Earn Trust rather than Money

＊This article was originally written in Japanese by our CEO, Yoshihide Arai.

As an executive of my company, I face so many different kinds of decision making everyday. And most of it, there is no one definite answer to it, which makes it a challenging problem.

Because I’ve been an executive since I was 26 years old, I’ve faced that kind of difficulty and severeness many many times. I’m not really sure but I might have wanted something to believe in, I read multiple books about decision theory at that time.

16 years have passed, and I probably improved a bit. When I look back and think about the changes, I think I consider qualitative aspects such as building trust with people and ethical perspectives, rather than rationality when I make decisions.

Last week, I saw Jose Mujica, the former President of Ukraine on TV and the words he said really grasps the true essence of people. This is what he said;

“There are so many people in Japan that use up their time to earn money so that they can satisfy their material desire. However, this makes people forget about the really important things.”

“Having a reason to live is the best thing. And in this case, people should provide something valuable to the society.”

These days, “career” or “marketability” is a trending word in the business world. However, I think that how much trust this person gained from others is important, rather than the professionalism or ability they have. At least, the excellent business persons that I’ve met have this in common.

Not only just as a person but as a company, I feel that it’s important to focus more on how much trust you gain from clients, stockholders, and business partners rather than the market capitalism, sales or profit. The total trust you gain is the fundamental value of the organization/company and is probably the ideal system rather than the imperfect system of capitalism.

So, we will keep on accelerating towards becoming an attractive company that have fans all over the world!