Conscious Thinking – Dam Style Management

Conscious Thinking - Dam Style Management

In 1965, Konosuke’s Matsushita, Panasonic founder, once offered his business philosophy to a large business group he was speaking to in Japan. He called his philosophy the  “dam style management” theory.  Matsushita’s theory advanced the notion of building reservoirs within your business as a way of “keeping an enterprise on an even keel” in times of unexpected changes in business conditions.

“It is important for any company to prepare and to have a stable management with enough capital, enough production facilities, and enough manpower, regardless of economy situation, as if you had built a dam on a river and therefore to stabilize the water flow. Once the dam is built, you can control the water flow, and you can use the water more efficiently without waste, and you can keep the water flowing even when there is no rain …

It is an entrepreneur’s responsibility to prepare for any social events to happen. Preparing production capacity 10% more than necessary is recommended. The capacity increase of a modest 10% will lessen the stress on the company  when a 20% increase in production is required. In this way the price or product can be controlled with minimum fluctuations. If you don’t do this with a conscious efforts, it cannot be done.”

Kazuo Inamori (Kyocera founder) was one of the listeners at the above seminar. He recalled the event as follows:

“When the Q/A time came, one audience member asked Matsushita:  ‘How can you do such flexible management?’

Matsushita answered: ‘I do not know the answer, but you have to think it as it is necessary to have flexible management.’

The audience laughed at his answer, but the answer moved me deeply.”

If you want to accomplish anything, you have to think that it is possible and that you want to accomplish it from the bottom of your heart. If you think it is impossible to accomplish, nothing can be done. Entrepreneurs need a strong will to accomplish. I learned the importance of a strong intention to save money and to accomplish “dam style management” at Matsushita’s seminar.

Matsushita stressed the importance of thinking toward “dam style management.” While most of audience laughed at him because he did not have a practical solution on how to do it, Inamori’s intuition captured the most important answer of the day: conscious thinking.

Inamori built an international high-tech ceramic company with this foundation.

The following is a comment related to the above story from unknown source:

“You are unconsciously sending your energy toward the direction of your image.”

Practice creating conscious thoughts of your vision and projects with consistency and a strong belief in its possibility, so much so, that it becomes embedded in your subconscience when will then direct your energy towards the realization of your vision.