Who Leads Change Processes?: From the Case Study of Japan Railways Kyusyu

A Historic Overview of JRK Activities

Stories around the transformation of JNR, which stands for Japan National Railroad, had been struggling for accumulative deficit since the 1960s. In June 1949, JNR was established, and prime minister of Japan designated a person, who was in charge of JNR, as its president. Because JNR was a part of state-owned company, he took control of it after much political argument and final vote at the parliament. During the 1950s, managing some problems of JNR was getting bigger and complicated. There could be many reasons why the problems intensified so much from different perspectives. One reason is technological and economic issues, because steam locomotion system was already outdated, and new train system powered by electricity was already installed in some major lines in JNR. It was safer and easy system for JNR, passengers and drivers of the trains in the system.

Above all, JNR had regularly received financial rescue packages from Japanese government to reduce their deficit since 1964. Government and both parliaments confirmed that JNR hiked their charge to reduce their deficit. As a result, JNR faced severe financial situation and a political debate over Labour Unions and the company. Ironically, massive debate among the unions of JNR and politicians reflects that 400,000 workers, who were mostly members of the unions, did not work for JNR in an autonomous and a prompt manner.

Some perspectives suggested by the researchers in the governmental institutes show some reasons why JNR resulted in such a financial predicament. The first is losing competitive advantages of the market in transport sectors, such as cars, trucks, ships and airlines. The second is that JNR was in the detained situation whereby governmental regulations tightly controlled almost all activities in JNR, and naturally, JNR was likely to lose their chance to adapt flux situation properly. The third is that the size of JNR organization did not fit in the way of management in transport sectors. Because 400,000 enrolments were working during those days, management of JNR depended on the command and control system under stern culture, that is, ‘On time and Safety’. The fourth is that the relationship among the unions in JNR, management of JNR and Japanese government were politically complex, and important information for the prompt management of JNR did not transfer effectively among those players.

Transition processes and preparation for the privatization in 1987 had already started in 1985 according to Mr Shimura’s interview and some books written by a member of such activities. Six core members in the upper middle managers of JNR in the Kyusyu area formed project teams to talk about the way of management after the privatization. Themes they talked about were the way to deal with property of estate and buildings, restructuring their businesses and cost-cut and lay-off. In 1986, project teams started to discuss new diagram of the train schedule in the whole territory they covered, a new policy of their company for the train speed faster than ever, and having a busy traffic around metropolitan area in Kyusyu area. And, they had a plan to invest for introducing new trains for the passengers and outsource their cargo business.

JRK started their business as a private company in March 1987, and named Nagakura, former Chairman of Kyusyu-Electric Co. as the Chairman of JRK and Ishii Yoshitaka as the CEO of JRK. Top management comprising the President, ten members of the board, two auditors and the owner of the company, by the prevailing Japanese law, became a clearing company run by the Japanese Government. There was a gigantic liability in JNR when they went to become a public company. Formal statistics issued by Japanese government tells us that the final deficit of JNR was 37 trillion yen and the government set up a clearing house for the deficit. Some part of a whole deficit, which was 11.6 trillion yen, was divided and given into six companies to own it as a reasonable deficit to pay back to the government.

Embryonic Stage: JNR to JRK

After the execution of privatization of JNR to JRs on March 1987, JRK enacted a final goal of the whole change efforts and declared it in the public. Naturally, it required a thorough investigation for the change efforts before their implementation. Moreover, many sequential change steps follow bold and long-term roadmap towards the final change target.

New CEO of JRK raised some messages to the entire managers of JRK. That is, JRK will make sufficient revenue from train businesses, and JRK will turn around our financial situation from red to black. At the same time, the CEO insisted that JRK had to clarify our existential reason for the train business, as it must stand at the centre of JRK businesses. In addition to it, new businesses with train business, JRK guarantees these new businesses freed from JNR culture and regulations. To make sure the existential reasons for train business, top managers in JRK revisited their transport business from the basic. Because of such an argument, JRK first came up with some new change targets, which cover three themes: JRK keeps their traffic busy, more launches of new and unique trains and renews old stations to new ones.

Operation ‘Safety and Service Programme (SS Programme)’

After embryonic stage, SS programme started in 1991, and CEO Ishii declared a new change policy and objectives they achieved throughout the SS programme. His main objective of the change efforts was to change total organizational culture, namely, JRK, completely as the result of all efforts coming out of SS programme. At the same time, CEO Ishii clearly articulated three objectives of the change efforts. First, JRK intends to transform their old culture nurtured by JNR era into new culture replenished with service centred mindset. Second, the company tries to achieve the goal of one million passengers a day within the area of their operation. Third, all stakeholders from the financial view to Labour Union in JRK acknowledge it as a dependable and virtuous existence in the regional community.

This message indicates radical departure from old JNR culture, because JNR as a bureaucratic organization had crystallized their ideal but exorbitant mission for their operation. During the era of JNR, everybody in JNR believed in the superiority of accuracy for on-time schedule, safety and command-control management. In fact, they voluntarily admitted that we were happy to work here for JNR as callers, and nobody had any sceptical inquiry for what JNR did. Based on the supportive Japanese culture for the idea of accuracy and paternalistic management, JNR spent gigantic resources for training programme for the drivers with punitive manner, planning traffic schedule at the expense of passengers’ demands and complex communication channels throughout functionally separated units interconnected with documents and weird attitude like a ‘Nemawashi (Bird, 2002)’.

SS programme indicated a hypothetical combination between safety and service. Safety is the core value of the transport business, and anyone in JRK must guarantee all activities in JRK as completely safe. At the same time, new CEO posted an ambivalent policy for JRK, because CEO asked all in JRK that service activities based on guaranteed safety were the values offered by JRK. In other words, all managers in JRK challenge subtle problems to make a well-balanced combination between safety and service. During JNR era, nobody was allowed to give any service activity to the customers without keeping them safe. However, CEO intended to give a sort of ‘Opposable Mind’ (Martin, 2007) to all managers to change the attitude towards their work. A definition given by CEO was ‘everything was worth being given to all customers, and consisted of three components of the service, such as core value, added value and quality maintenance’.

JRK designed SS programme as three consecutive stages to achieve all organizational changes. SS programme meeting started in 1991 and ended in 1993 as the first stage. Main theme of the first stage of SS programme was ‘Ready for Change: building solid foundation of the change efforts’. From 1994 to 1996, the second stage of SS programme had focused on ‘Wandering: internalization from change processes to create new identity of JRK’. The third stage started in 1997 and ended in 1999. This stage focused on ‘Bald involvement to diffuse new culture in local and daily practices to build the dynamics of learning organization’. SS programme formed annual meeting twice a year, one in September and the other is in either March or February.

Just before SS programme started, a Japanese consulting company, Business Consultants Co., entered to engage in the change efforts of JRK to practice training programs and action research for the JRK. Both senior consultants, Mr Kawamoto and Mr. Hatae, were in charge of consulting for JRK then. Meanwhile Mr Shimura, a service manager in service department in JRK, was a contact person to Mr Kawamoto and Mr Hatae. According to the interview with Mr Shimura, JRK designated him service manager; however, he did not have any proper background for his work designated by JRK then. He earned bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and had been working in JNR as an engineer since he joined there.

After privatization of JRK, CEO designated Mr Shimura as service manager in JRK, who is in charge of improving service quality, and has several discretionary rooms for use. Because there must not have been service activities in the era of JNR, there was no appropriate leader for the service activities in JRK except Mr. Shimura. Inspite of his lack of experience in the service activities, he applied his skills learned from his university and tried to define what quality might be in JRK in the future. After being used to a manager of service department, he travelled around all of JRK and aggressively made many appointments to listen to hidden voices from the front line.

He told the case writer about what happened to him on the trail around those areas. According to his stories about it, he spent almost a whole year to travel to meet and listen to those voices, and such campaign trail suggested him what is going on in local line of JRK. He was born and raised in Kyusyu and loves Kyusyu from cultural heritage to food and language completely.

Much experience gained through travelling around the areas gave him various roles for the service activities.. First he was listening to and seeing the reality from the front line. The second was a sales pitching for some activities of service improvement as the result of their interactive talking. Finally, he sometimes worked as a priest of service activities. Mr Shimura said to the case writer, ‘I was a disseminator of service principle as if I were religious disseminator’.

SS Programme in the First Phase: Need for SS Programme: Well-Balanced Business System

At the first stage of the SS programme in JRK, there were fundamental dilemmas between business and JNR culture weight on accuracy. JRK tried to improve their service quality as much as possible, whereas JRK did not hike their charge price to set off the deficit from the hike. In other words, they must make unique and well-balanced equation between cost and satisfaction from the service.

The predominant atmosphere was, ‘…Let’s move and do it immediately…it might be hard for us to take on those new activities because we had never done those at all…the change had already embarked on, and we were in the point of no return…’ (Memorandum written by Mr Hatae).

To understand the subtle balance among safety, service and profit, managers in the SS programme had to formulate a figurative framework among them to show possible connections among all factors related to safety, service and profit. Throughout all change efforts in JRK, many managers in SS programme noticed that trust is the heart of the framework of maintaining such balance among three basic elements. That is, change efforts in JRK kept the trust high enough to pull much investment from financial stakeholders and many passengers on the commuter train and rapid special train. Furthermore, all managers and front line workers in JRK affirmed that we would be a trustful company in the regional community. Therefore, in every moment they reflected all things they did from the trustworthiness for all stakeholders.

According to a memorandum written by Mr Hatae, the atmosphere of the meeting is the following:

…It has passed for three years since the beginning of SS programme, and it was the time to see about what we did from different perspectives. An executive said the task we have been facing was the way we aligned all change efforts with the business systems. CEO raised some questions about the way to change the raison d’etre and value of the company and he would ask those to the members of the SS programme meeting…

…The idea of emotional satisfaction programme suggested, new facilities and healthy working environment could be necessary for us to satisfy the emotional factors of the front line workers. Well, it may well be right for us, but…

At the end of the first stage of SS programme, some results of assessment revealed the facts, qualitative feedback showed some desirable service recognized by customers. However, as a quantitative target of the change efforts, one million passengers a day raised in 1991 had not yet been achieved. All managers in the SS programme meeting reached unanimity that this meeting had an important role to be a learning community under the supreme programme of the change efforts in JRK.

The Second Stage of SS Programme Started in April 1994

It might be difficult to give clear sentences describing the all change efforts through this stage. Because on 11 January 1995, a huge earthquake hit the central region of Japan, over 5,000 people died within the region. Furthermore, transport system collapsed for several months, and people in that region and in the rest of Japan were depressed, too. As a result of such devastation, Japanese economy got stagnated for years, and the number of passengers shrunk immediately and the numbers remained low for a while.

At the end of the SS programme meeting in September 1996, their arguments converged into what we did and did not do. They reflected on all they had done towards reaching the ultimate target of SS programme and concluded it. Although many managers tried to redress their old culture nurtured by JNR during the period, JNR culture embedded in their unconscious mind remained influential in all managers and front line workers. They understood that service activities were to be a way to change their culture; however, affective and behavioural aspects of their attitudes towards their customers changed a little. Interactive practice between behavioural and cognitive aspects of their attitudes needed to be taken care of.

Because JRK was still in a serious situation from financial perspective, only a small amount of money was possible to invest for the activities required, and finally, they put their efforts to improve the quality of service to the customers. At SS programme meeting, they announced two new policies to recover from such bad predicament. First was that change efforts might well focus on human side of organization to change the entire culture of JRK from the heart. Second was that operational management at the front line was the key for the service we should offer, and all managers understood that it might be necessary to encourage them to change their mindset from a recipient of orders to a lifelong learner from their work.

At the end of the second stage of SS programme, managers proposed, ‘we give employees great support to engage them with emotional satisfaction activities’. They had a hypothesis—‘Happy employees work with others in the company collaboratively, and they are likely to do their best for the customer with an open-mind’. JRK deemed ‘Emotional Satisfaction Management’ to be a key component of the process of cultural change in JRK.

The Third Stage of SS Programme Started in March 1997

At the first meeting in the third stage, they reviewed feedback data from CS management and realized that they were at the beginning of the last stage. Data showed that 40 per cent of the customer complaints portrayed the lack of front line workers’ courtesy and manners. Problems were still lingering on our mind, and all in JRK were willing to go back to JNR culture, instantly.

All managers in the meeting talked about the goals they sought to achieve by the end of the stage. Emotional satisfaction activities were on the way to becoming embedded culture in JRK, and those efforts disseminated some key factors for cultural change in JRK. Their discussions were supposed to converge to a few points of concern. Thus, trust exchange process among people who were stakeholders in JRK is critically important to create new service culture in JRK and go beyond a mere company in transport sectors. In other words, trust, the heart of the framework, mediates among all three factors to become a dependable and virtuous company in the community. During the previous two stages, they achieved some of them somehow; however, it was time they integrated those efforts into a coherent and organic system.

Consequently, they set up two targets that needed to be done. First, JRK needs to engage with long-lasting and persistent change efforts to transform their culture from the heart. Huge organization like JRK takes much time and resources to keep them frugal for the development and grow. Moreover, organization must be dynamic for the change efforts.

Second, managers needed to perform strong and clear leadership for the change in every single situation. Top management and upper middle managers in JRK were not isolated from work practices as followed by ES management. They were insisting on ES management for two stages, and some of the progress occurred; however, not all managers and front line workers were engaged with ES management. When JRK achieved organizational change from the heart, it would completely become a new organization built on a new culture as the result of the re-born processes.

Managers in the meeting decided to apply a systematic approach to the problems. Some of them were masked observers to know the reality ran the research for the front line operation. At the same time, any manager must take leadership training courses to perform a leadership of ‘Walk the talk’.

JRK revealed another data showing sour messages to the managers in the room. Statistics of questionnaires suggested that the ratio of favourable impressions for JRK was staggering, and some parts of the question were a setback. From financial view, the number of passengers a day and total revenue were decreasing.

CEO’s comments in the meeting said, ‘…No effective way to turnaround their situation without giving amiable and loud greeting to the customers repeatedly and enthusiastically… (Memorandum written by Mr Hatae)’.

At the end of the third stage of SS programme, CEO concluded all efforts as a triumph of SS programme, ‘…Passenger count still fell in 850,000 a day …the company achieved a certain degree of progress…the company had only 760,000 passengers in 1990 at best…the company attained the goal of change… (Memorandum written by Mr Hatae)’.

A Story of Cabin Attendants (CAs) on the Train: Humble Birth of CAs in JRK

A history of ‘Cabin Attendants (CAs)’ on the train originated on 13 March 1988. It was not a formal job, but it was informal and fragile existence because JRK did not acknowledge it as formal working status. However, 17 women called ‘Hyper Lady and Netherland Lady’ started work on the special rapid trains travelling from Hakata to Nagasaki. There was no formal information in JRK for them to represent their rank and roles in their jobs. Besides their invisible existence, the only thing that JRK furnished them was a Red Coat. Nevertheless, they voluntarily arranged proper clothes and belongings for their work environment, such as bags, coats, accessories. Major reason for such detached treatments was that JRK did not afford to provide them with anything.

On 11 March 1989, new women came to work for other rapid trains as attendants after taking training courses for their work. They had worked on another special rapid train, called ‘Kamome Lady and Yufuin Lady’. Each rapid train has a unique name derived from another train’s name with the characters given by JRK. CAs who had been serving earlier on the trains were given a formal status by JRK much later. Eventually, JRK designated them as formal CAs on the train in 1992.

At first even before receiving the formal status as CAs, all attendants worked as escorts; they did not work in the dinning-car, sell any goods on the trains and deal with tickets. As they became active and popular among the passengers and managers in JRK, their functions grew diversely.

Formal CA Began to Work

In 1992, JRK added a new rapid train called ‘Tsubame’ which means ‘Swallow’ in Japanese, to diverse lines across Kyusyu-island as a regular express liner. Growing popularity and demands from the passengers made their existence clear for JRK management. As a result, the number of attendants increased to approximately 100 attendants working for the entire JRK. Three offices started to manage their work at Hakata, Kagosima and Kitakyusyu. This is when JRK gave them the formal status of a ‘Cabin Attendant’.

After they received a formal status from JRK, their activities on the trains grew with bright spotlight from diverse angles. In fact, JRK launched new special rapid trains one after another, and naturally, all passengers and news media saw CAs on them.

In 2002, general information service started at Hakata station in Fukuoka city. Major stations in JRK have some general information desks for travellers, and the staff for the desk work for those who want to know about places to visit and book stays around the station. If they want to know about booking tickets and schedule of the trains, they may go to the ticket counter or the desk of operation. General information desk may be important for the station; however, their contribution may be indirect to JRK. Therefore, JRK assigned the work to CAs, and they worked well on the assignment. Because high popularity and well-trained CAs gave proper information to the travellers with courtesy, many of them feel reassured and comfortable with JRK.

A Story Behind CAs

Service improvement committee started to engage with SS programme counselled by Business Consultants Co. in the early 1990s. Head offices and senior managers in JRK understood that they needed continuous and thorough activities in JRK to transform their culture from JNR into JRK as a public company. All managers looked for the best way to manage their organization as the ordinary public companies have done. Therefore, they took research questionnaires with 31 questions to the customers and all managers in JRK to get a feedback. However, such data did not show any clear direction for them to take a decision for their change efforts.

One day just after privatization, an idea occurred to a person, who was transferred from a famous department store in Fukuoka city. He asked Mr Shimura, ‘What is a parser on the train; is he or she like a parser on the airplane?’ In other words, the parsers were not employees who worked in the airplane, but on the ground like a parser on the train.

Mr. Shimura knew the situation well where traditional dining and selling goods service in the train had been bad financially, and there were many complaints about the service. Because JNR and JRK tried to cut all cost of that service and get more profit from train business, the companies outsourced the rights to sell food, beverage and goods in the trains; instead, the companies received sufficient charge (3 per cent) from those companies. Nevertheless, bad spirals went on and on. Consequently, JRK decided to run special companies by themselves to serve food and beverage and sell books to the customers on the train. Although every attempt was supposed to be good for them, they had been struggling with a vicious spiral between deficit and bad reputation from the customers for years. Mr Shimura had been wondering whether to stop that service, and someday JRK must decide to replace them with something new. With the help of an idea coming from a person and Shimura’s evolving idea combined they designed a new service system as CAs on the trains. This was the beginning of the CAs on the train.

Mr Shimura started a committee that managers in the service division discussed about CAs in the train and designed a practical plan for the idea. During designing process, he applied his experiences in technical engineering to make his idea clear. Because he had done a degree course in Mechanical Engineering from the university, such designs were familiar to him and effective for activities for service improvement in JRK.

During the era of JNR, almost all managers in the operations office had never utilized his capacity to create new ideas, because bureaucracy having 47,000 enrolments in one organization did not allow them to do it as it may lead to a mess. This is the core problem of cultural change in JRK. Mr Shimura and managers in the office kept on talking about it, and he negotiated his new idea about CAs with top managers in JRK. Finally, he was given a green signal to put the idea in action, which was to introduce CAs on the train.

According to our interview, Mr Shimura said:

There are two points about CAs on the train. One is the cost of hiring them as CA on the train, and the other is design process. That is, selling service in the train will not work well, even if anybody attempts it. The number of special rapid trains is small, and passengers on the train are flux depending on the package tourist. Not all the time, sufficient people come on board. In other words, such selling service is mercy for the uncertain situation. Mr. Shimura and JRK determined CA as a necessary cost for the special rapid train. Instead, he designed the work of CA to become unique but a precious existence for JRK. CA does not sell any goods on the train, deal with tickets, and work as the crew on the train. Only thing they could do is to provide hospitality to the customers on the train. This is the heart of service that we JRK offer…Second point of his idea about CAs is collaborative and self-managed design process…

According to our interview, once Mr Shimura was determined to share his idea of CAs with the managers in the office and started their dialogue towards the actual plan of the idea. He knew the design process well in the engineering fields, but he did not have any experience or a career in Human Resource Management until JRK started. Just before transition processes in JRK moved off, top managers in JNR ordered to transfer him to the service division and work there as a leader of service managers in JRK. I was anxious whether or not my aptitude to such job would be right; however, he understood that even in JRK no one knew what constituted service in JNR. There is beaucratic organisation to run all trains and buses safely and on time. There has been no person who cares for the customer in today’s era because JNR was a bureaucratic organization to run all trains and buses on time and safely. Punctuality is extremely important for them because based on their words ‘Delay’ means less than a minute behind schedule. Fortunately, because top managers in JRK did not comprehend it well, Mr Shimura had much room for discretion to challenge new things when he asked top managers something. It must have been ironical but effective for CAs project. New challenges for CAs on the train started later in 1991.

During busy schedule, Mr Shimura took some trains to make his plan for CAs project clear from the customers’ view. After such travelling and meeting, he started to organize training programmes and system for CAs project because he and others in the office did not know about such programme at all. Then, he visited the training centre of major airlines to learn more about it.

He said to us,

What I first understood was to raise a leader of CAs. It seemed to be cyclical fostering process. That is, first generation nurtures CAs, the CAs turned to be next leaders, and they foster next CAs on and on. They set up special training programmes separate from each line, and such programme in each line has distinctive training group called “Committee”. In addition, each committee has separate training and practice programmes. In summary, each line has separate training and practice programmes to foster CAs in the “Committee” activities, and they refine their training programme to adjust to the customer needs of the line.

Training Programme of CA

At first, Mr Shimura invited trainers from Japan Airline and learned some training programmes from various service departments of the company like Japan Airline. Alternatively, Mr Shimura took his staff to see what is going on in the service activities, such as Disney Land, some premium hotels and training schools for flight attendants in Japan Airline. They borrowed many resources from those well-known service companies to make a manual for CAs in JRK.

Meanwhile, one of the unique points that Mr Shimura made led to the decision. Attendants on the ground means the challenging service for JRK and even for railway companies, because there were many divestitures themselves of those services in them. Besides it, there were no benchmarks and forerunners for it; he thought along with his staff, ‘we create it by ourselves throughout all activities in and out of the actual service activities’. In other words, Mr Shimura and the first generation of CAs built original programme based on, On the Job Training (OJT) and trials and errors in daily activities on the train. In short, CAs in JRK worked their service activities while they were editing their manuals to use it for their customers. At last, they shared a first edition of service manual for CAs for the customers.

He told it during our interview, and gave me an analogy as ‘Home-made handbook (Mr. Shimura)’.

Mr Shimura said:

Our training programme did not have any assignments and contract with external consultants in the service sector. He decided to use writing a book system for early generations of CAs and Instructors for their training programme and a working handbook. Among early generations of CAs gave some suggestions to the freshmen that may learn well about what to do. Some CAs in early period kept them attentive to creating their training and onboard experiences throughout their daily activities. First edition of the manual and training programme gradually emerged in their mind; consequently, they used it as it was. Later CAs were applied it to receive freshmen training and follow it for their working situation.

Having done enough working experience on the train and around the stations for the customers, some of them are promoted towards the chief position of CA system. Naturally, such a manual and handbook were important for them to choose appropriate nominees for the status. After such screening process, self-directed nurturing system started to work.

Mr Shimura said:

…from the scratch I intended to run training and promotion system of CAs as a self-directed learning system. In fact, I attended some important training programmes and the editing processes for their manual to instil in them the sense of independence and pragmatic mind for all service activities. Accordingly, a culture based on such mind became clear as time goes on. Current CAs are conscious of it as our culture and values. In other words, instructors, who have more knowledge, skills, and ability to perform, nurture their freshmen to a way to being a master of CA.

Mother and Daughter System

A blog writer introduces her understanding on the OJT programme among CAs. All CAs in JRK are connected with both instructors and trainees after formal OJT programme. We have a tradition of the relationship between instructors and trainees, which is called ‘Mother and Daughter relationship’. It starts at the beginning of OJT programme, and then, lasts forever until either person retires. In addition, once it starts such a relationship both of them, and then, nobody changes it. In other words, ‘Mother’ takes serious responsibilities for their ‘Daughters’ from cultural sense. In fact, ‘Mother’ imprints the heart of CA on their ‘Daughters’. It might be unique training system for any other service sector. There might be many pros and cons in this system, the same as the general training system has; however, some points listed below are the uniqueness of the system.

Inheritance of the heart of CAs can be transferable over one generation after another like a cultural heritage. All trainees start their career as a ‘Daughter’ CA in JRK, and then, some of them turn to a ‘Mother’ CA, after successful career in JRK. All ‘Mothers’ including her original ‘Mother’ review her performance and reputation from the customers, and ask themselves about whether she might be appropriate for the role or not. Finally, she is promoted to the position. This process assures an ideal person who must be a ‘Mother’ CA, to maintain the quality of CA service throughout the auditing processes. This promotion system keeps their service quality high enough over the generations, and at the same time, all forerunners challenge their traditions to be meaningful from the service workers as a calling.

Conclusions and Implications

At the end of the case, it may be fair to put three implications for the discussions from this case.

First, this case shows a difficulty of the change process, in that a gigantic governmental bureaucratic organization ended up terminating its life. Just after that, privatization started; however, it was not easy to manage at all. Ultimate value that JNR had was safety and accuracy of the train operation without thinking of any operational cost.

Approximately two and half decades have passed since the privatization started. As a result, passengers, who are commuters, business travellers and tourists from foreign countries recognize JRK as a profit company, because it is attractive for passengers and society in the service area, in terms of service quality, train design and challenges for the continuous change, based on many performance metrics in comparison with another similar JR company.

Second, according to positive oriented researches, innovation is a people’s natural expression of positive emotional energy, and their dynamic combinations among positive emotional activities in the organization create enormous and connected energy for them to break their own momentum going back to the past (Cameron & Spreitzer, 2012; Cooperrider & Godwin, 2012; Cooperrider & Whitney, 2005).

Meaningfulness for work may be necessary for all people to make deep sense of life and broad context like a work life balance. If they delve their meaning of work into the large societal context, some challenges may emerge in their present work from large context.

It might not be hard for us to think it that CAs feel a sort of meaningfulness, for example ‘Calling’, when they receive affirmative messages.

Third, it is easy for us to imagine many managers in JRK facing identity crisis during the change process. It might be similar to ‘Transformative learning’ (Kegan & Lahey, 2009). That is, adults learn a way of learning to re-edit a way of learning to change, struggle with midlife confusion in terms of work life balance and achieve transformational learning to grow mature.

As ‘Organizational safety’ (Edmondson, 2012) shows, this case has a supplemental implication for the second one, such as adults learning through practices and experimentation in the safe fields. Learning as well as innovation for change may be a phrase that we use as a mantra. However, such mantra does not conjure anything up. If we, as adults, are to learn something new from awkward attempts, safe environment and honest feedback from others in the groups definitely need to create new idea for the customers and our identity to grow more. It may be a tiny phrase; however, meaning of it would be profound if we were in identity crisis.