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Saturday, July 20, 2013

Throwing Knives at Leaves





Building strategy and skills is a continual process, always refining and improving, preparing for the next challenge during good times or bad. Akiro Kurosawa's classic film Yohimbo gives a powerful illustration of this idea when the principal character Sanjuro finds himself badly injured and in need of time to recover. After managing to get himself to a gazebo where he can rest, Sanjuro waits patiently for his wounds to heal, passing the time by throwing his knife at the leaves which blow errantly into the open structure. Many days pass and Sanjuro slowly recovers, all the time throwing his knife across the gazebo at the blowing leaves. Eventually he is well enough to leave and in the climatic scene of the film Sanjuro, armed only with his sword and knife, faces a gang of gun-toting bandits. The bandit leader raises his gun to fire on the seemingly easy target.......and receives an expertly thrown knife clean through his gun hand.

Sanjuro demonstrates the practical application of a key element of the art of impact - even while injured, he is building the strategy and skills that will be needed to prevail. It's the same for all of us every day, personally, professionally, on both individual and group levels. To make an impact requires continual movement and improvement, increasing our grip--enhancing awareness of the current situation and arising opportunities, threats--and building strategy to meet this emerging landscape. This enables effective engagement with life's challenges, to get results with one clean shot rather than being embroiled in protracted combat.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Attack and Defense




"My centre is giving way, my right is in retreat, situation excellent, I will attack"

Nice quote from the French General Ferdinand Foch, which, even though from a French General, illustrates a core martial arts principle of attack and defense.

When attacking, think about defense. When things are going well, when we are on a roll, when our energies are focused on a situation that is moving in our favor, a piece of mental energy should be devoted to defending. From a martial arts point of view, the mind should be reviewing the possibilities for protection even as the body is moving forward; anticipating the counter-attack, being prepared to defend when we miss, guarding our vulnerabilities. This principle applies universally. Periods when we are having the best of times professionally and personally are those when anticipating problems and having contingencies in place are most important. This doesn't mean being pessimistic and worrying, or ploughing money into gold, stockpiling guns, water and toilet roll. Spending time focused on such negative possibilities is much more damaging than not considering them at all. As always, balance is the key to impact. Anticipation and early detection to treat problems while they are still small, building networks, sharing our good fortune with others, investing in fixing known issues are all worth our attention during the good times. That's how we avoid misfortune to the extent possible and prepare for the inevitable rougher waters, allowing us to keep stable and prevail when the tide turns. This principle is becoming increasingly important in business, as traditional models of innovation are being overturned by so-called "big band disruptions", rapid and devastating changes in markets epitomized by the success of Twitter, Kindle and mobile navigation smartphone apps. Industry leaders now need more than ever  to be vigilant in detecting such radical changes, ready defend their position. Instability and change is becoming the norm in our lives, and recognizing this, preparing while we are in the calm eye of the storm, is the means to retaining our impact when the hoodoo eventually comes.

The converse is equally, if not more, important. When we are being attacked (literally or figuratively) and are forced into a defensive mode, the best way out is to attack. Defense is loss-prevention at best; at worse it is retreat or surrender. Attacking deals with the root cause and creates opportunity. At the lowest ebbs of my professional and personal life I have always made it a point to attack, to lob something out in the hope that it will explode. This tactic has lead me out of the darkest of situations into hope, created opportunity and new possibilities where none seemed possible. There is credible psychological support for this concept. Martin Seligman, founder of the positive psychology movement, notes in his book "Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life":
"If depression is a disorder of thinking, pessimism and rumination stoke it. The tendency to analyze feeds right into it; the tendency to act breaks it up"

In other words, when you're at your lowest and feeling hopeless - act! Actively attacking the problem will dispel negativity, generate energy and lead to new horizons. It's always best to maintain control, creating and adapting an offensive strategy to meet the challenge, even when pressed on all fronts like General Foch.



Saturday, April 13, 2013

Higher Ground

Stevie Wonder is one of those performers whose musicianship and talent for melody, arrangement and feel is unsurpassed. I think that one of the 10 Commandments of Bar Bands should be "thou shalt not play a Stevie Wonder song", having heard "Superstition" slaughtered on the altar of rock cover band guitarists one too many times. Anyway, I digress, here's some classic SW to start the post:



Nice sentiment, but why should we try and reach the highest ground? What does this mean anyway?

Religions all focus on this topic and a good place to start is looking at their thoughts on the matter. For brevity I'll take the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas and his Seven Deadly Sins as representative of the religious stance. These are a distillation of those activities and attitudes that are most likely to condemn us to an eternity somewhere unpleasant:

  • Pride: an excessive belief in one's own abilities
  • Envy: the desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation
  • Gluttony: an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires.
  • Lust: a craving for the pleasures of the body.
  • Anger: fury over love; resentment and hate
  • Greed: the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual
  • Sloth: the avoidance of physical or spiritual work

Some of these sound like fun, so why are they so bad? What harm can a little indulgence cause? The answer is, I think, that they are all paths toward lower ground, terrain where a bigger perspective is not possible, where we expend energy on gratifying urges rather than making a positive impact. As Carlos Castaneda put it:

"I warn you: Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone one question: Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same. They lead nowhere. They are paths going through the brush or into the brush or under the brush. Does this path have a heart is the only question. If it does then the path is good…if it doesn’t then it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere, but one has a heart and the other doesn’t. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as your follow it will be one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong, the other weakens you"

In Bear Grylls' autobiography "Mud, Sweat and Tears" he describes his error during a critical timed hike as part of an SAS selection test:

"I dropped off the high ground too early, and soon found myself floundering again in the worse of the boggy marsh. Burning up energy and precious time. I could feel my tired legs leaking energy, and the weight of the pack was pushing my sinking legs further and further into the boggy ground with each step. To make matters worse, I could see distant figures on the skyline above steaming past me"

This is a good metaphor for the reasons why we should not opt for the apparent comfort of the lower ground, those vices encapsulated by the Deadly Sins. Balance is lost, the more we indulge, the more we need to satisfy, the more our mental energy is bogged down while the opportunity to make a positive impact passes us by.  This is borne out by the spectacular falls of those in high places--from Tiger Woods to Bernard Madoff--where the root cause is always one of the seven.

In this Battle of Everyday that we are thrown into, winning, making an impact, depends on maintaining a strategic advantage. A major part of this advantage is keeping the higher ground; a position that develops power, enables vision and gives the edge over opponents in lower positions. This is true figuratively as well as in actual combat, where higher ground gives the individual or army a superior position, with more options for attack or defense. Higher ground could mean better fighting technique, better training or stronger spirit, all of which are elements of a higher state. Likewise, outside of combat, not being dragged to a lower position by the numerous temptations of modern life, cultivating discipline and control, develops a tangible power. It's a practical approach, freeing available energy for fun, creativity, beneficial work, altruism and relationship-building. These all improve the impact we make, and is one explanation of the principles of karma--what goes around comes around--as the higher we raise ourselves, the more advantages we obtain from the higher position. If you want to make an impact, gotta heed Stevie's advice:

Gonna keep on trying till I reach the highest ground....


Sunday, February 3, 2013

Born to Run?

Tramps like us, baby we were born to run

Why is it that millions of people identify so strongly with Bruce Springsteen’s song ‘Born to Run’? Vicarious tramps, driving fast cars accompanied by their Wendy. I think there’s something worth exploring here, something that touches the core of the American psyche; it’s worth looking under this hood and meddling to see if we can tune up, find balance and adventure.
It seems like most of the fans that love the song are content in the very world that is to be run from; the cloying sterility of the job/dog/computer/Blackberry/TV lifestyle; the routine drudgery of making ends meet; the world of the GPS telling us where to go, and all the other (aptly-named) trappings of the new-millennium lifestyle. But are we really content, or are there suppressed rumblings deep in our engines, the spirit’s plea to recognize its purpose, the unfulfilled quest? I believe that we all have a deep-rooted wanderlust, a need to discover ourselves and our environment, a need to define our contribution to life. The popularity of Born to Run (and the many other songs and films that express the yearning for freedom) supports this belief; music provides an inspection-bay into our deeper workings, among which is a huge desire for freedom. That so many of us can identify with the song’s message is evidence that the human soul knows that its purpose is to ‘run’ and make an impact on the world in the short time available. Modern life stalls our motors though; we may lack curiosity and have no desire to explore externally or internally, no interest in finding out where those two lanes will lead us. We may lack courage; to leave safety and routine sounds good on a record—especially after a couple of drinks in the evening—but in real life it is scary and requires a top-up of bravery (and foolhardiness), levels of which are low in the cold light of the morning. Most often however we run out of gas because of lack of energy, and we fall into the very lifestyle that the songs and films we love rail against. As we progress beyond our twenties, our energy levels naturally decrease, whereas demand rises to cope with the complexities of work and family life. The lure of lifestyle weighs down our trunks with possessions; the hemi-powered drone becomes the coveted luxury car, and the notion that where you drive is more important than the car you’re driving takes a backseat to the quest for comfort and status. We continually reduce our degrees of freedom through acquisition and debt until we become enslaved by the very liberty that we think we have. Oftentimes our chassis is corroded by poor choices and the inability to restrain our compulsions, leaving us off-balance and vulnerable, unable to drive forward, to run and explore while we have the chance.
While Mr. Springsteen’s songs are powerfully evocative of the problems and angst we all encounter en route, they are not an abundant source of solutions, with the possible exception of one of his other paeans to the automobile, Racin’ in the Street. Here, he offers a glimpse of the road outta here:

Some guys they give up livin’, they start dyin’ little-by-little, piece-by-piece; Some guys come home and wash up, and go racin’ in the street

We should take his advice on how to keep a full tank, remain well-balanced, in-tune and able to make an impact. We have to stop searching for comfort, stop trapping ourselves with the vision of a lifestyle that is sold to us, stop planning our retirement and start planning to live. It’s time to wash up, take some risks and head out on the highway, ready for adventure and whatever comes our way.

 "What the hell's wrong with freedom man? That's what it's all about"




Sunday, January 6, 2013

Live dangerously.....

In defining and understanding the universal principles of impact it is useful to study those who have genuinely made an impression on our world. One such person was Winston Churchill, who, despite the estimated 20,000 bottles of champagne he drank in his lifetime, was indisputably a heavy hitter. Paul Johnson's book "Churchill" has an insightful Epilogue which describes five characteristics that the author believes contributed primarily to Churchill's achievements:

  1. Always aim high - improve your weaknesses and capitalize on your strengths, set your sights high. Churchill mastered English history, participated in five wars, became a prolific war correspondent and author, as well as an acclaimed painter, polo player (winning the top award in the world) and, of course, was Prime Minister during the most critical period in 20th century history.
  2. There is no substitute for hard work - do everything to the best of your ability, take the tough decisions, balance "flat-out work" with "creative and restorative leisure".
  3. Never allow mistakes, disaster, accidents, illnesses, unpopularity or criticism to get you down. Churchill suffered abject failure, humiliation and catastrophic loss but these never sapped his energy and courage to continue. This was arguably Churchill's greatest strength and the biggest contributor to his success.
  4. Do not waste any time on the "meannesses of life" - for example attributing blame, seeking revenge, rumor-spreading, grudges or vendettas. Conserve energy for positive ends, understand that hatred and fear are exhausting, energy-intensive and wasteful.
  5. Find time for joy in your life - be happy, laugh, enjoy your interactions with others.

These are five important principles, equating to boldness, discipline, courage, conservation of energy and balance, all key elements of impact. To finish with some further advice from Churchill, consider his counsel after being badly injured in a car accident in New York City in 1931. In an article about his accident he concludes "For the rest, live dangerously, take things as they come. Fear naught, all will be well."

Be bold, go with and don't worry - every little thing gonna be alright!