One JAPAN First Anniversary Event Part 1 of 2: I once was powerless in the face of awesomeness.
No matter how many inspiring seminars or events I attend, at the end of the day, I won’t be able to achieve anything.
This is the feeling that has been haunting me since I was a college student.
Encourage innovation.
Drive change in big companies.
Bring forth a change to Japan.
This was a message repeatedly delivered at the event. A message passionate and unarguably true, delivered by those who can proudly believe in it. And then there is me. A wannabe believer left behind the crowd.
I’ve always felt a slight disconnect between my ideals and reality. Desperate for change, I once read through many self-help books and attended various student group events. However, although these efforts gave me a spark of hope, the excitement died off overnight and all that was left was deep despair of being told again that I cannot be, “One of them.”
The One Japan First Anniversary Event was held on September 10, 2017 at Akihabara UDX. This event reminded me of myself from the past — a person unable to be a true doer.
Be a doer
The event opened with remarks from Mr. Hamamatsu, the representative of One JAPAN.
The themes for the event were, “Develop those who can embrace challenges” and “There is no point unless you become a doer.”
For some time now, I have been supporting the One JAPAN meetings where the representatives of various organizations get together on a regular basis, and I realized that the main message discussed in those sessions were also, “We need more doers.”
One JAPAN is, “A platform built by voluntary groups of large companies, where individuals inspire and encourage each other to take action.” (Extract from the Official Website)
With every meeting, the number of companies in this platform increase and at this 4th official gathering, almost 900 people from 44 companies had come together as a part of One JAPAN. One JAPAN is growing as a scalable platform. Hence, the focus is now shifting from “Plain participation” to “How to increase the number of doers.”
To prove this, the message from the speakers in the programs that followed the opening remarks were all about, “Becoming a doer.”
Mr. Matsuo, an associate professor from Tokyo University stated, “Connections don’t necessarily drive innovation.” In the One JAPAN “Work Style” survey, it was found that although 80% of people are motivated about encouraging innovation, only 45% take any action.
Amongst all the contents covered, what inspired me most was the panel discussion by business managers and the short presentations by external organizations.
To be a doer, find your inner fire
Mr. Miyaji from Asahi Glass, Mr. Iwai from JT and Mr. Higuchi from Panasonic were the discussion panelists.
Stories of innovation from the perspective of business managers were convincing and powerful, backed by firsthand experience.
“We all say innovate, but innovation should never be the objective. First question yourself, why you think an innovation is necessary.” Says Mr. Miyaji. Mr. Iwai responded to that. “It’s important to question yourself about the fire that’s burning within you.”
Those words reminded me from my past and brought back bitter memories.
Sometimes, people can get obsessed or even feel threatened by the thought they have to do something. That happened to me in college too. I now bitterly refer to that experience as the, “College Open Day Foot Bath Deficit Incident.” Desperate to do something different and fun at the College Open Day, I pulled together a team and came up with a plan to have a foot bath with doctor fish for the visitors. Just for your reference, this episode was previously introduced on my personal blog, “Quit trying to be a weirdo.”
Simply put, the 4 day event ended in havoc with only 5 customers visiting in total, leaving a deficit of several hundred dollars — almost a death sentence for broke college students. Furthermore the doctor fishes borrowed were not released into the tank due to concerns raised by the organizers, and the whole plan quickly wisped into thin air, just like the steam from the foot bath.
I did all I could do to be a “weirdo” in college, as Kyoto University was a place that encouraged students to be weird and different — but I found myself usually being a nobody.
The discussion by Mr. Miyaji and Mr. Iwai at One JAPAN reminded me of my shameful past. “A good leader, can spark a fire in people’s hearts.” Mr. Miyaji stated. This connects beautifully with Mr. Iwai’s message of, “Find your fire.” And Mr. Higuchi followed, “The stronger the philosophy of the leader, the more people resonate and gather.”
So my take-out from this session — To generate innovation, people need to find and spark the fire within, and use that as the guiding light to gather and grow with others.
Spark your fire within with experience
So that all made sense, but I still I wondered — how the hell do you find your fire? I’m not exaggerating when I say I spent most of my college years trying to find my fire. Other than the footbath incident I raised before, I recall myself sneaking into the post-graduate school laboratory to study molecular biology, saying I want to become a science researched. I worked part time at a diving gear shop in Okinawa, determined to become a scuba diving instructor. I tried selling stone crucibles as an intern at an IT start-up with aspirations to become be an entrepreneur. One summer I sat through a batch of summer internship program entrance exams for a consulting firm to become a consultant, and didn’t pass a single exam. I also spend a year in India selling real estate.
I don’t know of anyone who went self-searching as much as I did. I swear.
But no matter how far or wide I searched, I couldn’t find my fire.
By the time I started job hunting, I resigned from the idea of finding my fire and settled to the understanding that not all have the fire to be doers. It doesn’t mean that people with aspirations are better than the ones who don’t. Aspirations may simply just a part of your personality. I don’t need to be ashamed that I can’t find my fire… In hope to find a chance to share this with others, I chose advertising as my career.
Going back to the One JAPAN event, in the external organization short presentations, Mr. Aso from Recruit Inc. and director of an open innovation space located in Shibuya, “TECH LAB PAAK” stated the following.
“Simply establishing a network doesn’t get you anywhere. Your actions needs to be backed by a strong vision of what you want as an end result. How do you do this? You need to experience things. When you visit a place with a serious problem that requires a solution, for the first time you may feel the burning desire to solve it. For example, if you visit an area struggling with the aftermaths of an earthquake, that may give you a personal reason to do something. That’s the experience which will help you drive change.”
This made sense. Even if you force yourself to do something for the sake of doing something, it certainly didn’t get me far nor aspired others. Obviously I needed a spark, an experience that gives me the drive to take action.
After the event, I was blessed with the opportunity to talk to Mr. Aso. He said to me, “If you are satisfied with yourself, then you’re not going find the need to innovate. You need a problem which you can truly believe in to make things happen.”
Experience new things to spark and flare the fire within.
This is probably good news for people like me from the past — those who are looking for innovation but unsure of what to do.
How I found the “Fire”
Some people reading this article may have noticed me referring to many episodes from my past. This is because while being in the work force for 3 years, I actually found my ways to ignite the fire, without using new experiences as a spark.
There are 2 ways I do this.
One is to revisit an experience from the past which may had appeared insignificant at the time.
For example. I have always enjoyed expressing myself with words. By the time I was in elementary school, I started writing sequels to stories from readers. (Being a precocious brat, I added a bittersweet love story to the plot). I just liked coming up with “stories.”
Imagining stories of my friends was my favorite part of storytelling. In middle school, I secretly wrote a baseball novel starring my classmates (of course with a bittersweet love story as well). In high school I wrote essays of our graduation trip and distributed a copy to the members who went together. In my college years before the fall of Mixi, I wrote many posts regarding my extracurricular activities and acquaintances. I thought writing posts on was normal, but I eventually found out that others never wrote as much as I had.
Why did I write so much? I guess the answer to that is, because I am an absolute humanitarian and just love people. You may think this is a lie, but looking back I cannot recall I time when I felt pure hate towards anybody.
Everybody has some good, and it’s never too late to find the good in someone before you decide to hate. I think my initial motivation to write came from the hope that everyone should be given a chance to be liked before they are hated. When you belong to an organization, you can decide on someone just from rumors, badmouthing and how they look. I thought I may be able to change the dynamics by writing things about people which cannot be seen in the everyday workplace. I currently write reports on the company baseball club’s performance and articles of fishing and mountaineering trips. I do this because I just purely enjoy writing, but I also have the hope that this will lead to better understanding of each other in the organization.
The second approach is simple — If you can’t believe in yourself, believe in somebody else.
As I have mentioned on several occasions so far, I struggle to believe in my fire. As much as I want to, I have been let down too many times by my expectations, but I can’t change who I am… So I came to the conclusion that if I can’t believe in myself, then I should believe in what other people believe.
I am currently working on a personal project, 「東京よばなし」 . This is a project where I gather 3 acquaintances and I write a story of whatever we talked about over a drink. The reason why I do this is just as I explained before, but to connect people with others in ways they have never connected before. This was a project which I thought would be interesting, but was too chicken to implement due to my failures from the past. I only gathered the courage to make it happen because other people believed in it and told me many times that it is an action worth taking. This is still a little project, but when I posted the contents on the blog, 400 visitors came to my blog in the first 10 days and I have been contacted by several people that they want to be involved in this project. Some others offered to run this project with me, and we are now planning on how to improve the website. This is a huge difference to the footbath incident at college.
If you can’t be confident in what you think, then believe in others who believe in what you think. Even if the fire within you is small, put that small fire with someone else’s fire and it may turn into flames.
Finally
Encourage innovation.
Drive change in big companies.
Bring forth a change to Japan.
Indeed, these are wonderful words.
I am deeply envy of those who can naturally ignite the fire within them and take action without hesitation. But at the same time, I am probably their biggest fan and supporter.
However, if you are a person who is interested in innovation but feeling powerless in not achieving anything… Think of your past and new experiences, and trybelieving in someone you can believe in more than yourself.
At least, that is my take-out from the first half of the One JAPAN event.
(The second half of the event will be reported by Irie from McCANN MILLENNIALS→ ミレニアルズが起こす大企業での挑戦－One JAPAN交流会レポート（後編）)
About One JAPAN
Established in September 2016 as the platform for voluntary groups of young talents in large companies. Various activities are being conducted, ranging from planning and implementation of new projects and cross-collaborative businesses, through to research and proposal development for new ways to work.
http://onejapan.jp/
