Today’s Chapter is based on the book “A Compass to Fulfillment: Passion and Spirituality in Life and Business” by Kazuo Inamori, the founder of Kyocera.
Previously on Kazuo Inamori:
Here’s what I have learned:
Refine Your Soul
“There is no immortality but the memory that is left in the minds of men...to have lived without glory, without leaving a trace of one’s existence, is not to have lived at all.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte
Kazuo Inamori, the founder of Kyocera, mentions that the purpose of life is to elevate our minds and to refine our souls. He elaborates that refining one’s soul can only be done through hard work. As a matter of fact, he explains that “Working diligently does much more than fulfill us. It also builds and refines our character and helps us hone our philosophy for living.”
As such, he believes that it is one’s duty to be persistently striving to make each day better than the one before. This is the key in finding purpose and value in life. This reminds me of this following quote from Charlie Munger: “Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Day by day, and at the end of the day-if you live long enough-like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve.”
Furthermore, Inamori explains that “the path to refining one’s character can be found in one’s daily work.” As such, no matter role or job is in front of you, make sure you do your best. Similarly, whether you are a carpenter, a tailor or a fisher, you need to work hard in order to refine your soul and to elevate your character.
This reminds me of the important lesson Lee Iacocca learned from his father. Once at a restaurant, Iacocca recalls that the waitress was being rude and his father gave her the following speech:
““I’m going to give you a real tip,” he’d say. “Why are you so unhappy in this job? Is anyone forcing you to be a waitress? When you act surly, you’re telling everybody you don’t like what you’re doing. We’re out for a nice time and you’re wrecking it. If you really want to be a waitress, then you should work at being the best damn waitress in the world. Otherwise, find yourself another line of work.””
— Lee Iaccoca
In his book, Inamori shares with us six shojin (diligent efforts) that can guide us in elevating our souls:
Work harder than anyone else, study harder than anyone else, and carry on single-mindedly. If you have enough time to complain, you have enough time to improve yourself, even if only a little.
Be humble, not proud. A Chinese proverb warns us that "only the humble will find fortune." Humility attracts happiness and purifies the soul.
Reflect every day. Assess your actions and state of mind daily to see if you are thinking only of yourself, if you are being mean or cowardly. Exercise self-control and self-reflection and strive to correct your behavior.
Be thankful that you are alive. Believe that you are lucky just to be living and train your heart to be grateful for even the smallest thing.
Fill your days with good deeds and selfless conduct. As the Japanese proverb says, "The home that accumulates good deeds will be blessed with unexpected fortune." Do good things, be of service to others, and strive to be considerate in word and deed. Those who accumulate good deeds will receive a good reward.
Don't complain or dwell on the negative. Maintain a tranquil mind at all times. Don't worry about the things over which you have no control. It is important to do your very best so that you have no regrets.However, the act of working has far more significance and value to us as human beings than just providing a livelihood. It can help us rise above our selfish desires and is the most effective way to develop our minds and build our characters.
This reminds me of the concept of thinking of time as a limited capital that we have learned from Chung Ju-Yung, the founder of Hyundai. In fact, he believed that “time is a form of capital provided equally to everyone”. As such, he explains that to become successful, it is important for one to made good use of his or her time. More importantly, he explains that life without hard work is a life wasted and that a life without daily self-improvement has no meaning.
He once said, “Even if life doesn't stop for a moment, everybody wants to enjoy life comfortably at a leisurely pace. However, I think there is nothing more foolish than living a life according to the mantra of "doing enough just to get by," not knowing how precious one's time is.”
Chung explains that he believes that anyone can excel in any field if they make full use of their time:
“However, if you make full use of your time by living diligently, you can excel in any field. Such a life would be considered a successful one.”
— Chung Ju-Yung
Visualisation
“This first principle, knowing what we want, is the beginning of achieving performance excellence.”
— Joe Montana
As we have learned previously from Joe Montana, visualisation is often used by elite sport performers. One of the most important things in achieving great things is to know what you are pursuing. As Joe Montana mentions, “it is impossible to strive for something until we know what it is we are pursuing. You have to know what you want.”
If we do not know what are specific goals are, it is very difficult to have the drive, discipline or imagination to achieve them. As such, the first thing to do is to identify what we want to accomplish. Not only that, I believe it is primordial to choose which goals we need to focus on in order to manage our time better.
One way of doing this is by writing down the goals we want to achieve and to circle the top three we want to achieve. The rest should be eliminated.
Similarly, Kazuo Inamori believed that the first step to achieve a particular outcome is “to focus your mind on the image of who you want to become or the situation that you want to come to pass.”
In fact, Inamori mentions that it is difficult to achieve a result without having a strong desire for it. As he once said, “Life is an expression of our minds, and our desires are the original and vital force through which our dreams are realized.”
Furthermore, he explains that half-hearted desire rarely lead to results. To produce strong results, goals must have been clearly visualised right from the start. He reiterates that “To make the impossible possible you must be "crazy" about the idea and work toward it with the positive conviction that you can accomplish anything. This is the only way to achieve your goals in life and in business.”
“Dream. Be ambitious. Yearn passionately.”
— Kazuo Inamori
This reminds me of how many successful entrepreneurs are fanatics and misfits. As Charlie Munger once said, “How do you compete against a true fanatic?” In a speech given in 1994 at the USC Business School, Munger explained how Sam Walton achieved success at Wal-Mart through the combination of scale and fanaticism:
“It’s quite interesting to think about Wal-Mart starting from a single store in Bentonville, Arkansas against Sears, Roebuck with its name, reputation and all of its billions. How does a guy in Bentonville, Arkansas with no money blow right by Sears, Roebuck? And he does it in his own lifetime—in fact, during his own late lifetime because he was already pretty old by the time he started out with one little store….
He played the chain store game harder and better than anyone else. Walton invented practically nothing. But he copied everything anybody else ever did that was smart—and he did it with more fanaticism and better employee manipulation. So he just blew right by them all.
He also had a very interesting competitive strategy in the early days. He was like a prizefighter who wanted a great record so he could be in the finals and make a big TV hit. So what did he do? He went out and fought 42 palookas. Right? And the result was knockout, knockout, knockout—42 times.
Walton, being as shrewd as he was, basically broke other small town merchants in the early days. With his more efficient system, he might not have been able to tackle some titan head-on at the time. But with his better system, he could destroy those small town merchants. And he went around doing it time after time after time. Then, as he got bigger, he started destroying the big boys.”
— Charlie Munger
First-Principles Thinking
“Keep it simple. A scenario that takes four steps instead of one means there are three additional opportunities to fail.”
— Sam Zell
Kazuo Inamori once said that, “People tend to think that things are more complex than they actually are. The essence of all things is quite simple. Even things that appear complicated are made up of simple components.”
As a matter of fact, he explains that when facing a complex problem, it is essential to break it down into as simple a form as possible. He mentions that “this is a law of life, and it applies to business, too.”
Inamori mentions that while he knew little about business practices, he was able to achieve success as a businessman by following a basic and simple yet powerful principle of pursuing what is right as a human being as his decision-making criteria. He reiterates that “This is the most important guideline in my life, and I constantly remind myself of it by asking myself: Is this choice compatible with what it means to be human? Does this decision conform to the most basic ethical and moral principles?”
His reasoning behind this was simple. After all, human relationships are extremely important when running a business, and as such, “the same primitive ethical standards that apply to the treatment of individuals should apply to business interactions.”
“At a loss as to how to proceed, I decided that I would be true to what I felt was right as a human being. Don't lie; never harm anyone; don't be greedy or selfish—I took these simple precepts that we learn from our parents and teachers but tend to forget as we grow older and applied them directly to business policy, adopting them as my decision-making criteria.”
— Kazuo Inamori
This reminds me of the concept of “first-principles thinking” that we have learned from Elon Musk. When faced against a complex problem, he always tried to reframe it by using first-principles thinking. His work at Space X is a great example of this. Considering that rockets are absurdly expensive, Musk knew that he had to find a way to build cheaper rockets to send people to Mars.
As such, he implemented an “idiot index”, which calculated how much more costly a finished product was compared to the cost of its basic materials. By consequence, he realized that a rocket, which has a high idiot index, was around two percent of the typical material price. This was often due to inefficient manufacturing. As Musk would put it, “If the ratio is high, you’re an idiot.”
By consequence, Musk knew that the solution for cheaper rockets was for Musk to build them himself. If he could device a more efficient rocket manufacturing technique, he would be able to make rockets at a fraction of the cost.
“I think people’s thinking process is too bound by convention or analogy to prior experiences. It’s rare that people try to think of something on a first principles basis. They’ll say, “We’ll do that because it’s always been done that way.” Or they’ll not do it because “Well, nobody’s ever done that, so it must not be good. But that’s just a ridiculous way to think. You have to build up the reasoning from the ground up—“from the first principles” is the phrase that’s used in physics. You look at the fundamentals and construct your reasoning from that, and then you see if you have a conclusion that works or doesn’t work, and it may or may not be different from what people have done in the past.”
— Elon Musk
Adversity
“Objective Judgment, now at this very moment. Unselfish action, now at this very moment. Willing Acceptance - now at this very moment - of all external events. That's all you need.”
— Marcus Aurelius
As mentioned previously, Kazuo Inamori is a believer that hard work is necessary to refine one’s character. In the same line of thought, he mentions that it is essential for one to face adversity in order to have advancement, both in life and in business.
Inamori once said, “It is the ability to plod away without complaint, to never give up, to continuously do one's best each day, that transforms ordinary people into extraordinary people.”
As such, Inamori mentions that rather than being afraid of challenges, one should embrace it. He elaborates that the best approach when facing a problem is “to assess what is right and what is wrong on the basis of an open mind and clear, simple principles.” As mentioned above, first-principle thinking is an important principle of Inamori’s.
Furthermore, in the same line of thought, Inamori mentions that in business, taking difficult jobs was the only way to find work as a new and minor company. And when his employees confronted him on this, he would often tell them, "Impossible is just one stop on the road to success. I know we can do this if we give it everything we've got and stick with it to the end.”
“The only way to learn is to leap into the water and start paddling. In the same way, we can't hope to manage a business without working on the shop floor.”
— Kazuo Inamori
Inamori, as an engineer, was trained to ask himself if the results were good enough or if there were a better way. He explains that “If you look at what you are doing from that perspective, there is infinite potential for innovation in even the most mundane tasks.”
As such, even when not faced with difficulties, Inamori believed that one has to have that mentality of always seeking to make little improvements every day. In the long run, this makes a huge difference.
As a matter of fact, Inamori mentions that no matter how big our goals are, it can be achieved if we go through life with steady effort.
“Rather than mindlessly repeating what we did the day before, we should seek ways to make tomorrow better than today, always adding some improvement tomorrow to our efforts from today.”
— Kazuo Inamori
As a reminder, Inamori faced various obstacles and failures throughout his youth before reaching success with the creation of Kyocera. As a matter of fact, in his book “Dream Small, Win Big”, he explains how he failed to enter Junior High School twice and was unable to obtain his dream job upon graduating from University. Despite these challenges, Inamori was able to succeed by changing his perspective on how he faced difficulties in life:
“The important thing is to think of all the various things that happen in life, whether fortunate or disastrous, as divine trials. When a trial comes in the form of good fortune, it should be accepted with a "thank you" rooted in deep, sincere gratitude, and a commitment to continuing to stay humble while persisting in one's efforts. When the trial comes in the form of disaster, it should be met without grief, resentment, depression, envy, or complaint, and with a single-minded and cheerful commitment to moving forward.”
— Kazuo Inamori
As a matter of fact, he was able to achieve his dreams and succeed in life by facing his misfortunes with a positive attitude. He thought these trials in life were meant for him to improve his character as a human being. Inamori mentions that it is by overcoming difficulties that one’s abilities can be expanded limitlessly. As famously said by Wendell Philips, “What is defeat? Nothing but education, nothing but the first steps to something better.”
This reminds me of the concept of “small earned steps” we have learned from Michael Bloomberg, the founder of Bloomberg, who believed in the saying that 80 percent of life is just showing up.
As a matter of fact, while it is impossible to choose the circumstances you are born with, especially your genetic intelligence, the only thing you can control is how hard you work. Bloomberg mentions that “The more you work, the better you do. It’s that simple.” And that he always outworked the other person.
While predicting the future is impossible, Bloomberg explains that hard work increases your odds of success. While it is not guaranteed, he always believed that by working hard, you may place yourself in a better position to succeed. He also mentions the fact that his success comes from small earned steps rather than big lucky hits. He once said that “If you put in the time, you aren’t guaranteed success. But if you don’t, I’m reasonably sure of the results.”
As such, Bloomberg insists that by trying to improve one-self one step at a time, you will be able to outwork others and to seek the rewards that you deserve.
This concept of “small earned steps” is also an important notion to succeed in business. As a matter of fact, constant innovation is a must when running a company, due to competition. Bloomberg mentions that “in business, growth is a necessity: you grow or you get out.” He explains that no company can afford to stay complacent, no matter how successful it is.
Beyond the Book
Read "First Principles: The Building Blocks of True Knowledge" by Farnam Street
Read "How Julia Child Used First Principles Thinking" by Farnam Street