Lesson #3: Management Means To Inspire Creativity

“From a management standpoint, it is very important to know how to unleash people's inborn creativity,” said Morita. “My concept is that anybody has creative ability, but very few people know how to use it.” Morita created one of the world’s largest multinational corporations but he did not do it alone. Indeed, over his fifty-year career, Morita became one of the most outspoken businessmen for sound management principles, of which his were largely based on Japanese traditions.

“The most important mission for a Japanese manager is to develop a healthy relationship with his employees, to create a family-like feeling within the corporation, a feeling that employees and managers share the same fate,” said Morita. “We will try to create conditions where persons could come together in a spirit of teamwork, and exercise to their heart’s desire their technological capacity.”

To that end, Morita made it a point to visit each of his factories and to try to meet every single employee. He wanted to make sure his staff felt like fellow human beings instead of tools that were being used. But, while he emphasized teamwork and a close working relationship between management and staff, so too did Morita believe in the importance of the individual’s ability to exercise creative freedom.

For Morita, however, motivation came not from money, but instead from the quality of the jobs his staff were performing. “I believe people work for satisfaction,” he said. “I believe it is a big mistake to think that money is the only way to compensate a person for his work. People need money, but they also want to be happy in their work and proud of it.”

In order to motivate his staff, Morita strove to provide challenging work, with clear goals about where the company was headed. “My solution to the problem of unleashing creativity is always to set up a target,” he said. “Management of an industrial company must be giving targets to the engineers constantly; that may be the most important job management has in dealing with its engineers.”

Morita, in fact, disagreed with the Japanese government, which saw big laboratories equipped with all the latest instruments as the key to stimulating creativity. While he wanted his staff to have the best facilities, he knew that alone would not lead to creative and productive work.



Morita also believed in long-term planning and investment, versus the preoccupation with quarterly profits he thought American companies had. To that end, Sony was always focused on hiring people who could work together. Morita never cared whether or not his staff came from the best universities, or if they had the top marks. “I established the rule that once we hire an employee, his schools records are a matter of the past,” said Morita, “and are no longer used to evaluate his work or decide on his promotion.” In 1966, he even wrote a book to that effect called, “Never Mind School Records.”

Morita believed that his management style was a mixture of both Western and Japanese traditions. He combined the two to create a style all his own, and one that would take his company to the top.



Lesson #3: Management Means To Inspire Creativity

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