This sentence is chasing me when hearing a story of rare excellence that goes out of the ordinary in its performance, whether it resulted from an individual diligence to build a reputation or achieve an impact that is passed on to the memory of time and place, or achieved by an administrative work system that excelled in providing a service or product that takes into account the quality, not abundance. Here I mean the stories that compel you to admire the integration of its elements, and their ability to survive in drowning in the boring repetition seas or consumption vulgar in the worlds of fame or works.
The issue of preoccupation with quantity at the expense of how, without indifference or focus on the quality of the outputs, has become a general phenomenon in modern societies that seek to sell everything, even water, air and human being. It is an intellectual issue that occupies sociologists who are concerned by the causal relationship between pathological consumption and the sake of life, which leads to the consumer to fall into the trap of the “Mercantile”, and its definition in the dictionaries of the language as “the tendency of trading without interest in anything else.” The result of this is the exacerbation of the consumer addiction as a way to survive the market with “trap”.
We may believe that the consumer is the only affected within this difficult equation in its balance. But in fact, the victims are many, most notably the production forces that lose their ability, over time, on creativity and innovation, and maintain the quality of up to the hands of the consumer or the recipient of the service.
Such a defect is greater than that it is linked only to the surroundings and transactions of the market, as it penetrates into the work spaces in general, and in education and even in personal life, where everything is measured by the quantity, not how. Success is related to the number of working hours regardless of the output, the number of books that were read, even if they are not understood, and the number of people possesses from the goods from which he derives its value in society.
Focusing on the culture of quality in performance, so that the final product of the sex of work requires deep cultural transformations, bold behavioral reviews, and flexible and renewable decisions to control the balance between “quantum” and “how”. This will only be achieved by focusing on small details before the big, and extracting the unconventional value in our human behavior first, to be reflected in the quality of what we produce.
And because the Japanese action culture imposes itself in such contexts, despite its criticism that it is a supporter of excessive work, and sometimes, because of my great admiration for it, but it is, whether it is or not, adhere to a national administrative philosophy that transmits life in the ethics matrix and values of this disciplined eastern society, to be reflected on the methods of work through the theory of “continuous improvement” with everything the word means. It also adopts, periodically, not seasonal, what is known as hours of thinking that is not only concerned with creating the new, but also analyzing errors and finding radical solutions that make the repetition of “the same” mistakes from the “seventh” impossible.
Among the impressive stories, and the most in the Japanese business world, is the story of one of the Japanese airports who has succeeded in achieving “zero” loss of passengers of travelers for thirty years. Can this be imagined? Three decades of perfect performance and maintaining reputation without a single setback, and without him panting behind international awards.
Of course, an achievement like this conveys us to that harmony that is studied by the administrative mind that insisted on the sustainability of achieving the goal, so that the story turns into a chapter of success based on controlling the balance between quantity and quality, and to facilitate the smooth transition of the essence of success from one generation to another.
The other example that I will strike here is for the luxurious French company “Ermes” and maintaining its quality and reputation since the birth of its idea. The company, despite its control of the limited supply system in exchange for the increasing demand for its goods in a way that raises the madness of its customers, but it has succeeded in a great success in bombing its products through its cultural symbolism related to the Parisian reputation as the title of taste and luxury, and on the date of acquiring its pieces by the famous characters, such as Princess Monaco, Grace “Kelly”, and the French actress Jin “Berkin”.
Otherwise, what do we explain the sale of the first “Berkin” piece that was specially made for the actress, and in one of the most famous auctions, with ten million US dollars? It is said that the buyer is Japanese, but I have no income in that!
