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Apr.23.2016 KIP Forum “The Global World and The Leadership”
Mr. Shigeo Ohyagi, the Representative Director of Teijin Ltd
For our April forum, we invited Mr. Shigeo Ohyagi, the Representative Director of Teijin Ltd from 2014. He also has served successively as the chairman of the Japan Chemical Fibers Association, Nippon Bio-plastics Association chairman, and "project to consider the vision for social, economic and market" of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives. He gave us a lecture on a title of “the global world and the leadership”. As one of the top of the business world, Mr. Ohyagi mentioned his view to the modern world that is increasing its uncertainty of the future, and in such an environment, what kind of posture the leader should be.
In the first half, Mr. Ohyagi talked about diversification and complication of modern society with mentioning four points, globalization, digitalization, ICT and low birthrate and aging as the elements surrounding modern Japan. Of these four points, ICT that enable information to connect service was the most interesting for me. He told us that Teijin Corporation is also working on this technology. For example, it is used for management of the respiratory medical equipment which is necessary for the life of the person. Then Mr. Ohyagi talked what the leaders should be in such a modern age. I was particularly inspired with the indication that a leader is completely different from a manager managing the accomplishment of duties. A leader has responsibility to state a vision clearly and realize it and bring up a follower becoming the future leader. In addition to these, leaders are expected to have strategies and a severe sense of duty to realize his vision. After that, he introduced a parable of Momotaro to consider the viewpoint of a follower. Momotaro is with three followers of the monkey a dog, a pheasant. And the dog indicates action, the pheasant is information collection, and the monkey is planning. And when it was asked which was the most important among these three types of followers, Mr. Ohyagi’s answer was the action of the dog. That is because when you put some plans into an action, you can notice an insufficient point for the first time. So we should consider at the perspective of action. As I expected information or planning is essential in the current world that huge information is flying busily and a novel planning became an innovation, I was surprised at his story and had a new discovery.
In the latter half, we had a group discussion based on his lecture on the theme that “Should leaders consider the opinion of followers?” Even though the discussion theme was the same, each group devised discussion points and tried to push forward the arguments. For example, one group clarified the role of an ideal leader based on their own experience that acted as a leader or a follower. Another group set a particular situation not to keep the discussion an argument on the matter of the degree. The majority of the groups concluded that the decision should be made by a leader because it is a leader who recognizes the goal beat and would take the responsibility. On the other hand, some people pointed out some merits to take consideration into the opinion of the follower such as the new discovery from various opinions or the motivation improvement of the follower. Since we are living in groups and act leaders or followers in everyday life, I think that it was a significant opportunity to think about ideal form of organization. I would like to take this opportunity and thank Mr. Oyagi for giving us a great lecture. Thank you very much.
(Oneda Hiromi)