Ask Iwata: Words of Wisdom from Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's Legendary CEO

by Satoru Iwata

As human beings, unless we have someone to compliment our work and enjoy what we’ve created, we’re not apt to go out on a limb.

My plan was to be a sounding board and to get a sense of what was happening, but when I sat down with each person individually, I was blown away by how much I was learning. The idea was to figure out everybody’s strengths and weaknesses. Without this kind of knowledge, I knew I couldn’t make decisions on behalf of the whole company.

It was during these interviews that I realized that decision-making means gathering and analyzing information and managing priorities, and that as you discover your priorities, you should see where they take you as you work through your decisions.

I’m of the view that if a person hasn’t given you an opportunity, it’s up to you to make one and approach them.

everyone is different and always changing. Sure, lots of people never change. But I would never want to work under a leader who failed to understand that people can evolve.

As I sat down with each of the employees, I found that everybody touched on different themes. The only constant from one interview to the next was my opening question: “Are you happy doing what you’re doing?”

The more frustrated someone is, the more important it becomes to listen to them. Unless you make a point of this, anything you try to say goes in one ear and out the other. If you interrupt them midsentence and say, “It’s more like this,” it’s only natural for them to think, “This person has absolutely no clue what I’m saying.” If you let people tell you what they want to say, and wait for them to finish, they’ll give you a chance to weigh in afterward.

I think that management depends on an ability to minimize your personal agenda.

Listening to people speak their minds one-on-one, I came to realize “The reason behind that particular decision isn’t getting through” or “That thing I said was misconstrued and became a real source of frustration.” Where possible, I took these opportunities to provide additional context for why I’d said what I had said, or what events had led to a particular decision.

If a president says they’ll revolutionize the industry, but for the next five years the company won’t be able to turn a profit, they’ll find themselves without a job. And so, every year, they need to generate a steady stream of profits, but they also need to innovate. It’s like flying along in an airplane and working on repairs midflight.

What are our strengths? What are our weaknesses? Management means figuring this out and leading the company in a direction that helps everyone’s strengths flourish and keeps their weaknesses in check.

The number of things we should be doing is always greater than what we can actually do. If you try doing everything on your list, you’ll only wear yourself out.

When the going gets tough, if we’re not praised accordingly for our efforts, it makes things even harder. When things enter a downward spiral, people’s spirits flag all around, and speaking with staff becomes essential.

unless people have a shared understanding of the company as a place where praise and criticism have a specific purpose, before long things will seem unfair.

if you want to make any big picture changes, the first thing you need to do is find the bottlenecks and fix them. You can fix as many of the looser areas as you like, but the general design will barely change.

Before taking any action, you should identify the most problematic areas and figure out what you, and only you, can do to fix them.

When we test out the things we make, people have no interest whatsoever, not even a little bit. This is how it always is, in the beginning. From there, unless we can win people over, improving products so much that people pick them up and smile, we’ve failed.

you may have a second or third string to your bow, but you have to wonder: Will you really hit the target?

if you rely on what we might call a shortsighted cleverness, making decisions solely by comparing options and deciding “This one’s better,” you’re bound to wind up on the road more often traveled. A major reason why this hasn’t happened to Nintendo is that we’ve maintained clear objectives.

In my experience, there are two types of interviewers: those who make a person feel at ease in order to get a sense of who they really are and judge their candidacy accordingly, and those who believe an unrelaxed person, though unable to speak their mind, will reveal all kinds of things about themselves, like how sociable or strong they are.

the most important aspect of the interview is starting in a way that makes it easy for the other person to respond. When I’m speaking with somebody at the company for the first time, I begin by asking, “What made you decide to join Nintendo?” Because this is a question anyone can answer.

there’s another question I like to ask: “Out of all the work you’ve done so far, what was the most interesting thing? And what was the most painful?”

it’s extremely important not to be embarrassed that you don’t know.

If your primary motivation is to make the people working above you think, “Wow, this guy’s so clever,” they’re going to see through you every time. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, you’ll come across as vain and leave a bad impression.

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The people who can take constructive criticism are capable of learning an incredible amount in a short period of time.

how do you know when a project is going well? When someone points to a gray area in the initial plan, then asks you “Hey, can I take care of this?” and follows through.

No job is ever done alone. Someone else will always play a role.

Being human means having potential. I see the role of the organization as making sure that everybody’s latent potential is fostered as effectively as possible. The organization will squander its resources if energy is wasted on irrelevant tasks, but if you can direct that energy to the right place, you can exert incredible influence on the outside world.

firmly believe in the importance of setting goals, even when the goals are without precedent. If you simply keep piling on features, one after the next, things get crowded and the end result is bulky. But if you have a clear vision for what you want, you can say “Let’s do it this way” and work your way backward from there.

a president can’t just say “Let’s do it this way” once and expect everybody to share their vision. People need to hear the same thing over and over, but before long, something that you’ve said will stick. They’ll realize, “Oh, that’s what they mean.” One person will get the gist, and then two more, and so on, until everybody realizes: “Nintendo set this as a goal. That’s why we’re here.” That way everyone can share the same vision for the foreseeable future. Of course, this may mean sounding like a broken record for a while.

as a company, Nintendo works incredibly hard to make good fortune come our way. Then again, the world is full of cases where people tried just as hard but luck wasn’t on their side and things didn’t work out.

The bigger an organization, the more important it is to decide, “All right! We’re focusing on this now.” Any company will have an endless list of pressing tasks, so if someone doesn’t provide direction, the firm will gradually lose potency. That’s why somebody like me, or Miyamoto, needs to step up to the plate and say, “Let’s give this a try.”

I’m driven to understand why things happen. I can’t be satisfied otherwise. Inside of me, a voice is always asking questions: Why do things like this happen? What makes this person talk and act the way they do? How did the world wind up this way? I’m always searching for the reasons why things are the way they are.

“I don’t predict the future. I simply notice the world starting to change a little before everybody else.”

I’m far more interested in what makes people happy than doing things the right way.

You might realize that somebody is making a mistake, but unless you can advise them in a way that they can readily accept and comprehend and fit into their point of view, your advice—right or not—is meaningless.

Lots of people will tell you that they know what’s right. This is the cause of all kinds of conflicts. When two people with good intentions disagree, things can get ugly. That’s because if you believe that your intentions are good, it feels as if you couldn’t possibly be wrong. And as long as accepting the other person’s point of view means negating your own core beliefs, there’s no room for adjusting your position.

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When the reward feels like it’s greater than the energy and effort we’ve expended, we don’t give up. But when the result of all our efforts is a disappointment, we tend to fail.

talent isn’t about achieving results so much as deriving pleasure from the results that you’ve achieved. When somebody has tapped into their stores of talent, the cycle of discovery and reward is up and running.

because I couldn’t make the connections, I was unable to retain what I was reading in any meaningful way. Sure, I may have been amassing knowledge, but knowledge on its own won’t give you a sense of achievement. Nothing I read made me excited to try it out the next day. As a result, my reading failed to be rewarding.

In communicating with others, if I fail to get my point across, rather than blaming the other person, I will instead consider where I may have been at fault. When communication isn’t going well, blaming others never helps. Instead, I tell myself, “They’re not getting my message or seeing eye to eye with me because I’m not expressing myself as well as I could.”

regardless of whether I like it or not, once I’m convinced that I’m the best person for the job, I’m going to step up to the plate.

I’ve been doing this because I felt that it made sense for me to do it, rather than someone else. That conclusion gave me the resolve I needed. Since there was no way out of it, I figured I had better jump right in and take a positive approach.

now that the emergence of the internet has eliminated such limitations as setting, distance, and physical space, we feel this dilemma more and more acutely.

In the past, if I was at the headquarters in Kyoto and planning how to spend a day of work, I could only meet with people who were there in Kyoto. In which case, when I asked myself “Who should I see today?” I needed only to consider those in Kyoto with me. But now that the internet is in widespread use, we can regularly interact with people on the other side of the world.

while our opportunities for interacting with others may have drastically increased, it’s not as if we can engage with dozens or hundreds of people at once. As a result, it’s become more difficult than ever to determine how to spend the hours of the day without regret.

people waste time worrying about problems that can’t be solved by worrying. If worrying would solve the problem, then I’d say go ahead and worry, but somehow we can’t stop ourselves even when worrying solves nothing and leaves us empty-handed.