Episode #149: Dojo Business Lessons

I have often thought there are so many lessons from the martial arts for our businesses. Here are my musings assembled from my 46 years of training in traditional Japanese Karate.

Entering the Dojo

The Dojo is the ultimate equalizer. Whether you arrived by chauffeur driven Roller, Maybach or took Shanks’s mare, once you step on to that Dojo floor only your ability and character separates you from everyone else. You have had all of your wealth, privileges, educational background, social status, connections stripped away and you are left alone to rise or fall based on your own abilities.

In business we forget this and allow people to accrue titles, status and power unattributed to their abilities. It is always amazing how many politicians there are infesting companies. We need to see beyond the spin and politics and ensure that people’s real abilities are recognized and rewarded. If the politicians control the top positions then the corporate fish will rot from the head and the business will be destroyed.

Starting

The class begins with a short meditation interval. This is designed to focus the mind and separate the day from what will now come. Next everyone is bowing toward the front. The front of the class represents all who came before us. We are not here today based solely on what we have done. Others were here before us building the art and the organization. By bowing we acknowledge the continuum and our responsibility to keep it going. Now we bow to the teachers, respecting their knowledge and their devotion. Finally we bow to each other expressing our solidarity as fellow travellers on a journey of self-discovery.

How do we start the work day? Are you controlled by the weather when you awake – rain means I feel bad, sunshine means I feel happy? Or are you motivated, irrespective of the weather and you determine yourself what type of day it will be? At the workplace is there a chorei or morning gathering of the work group, to get everyone aligned and focused on the WHY they are there. In our office, for example, we rotate the meeting leadership and review one of the Dale Carnegie Human Relation’s Principles each day. We then share our scheduled meetings, our highest goals for the day, end with a motivational quote and a final rousing call to all do our best (ganbarimashoo!).

Stretching

We warm-up our minds and our bodies by going through a set routine to stretch our muscles, to be able to operate at a very high level of performance.

If you are a sales team, are you beginning your day with role play practice or are you just practicising on the client? Fifteen minutes is not a burden and quite a lot of practice can be achieved in that period. Salespeople, more than most, are really constrained by what they say and how they say it. The wrong explanation and the buyer disappears. The first thing that pops into your head, better not pop out of your mouth. Better to warm up the brain in the morning and get the syntax and cadence humming before you talk to any clients.

Basics

We repeat the same drills over and over, every class, every year, forever. We are seeking purity of form and perfection of execution. We are preparing ourselves for a Zen state where we can react without pre-thought.

A large amount of our work is routine, but can we improve the systems, the execution to bring in greater efficiencies and achieve higher productivity? We need to constantly seek to improve our speed and accuracy of execution of projects and tasks. Are there procedures we can trim back or improve to save costs of time and money? Rather than just repeating things the way they have always been done, is there any opportunity to refine further?

Sparring

There are two formats. Prearranged sparring dictates what is coming and the order in which it comes. Free sparring is 100% spontaneous, ebbing and flowing with the rhythm of move and counter move. At a high level, this is like playing a full chess match in one minute, but using our techniques with full body commitment. Trust me, if you get this high speed chess game wrong, you get a punch in the mouth or a kick in the head – a sure way to improve your focus.

When we compete in the marketplace are we a speedboat or an oil tanker? Are we nimble, adaptive, on purpose and aware of market changes? Are we thinking steps ahead of the opposition, anticipating their moves and constantly outflanking them, applying our brains over their brawn? Are we able to bounce back from losses? If the rival wins the business, can we analyse where we failed and better prepare for the next round? Do we have the guts to keep going when things get tough and we wonder if we can make payroll this month?

Kata

These are full power set pieces, representing a battle against multiple opponents. The forms are fixed and the aim is perfection. The form is set and so Zen like, releases the mind to go beyond the form.

Are we able to keep reproducing execution pieces of our work that are perfected? Can we refine our actions for the maximum effectiveness? Can we eliminate mistakes, defects and rework entirely at all levels in the organisation? Do we have templates for processes that are best practice and which everyone can follow? Do we have the workflow in the best possible sequence? When was the last time we took a good, long, hard look at how we do things, in what order, by whom etc?

Strengthening and warming down

Strength training is there to build the physical power and our mental perseverance. We do a final stretch to reduce stiffness and muscle pain by reducing lactic acid build up in the muscles.

Are our training methodologies making us stronger than our rivals in the marketplace? Are we allocating sufficient time to grow our people? Are we seeing outcomes from the training time invested? When we are busy, we are too time poor to allocate time for training. When we are not busy, we are too cash flow poor to allocate time for training. When can we train? If we don’t build strengthening processes into our organisations, we will never be able to grow the people, in order to grow the business. The people will plateau and so will the company.

Finish

We repeat the bowing and this time we add the Dojo Kun (Creed). Voicing carefully chosen words which represent the value system of that dojo, (e.g. Effort, Patience, Moderation, Respect) so that these are the last things settling into our minds, before we go back to our usual routines of life.

How do we end the workday? Do we rush out the door to get home? Do we spend a few moments to set up for the next day by reflecting on what we did today, what we achieved and what we need to work on tomorrow? Do we review the quality of our performance and think about ways to do better? Do we look at the goals we set for the day and see how closely we went to achieving them?

There are many metaphors in Karate training for our business lives. I hope these different angles on what we do everyday and how we do them, has stimulated some thinking about how to be even better. Karate training teaches us that to succeed, we must defeat the weaknesses in ourselves, overcome our self-doubts and limiting beliefs. Business is just the same.