Scrapping the conventional mid-term plan for “medium-term ASV management” (2023)

A bet on running the company by purpose, not by numeric targets

The heart of this decision is that Ajinomoto reworked the very craft of its own planning — not in response to a financial crisis, but while results were improving. A meticulous mid-term plan that stacks three years of single-year forecasts is easy to measure against, yet the planning can become an end in itself and drain the energy out of execution. President Fujie named this the “mid-plan disease” and abolished it, shifting the axis to “ASV indicators” backcast from the company Ajinomoto wants to be in 2030 — a choice that puts challenge and speed of execution ahead of precision of control. That it moved into the craft of management while performing well gives the reform a different character from the crisis-driven kind.

That said, lowering numeric targets from the front is the flip side of a difficulty in explaining yourself to the outside. You can speak of a long-term destination, but if the concrete mid-term picture of how you reach it is hard to see, investors and employees struggle to be convinced; that the new indicators were talked about as “hard to understand” right after the shift is a sign of exactly that difficulty. From hitting the numbers to cultivating a corporate culture driven by purpose — Ajinomoto’s medium-term ASV management is an attempt to move the centre of gravity of management toward people and the time axis, and its success or failure hinges on how far the organisation can run the indicators it has raised as its own.