Weekly Review (2019-12-01)

Time flies! December has come.

What I have done this week

I spent the entire week in Japan. It’s been 2 weeks since I came back to the country. I’ve never been in Japan for more than 15 consecutive days since I started the company. One of the reasons for the long stay was visa application — Myanmar, Switzerland, and India. Thankfully, the Myanmar visa application process has been normalized now. It’s been 7 years since I last obtained a Swiss visa, and since then, the rule has changed, making it a bit more complicated. I hope that everything will be alright. The new visa officer of the Indian Embassy came in, and the format of the required document also changed, asking me to obtain a document again from India. 3 days delay in the application.

The new corporate strategy for Gojo is almost ready. One breakthrough that I made during this thought process is that I seriously thought about how to overcome a chicken&egg problem. Everyone can say that “if we have money, we can hire talent and grow the business. The growth will lead to more funding and talent, a good cycle. “ The question should be how we make that cycle when we are not there. If we think carefully, we can understand where we should prioritize.

The new initiative began during the week. I am looking forward to sharing it.

I made a speech for high school students of my alma mater. I thought a lot about what I should tell them. They don’t have that much opportunity to understand the world outside of their community. I am a rare “outsider” who may bring about new insight, hopefully life-changing one. Given the potential impact, I have thought a lot about what I have to tell. Then I concluded that I should say to them what I am doing now without diluting the contents, hoping that some of them will understand.

I spent the weekend with my friends who used to hang around. It was interesting to see that everyone gained autonomy over how they spend their time. Some of them started a company, some became CXO, and some became independent designers/consultants, etc. It was great to see that everyone is happy with where they are.

Other thoughts

Organizations are an algorithm. Input/output are human, information, goods, and money. The algorithm is expected to optimize the input-output process. That is the organization design. Organizations are not machines; they are living organisms. Too many rules would make the process expensive. The best way should be to come up with the minimum protocols and let the people work independently. The design requires deep thinking.