Chapter 16 The first source of "simple + hard work"

In my life, if there is one person who has really taught me a lot, it is undoubtedly Itakura-sensei.During the five years of studying in Japan, I have been doing research under him. The impression he gave me can even be said to be the impression Japan gave me. I turned out to be not a particularly hardworking person.After studying in Japan, under the pressure of Mr. Itakura, he worked hard all night.In order to produce one project result a week, I learned to pay special attention to speed and efficiency.Therefore, whether it is the way I pay attention to speed when I work, or the diligent and conscientious attitude towards things, I have learned from him.His guidance on my dissertation speech also taught me how to grasp the key points and quickly summarize the complexities into simple and clear ones.It can be said,

Teacher Itakura's teaching is the first source of my "simple + hardworking" concept and style. Paying attention to details has benefited me for life Another major influence of Mr. Itakura on me is that it has changed my past shortcomings of being careless and benefited me in my future work. When I was the president of Microsoft China, I could remember the names of each of the company's more than 1,000 employees. I don't know how many people were touched by this method.I get in touch with employees every day and do a lot of things that move them.Every morning, I send an "elevator auntie" to the "disobedient" elevator in the building to control the elevator reasonably; I ask the company's logistics staff to help employees pay utility bills; The family members of every employee in Beijing; sending moon cakes to the relatives and friends of the employees during the Mid-Autumn Festival...

In enterprise management, everything I do seems to be trivial, but everything will move the employees. This is the power of paying attention to details. It is precisely because of the attention to detail that when Microsoft conducted an employee satisfaction survey on global employees through a third-party consulting company, both Shanghai Microsoft and Microsoft China under my leadership became the No. 1 branch of Microsoft’s global employee satisfaction. .As a result, I have also become the only person in the history of Microsoft who has won the "Bill Gates President's Excellence Award" twice.

Many CEOs like to emphasize "grasp the big and let go of the small" in management, but in my management philosophy, "grasp the big and let go of the small and look at the details" is the correct way of management. From dishwasher to post-secondary teacher After passing Itakura-sensei's postgraduate entrance examination, my first thought was to work part-time to earn money.At that time, there was a magazine in Nagoya that provided information on work-study programs, and it was full of job advertisements the size of tofu cubes.Job content, time, location, requirements, and salary (the Japanese call it "shigi") are all available.According to the division of labor in the industry, catering industry, retail industry, processing industry, etc.For Chinese students studying abroad, because the language is not fluent, the first thing I think of is washing dishes.According to the policy of the Ministry of Education at that time, the government-sponsored overseas students were not allowed to work, so they could only do it secretly.

I found a pasta restaurant in a magazine, the name is ITALIAN (Italian).When I called, my Japanese was not very good at that time, and the boss knew that I was a foreigner.We made an appointment to go to the interview at 6:30 in the evening. When we went there, it was a very small shop.The owner of the store, Mr. Oki, is a middle-aged man in his thirties and forties who also works as a chef.There is also a girl about eighteen or nineteen years old who is a waiter.In addition to selling spaghetti, this shop also offers stir-fried dishes and wine, like a small bar.I told Mr. Oki that I am Chinese, and he was very curious.He said my job was to wash dishes, so I stayed and worked that day.

The business of this store is not very good, there are only about ten customers a day.Sometimes there is no one for two hours.When no one came, Mr. Oki was preparing meals at the bar, the little girl was standing by the front door, and I was washing dishes in the kitchen. Each of us did his own thing, without any slack or chatting.At first I thought the Japanese were really stupid, but then I had to admire their standard of doing things.The closing time of the store is 9:30 in the evening. According to the usual rule, if there are no customers after 8:30, basically no one will come, but the three of us will stick to our posts until 9:30 even if we have nothing to do.At 9:30, Mr. Oki said: Well, today is over, thank you for your hard work.The day's business is officially over.

In ITALIAN, I became an expert dishwashing expert.Rinse with water for the first time, and wash with a pot of diluted dishwashing liquid for the second time.Then rinse with cold water, rinse with hot water, and rinse with cold water again.A bowl will be washed 5 times, which is the way Japanese restaurants wash dishes.The kitchen in the store is cleaner than ordinary people's homes. The dishes, cups and plates are all dried with clean towels and neatly put aside. My salary is 620 yen per hour.Work 3 hours a day, from 6:30 to 9:30 in the evening.The salary for these 3 hours is equivalent to my mother's salary for one month. 3 hours is enough to keep my mother from working, and that has become my motivation.

I work very seriously, and my behavior is considered polite. Mr. Oki thinks I am a nice person, and he often calls me out for dinner after closing.He is a native Japanese, and he is curious when he meets foreigners for the first time, and wants to know more about the situation in China.Gradually we became a relationship of friends, talking about everything.It was from him that I really learned authentic Japanese.I work in his shop 4 nights a week, and I have at least two hours to speak Japanese with him on 4 nights.I worked there for 4 months from December to the end of March the following year.My Japanese has improved by leaps and bounds.Later, when I introduced Mr. Oki to others, I said he was my Japanese teacher.

Since then, Mr. Oki and I have kept in touch.My younger brother went to study in Japan and became friends with him too.I also invited him to China. When I went to Japan in 2007, I took my wife and daughter to his small shop.The signboard at the entrance of the store and the furnishings in the house have not changed at all.I looked very kind.I said to my daughter, "This is where Dad earned his wages for the first time." In her mind, I probably have always been a big person doing big things, so she was surprised and said, "Ah, you come to work in such a small shop." ?” I said, “Yes, it’s washing dishes.”

Excellence permeates the blood of the Japanese nation: My enlightenment from visiting Toyota Mr. Oki's small restaurants are so particular about service standards, and Japanese large companies have achieved the ultimate pursuit of perfection.Toyota is the closest major company to Nagoya University.I have visited Toyota three times.I am very shocked every time. The first time I went to see Toyota's assembly line, all the workers were working intently, completely ignoring the visitors.Based on the situation of ordinary Chinese companies, I deduce that this is mostly ordered by their leaders, and it must be done when someone comes to visit.So after the large group of visitors had passed by, they turned back and looked at it alone, but they were still as engrossed in their work as before.After I went back, I thought, this company will be great in the future.Sure enough, Toyota will become the largest company in Japan by market capitalization in the future.

Toyota people explained to us their high requirements for product quality during research and development. They would go to the auto repair shop to investigate which parts are prone to failure and where the problem lies. They conduct data surveys every month and adjust new products at any time according to the results. Product quality standards.Their attention to excellence even reached an incredible level for me.For example, in order to ensure that the steel plate under the car body is smooth, they require the staff to pass the test quickly with their hands under the car body, so that the hand is not injured. Later, I also visited the factory of Ford Motor Company in the United States, where workers wore headphones and worked while shaking to the music.I was worried that they might miss a screw on the car.Why is the U.S. auto industry getting hit hard by Japanese companies?The thinking of Americans and Chinese is somewhat similar, and they always think that it is enough to make the product.The Japanese not only pay attention to making products, but also to be the best.The automobile industry in the United States is very developed, and Ford has a history of more than 100 years.But it is not the same level as Japanese cars, and the distance in the future will become larger and larger. Therefore, I predict that if there is only one car company in the world, it must be a Japanese company. If there is only one kind of car on the roads in the world, it must be a Japanese car. Of course, I am not advertising for Japanese cars, but I hope that Chinese companies can learn from Japanese companies and make standardized management and excellence their daily pursuit. Enlightenment from Japanese Computer Wizard Nishi Kazuhiko to Gates Later, after I joined Microsoft in the United States for a period of time, I realized that Bill Gates was also deeply influenced by Japanese culture in terms of business management. When Gates first founded Microsoft, most of his customers were Japanese companies.At that time, he was a typical American style, frizzy, forgetful, and often not punctual in delivering products.These Japanese companies sent people to stay at Microsoft all day, urging Gates to deliver on time.Gates was still very confused.Later, Gates met Nishi Kazuhiko, a Japanese computer genius of the same age as him, and became close friends.Microsoft also entered the Japanese market in 1977. Nishi Kazuhiko was once the deputy general manager of Microsoft. He told Gates many essentials of doing business in Japan: (1) Japanese pay attention to credibility; (2) Japanese pay attention to quality; (3) The Japanese pay attention to the punctual delivery of products.These three points greatly influenced the management style of Gates and Microsoft in the future. For myself, I also have to say that Japanese culture has helped me in a big way and changed the way I do things.Because I have the experience of studying, living and working in China, Japan and the United States, many people ask me which culture is more influenced by China, Japan and the United States.actually, I have always hoped to combine the advantages of the three cultures of China, Japan and the United States and apply them in my management practice. This is a distinctive feature of me. After brushing dishes for a few months, I started looking for a new job.Japan is an exam-oriented society, and there are many private schools, most of which are for elementary school students in grades 4 to 6.I went to a private school to apply for a math teacher.It is generally difficult for private schools to recruit students from Nagoya University as teachers. When they heard that I was a famous university, they were very willing to have me interview.Japanese people are generally unwilling to hire Chinese as teachers. They can't tell where I am from after listening to my standard and fluent Japanese.In addition, my lectures are better, even if they find out later that I am a foreigner, they don't mind. From elementary school students in private schools to junior high school students, and then to high school students, I have taught all the way.At that time, I had a "famous saying": as long as you give me a week of preparation time, I can teach anything.As a result of constant job-hopping, the hourly salary has risen from 620 yen when washing dishes to 1,500 yen for teaching private schools, and then from 2,000 yen for teaching junior high schools to 2,500 yen for teaching high schools. I ended up applying to a computer school called HAL in Nagoya.The name of the school is very interesting, because there is a well-known IBM company in the United States. They each take the first letter of I, B, and M to be HAL, which means that they are ahead of IBM in the computer field.This is a junior college, equivalent to a junior college in China.I taught there for two years, and the hourly salary rose to 4,000 yen, which belongs to the gold-collar family in Japan.After half a year of teaching at HAL, I told my students that I was Chinese, but they didn't believe me.Japanese can be so good, it is beyond my own expectation.Later, the school gradually found out that I was Chinese, but because I did well in class and received good feedback from the students, they did not pursue it.