Going to Sunderland: Ishihara versus the union boss (1984)

The decision is easy; the problem is the follow-through

The core of this management decision lies less in whether the decision itself was right than in the process of making it bear fruit. Reading the limits of finished-car exports amid trade friction, the move into Britain — putting down roots as a local company in a European market where friction ran high — was a farsighted stroke later praised as “strategic.” But Nissan had no organizational soil in which to carry that decision out quietly. Faced with a long-entrenched, cozy labor-management structure and the sway of union federation chairman Shioji Ichiro — whose reach extended from plant management to rationalization — the abrupt way it was pushed through opened rifts among executives and stirred labor conflict, so that an aggressive move ended up sapping employee morale.

Years later Hanawa Yoshikazu, who became president, drew the lesson: “The decision is easy; the problem is whether the follow-through goes well.” Ishihara, he said, “sowed the seed remarkably early,” but the follow-through was inadequate. The move into Britain was right as a decision, and it was early. Yet the cozy labor-management structure, and the weak capacity to see a decision through, were not overcome in this episode. Those problems were carried over to more painful decisions to come — the Tsuji Yoshifumi regime that pushed into closing the Zama plant, and the Ghosn regime that carried out a sanctuary-free rebuild under the discipline of foreign capital.