Back to Basics

When you’ve been “adulting” for a while, it’s easy to kind of just keep doing things even if we don’t really know what we’re doing… whether that’s because we feel too stupid to ask, or we’ve just been doing things a certain way. But I believe that going back to the basics is really important so we can make real progress.

Let me tell you a story from the past.

There was a day when my team started work in the morning without greeting each other at all.

It felt like things were somehow “off,” like we had woken up on the wrong side of the bed.

It was a time when there was a lot of work to be done in the team, and the focus was on just getting it done.

The “funk” continued into the next day, which eventually led to some mistakes due to lack of communication.

My personal analysis of the situation was that because we had forgotten to greet each other, which is the basis of communication, that set a stale mood. As the team proceeded in this atmosphere, it led to mistakes in work.

The work, which was the application, was not able to be carried out properly without the greeting, the basics.

If communication and trust, which are the basis of human relations, are broken down, this will lead to the same result.

This is also true in other situations where the basics of a process are important before the application.

Qualification exams, the process of building a system, and process improvement are good examples.

Can you solve an application problem for a certification exam without being able to do the basic problem?

In system construction, can you skip a single program and still complete the system?

Can you improve a process without understanding the process in the first place?

I believe that the basics are important, and it is even more important to remember to go back to the basics when in doubt.

We are human, we make mistakes, and we have many doubts.

In such cases, we need to go back to basics, correct our course, and reorganize.

I am not ashamed of this process of course correction and reorganization, and I believe it is always necessary.

There is not a single project that I have worked on that did not involve some sort of reorganization or course correction.

It is a beautiful time of year for autumn leaves in the Kanto region of Japan.

I hope to enjoy this brief period as I take my daily walks!

For the rest of the country and the world, may this be a week with at least a few more smiles on your face!