Operations: Shohei Ohtani

Unit 3, Professor Frances Frei, Operations & Technology: Shohei Ohtani: Achieving the Dream.

A teenage boy writes down an enormous dream — and also writes down tidying his room, thanking people, and building lower-body strength. What draws me to Shohei Ohtani's goal chart is exactly this span: a distant wish, carefully placed into the life right in front of him.

Here goes — enjoy:

Case Summary

Shohei Ohtani grew up in a sporting family in Iwate Prefecture, Japan. His father had played baseball and also coached him. After practices and games, father and son exchanged little notebooks, writing down what had gone well and which movements needed work. A mistake didn't end in frustration; it was turned into something that could be described and practiced again.

In high school, his coach Hiroshi Sasaki had players write down goals and introduced the Harada Method. At the center, Ohtani put becoming a rookie coveted as a first-round pick by multiple teams; around it he laid out eight categories of conditions — body, control, mentality, speed, breaking balls, character, luck and more — and then wrote out 64 concrete actions.

The chart included strength and technique, but also respecting umpires, caring for equipment, tidying his room and reading. The question it tried to answer went beyond any single game: if I want to become that kind of player, how should I train today, how should I live, how should I treat other people?

Career choices also played a part in reaching the goal. Ohtani originally wanted to go straight to the U.S. after high school, but the Nippon-Ham Fighters offered him a path that let him both pitch and hit. He chose to stay, and only later moved to Major League Baseball. The goal persisted; the route did not unfold exactly as the teenager's list had it.

The case records his remarkable achievements, and also his adjustments. In 2024, unable to pitch after surgery, he shifted his focus to hitting and baserunning and reached the goal of at least 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a single season. The exhibits record 54 home runs that year; in 2025 it was 55. By the end of the case, he had won four MVPs and two World Series titles.

These results are astonishing, but what's more worth discussing in class is how to understand the relationship between goals, daily actions, environment and opportunity — without turning a success story into a success formula.

My Thinking

A goal needs to explain today's actions

A useful goal changes how you allocate your attention today. The goal chart breaks a distant wish into supporting conditions, and then into behaviors you can practice. It makes "wanting to be better" concrete.

My own understanding is that the most important part of the chart is the reasoning connecting each action to the goal. If you can't say why something helps, filling in every box won't add any sense of direction. Conversely, a plain but well-grounded action may be more worth sticking with than a very complete plan.

Reflection makes repetition more than repetition

The little notebooks father and son exchanged built a feedback loop long before the prettier chart came along. They didn't just record results; they described his control, his swing and his mistakes, so that experience could be preserved in words.

It reminds me that doing something consistently is not the same as consistently learning it. You need to put expectation and reality side by side to know what to keep and what to change next time. If a record is reduced to counting completions, it can hardly serve that purpose.

The right environment can protect an unusual ability

The Japanese team's offer to develop him as both pitcher and hitter is a crucial condition in this story. If an organization only allows one standard path, then however hard an individual works, they may have to give up another ability too early.

My own inclination is to write the choice of environment into the goal plan as well. Whom you learn from, under what kind of evaluation you work, what feedback you can get — all of these affect whether an ability can grow. Willpower matters; the environment deserves to be chosen just as carefully.

Character has value, and winning is still uncertain

Respect, consideration and caring for your surroundings don't need winning as their only justification. They may help with emotional steadiness, cooperation and sustained commitment, and they have value beyond performance.

I wouldn't read "luck" as meaning that doing good inevitably brings good results. Losing a game says nothing about a person's character, and outstanding results don't automatically prove moral worth. Bringing daily habits into your goals can make a person more whole; turning them into some mystical cause of winning or losing goes too far.

Serious pursuit includes revising the path

Changing his focus for the season after an injury shows that adjusting and persisting can happen at the same time. In 2024 Ohtani concentrated on hitting and baserunning, keeping his demand for excellence while accepting that he couldn't pitch at the time.

If all 64 actions become equally urgent tasks, they may eat up too much attention. I'd rather treat the chart as a whole to be tested, and choose a small number of actions from it for the current period. Every so often, look back at the purpose, the evidence and the costs, so the path can be updated.

Takeaways for Arcus42

Broad commitments need observable behaviors. Diligence, transparency and reliability in our service should translate into checking information, explaining and following up — not just stay as adjectives.

Look at outcomes and process evidence together. A good result may contain luck; a disappointing result may still contain the right actions. A review needs to keep both layers of information.

Feedback should come before large-scale repetition. If repetition brings no correction, scale only multiplies the same error. We need to know first what is worth continuing.

Values shouldn't shift with short-term returns. Respect, integrity and being clear about what we don't know are worth holding to, even when they don't immediately produce a nice-looking number.

Before Class

My pre-class choice: high goals, a few actions for the current period, continuous review. In borrowing this method, I'll keep its ability to bring aspirations into daily life — and keep the right to revise the path.

You have to look up to see the light in the distance, and still look carefully at the next step beneath your feet.

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This is a personal study analysis based on a course case; athletic results and events are as described in the case for its time period. It does not treat a single success story as causal proof that the method works, and does not constitute training or health advice.