Management and the Greens

One day the President of a group of companies made a visit to investigate his own
golf course. The golf course manager who welcomed him went over the problems of
managing the golf course. He said, “We hire a lot of labourers to take care of the greens,
but they don’t work well. They work only when a supervisor goes around to check on
them. When he is out of sight, they just sit down on the grass and don’t work at all”.

The President replied, “Of course, That’s natural. While other people are playing
how can we expect them to work? However, I have an idea. Get them all together right
away”.

Mr. Aoki is one of the labourers working at this golf course. Today he was told
by the President, “From now on, you will be responsible for the grass on the 15 th hole. I
would like you to work with Mr. Baba and Mr. Shimada. As you have experience
growing rice like your parents before you, I’m sure that you can take care of these greens
well. You may buy tools, agricultural chemicals, fertilizers, and so on, including
whatever you think is necessary, provided you stay within the budget. We won’t ask
anybody to supervise you, but infact your work will be supervised quite severely, that is,
through the grass itself we can easily see whether you’ve done a good job or not. I would
like you to make it a green that our guests will be pleased with.”

That evening Mr. Baba, Mr. Shimada, and Mr. Aoki gathered at Mr. Aoki’s
house. So far they had only been doing what they were told to do and using the tools and
fertilizers they were told to use, so they didn’t know where to begin when asked to do the
work by themselves. Mrs. Aoki broke into their conversation, “Since Mr. Baba’s son
goes to an agricultural senior high school, why don’t you ask his teacher?” After
following her suggestion, they learned that lawns can get infectious diseases and that too
little of chemicals allow them to get mouldy while too much of them make them rot. It
appeared that growing grass was as difficult as growing rice. Mr. Aoki started to
participate in the meetings of the greens’ keepers. He learned that the number of guests
and the ratio between the earning and the cost to take care of the grass was fixed and
budgeted on a per hole basis. He did not understand the contents in detail, but strangely
enough he began to regard golf players as important guests whom he had previously
thought of as “just players,”.

Though Mr. Aoki and his friends had recently switched from growing rice to
being labourers looking after greens, Mr. Aoki came to think, “This may be the job I have
always been hoping for.”

“What should we do to encourage many customers from the big cities to come to
this golf course?”
 “How can we maintain good greens that they will be pleased with?”

These became his personal problems. What about the conditions of the other
holes? He went to see how good the others were because he wanted to make the best
green and because he did not want to fail in this challenge.

One evening, there were signs of a coming typhoon. Mr. Aoki and his colleagues
were afraid that the near by river might overflow ruining their green. While they made
sandbags to check the flooding at Mr. Baba’s place, Mr. Aoki remembered there were
plastic sheets in the warehouse to cover the greens. So he went there in Mr. Shimada’s
station wagon. The people who took care of the other holes were also there.

In effect, the typhoon passed and the sun rose from the east as if nothing had
happened. The wet greens were glittering with moisture. Mr. Aoki and his family
completely forgot about their previous night’s efforts as they admired the beautiful
greens.