The automobile industry is facing a “once-in-one-hundred-years transformation”. Aiming for a more prosperous and sustainable future, Honda is going forward with technological reforms. To change the output of the organization which consists of approximately 30,000 associates on a non-consolidated basis and 200,000 people on a global consolidated basis, innovation in the Corporate Division is essential. Honda’s future image is disclosed through an interview with a key person in the Corporate Division who has undertaken multiple initiatives in innovation creation while working in human resources and corporate planning for a long time.

- Could you please tell us how you met Honda and what made you join Honda?

It appears that many of Honda’s associates joined the company because they love cars and motorcycles, but in my case, it was Honda’s people. My family runs an inn at a city called Yugawara in Kanagawa Prefecture, which was rented out to Honda engineers for about two weeks when I was a senior in high school. They came to the area to test braking on a toll highway during its nightly closure, so they left around 10 pm at night and came back in the morning. They looked so professional and cool that I was intrigued. They also told me how things were in the UK and the US, which made me want to work on the global stage when I became an adult. That is how I aimed to work for Honda. When I was a university student, I went to the US to study and even visited Honda’s Marysville Plant in Ohio. I was that serious about Honda. There I became acquainted with an associate of Corporate Communications who inspired me to work in a Corporate Communications Division at Honda.

My wish came true and I joined Honda, but I was at first assigned to an administration department despite of my hope. I worked as a facilitator for training, collected improvement proposals, and organized staff appraisals at Hamamatsu Factory in Shizuoka Prefecture. Although the job was not exactly what had I hoped for, because human resources related tasks are life-changing for associates, I carried them out with a sense of mission and I also felt it rewarding. After that, I was transferred to the Human Resources Division at the headquarters.

- What was an especially memorable work experience in your long career in HR?

What comes to my mind first is a change in pay system which happened when I was young. At that time, there was an imbalance between years of experience, appraisal, and salary. So, I designed a new pay system where an associate’s career was divided into an “ability development stage” and “ability demonstration stage” after joining the company. I was involved in it from designing through negotiation with the labor union and introduction of the system. It was a large project that took more than five years to the completion without precedent because almost no change had been made to the pay system since the company’s founding. I am grateful to the management of that time for their consideration in involving me who had brought it up until the end of the process.

Then, what happened after the financial crisis in 2008 was also remarkable to me. I was a director in the management in the UK that time when we decided to shut down the plant for four months. The local management members and I had intense discussions to finally decide on a direction to guarantee the salary for the time being, which was an extraordinary measure in the UK. This experience has given me a confidence for my future career.

When I was an HR managing director, I worked on globalization of associates in light of this experience in the UK. There are many outstanding leaders not only in Japan but also in other countries where Honda has a base. I tried to build a system in which these excellent leaders overseas could undertake whole Honda’s global development. Not all efforts were successful but I believe even now that the direction we are heading is not wrong.

- Please tell us what has changed and what hasn’t in terms of the organization and associates through your interactions with many people since you joined the company.

When I joined Honda, there were significantly fewer associates than now. Because many of them were junior, there were not so many senior associates for management. It was the opposite age distribution from what is now. Therefore, work did not get done unless you did it by yourself, so a person responsible had a strong sense of ownership. We heard the term “reaching out” in the office, and were encouraged to expand our responsibilities progressively. Younger associates were evidently cultivated through friendly competition in such an atmosphere.

Now that we are more in number than 30 years ago, we are assigned to more segmented jobs from an efficiency perspective, making it difficult to venture into work beyond our own responsibilities. It seems to me that we have started losing a sense of ownership, as a result. Then, we only do what we are told to do, or we are not given a chance to do anything except for what we are told. And we tend to rely on superiors because there are many in the management layer. While an advantage of this is that tasks hardly depend on individual expertise, there is a risk that individuals might diminish their own roles and the values of their work.

On the other hand, what remains constant is that many of us then and now had and have strong egos. (laughter) An employment agreement boils down to a contract to sell eight hours in a day to a company. But Honda associates seem to have little sense of selling their time hour by hour. It appears to me that many of them have an ego and ambition to accomplish something at Honda.

- In recent years, you are involved in a collaboration with Sony and establishment of the Innovative Research Excellence in addition to responsibilities at the HR division.

The collaboration with Sony came up when I was in the Corporate Planning Division. I was talking to President Mibe about electrification, and we thought that it would be interesting to collaborate with a company of a different industry, such as Sony for example. So, I reached out to Mr. Kawanishi of Sony who is the current president of Sony Honda Mobility Inc, and we decided to form a working group with young associates in the first place. Once we found affinity between Honda and Sony, things went swimmingly. I think it was Honda and Sony’s similar values and visions to share a sense of fun that made a deep relationship between Honda and Sony possible. Sympathy that goes beyond a business relationship is essential for a successful collaboration between companies.

The Innovative Research Excellence, which I had been involved in from its founding and was the first head, was established while Honda was streamlining the research and development division. Simply speaking, it is a research institute for technologies of a decade ahead, dedicated to addressing innovative technologies for mobility and the creation of advanced technologies. After discussing with Honda R&D members, areas of its research were determined to be the next-generation mobility, robotics, space, safety technologies, and hydrogen.

Having a non-engineering background and being unfamiliar with technical details, I wondered how I could contribute to this organization. Eventually, I decided to focus on managing people involved in technologies, leaving technical matters to the experts. When I pay attention to what they say, I understand more or less what they think, what they truly want to achieve, and how far they are committed to it. Giving a chance is a grave responsibility, but I regard investment in technologies as investment in people who push forward with technical subjects after all.

- Please tell us what drives you to work and your work tactics.

Looking back on my career, I did not always have a long-term vision, instead, I have scrambled for reflecting my ruling passion in finding solutions for challenges at hand. In the end, I have been engaged in so many different work areas that I think Honda is a company that invests in proactive associates.

It is difficult to describe my work tactics. (laughter) Characterizing my thought process, I tend to abstract relatively complicated matters and try to approach them in an analogical manner. And it is not really work tactics, but since I have worked in HR for a long time, I try to capture people in multi-layered and three-dimensional ways. I have rather strong interest in what drives people, their viewpoints and thought processes, and why they view/think that way, etc., because people are different from one another.

- Currently Honda is carrying out a number of innovations in its “Period of the Second Founding.” How will Honda transform itself?

One of the reasons why we call it the “Period of the Second Founding” is because we believe we had an overwhelming sense of ownership back during the time of founding that we no longer possess. One former associate of that time told me that Soichiro Honda had demanded him to establish R&D in the US. Even in a place you have never been to and without anything to rely on, with a strong sense of ownership compelling you to push through it on your own, it was possible to establish an R&D function. As present Honda has far richer resources, human network, and information than back then, if we have the spirit that we had at the time of founding, we should be able to deliver larger outcome.

I interpret that the phrase, “How we move you.” added to Honda’s global slogan conveys a message encouraging Honda associates to pursue our own dreams more diligently above all without diminishing ourselves. Then, those who witness the efforts leading to the realization of dreams and who have utilized the materialized new mobility products are inspired and empowered to pursue their dreams. A new entity that brings such a chain reaction of dreams is what Honda aims for.

- What does it take to allow Honda associates to pursue dreams?

It is necessary to put in place a system to back up their dreams that would change the world. Most importantly, each associate needs to find meaning in their work, feel their contribution to it, and wholeheartedly invest themselves in their job. Dreams take different shapes. For those originated from Honda associates that are difficult to bring synergy within the large organization, we kicked off a program in 2017 for new business creation called “IGNITION” to support their realization.

In this program, we take up associates’ ideas that are not necessarily linked to their current work but they are eager to materialize, and prepare an arena in cooperation with venture capital for nurturing them. Currently, it targets not only Honda associates but also external individuals and companies. As the project provides an opportunity to accomplish dreams and create values, it is literally an embodiment of “The Power of Dreams”. We would love to expand its scope.

- Lastly, please tell us your own dream.

I would like to set the environment in an organization of people with different characteristics and levels of capabilities where the “power of individuals” can be exerted to the fullest without being diminished. The organization could be a place where its members inspire each other, boosting their capabilities in a chain reaction, while demonstrating their utmost power. To start, I want to transform the departments I am involved in into environments where the “power of individuals” can be fully showcased. It would be my greatest pleasure to see the organization become a source that disseminates to other departments within Honda.