The Future of Apprenticeship-Style Startups

Since the beginning of this year, a new division manager from outside the company joined the department where I work, and the atmosphere in the workplace has changed completely.

Until last year, the department was enthusiastically working on business improvements, saying things like 'systematization is important,' 'let's be conscious of business standardization,' and 'we must promote DX,' but it is now rapidly changing into an old-fashioned, apprenticeship-style culture.

To give a concrete example, many of our communication methods have shifted to phone conversations.

The division, which had been heading toward a document-driven policy of leaving records in chats like Slack, is reverting to a culture dominated by phone conversations. There are also many calls like, 'I sent you an email, so take a look at it.'

Furthermore, face-to-face meetings and drinking parties have increased, the era of remote work dominance has ended, and it seems that communication has become more active.

At first glance, this might look like a regression, but for now, it seems to be moving in a positive direction. Sales are also growing steadily.

The reason for this is that the wasteful digital communication costs incurred by employees who could not keep up with the rapid DX implementation have plummeted. After all, analog can sometimes be faster.

Of course, this phenomenon occurs because complete DX has not been achieved, and ideally, one should maintain speedy communication while keeping records of interactions as logs. However, I have keenly realized that if that state is incomplete, analog is actually superior.

The reality that the company culture has suddenly returned to the Showa era, yet it is actually continuing to grow and succeed, is extremely interesting.

Indeed, when you think about it carefully, systems and institutions do not solve problems just by being introduced. They are merely one means to solve problems.

There is a history of how, during the Prohibition era in the United States, smuggling and illegal sales became rampant, worsening the social situation. Even if systems and institutions exist, there will always be people who slip through the cracks or who cannot adapt to those systems and institutions.

If a state of unnecessary burden is being created by poorly implemented DX, then reverting to an apprenticeship-style culture might temporarily increase the organization's productivity.

I look forward to watching how things unfold from here.