The Importance of Bridging Information Gaps

■Sharing information within the company

In this issue, I would like to share how our company handles internal information gaps.

“What do you think about this?”

There are times when I get information (through such a question) from employees during company meetings or when I’m working on a project.

For a question such as “How do you plan to use information about the company’s vision and plans,” there are employees who understand the question and have accurate responses, and there are employees who misunderstand the question’s purpose and meaning.

This situation has begun to occur more often when our company started increasing its number of locations. It was really tough, and I often thought it would’ve been faster if I did everything by myself.

We have been implementing multiple initiatives to improve this situation.

Every first Monday of the month at 8:30 am, all locations participate in an online meeting, and I share recent reviews, our current situation, and the company’s short-term outlook with all employees.

When we first started these online meetings, there were many who said they didn’t understand most of what I was saying, or that they’d rather get on with their work right away. But now, most of the employees listen and focus on what I have to say and understand what I’m saying.

What I was saying and what I meant were not being conveyed because I used words that they were not used to hearing while they worked, and it was also hard to make them imagine a medium and long-term perspective or the abstract concepts that I was talking about.

As much as possible, I chose words that all employees could understand. By converting my words into concrete details such as how such a concept or plan will affect them, I was able to share my thoughts and policies with our employees.

As a result, gaps in communication have been improving gradually. To align all vectors of each decision, word spoken, and behavior, we continue to share assessments of preconditions and current priorities. I believe this is important especially in today’s rapidly changing world.

■The importance of sharing information and policies with people outside of the company

Currently, my biggest regret is having neglected to share information (policies) with our partner companies.

Our business model’s strength is being able to quickly grasp our customers’ needs and build locally based services together with our partner companies. From our customers’ perspective, it may appear that the automobile export YARD business we offer throughout Japan move and work in the same way, but the actual construction of services greatly differs from area to area.

For our partner companies that are mainly port operators, we ensure that we have a “trust-based cargo acceptance system” within the constraints specific to each area.

When our company was first established, I personally interacted with the people in the area and shared information with a view to the future as I created services for them. Back then, only a few didn’t fully trust of our company, but as the number of our employees increased and authority was transferred to others, many instances of others not trusting of us emerged.

In this light, it was around 2019 when we decided to aim for medium to long-term growth by clearly communicating our philosophy and vision internally and externally, and by enhancing the cultivation of employees who embody them.

There have been many times when I wanted to fly in and take charge when a problem occurred or when a new service was being launched, but I did not. In order to realize our company’s goal of “maximizing the number of automobiles exported from Japan,” each employee, as a member of the used car export industry, must remind themselves of the importance of going through the process of building operations and creating services as they deal with everyone involved.

However, I feel that this has caused a great deal of stress and frustration for some of our partner companies.

Being able to act quickly and flexibly has always been one of my strengths, but sometimes I receive complaints such as “Why don’t you come and see us personally?” Not flying in and handling things personally may seem unfair, especially to our partner companies who started doing business with our company because they trusted me rather than our business itself.

The truth is my thoughts and feelings for our partner companies have not diminished.

My desire to train as many people who can handle logistics as possible, and to expand our business while building deeper and more solid relationships is stronger than ever.

■Creating opportunities to share our plans and vision internally and externally

We are now developing a three-year business plan starting 2023 with our managers and other higher-ups.

I plan to invite our partner companies next year for a gathering and a presentation.

Why am I the president of this company? What kind of thinking do we base our work on? What are we going to do in the future? By clearly championing and sharing the answers to these questions, we will take on the challenge of expanding into areas and on a scale we have never been in nor done before.
Thank you for your time.