Leadership-Interview-Transkript - Sozialpsychologie - Goethe ...

the agendas that we have, that they actually need a lot more attention now, and they are the
foundation of all the rest of the transformative and energy processes associated with modern
leadership.
Rolf van Dick: Do you do something personally at Hitachi to bring that mission or purpose
about in every person you lead? Is there systematic activities like retreats or things where you
talk about these underlying elements?
Patrick Cowden: Absolutely. I think one of the key pieces of what makes Hitachi who we
are, and what has made the success of the German organization in the last few years so
successful, is exactly that cultural value and belief piece. And the reason it works at Hitachi is
because, the founder of Hitachi, 101 years ago, Odaira-San, he set certain foundational layers,
that have remained the same for 101 years, for 400000 people. There is no holding structures
in place, there is no legal entities in place, it is thousands of individual companies around the
world, with 400000 people, but we all have the same view on those cultural and foundational
pieces. And they are very simple. He basically said, ‘We are going to focus on technological
innovation for the good of society’. Very base rule, very base statement. So it is more
important to do good, than to focus on revenue and profit. That is not very extreme
capitalistic, I would say, right. But it is an extremely important value because those two
founding principles have stayed the same for 101 years. And on top of those, we always talk
about the three values of the company, ‘wa’, ‘makoto’, and ‘keitachu seichien’. Japanese
words. ‘Wa’ – I live in Berlin, the Berliners know what ‘wa?’ means, right? But ‘wa’ is the
respect, and the trust, and the harmony as a baseline of everything we do. ‘Makoto’ is
sincerity, honesty, integrity, and openness in everything we do. And ‘keitachu seichien’ is
pioneering spirit, and questioning everything we do. So it is an interesting combination. But
the answer to your question is, yes, at Hitachi we do it in everything that we communicate,
every screensaver on the computer has it, every USB-Stick has the values on it, when I speak
to costumers, most of the time, and actually every single session, we are talking about these
beliefs and values of Hitachi, and how they compare to our customers. Before we ever talk
about the product. That happens really in my business – I am in the IT industry, very fast
moving industry, everyone wants to sell very quickly, dominated by American companies on
a quarterly, quarterly, quarterly cycle, they rarely in a sales meeting with a customer are going
to talk about values that are a 100 years old. They are not going to do that. They are talking
about the product, how fast it is and how good it is, ask what the price is going to be, make it
very cheap and close the deal right now because it’s the end of my quarter and I need the
money quickly cause I need shareholder value. That is very different at Hitachi, and we have
been able to have this discussion with the employees, with those values, and we do it with our
partners, and we do it with our customers, every day, so it is part of what we do and who we
are.
Rolf van Dick: Thank you very much, Patrick. That was very interesting.
Patrick Cowden: Thank you, Rolf. Appreciated.