Translated from 日本語 • View original Have you ever heard of Diamond Media Co., Ltd.? We provide web solutions for the real estate industry and are a real estate solution company that is attracting a lot of attention right now. In addition, this company is also famous for its holacracy management. Diamond Media Co., Ltd., which is managed by Horacy, and ISAO Co., Ltd., which is managed by Bali Flat.
I feel sympathy.
So, we invited President Takei, who can be said to be a leading expert on holacracy management in Japan. A conversation with our representative, Nakamura, has been realized! What did the managers of each company think and ended up here? As you talk deeply, you will see what are the differences between each other? ! Pioneers of holacracy management discuss the shape of the company in the 21st century. I will send you a total of 3 times.
The first session "Horacy Management and Bali Flat Management"
First of all, about each other's organizations
Nakamura
Thank you for your time today. First, I would like to introduce each other's organizations, and then talk about the differences between conventional organizations, holacracy organizations, and vari-flat organizations, and learn from each other. ISAO is behind the scenes of the IT industry, providing B2B system and operation resources, creating services with clients, and creating in-house services, and doing a wide range of work in the IT field. Originally started as a joint venture between CSK and SEGA, it has been part of the Toyota Tsusho Group since 2010. The scale of sales is about 3.7 billion yen, operating profit is about 450 million, and the number of employees is about 250 people, including part-time workers.
Takei
Diamond Media makes a living from real estate fintech and is engaged in a maniac IT business called B2B2B in real estate distribution. Customers include real estate brokerage companies, real estate management companies, real estate investors, and individual owners. It was established in 2007 and has been in operation since 2008, and it began to specialize in the real estate area about 5 years ago. The number of people is 16 or 17 full-time employees, and about 10 freelancers, etc., and they are free to do side jobs. We have sales of about 200 million yen, and we continue to operate in the black without external capital, and if we want to make a profit, we will make a profit of about 50 million, but we are currently in the investment phase and are intentionally aiming for an operating profit of about 10 million.
Nakamura
Specifically, what services do you provide to the real estate industry?
Takei
It's very difficult to explain...... We provide a web marketing system for CRM (Customer Relationship Management) for real estate brokerage companies, which accounts for about 70% of sales in our main business, and four people are in charge of the service.
The rest of the team is all in charge of new businesses, one of which is a leasing management system for real estate management companies. This service is unique to us in Japan, and it defines the work performed by real estate management companies into management and recruitment operations, and focuses on areas that have not been covered until now.
Simply put, it is a combination of marketing automation and SFA (Sales Force Automation) services, specializing in property management operations. This service allows you to visualize the sales/marketing part and analyze the "recruitment business" of real estate management companies. The second is for investors, which is why we call ourselves real estate fintech, but unlike cash and other financial assets, real estate assets are physical assets, so it is difficult to buy and sell them online. Like a used car, you can't judge the condition unless you actually look at it. Therefore, relative transactions with intermediaries are basic, and they cannot be bought and sold in the market like stocks. In various industries, IT reform often destroys middlemen and margins, but for the reasons mentioned earlier, it is difficult for the real estate industry to do so, so we would like to optimize distribution including middlemen.
Therefore, we are developing a service that aggregates information such as the utilization rate of intermediaries and connects them with the accounting app of the company we are currently partnering with, allowing investors to manage real estate assets on the same screen as other financial assets.
Nakamura
Well, I kind of understood. (laughs) In an industry where information is very closed, it is a business about how to open up information.
Takei
That's exactly right, and I believe that if we open up information, the market will become healthy on its own. And this way of thinking is also connected to the management style of Diamond Media.
Nakamura
Thank you for connecting to the story of management style in a good way. (laughs) Let's talk about the organization soon.
Eliminate unreasonable power through horacracy management
Nakamura
Diamond Media has achieved a fairly open "holacracy management", but may I briefly explain its management style first?
Takei
Originally, we called our management with the word "humanity management" created by Mr. Tengai Shiro (the pseudonym of Toshitada Doi), and we also wrote a blog, but it is not widespread at all, so recently we have taken advantage of the trend and called it "holacracy management". When I changed the title of my blog to "Horacracy Management", the access increased tenfold. I feel that the content of what we are doing is exactly the same as ISAO's management, but we are smaller in scale and may be easier to get to the bottom of. Recently, we are trying to introduce this idea into capital policy.
Nakamura
What kind of initiative is that?
Takei
I think that the idea of holacracy is basically an effort to eliminate unreasonable power, but as a result of removing power such as internal positions, the current situation is that it is trying to touch the power of shareholders. Currently, I have the majority of shares, and the two founding members and the current executives each own shares, but it is annoying to be thought to have power because they own shares (laughs), so I would like to move to a new scheme.
Nakamura
What is the new scheme?
Takei
We are currently considering creating a stock holding association and having shares with voting rights in it, and making other shares non-voting. If I do that, I think I will be able to maintain the state of management even if I am gone.
Nakamura
I see. However, you will continue to have a share (of stocks).
Takei
Yes, you have a share, but you don't have voting rights, so you have no power over management. I can see the prospects of realization, so I plan to do it within the year or next year.
Discomfort with traditional hierarchical organizations
Nakamura
Basically, I want to eliminate meaningless power such as positions and hierarchical relationships, but I am often asked what I am doing for something different from the traditional "hierarchical organization". What do you think you are doing it for?
Takei
What is it for? From our point of view, don't you think, "That's the only thing!"
Nakamura
There are many cases where there is a sense of incongruity in a hierarchical organization.
Takei
Well, my company has been running in this style for about 9 years, and I myself have never been in a normal organization, so I don't know, but I feel like this is better.
Nakamura
You have never worked in a hierarchical organization.
Takei
I guess it's about the part-time job in the past. But it's annoying to be instructed from above by someone who can't do a better job than you. I don't think it's a title, but someone who can do it.
Nakamura
I see. I have always felt that there is too much waste in a hierarchical organizational structure. Productivity is severely impaired, such as useless approvals and reviews due to hierarchical organizations, or reports for reporting. I grew up as a member of society in a hierarchical organization, but when I looked around, I often saw powerful people who usually drive their work without worrying about hierarchies, but they had to get a stamp from their boss to move on to the next job.
Takei
It's like a picture of a large company. (Laughter)
Nakamura
I was in Europe before I became the president of ISAO, but Western companies are overwhelmingly faster at decision-making. When I was observing why, I found that many companies had very flat organizations and did not ask for unnecessary reports from front-line employees. Witnessing Japanese companies losing to such companies made me realize the importance of speed in decision-making. When I was thinking about what I needed to do to speed up decision-making, I realized that an unnecessary hierarchy was getting in the way, and I wanted to remove it from the organization. I also thought that meaningless work, such as "requests to create unimportant materials" from elders, would disappear if the hierarchy was eliminated and the organization was flattened.
In summary, "increase decision-making speed to win in business" and "eliminate inefficient work in the organization and work comfortably and happily". These are the two points. With this idea, I am currently managing ISAO.
I kept asking after bankruptcy, "What is the purpose of work?"
Takei
I started a company before Diamond Media, but it went bankrupt quickly. I started a company with four people, and all of them were executives, but even though I went into debt and lived in extreme poverty, I dreamed of success and worked hard, but it didn't pay off at all. At that time, I thought deeply, "What is the company for?" and "What is the purpose of work?" I wondered if there was any point in wanting to make my friends borrow money. At that time, I realized that I should not run a company with my ego, and I began to think that I wanted to do "meaningful management".
Nakamura
Does "meaningful" mean "meaningful business"? Or does it mean "a meaningful team, a place"?
Takei
It's both. There are many stakeholders for a company, such as shareholders, employees, themselves, partners, customers, and local communities, but I believe it is important to balance their contributions. I want to create a good company for everyone who is involved, and I want to realize it in a reproducible way as a system, rather than realizing it with the manliness of the management. Therefore, from the beginning of launching Diamond Media, we have tried various initiatives, such as whether to decide the salary by everyone's agreement or to make the company a company without superiors and subordinates. There have been times when the company almost collapsed if I had tried to take it seriously and try it. (Laughter)
The dark history of ISAO, which is rough and rough that can now be laughed at and talked about
Takei
So, on the other hand, can you tell us why you came to Bali Flat management?
Nakamura
Open and flat management are the key, but first I will talk about an example of openness.
I came to ISAO in 2010, and the organization at that time had a huge hierarchy of presidents, officers, business managers, general managers, group leaders, etc., and there were only about 80 full-time employees, but there were 22 managers. There are many people who are in a job that does not directly generate profits, such as managing people, and the business is not doing well. Six of the seven businesses are in the red, and only one is in the black. It started from a loss-making company of 620 million yen per year.
Takei
It's a very painful situation.
Nakamura
Yes, quite. (laughs) Human resources were also carried out in a very closed environment, and the great people of the time were assigning people with their own sensibilities. I was an outsider, so I couldn't understand what's going on inside, and no one actively gave me information. I managed to gather information and make a list of personnel and annual income, but it was a terrible situation that I couldn't think of anymore. I couldn't help but get to the bottom of why this happened, so I gathered the management at the time to discuss what kind of person and what kind of annual income was appropriate. After a long discussion, we created 10 ranks and applied all employees to those ranks. Without considering who actually received how much. However, if the plan was suddenly implemented, some people would lose their annual income by about 3 million, so we decided to set up a two-year adjusted salary. And we made the new grade plan available internally for a limited time.
Takei
What was the reaction?
Nakamura
It was completely rough. So I decided to open the company to the public after the situation calmed down a little, but it took two or three years to make it completely open. At that time, I realized once again that it takes tremendous power to open up information from an old organization and be reborn as a new organization.
Takei
Sounds very interesting, doesn't it? I like that kind of thing.
Nakamura
Next, regarding flats, the organizational hierarchy, which had about six levels in 2010, was changed to three levels in 2014. Information was also quite open through the use of social media, but the timing when we moved from there to Bali Flat, which is a completely flat organization, was when we were discussing what kind of position to return to when excellent human resources who had been outside returned to the company. I thought it was kind of nonsense to create a new position to bring people back, so I decided to abolish the position itself. There were various proposals for naming, such as amoeba management and project-based management, but as a result of an internal public offering, it became "Bali Flat Management".
Takei
There were no resistance forces? Or people who quit because of that.
Nakamura
It wasn't the right time to become a burr flattening, but there are quite a few people who quit in the flow since 2010. Since power is created based on information and payment rights, the openness of information and the flattening of the organization are synonymous with the deprivation and abandonment of power, and there were still people who did not think well of it. Since self-payment of entertainment expenses was completely prohibited, some people quit saying things they didn't understand, saying, "I don't think it matches." (Laughter)
Takei
It's not that the way of thinking doesn't match. (Laughter)
Next time. In the second installment we will send you a of "Salary and evaluation to speak honestly". Do you tell the raw part nakedly? !
Who to talk to
Kozo Takei, Representative Director and Co-Founder of Diamond Media Co., Ltd.
He has a top-class level of experience, including studying in the United States, CD debut, starting a business, bankruptcy, M&A, and re-entrepreneurship. Even before the word holacracy was coined, he has continued to practice holacracy-type management, giving lectures and providing organizational support as a leading expert on holacracy management in Japan.