Are you making the right kind of effort?

I have updated this article that I wrote a year ago. Since it is quite an old article, I am posting it again.

The "Right Kind of Effort" as Seen in Shinsuke Shimada

In the world of human resource development, there is a legendary DVD known as "Shin-Ryu no Kenkyu" (The Study of Shin and Ryu). This is a recording of a lecture given by Shinsuke Shimada, who was at the peak of his career at the time, to young comedians at Yoshimoto Kogyo regarding his "manzai strategy." Watching this video, one can clearly see how strategically Shinsuke Shimada constructed his own manzai.

Many people probably think that those who succeed in the comedy world have an innate "sense of humor." It is the idea that people who are born with a "knack for making people laugh" naturally get laughs by showing their "true selves."

However, in this lecture, Shinsuke Shimada completely denies such a way of thinking. The reason is

even if you happen to sell well by doing that, you will only end up as a one-hit wonder

that is why.

To survive in the comedy world, you need a "manzai strategy"

How to survive in the world of manzai. To survive, you need a "strategy for survival." Once Shinsuke decided that he would make a living in the manzai world, he first devoted himself to creating this "manzai strategy." Specifically, what he did was first organize the "patterns of manzai." He watched and listened to as many manzai performances as possible by comedians who had been active and popular for a long time.

Readers of this article might be thinking, "I could do that much, too." Yes, the difference lies in what comes next. Shinsuke would transcribe all the manzai he watched into text and then analyze the "structure of what makes it funny." Shinsuke advises his juniors: "Everyone records funny manzai and watches or listens to the tapes, right? No matter how many times you do that, you won't understand anything. You have to write it down on paper. It takes an incredible amount of time, but you write it all out on paper. Then, every night when you go to sleep, you think about what makes it different. Then, various things start to become clear."

In the world of management studies, this is called "competitive benchmarking through reverse engineering." Of course, Shinsuke did not arrive at this by studying management concepts. He simply thought for himself about "what should I do now?" If he had become a business person, he probably would have been a fantastic strategic planner.

From this benchmarking analysis, he extracted "laws of laughter," such as "80% of the punchline patterns can be the same; the audience won't notice," "mixing in unfunny material makes the funny punchline stand out," and "the more pauses there are, the harder it is to maintain the rhythm." Shinsuke says, "There were no textbooks for comedy, so I decided to make my own textbook first."

It is a formidable strategic way of thinking. Ultimately, he thought, "There are several patterns in manzai. I will choose the pattern I can perform best and bet on that," and based on that pattern, he built his own style of manzai.

Positioning Map of the Comedy Market

He analyzed competitors who already had a presence in the market and copied the pattern that best fit his character, voice tone, and rhythm. In other words, Shinsuke's manzai was not created naturally by his "true self," but was planned after extremely strategic thinking.

Now, assuming the direction of his "own manzai" was clear, Shinsuke deepened his thinking even further from there. What he thought about was "market analysis." Surprisingly, he introduced the concept of coordinates here. He said that he would take "his own manzai style" on the X-axis and "the world's need for laughter" on the Y-axis, and consider the intersection point.

Why is it necessary to do such a thing? Because "the times will always change." Even if your comedy style is determined, you should not think that you can keep going with it forever. To keep selling, you must adapt to the changes in the world and adjust your own comedy style. This is exactly the way of thinking in marketing strategy.

It seems that the people around him could not keep up with this way of thinking, and although Shinsuke explained the "manzai strategy" he had polished to his comedy partners, they did not understand it at all at first, and he often ran away from them or was abandoned by them. That was when Ryusuke Matsumoto appeared. Because Ryusuke immediately grasped and understood what Shinsuke had been thinking about, Shinsuke decided, "I will form a duo with this guy."

Do not escape into easy effort

What is very impressive in this lecture is the advice Shinsuke often gives: "Do not practice blindly, do not escape into effort." If you practice your material, you will naturally get better. It is easy to be satisfied with getting better, but that is not enough; the important thing is to think carefully about the strategy of "what kind of manzai to use to compete."

The word "strategy" is very profound; it originally means "to omit the battle." If you are going to struggle and fight a bloody battle, you don't need a "strategy." Strategy is about thinking how to make things easier and how to find a more rewarding way to compete. In other words, the essence of strategy formulation is "making it so you don't have to struggle," and that is precisely why you should "devote your efforts to strategy formulation."

This is a point I have made in various places regarding the "types of effort."

There are two types of effort. Taking a position in a bloody market that is indistinguishable from others and continuing to work hard there is "Type 1 effort," but this is very cost-ineffective.

On the other hand, thinking hard about how to secure a rewarding position without competing with others is "Type 2 effort." To an outsider, those making "Type 1 effort" might look like they are taking it easy, but that is far from the truth. They are desperately putting in the effort at the strategy formulation stage to secure a position where they can win easily; the difference lies in where they invest their "resource of thinking power."

The strategic freedom of life is higher upstream.

If we diagram this, it looks like the following.

The dotted line represents the "resource allocation of an unsuccessful comedian." As Shinsuke-san pointed out, these people do not spend time on market analysis or positioning design, but instead focus solely on execution—practicing their comedy routines. That is why they never get ahead.

This can be thought of as a "problem of strategic freedom." We have complete freedom regarding the strategy of our own lives, but this freedom becomes greater the further upstream you go, and smaller the closer you get to the execution stage.

In other words, if we want to utilize the strategic freedom we possess for our life's management strategy, we should do it at the upstream stage of market analysis and positioning design, not at the downstream stage of execution. However, very few people invest their resource of thinking power here. Why do you think that is?

It is because people want to escape into "easy-to-understand effort" to feel at ease. However, even if you continue such "easy-to-understand effort," it will not lead to positive changes in your life.

Since the meter of life is constantly moving, people feel anxious if they are just standing still. Therefore, they try to feel at ease by working hard at "easy-to-understand effort" and convincing themselves that they are "making an effort." But does a great result await at the end of this "easy-to-understand effort"? Shinsuke-san points out that, at least in the "world of comedy," that is "absolutely not the case."

Think carefully about what kind of comedy you are going to perform and whether it fits the needs of the times. In other words, you should direct your efforts toward the strategy formulation part, and the core of Shinsuke-san's advice is that you cannot survive in the market if you neglect that and just keep polishing your material like a craftsman.

I think this advice is very insightful for those who jump on trendy certifications or studies, work while wearing themselves out in the red ocean of the labor market, and yet feel they cannot escape from the pack.