26 July 2010

A lil bit from the book : Konosuke Matsushita - His Life and Management Philosophy


While planning for adoption of the five-day work week in the company, he faced a challenge where the labor union began to voice objections. Many people query that the implementation was too good to be true -  as the salary will not be lowered, the fringe benefits and other working conditions will remains the same as before for the workers.

Around that time, a friend of him showed a Japanese translation of a piece of reflective writing that he found very inspiring. The writing is shown as below:


~Youth is not a time of life-it is a state of mind;it is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over lose of ease...

Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years wrinkly the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair - these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust.

Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being's heart love of wonder, the sweet amazement at the stars and the star-like things and thoughts, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfilling childlike appetite for what next, and the joy and the game of life.

You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.

So long as your heart receives a message of beauty, cheer, courage, grandeur and power from the earth, from man and from the infinite, you are young.

When the wires are all down and all the central place of your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then you are grown old indeed and may God have mercy on your soul.~
(Given to Douglas MacArthur by John W.Lewis. It is based on a poem written by Samuel Ullman of Birmingham, Alabama...)

Konosuke Matsushita then composed a poem, based on the fourth paragraph of this piece, that became a kind of motto for him.

Seishun to wa kokoro no wakasa de aru
Shinnen to kibo ni afure
Yuki ni michite hi ni arata na
katsudo o tsuzukeru kagiri
Seishun wa eien ni sono hito no mono de aru.
-------------------------------------------------
Youth is youngness at heart
Youth is eternal for those
Who are full of faith and hope
And greet the challenges of each new day
With courage and confidence...
Konosuke Matsushita (松下 幸之助 Matsushita Kōnosuke, November 27, 1894 – April 27, 1989) was a Japanese industrialist, the founder of Panasonic, a company based in the suburb of Kadoma (on the Keihan line), Osaka in Japan. For many Japanese, he is known as "the god of management".(Di petik dari Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

No comments: