MUJI: How Can We Build Competitive Strength Without Overtime?

Matsui Chuji is a very talented person who can grasp the essence.

MUJI has created many myths from huge losses to tens of billions of companies.

Despite the impact of the electricity supplier, 134 Muji shops in 39 cities in mainland China have recovered their investments for an average of 15.9 months.

Matsui Chuji had a perverted philosophy: no overtime.

Although Muji emphasizes no LOGO and emphasizes practicality, I think Muji is selling.

The first competitive power of Muji is to compel the grid, it is the color value, and practicality is in the second place.

But I was wrong. After reading the story of MUJI BOSS Matsui Chuji, I found that Muji was selling efficiently.

This is Matsui's style of painting, very simple.

Be sure to leave work on time!

This is a must in the eyes of Matsui.

Perhaps many people think that overtime is a symbol of conscientiousness, effort and effectiveness, but it is not.

The problem is

The eyes are actually very simple. Although Muji has a lot of people who love their jobs and are willing to take the last bus home for work, the leadership believes that such a low quality of life will weaken the productivity of the company in the long run.

So overtime is not a good thing, not only from the corporate level but also from the individual level.

When Matsui was pushing the "zero overtime" activities, his belief was simple, that is, the employees should make their work process SOP, and when you carefully examine your work process, you will find that there are many meaningless time wastage, and delete these items, and match with planning such as meeting presentations, pre programmed formulation, and what to-do items are arranged every day and when to do everything.

In order not to work overtime, Matsui did several things:

1, let employees realize the importance of completing the work during the working hours, and then try to improve their work efficiency.

For example, Muji surveys employees' Internet usage, and 25% of employees admit that they have visited websites unrelated to work at work.

2, the most effective is to establish deadline.

Once the work is completed within a limited period of time, it is bound to arouse the employee's concentration and learn to prioritize the work.

3, supervisors do not assign jobs to others in the evening.

Matsui's book is called "Muji's success and 90% depends on the system".

Matsui made a manual called MujiGram - Muji guidance manual, which is what Muji has consistently stressed.

Its simplicity is clear, and the reason why such a detailed guide is to be established is to "integrate the services that rely on personal experience and intuition" to make it continue as a norm.

The guide is meticulous and specifies when the commodity should be placed as "equilateral triangle" and when it is "inverted triangle". The color of clothing must be kept within three colors. These two points are the basic points of the shop guide.

The guidelines reflect the mechanism, and the guide refines the concept into working principles.

Matsui's plan is very shocking to me: there is no work that can not be written into the guide book.

Even selling products depends on the system.

To gather customers' opinions, Matsui will input customer comments into a software called "voice guide", which will be checked by the responsible person once a week and decide whether to reflect it on the merchandise.

A website named "life good research institute" has been set up to establish a system that can communicate with customers and take account of commodity development.

Second class strategy is no harm.

Matsui's internal slogan is: implementation 95%, plan 5%.

What is a good system? It must be a system that enables employees to execute.

The system is a continuous cycle of "writing - proposals - improvement".

How to improve executive power?

Matsui has an internal method called PDCA cycle.

Planning (PLAN)

Implementation (Do)

Assessment (Check)

Improvement (Act)

Matsui has a test question: the executive power of an enterprise can be seen at a glance at the meeting.

The meeting of many companies has become an internally "bureaucratic culture" that has been cleared up in advance. The conference has become a pure situation, and the company that "more procedures than execution" will continue to decline.

Matsui believes that a good meeting must ensure that employees have a sense of ownership. The responsible colleagues must make their own decisions and take the responsibility of implementation.

Matsui, a very thin and simple book, looked at me with cold sweat.

No anxiety, no slack, no pride.

This is Matsui's self vigilance motto, first to myself and to all of you in 2016.

In fact, not working overtime is a very difficult state. Can you execute "no overtime"?