Was the workplace really 'lacking effort'? I wrote a business novel about saving a Heisei-era branch using AI and management experience.

When the numbers on the front lines are bad, there are words that often come up.

'Not enough effort.'
'Low awareness.'
'Not enough action.'
'The store manager is failing to manage.'
'The sales representative isn't pushing hard enough.'

Certainly, there are situations where it looks that way.

The numbers aren't coming in.
Measures aren't being implemented.
Reports are shallow.
Even when asked in meetings, no clear cause is identified.

From the top down, it looks like the front lines are soft.

But from the perspective of the front lines, the view is a bit different.

Too many decisions are concentrated on the store manager.
New hires don't know what to ask.
Sales representatives distribute materials but cannot articulate why the front lines aren't moving.
Crew members freeze in front of customers and check the manual in the back room afterward.

They aren't slacking off.
They aren't unmotivated, either.

But they can't move.

There are probably quite a few workplaces like this.

And what's scary is that by the time such a state is brought up in a meeting, it has turned into very crude language.

'Lack of effort on the front lines.'
It's dismissed with this one phrase.

But was it really a lack of effort?
Were the conditions for them to act provided?
Were the decision-making materials organized?
Were success stories left in a form that anyone could replicate?
Was the discomfort felt on the front lines turned into facts that could be accepted in meetings?

Recently, I've started wanting to turn this theme into a novel.

In my usual notes, I write about sales front lines and management work.

The reason new hires stop.
Workplaces where 'I'll check' increases.
The structure where decisions concentrate on the store manager.
How to use AI to reduce 'work that requires rethinking every time.'

I've been writing to organize these things as structures rather than emotional arguments as much as possible.

However, there are things that are hard to convey through explanation alone.

The atmosphere in the meeting room.
The face of a branch manager being grilled over numbers.
The front lines that don't know how to act at the store level even when given headquarters measures.
Stores that are called 'success stories' but that no one can actually replicate.

Those things might be better conveyed through a story than an article.

Thinking that, I started writing a business novel on Tales.

The title is,

'48-Year-Old Department Manager Returns to a Slumping Heisei-Era Branch. Saving the Front Lines Labeled as 'Lacking Effort' with AI'

The genre is work/human drama.

The protagonist is 48-year-old sales department manager Makoto Kasugai.

He has the ability to see the front lines.
He knows where agencies and store managers get stuck.
He can pick up on why crew members freeze in front of customers and the discomfort behind the numbers.

But he couldn't turn the language of the front lines into a form that management would accept.

As a result, he loses the executive race to his peer, Reiji Takamiya.

His demotion is to a regional sales branch where he worked twenty years ago.

That place was once condemned by a presidential audit as having 'a lack of effort on the front lines.'
The branch manager was demoted, and his colleagues slowly fell apart.

On his first day, Kasugai finds a yellowed, old campaign POP in the storage room at the back of the branch.

The next moment, he had returned to his twenty-year-younger self.
His body is 29.
His memories are 48.

And at the edge of his right eye is the display of 'Haru,' an AI glass brought from the future.

One month until the presidential audit.
In the original future, this branch is judged as having 'agencies and sales staff lacking effort.'

But 48-year-old Kasugai knows.

The front lines weren't lazy.
Decisions were concentrated on the store manager.
The crew couldn't find the right information.
Sales representatives were just distributing materials and grilling them on numbers.
There were success stories, but why they succeeded wasn't recorded.

In other words, the conditions to act weren't provided to the front lines.

What Kasugai needs to do isn't to win easily with past knowledge.
It's to turn discomfort into records.
It's to turn the front-line feeling into facts that pass in meetings.

It's to clarify where the people labeled as 'lacking effort' were actually getting stuck.

The AI glass 'Haru' appears in this work.
However, I won't make it a story where AI solves everything.

A one-shot reversal with AI.
AI telling you the correct answer.
The front lines being saved because AI is superior to humans.

It's not that kind of story.

AI is not magic.

But it can record the discomfort of the front lines.
It can organize gaps in conversation.
It can structure the statements of store managers and sales representatives.
It can help turn 'something feels wrong' into facts that pass in meetings.

The protagonist is not the AI, but the human who sees the front lines.

What I want to write in this story is not a flashy success story.

It's a story about returning facts to the top in a workplace where responsibility flows downward.
It's a story about picking up what was happening on the front lines before being condemned by numbers alone.

And it's a story about a 48-year-old manager who couldn't become an executive going back to see a slumping branch from twenty years ago.

For those who like business novels.

For those interested in sales front lines, regional branches, agency sales, management, AI utilization, and front-line improvement.

Or for those who have seen something in their own workplace that was dismissed as 'lack of effort'.

Please read it if you'd like.

It's a slightly different form from my usual notes, but the root theme is the same.

Was the front line really lacking effort?
Or were the conditions to act not provided?

I will write this question as a story.

If responsibility flows down, return the facts up.

This is a business novel that starts here.

▼ Click here for the work
'48-Year-Old Department Manager Returns to a Slumping Heisei-Era Branch. Saving the Front Lines Labeled as 'Lacking Effort' with AI'