Today, I’d like to talk about ‘rules’, that should be followed, in a slightly different way than you might expect.
Imagine walking into a Muji store somewhere right now. Tokyo, Paris, Seoul wherever you’re in, there’s always the same soft aroma, the same texture of wooden shelves, the same sense of quiet order in the air. For a long time, I assumed that consistency came from the refined taste of some particularly gifted individual who might be called something like an Art director. But when I learned that the secret lay in an over 2,000-page manual called the MUJIGRAM, I paused. It made me wonder that perhaps excellence doesn’t have to come from someone exceptional.
The word ‘manual’ is rooted from the ‘manus’, a Latin means ‘hand.’ In other words, a manual should be a guide that allows anyone who reads it to carry out an unfamiliar task with their own hands.
This matters more than it might seem. A manual is not written to be read but written to be acted upon.
The rules are designed to be touched, followed, and repeated. In that sense, a manual is not only a set of instructions. It is closer to a shared commitment that produces the same result no matter whose hands it ends up in.
The Meaning of “Properly”
The MUJIGRAM does not tell employees to “clean the store properly.” Instead, it says something like this:
“The top surface of the showcase must be free of dust when wiped with a finger, and is to be cleaned every day at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.”
This difference becomes even clearer when you think about learning to cook for the first time. Some cookbooks tell you to “add salt to taste.” In front of that instruction, a beginner freezes not because they don’t know what “to taste” means, but because they’re afraid of getting it wrong. However, replace “to taste” with “5g of salt,” then something shifts. The anxiety of failure diminishes, and you know exactly what to do next.
A good manual must reduce ambiguity. Vague language can feel considerate, but in practice it transfers the burden of judgment and the responsibility for the outcome entirely onto the other person. And if that person is a new hire, someone with little experience, or a part-time worker who feels they can’t afford to make mistakes, there are few instructions more frightening than “add to taste.”
The Prerequisites for Good Instruction
Thinking about the MUJIGRAM brought a question to mind: what makes a manual good indeed?
Imagine a manual saying “dust the shelves on the upper level” but the employee assigned to the task is short, and there’s no step stool in sight. Or a manual that instructs staff to adjust the angle of a mannequin’s arm, only for the mannequin to have no joints at all. What is anyone supposed to do with that?
A manual that doesn’t come with the tools and/or conditions needed to follow it is, in the end, nothing more than dead words on a page. A manual cannot stop at the sentence. It is only complete as a guide to action when the environment and resources required to carry it out are in place as well.
Rules that cannot be followed don’t simply go unfollowed. They create people who have failed to follow them. We see this pattern in the real world more often than we’d like. After every major accident, the question “did you follow the manual?” is never far behind, yet we seldom ask whether the manual was ever actually possible to follow in the first place.
That’s why any good manual must begin by answering one question:
“Can this actually be done?”
And the conditions that would allow someone to answer “yes” must be built into the design from the start. The same question applies to the rules we set in our workplaces and homes. Is the step stool there, next to the rule that requires someone to climb?
Is Yesterday’s Answer Still Right Today?
There’s a quality needed for a good manual, timeliness.
No matter how carefully a manual is written, it cannot be a fixed, permanent answer. If a manual is a guide for hands to repeat, then when the hands change when people, circumstances, and environments shift the content must shift too. And that judgment should rest with the people who really do the work.
This means building a system where those on the ground, not those in management, can comfortably raise their hand and say, “this isn’t working”. When individual suggestions go through proper review and are reflected in practice, the manual becomes what it should be the ‘Current Best Approach’.
A good manual, in the end, is not a finished document. It is a promise that must be continuously revised. Without the flexibility to accept that yesterday’s answer might be today’s mistake, a manual is nothing more than the shell of authority.
And this isn’t only true of manuals. Old habits, familiar ways of doing things, standards that once made sense but perhaps no longer do, how often do we actually open them back up and take another look?
A Real Promise
A manual is not a tool for surveillance. It is a declaration of trust, a commitment that no matter who does the work, or when, or where, the same result will be delivered.
And that trust, surprisingly, begins with very small things. One sentence that isn’t vague, one condition that could be met, one willingness to keep revising.
Don’t we need that kind of promise in our everyday lives too? It doesn’t have to be grand. One small but clear agreement with a colleague. One specific, concrete commitment to yourself. Perhaps that quiet resolution is what keeps us oriented, a way of holding on to who we are and where we’re going.
