Winning and Losing Organization (Reference: Ikujiro Nonaka et al.)

Winning and Losing Organizations

Organizations	Winning	Losing (Japanese Military during the WW2)
Strategy: Purpose	Clear	Unclear
Strategy: KPI	Long-term goal	Short-term results
Strategy: Deductive / Inductive	Deductive (grand design) (*)	Inductive (incremental, expeirience)
Strategy: Options	Wide, integrated, and adaptive	Narrow and fixed
Strategy: Technology System	Structured, standardized, and systematic	Individuals-oriented
Organization: Structure	Systematic	Individual-dependent network
Organization: Integration	Systemic, task force	Individual relationship
Organization: Learning	Double loops (deductive and inductive)	Single loop (inductive)
Organization: Evaluation	Results	Motivation, process

(*) Obviously, inductive is plus, but deductive comes first.


Japanese military did not unlearn and innovate their strategies and organizations along with changing environment. They focused on organizational harmony and accordance. They had to use a lot of energy and time for it, so they could not self-innovate. Why did they fail? Because they over-adapted to the past successes and the over-adaption precluded adaptability. So they could not unlearn.

Bureaucratic organization and individual-dependent network prevented them from unlearning (disposing the past knowledge and re-learng new things). That also stopped them self-innovating and pursuing rational ways.

What they needed were:

The imbalanced
Autonomy
Creative destruction (not mere adaption)
Coexistence of the heretical and the chance-driven
Knowledge: selection (disposal) and accumulation
Sharing the integrated values