By Michael Martyn, Shingo Academy Member and Publication Recipient
Note: This article is excerpted from Mike’s new book, Management for Omotenashi: Learning to Lead for Purpose, Passion, and Performance, recipient of the 2023 Shingo Publication Award.
Management is the act of adhering to the process and managing complexity. By contrast, leadership is about setting direction, instituting change, and delivering results. While our job as managers is to follow a daily management system, work to reduce complexity, and strive to achieve process integrity, following processes does not by itself guarantee better results. In fact, when you just follow process, you will get average results. Our job as “managers” is to follow processes and strive to maximize the engagement and contribution of every person to help make the organization better every day. That is where leadership comes in. As leaders, our job is to align the organization toward using the daily management system, not just in an effort to adhere to current process, but to create the condition where daily improvements are made that won’t just happen on their own. In this context, leadership takes a laser focus on what matters most: a commitment to achieving total participation by creating an environment where good process enables people to experience pride in their work, passion for their company, and improved performance through daily kaizen.
Leadership is about getting results. Period. However, leadership is not just about getting performance for the company at all costs. Great leaders understand the cause-and-effect relationship between engaging and motivating people to do their best work and focusing their best work on outcomes for the company, the community, and the customer. A leader’s job is to create an environment where people are clear about their goals and focused on what is most important each day. To do this, leaders must create an environment where people are maximally motivated to do their best work to continuously improve the organization and themselves.
With the changing workforce, however, maximizing the contribution of everyone and motivating them to take action toward improving every day takes a new model of leadership. A new model that moves past a command-and-control approach reliant on positional power and rigid standards of operations and one that aligns processes, tools, and systems with principles. A model that acknowledges that the wants and desires of our workforce are changing as fast as the market itself. A model that properly values the role engagement and passion play in sustained performance and that places a balanced emphasis on purpose and profit when setting strategy and developing their people.
Management for Omotenashi
Omotenashi is a Japanese word that is most commonly translated in English as “hospitality.” But hospitality does not embody or convey the depth of omotenashi in Japanese culture. In the West, hospitality is most typically a hierarchical relationship between the guest and the host, whereby the host responds to the customer’s needs both promptly and precisely. Omotenashi, however, is based on a more equal and co-creative relationship and is traditionally cultivated between the guest and the host, who tacitly understands the needs of the guest. It is about creating a non-dominant relationship between a person who is offering the service and one who is receiving it. At its best, omotenashi is expressed when the host anticipates the needs of the guest in advance and offers a pleasant service that the guest does not expect. It has both the characteristics of selflessness and anticipation.
The problem with these definitions is that our attention is still focused on the service itself and the method of delivery. It can still seem like the difference between hospitality and omotenashi is potato and potato. In order to understand what omotenashi is and why it is so unique, we need to look past the concept of omotenashi as being a simple commitment to hospitality by the Japanese culture to look after someone’s every need. It is a far deeper concept when we look past the tactical details of the service and truly understand what the word means and what implications the word has when we apply the principles of omotenashi to our approach to management.
For omotenashi to be present, there must be a relationship established between the host and the guest. Omotenashi requires observing the need of individual customers in discrete situations and meeting them promptly. It involves reading the context of every interaction with customers making decisions and implementing them based on a balance between unique customer preferences and documented best practices. It takes skill, knowledge, and care to create true omotenashi across a variety of customers.
The idea that omotenashi is inextricably linked to a one-on-one or personal relationship between the host and the guest is a critical factor in understanding the power of omotenashi as well as the commitment required to create it.
“Most people only think of omotenashi as it relates to the customer, or in our case, the passenger. But at TESSEI we added the concept of creating omotenashi for the employees. This was critical to our success. When people are treated with respect and omotenashi, they are motivated. And when they are motivated, they will participate in improvement. And when they participate in improvement, the pride in their work increases, which helps create omotenashi for the customers.” —Teruo Yabe
By better understanding how managers positively create omotenashi for employees through the design of the daily management system, the delivery of exceptional leadership, and the engagement of the employees in daily improvement, we can achieve two outcomes. First, a management philosophy focused on omotenashi and supported by systems creates an environment where each employee can find their passion through their contribution at work and can continuously grow through challenge, action, and achievement. Second, by redefining the purpose of management to be the creation of omotenashi in every interaction with employees, we can improve our business results as our people take pride in their work, are motivated to improve every day, and strive to create omotenashi for our customers.
To order your copy of Management for Omotenashi: Learning to Lead for Purpose, Passion, and Performance, please visit https://www.managementforomotenashi.com. To learn more about the Management for Omotenashi Masterclass, please visit: https://www.sisulms.com/omotenashi-masterclass.
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