There is an excellent article in Rudlin Consulting’s newsletter about Nidec’s “work – style” reforms, that will probably “hit the spot” for many in Japan. A juicy excerpt:
“One area Nidec tackled was unnecessary meetings. In just 4 months at one of their subsidiaries, Tosok, the number of types of meetings was reduced from 156 to 89, and their total occurrence was reduced from 716 to 440 a year. The number of hours spent on meetings fell from 533 hours to 240 hours a year.
Meetings that did not have a result were particularly targeted, such as the “related divisions information exchange meetings”. New rules were introduced such as:
- Meetings should only take 45 minutes, or 25 minutes for short meetings
- Participants should all be told the purpose of the meeting, the schedule and the expected results beforehand
- Only the absolutely necessary people should attend
- #2 should be reviewed at the beginning of the meeting
- 1 page per topic, distributed before the meeting
- At the end of the meeting, conclusions and homework should be agreed, and who is in charge of each action point
- The minutes of the meeting should be written during the meeting and circulated within 24 hours after the meeting”
Here is the complete article on Nidec’s work style reforms.