Report No.24
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Japan Entrepreneur Report No. 24 October 2004
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- The happiness issue
- Humetrix builds satisfied teams
- Positive psychology's Grandpa
- Sound bytes
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The happiness issue
While reviewing thousands of psychology studies performed over the past
six decades, Martin Seligman discovered a disturbing pattern--the
overwhelming majority dealt with mental illness. Only a tiny portion of
the research addressed the issue of greatest concern to most people: how
to be happy.
Dr. Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania,
was thunderstruck by the implications of his discovery. During World War
II, Seligman realized, psychologists had focused on helping traumatized
soldiers regain their lives. In the process they became preoccupied with
studying, classifying and treating mental illnesses. Inquiries into
happiness and well-being were crowded out of the research ring. For the
past 60 years psychology has been devoted almost exclusively to
rehabilitation, remaining largely unconcerned with understanding how
people become happier and more satisfied.
Seligman has since spearheaded a "positive psychology" movement dedicated
to scientifically defining, identifying, classifying and engendering
behavior causally linked to happiness and well-being.
What does all this have to do with entrepreneurship in Japan? Everything.
First, work satisfaction is crucial to business owners and employees
alike. Seligman says workers become happier when they can use their
"signature strengths"--another word for skills or core competencies--in
an enterprise linked to a greater good. That jibes with my personal view
(not empirically substantiated) that ventures are scalable and successful
to the extent they address significant social problems.
Second, job dissatisfaction and career mismatching are knotty problems in
Japan, given the nation's two million "freeters" (young workers
skipping from temporary job to temporary job) and nearly half a million
NEETs (adults Not in Education, Employment or Training). The number of
NEETs aged 15 through 24 has jumped fivefold over the past six years,
according to business weekly Shukan Diamond.
Tough social problems like these create entrepreneurial opportunity. What
could be more worthy or challenging than helping workers become happier
and more satisfied?
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Humetrix builds satisfied teams
A new Tokyo firm, Humetrix, is applying the principles of positive
psychology--as well as its own patent pending methodology--to the
challenges of boosting worker satisfaction and organizational
productivity. Led by former Andersen Consulting partner/SAS Vice
President/Dentsu Fuse CEO Momose Kimio, Humetrix's goal is "human
potential maximization."
Mr. Momose gave me an in-person lesson in Humetrix theory this summer,
and I caught up with him again by e-mail this month. Excerpts from our
conversations follow.
- What is different about Humetrix's approach to personnel work?
Two things. First, the U.S. approach focuses on corporate structure and
positions; organizations look to fill open job slots with certain "types"
of people. The Japanese personnel focuses on people; organizations create
positions to accommodate outstanding hires. Humetrix takes the Japanese
approach.
Second, we deal with teams, not just individual employees. Personnel
departments typically evaluate policy effectiveness using employee
satisfaction surveys. But results of these person-to-person surveys
rarely have a bearing on the organization's mission. Rather than
identifying team or organizational problems, they tend to reflect
individual respondents' personal reasons for being satisfied or
unsatisfied.
- Tell us about your methodology.
We use interviews and written assessments structured around our
proprietary, patent-pending Team Relation Map, a tool for evaluating how
well teams function. We provide leadership coaching for team leaders,
individual coaching and counseling for team members, and consulting to
help management redeploy teams. So far we've done more than 3,000
assessments. When we have 10,000 data points we'll publish some cases
and perhaps a book.
We want to work with leaders who love their employees. Humetrix solutions
work brilliantly with such leaders. Without such a leader's commitment,
at least at the top of the organization, Humetrix solutions simply won't
work well.
- What other services does Humetrix offer?
We offer career search support. It's free of charge to applicants and
includes an occupational suitability assessment. Fees are employer paid.
Those interested can visit
<www.humetrix.co.jp/modules/sbh2/index.php?id=2> for details (Japanese
language service only). We are making some of our assessment tools
available via an ASP (Application Service Provider) model to reduce costs
to clients and improve our business's scalability.
- How do you hope to change the human resource function in Japan?
Our mission is to activate teams using key elements from the three
disciplines of psychology, business, and human resource management.
Businesspeople are concerned more with motivating and "incentivizing"
employees and less with organizational structure. Psychologists recognize
money and other tangible incentives as insufficient to create motivated,
satisfied employees. Meanwhile, human resource people tend to be
generalists focused on organizational structure rather than maximizing
employee potential. We want to transform human resource people from
personnel generalists to counseling and team psychology specialists.
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Positive psychology's Grandpa
One hundred years ago a soft-spoken, retired Englishman living quietly in
the southwest coastal town of Ilfracombe, England, wrote a short book
about the power of positive thinking. Contradicting his own work's theme,
he decided the slim volume was unworthy of publication. Fortunately his
wife disagreed. James Allen's book, entitled "As a Man Thinketh" seeded
a sprawling industry worth $200 billion last year.
Allen died in 1912, long before witnessing the seminal effect his work
had on today's gargantuan self-help/"wellness" industry. Allen wrote 19
books, many with undeniable universal appeal. Every year it seems another
becomes a bestseller in Japanese translation.
The key theme of "As a Man Thinketh," Allen's best-known book, is that
one's thoughts determine one's circumstances. As Allen put it, "most of
us are anxious to improve our circumstances, but are unwilling to improve
ourselves." You can read the entire text of "As a Man Thinketh" on a
number of Web sites.
James Allen was to the self-help industry what Chuck Berry was to rock-
and-roll music. Berry was influenced by many musicians, but he was the
first to combine numerous traditional elements into an original, enduring
new form. Similarly, philosophers preceding Allen by decades--even
centuries--wrote about comparable topics, but Allen was the first 20th
century author to crystallize the "power of positive thinking" concept in
concise, accessible language.
Later self-help gurus--Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Tony Robbins, Wayne
Dyer and many others--owe a huge debt to Allen, the grandfather of the
positive psychology movement. Meanwhile, the industry is poised for even
more explosive growth, analysts say. Economist Paul Pilzer, in a book
entitled "The Next Trillion," predicts the U.S. wellness industry will
grow to one trillion dollars by 2010, about the same size as today's
health-care sector. If Japan's wellness industry grows apace it will be
worth some $300 billion by 2010.
In short, there's still plenty of opportunity to do well by helping
others be well.
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Sound bytes
Serial entrepreneur and former Asahi TV reporter Sasaki Kaori will speak
at the Entrepreneur Association of Tokyo meeting November 2. See
<http://www.ea-tokyo.com> for location and details.
Next month JER's all about Japanese entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.
Stay tuned...
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Tim Clark
Senior Fellow (non-resident)
SunBridge Corp.
Voice (U.S.) 503.235.4419
Fax (U.S.) 503.235.4429
clark@sunbridge.com
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