sized venture companies. My job was to support organizational development for venture companies with dozens of employees and see them through to growing to a scale of 1,000 employees.

While I was involved in supporting the organizations of renowned growth companies, I hit a major wall. Even though I was in a position to support corporate organizational HR, my own department was on the verge of collapse. How could I be in a department that supports organizational development for clients, yet be unable to build our own organization? I thought that if I introduced the right business strategy, I could turn it around, so I tried various things. But even after two years, it didn't recover. Performance remained sluggish, and resignations didn't stop.

During that time, I went out for drinks with a senior colleague. When I said, 'I'm thinking of turning the business around like this,' he retorted, 'Your talk is all about the 'how-to'. That's not it; you need to rethink your 'way of being'.' That hit me hard.

'Do I need to change my way of being?' While I was brooding over this, I reread 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,' which I had tucked away on my bookshelf. It is a business book in which management consultant Stephen R. Covey summarizes the common habits of successful people. One of the habits introduced was 'Seek first to understand, then to be understood.' I thought, 'Ah, this is it!'

Reconnecting with a book is all about timing, isn't it? When I first read this book as a university student, the message 'Seek first to understand, then to be understood' just ended with me thinking, 'Well, obviously.'

But when I reread it, I was desperate, having failed at everything I tried. Just as you can't appreciate water unless you are extremely thirsty, my perception of these words was completely different from when I first read them.

I rethought, 'I was always wanting to be understood, wanting to be understood, but had I been understanding my subordinates' emotions and feelings... No, I hadn't.'

Soon after, I gathered the members of my department and listened to them for about two hours.

Asano:When I asked, 'What are you thinking right now?', the initial reaction was 'Nothing in particular,' but as I waited for their true feelings, they started to trickle out. 'Asano-san, you think of us as pawns, don't you?' 'Asano-san, you have no intention of listening to us, do you?'

When I was told, 'You think of us as pawns,' I almost replied, 'No, I don't think that.' But I told myself, 'No, this isn't the time to have myself understood. This is the time to understand the other person,' and I asked back, 'Why did you think I saw you as pawns?'

I also reflected on my own behavior up until then.
For example, I would suddenly interrupt what the other person was saying, or prioritize visiting clients over meetings with my subordinates. If that was my attitude, it was no wonder they thought, 'I'm not valued.'

I stopped interrupting people during meetings. I stopped looking only at my smartphone while on the move. As I corrected these things one by one, the atmosphere in the workplace changed within a week or two. Until then, I honestly dreaded meeting everyone at the company, but it gradually became fun. Everyone else also changed, saying, 'Since you've done this much for us, we need to understand what Asano-san is saying more.' Three months later, performance began to turn upward, and after six months to a year, growth accelerated to 130% and 140% year-on-year.

This experience was extremely useful in my work as a consultant advising on organizational 'way of being.' I think I became able to understand the emotions of managers, such as their loneliness and conflicts.

The 'Wall' of Venture Companies

—What do you think are the 'people and organization' challenges for venture companies while being involved in organizational development?
Asano:When things aren't going well in an organization, people tend to look for the cause in a specific individual, but organizational problems often occur in the 'space' between people. It is easier to solve problems constructively if you think that the problem is not with a specific person or 'people' themselves, but rather 'between people' or 'because the connection between people is not working well.'

In that sense, the 'space' where problems are likely to occur in venture companies is the 'space' between 'management and the front line.' In the service 'Motivation Cloud' that I worked on at my previous job, the items with the worst scores among those capturing the state of the organization were 'communication between management and the front line' and 'conviction in strategic goals.' Even when management sets policies and goals, the front line very often ends up saying, 'That's absolutely impossible' or 'Management doesn't understand the front line at all.'

It is important to connect the 'two axes' of vertical and horizontal that exist in a company well.
The horizontal axis is the 'business and organization' axis. This axis connects the business that provides value to customers and the organization that utilizes human resources. The vertical axis is the 'management and front line' axis. Management tends to think from a relatively 'long-term' and 'overall' perspective, while the front line tends to think from a 'short-term' and 'individual' perspective. A discrepancy is likely to occur here.

For example, when the president looks three years ahead and says, 'We're going to do this,' the front line resists, saying, 'Wait, we're overwhelmed with what's right in front of us right now.' The president thinks, 'Why aren't you doing it?' and the front line thinks, 'The president really doesn't understand the front line.' This mismatch happens because the time axes they are looking at are different.

What connects these mismatches is the 'act' of management.
Four types of management that connect the horizontal axis of 'business and organization' and the vertical axis of 'management and front line'=Figure below are necessary.

What connects management and the organization is 'Vision Management.' It is the act of the manager showing the long-term state that the organization aims for, saying, 'We are going to do this.'

What connects management and business, saying, 'Here is the strategy for realization,' is 'Strategy Management.' It is the act of showing who the company provides what value to, how it adapts to the external environment, and how it builds business processes.

What connects the front line and business, saying, 'These are the indicators of whether the strategy is being executed,' is 'PDCA Management.' It is the act of repeating problem-solving daily to execute the strategy.

Finally, there is 'Member Management,' which connects the front line and the organization, saying, 'We will improve (evaluate) members' abilities like this for execution.'

Whether you can create a mechanism where these four types of management connect in the order of 'Vision,' 'Strategy,' 'PDCA,' and 'Member' is the key for venture companies.

In particular, the scale of 50 to 100 employees is quite difficult, to the point where it is called the '50-person wall' or '100-person wall.' Up to 50 people, it can be done by the sheer strength of the founding members and some players. For example, if there are three executives, they can somehow move forward by overseeing a little over 10 subordinates each. But once you exceed 50 people, you exceed your capacity up to that point. You start to feel, 'Huh? It was going well until now, but something isn't working.' Conversely, once you pass that stage, it becomes easier to operate the organization stably.

Middle managers are essential to overcome the 'wall.' Organizations without middle managers physically cannot operate.

The way the number of members increases and the way the 'communication lines' that refer to connections between people increase are different. A 10-person team has 45 communication lines. What if this becomes 100 people? The communication lines become 4,950. If the top layer alone tries to manage this amount of communication lines, it will collapse. That is why middle managers are necessary. Google also onceconducted an experiment to abolish managers entirely, but the organization could not operate well, so they recognized the importance of managers again and brought them back.

Misunderstandings about 'Diversity' and 'Communication'

—In your book 'THE TEAM: 5 Laws,' you question assumptions about organizations. Why do such assumptions arise?
We have various social conventions embedded in us. Business and performance have been grasped through logic and data, but organizations and teams are hard to see and there are few opportunities to learn them systematically, so they tend to be talked about intuitively. I think that has fueled assumptions. That is why I tried to convey in 'THE TEAM' that we should 'solve organizations and teams with arithmetic, not Japanese literature.' I recommend a method of thinking about and choosing an approach that fits the organization or team, rather than a specific approach being the 'correct answer.'

—Your point about the idea that 'a team with diverse members is a good team' was particularly impressive.
Asano:This idea is not necessarily wrong, but diversity has both advantages and disadvantages depending on the situation. The degree of environmental change and the degree of collaboration among human resources differ depending on the organization. The degree of diversity and uniformity required varies accordingly. What is important is to accept the 'appropriate' diversity for each organization.

What is common among executives of large Japanese companies is that they are all male, new graduates, and older. It is clearly too homogeneous and lacks diversity. However, if you try to do the 'diversity' required by such large companies as it is in a venture company, it often does not go well.

The reason is that venture companies are inherently bundles of diversity. They are often collections of people who have all been hired mid-career and have completely different backgrounds. Because they are too diverse, it often happens that they think, 'We aren't on the same page.' That is precisely why it becomes necessary to aim for appropriate diversity by daring to move in the direction of 'homogeneity,' where you put out 'our common values,' that is, a vision, and people who empathize with those common values gather.

—You also cut into the idea that 'the more communication in a team, the better.'
Asano:The amount of communication also needs to be 'optimized.' What is important for optimization is creating rules. Organizations without rules take time because they try to solve everything through communication.

When taking a free kick in a soccer match, if the players gathered every time and discussed, 'How should we kick this time?', it would take a considerable amount of time before kicking. To save time, they must have decided on patterns according to the situation to some extent.

Conversely, if you rely too much on rules, you cannot respond flexibly to situations, and there are dangerous aspects. Therefore, it is important to converge on moderate rules and an optimal amount of communication.

—I think there is also the idea that 'whether or not you have motivation is up to you.'
Asano:Humans perceive things in relationships with others and events. Therefore, you cannot maintain perfect motivation by yourself. I want to say, 'Your motivation is also established in the relationship with the world, sometimes with the support of someone.' Of course, there are parts of how you relate to the world that are up to you, but it is important to recognize that it is not determined solely by your own state of mind.

If there were a young member whose motivation had dropped, I would say to them, 'Do your best and raise your motivation yourself.' But to that manager, I would say, 'As a manager, raise your member's motivation.' This is never a trade-off.

In any organization, it would be best if you could aim to be a professional who can carve out your own career. On the other hand, organizations must create teams where any individual can have their motivation raised. In other words, it is important for both the individual and the organization to raise each other up.

Interview/Text: Masumi Takahashi, Masako Kinkozan Photography: Yuko Kawashima

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