I, Kusonoki

10: May, 2020

“Where have you been hiding yourself?” asks the voice on the telephone. It’s Miss Okano. She’s been leaving messages on my voicemail for the past couple of weeks, but I’ve been ducking her. I decided to answer the phone this time, mostly to apologize and try to explain myself. I’ve been caught up in work. The beginning of the new season in a heavily revised league has resulted in a storm of activity at the office. We’re out to prove that we’re pulling on our oars as hard as we can.

 “I’ve been right here at work, unfortunately,” I say. I glance up at one of the new monitors management installed in our offices. When we’re working late (and I always am, it seems), we never miss a game. I have the sound off. I find sports announcers to be merely a distraction about 90% of the time. It’s still the pregame anyway. Someone dressed in a fuzzy suit depicting some cartoon character I don’t recognize is throwing out the first pitch.

 “That’s a crap apology, Kusonoki-san.”

 “It’s all I’ve got. You may have noticed that things aren’t going well for us right now.” This was true. In the first five weeks of the season the team had struggled to a 14-16 record. In the corporate world, when the going gets tough, the default strategy is to fail harder. Radically changing how you go about your business is risky, and the price of failure is great (usually your job). But if instead you keep doing what you’re doing, and make sure everyone knows your working really, really hard at it, you’ve covered you posterior. The key to getting along isn’t to have brilliant ideas, it’s the ability to make sure blame doesn’t stick to you. Work hard “the way we’ve always done,” and no one points the finger at you if the enterprise goes south. Do things differently and you stick out like a sore thumb. And that’s dangerous. As much as everybody likes to talk about innovation as the key to success, there’s a built-in bias against it . New organizations experiment and innovate. Existing organizations poach and perpetuate. “We’re all working like mad at the moment,” I tell her.

 “That’s a good salaryman,” she chides.

 “Unfair,” I say. “I hate karaoke and I don’t play golf.”

 It’s at this moment that Mike Freund sticks his head in my office doorway. He’s carrying the clipboard.

 I ask Miss Okano to hold for a moment.

 “Been looking at the gate logs, Kusonoki,” says Freund, referring to his report of our comings and goings through the RFID-controlled building entrances and exits. “You’re at sixty hours. Go home.” It’s Thursday. This means he won’t let me back in the building until Sunday afternoon, at the earliest. I consider protesting, but think better of it.

 The new American management team comes from a somewhat different school of thought regarding work hours. “Quality over quantity,” is their favorite phrase. They don’t actively discourage overtime hours among their salaried staff, but they draw a hard line at sixty hours a week. While the Japanese staff think of the Shisa as an established organization with established ways of doing things, the Americans seem to think of the club as a brand new start-up. And I guess for them, it is, in a way. They emphasize ‘trying different’ instead of ‘failing harder’. It’s been a tough sell, breaking us of old habits, not just the ones learned in these offices, but offices all over Japan. I reluctantly agree to go home after the I finish with the phone call.

 “How cruel,” says Miss Okano. “Forcing you out of doors on a night like this.” The night is warm, pleasant and clear. Something of a rarity in early May on Okinawa. She doesn’t make the ‘tsk-tsk’ sound, but it is clearly implied by her tone.

 “Your sympathy is appreciated,” I say flatly.

 “As luck would have it, I’m across the street getting ready to order something for dinner. Come on down and we can talk about that fishing trip you’ve been putting off.”

 I sigh. “I’ve told you before that I’m not much of a fisherman. This is bound to end in disappointment.”

 “Humor me,” she says. “They’ve got the game on and everything. You can pretend you’re still at work, if it helps.”