Bill Gates and the Bouquet. (Reading Satoshi Nakajima's "Why Your Work Never Ends")
Are you familiar with the story of "Bill Gates and the Bouquet"?
It is an episode introduced in the book "Why Your Work Never Ends" by Satoshi Nakajima, an engineer who worked on projects like Windows 95 at Microsoft. It was also mentioned on Mr. Nakajima's blog, so I will introduce it by quoting a portion.
For example, suppose there is a party and Bill Gates asks you to arrange flowers. You call a florist and order a bouquet to be delivered to the party venue. However, on the day of the party, the florist calls to say that the delivery will be delayed due to snow.
You inform Bill Gates that the flowers will be late. In such a case, he gets incredibly angry. (Omitted)
The task you were assigned was to have flowers at the party, not to place an order with a florist. (Omitted) He argues that failing to have the flowers ready for any reason is 100% your negligence, and you should take responsibility for it.
As written on the blog, it is important to "separate the problems". The event of "the florist cannot deliver the bouquet due to heavy snow" mixes two problems:
・The florist cannot come
・The bouquet cannot be procured
These two issues are being conflated.
If the florist you ordered from cannot come, you should urgently find another way. You could ask another florist, or go around to neighboring houses to see if they can spare a bouquet. "Even if the florist cannot come, the bouquet can still be procured."
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At the same time, another key point of this story is that you should "take personal responsibility for everything".
The bouquet example is just a metaphor, but any job can be "blamed on others" as much as you want.
There is no budget, there is not enough staff, the law was changed, we were outmaneuvered by a competitor... and so on. (One could say this is a blessing) Even if there are some mistakes or slacking off, your life will not be shaken. Thinking that "good enough" is fine might actually be more natural.
However, "being able to blame others as much as you want" also means, conversely, that "you can turn anything into personal responsibility". There are countless ways I fell short, and because of that, the project's level of completion was not 100%. The attitude of trying to create something better while repeating such reflections is what is truly important.
The florist didn't show up, that's a real shame, isn't it?
It is easy to say that. But before making such excuses, I think it is important to desperately try to find what can be done. At least, for me.
Of course, I do not intend to force this on others. I just want to keep this as my own stance on work.
With that said, the book by Satoshi Nakajima that I quoted is a very good book, so business professionals should definitely pick it up.
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