Sitting stock-still, hands in his lap, eyes closed, Kazuo Inamori is quietly explaining what he found when he took over as chairman of near-bankrupt Japan Airlines in 2010. His calm belies the turbulence he flew into — and the radical change of course he effected to pull the group out of its dive.
Asked by the government to pilot JAL through the bumpy bankruptcy process and out the other side, Mr Inamori first tackled a coterie of managers — “graduates of very prestigious, well-known Japanese universities” — who used to plan and implement strategy without ever leaving their desks.
“I really felt?.?.?.?that management style was no way to conduct business,” he says through an interpreter.