Corporate Samourai! A manager is like a samourai
As a manager you have your hands full today. You must constantly make choices.
You cut one node after the other. You choose your own path, through a lonely life. (Because let's be honest, it's still lonely at the top?)
In short, you look like a real samourai.
The samourai have overcome 250 years of civil wars on the basis of a few simple techniques that they could apply in all sorts of different variations
As an entrepreneur, you have a few similar techniques that you can apply in all sorts of different variaties in order to survive 250 years of competition.
On this blog I will explain how samourai techniques can be aplied in business in order to get ahead of the game!
Happy reading! And yes, comments are more than welcome! And I will try to respond or answer questions when applicable!
Skills and techniques
I mentioned earlier that samourai survived 250 years of civil war.
Lets find out if there is anything we as business people can learn from the good old samourai!
250 Year Civil War
68 Kata (kata is a variant of a basic striking technique)
4 base techniques
That is how simple the lives of the ancient samurai was structured.
Now what is the life of a modern manager like?
4 techniques
68 disciplines
250 years of competition to survive!!
Lets take a look at the 4 basic techniques!
Self-consciousness
Be aware of what is going on around you. This is not always easy. Would a fish do understand that he is wet? Be awarethat your view might be coloured. Is what you see realy what there is to be seen? Also be aware of your subconscious. Be especially aware of yourself! Be aware of your limitations, be aware that you can learn, and learn to listen to your subconscious.
Be particularly aware that you will need to adapt and improve forever! There is no finishline in your quest to get better
!
Self Improvement
Improvement is omgoing and of great importance.
You must constantly keep looking for opportunities to improve.
Improve the world but start with yourself because you can not and should not depend on others to make your improvements do you?
Improvement is yours to archieve and nobody elses thats why samurai called it selfimprovement!
Force yourself to do better every day again and again and you will see miracles happen in the end!
However to keep working on improvement requires a lot of self-discipline!
Self-control
Discipline is the core of self-improvement!.
Have yourself under control. Put yourself on a target! Forget self-pitty for the rest of your life Do not aloow yourself to fail due to lack of self discipline!! Force yourself to go as far as you want, but also to force yourself to stop in time. Control yourself in order not to waste your energy.
Manage your time like it's your most precious possession. Almost everything in life is replaceable. But, lost timeis gone forever!!! Optimal management of yourself and your whole being requires maximum self-awareness and ongoing self-motivation! And self-discipline! No excuses! Ever!
Self Motivation
If you want to put something in motion, and you want to be sure that it happens, you never dependent on others!
Then you can decide on your own destiny. Do it yourself and take the first step.
For this you should be able to put yourself into and keep yourself moving especially it the going gets tough! If you want it, than go for it and never give up!
You will always need to succeed to motivate yourself to continue where others stop to the point where you yourself feel you should stop because you want to, not because others around you think you should !
Different management styles
There are a number of known management styles that have large followings.
Perhaps you use them.
The best known are the American and the European approach.
The American approach
Almost everyone is talking about the highly successful American management style. It seems increasingly to be the Americain Dream. The interest of the shareholder prevails all other interests! Bottomline performance is all that coounts! You hear it in the news everyday!
Investors are after one thing only! Rsults as fast as possible in order to create maximum shareholder value!
That is in any case the loudest convened by the hedge funds.
And of course everyone who invests in a company demands the invested money is spent as effectively as possible and at the highest possible return.
Finally, every investor wants to get (preferably as soon as possible) his money back plus a highest possible reward for the risk taken.
In short, the shareholder demands profit and results! Fast and huge returns!
That is what it is all about, isn't it?
The question now is whether the shareholders' interests are best served by the pursuit of strongly measurable short-term successes and constantly chasing the organization for more and faster results. The removal of all "unnecessary" expense and at any price within dragging each Euro turnover and margin seems fine, but is it really?
All too often, this approach to customers and employees as "we have to sell at any price" and "We need to save money, no matter the costs!"
Too often people experience this ongoing reshapings as a hopeless crush infinite non financial capital. And more than once it gives the impression to customers and employees "because of budget cuts the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off"
In this atmosphere of fear and pressure on people, people do not usually feel comfortable to deliver the best performance and certainly not to innovate.
The European approach
The European approach is particularly conservative. Changes will be implemented only after endless meetings. Nobody is really the boss and nobody accepts leadership.
Everyone is constantly seeking consensus. From top to bottom, everyone wants to meddle in everything and decisions should certainly never be enforced by higher echelons.
A good idea that does not come from me can not be any good and even when it is any good than still we will kill it because of the "not invented here" syndrome
We are willing to sacrifice all diligence to the consultation culture. An urgent decision today can not be taken because the department is only open for consultations on Monday because that is when innovation is on the agenda!
If you are not involved in endless meetings you can not be important. Your status is typically measured by the amount of meetings you attent! The more meetings and the higher the percantage of your time spent on having meetings the more crucial you are for the succes of the company it seems?. Obviously if a meeting can not take place without you your say must be pivotal!
The biggest disaster in such a culture is A DIRECTOR WHO TAKES MATTERS FIRMLY IN CONTROL! This is what we are going to do! Why? Well easy, because I say so!!"
The advantage of the European approach is that there is often more of a long term approach, this however must not be confused with putting every good idea in the deepfreezer. It will be preserved for a long time, but it also will not be digested!
The European approach can often be recognized by the tendency to deligate every project on just about anything onto a projectgroup, coordinated by a steering commitee supportet by an advisory board!
Unfortunately, a working group usually turnes out to be "a collection of unwilling people , appointed by a collection of ignorant people that are inspirated by a team of brain dead people set out to do something nobody is waiting for!!"
The sharp approach!
The sharp approach also known as the samourai approach requires a sharp sword to cut the Gordian knot. It also requires a sharp mind fed with accurate information in order to make proper analysis, take the right descisions and move forward without wasting precious time.
This involves the risk that an initial descision may be not 100% perfect. But ongoing re-evaluation, re-adjusting, testing and ammending will get you where you want to go, fast, effici?nt, with sometimes small mistakes but in the end far more effective than any other method. Test, improve, retest, reimprove, finetune and scale up! And above all move!
Good is the biggest enimy of better! Success makes lazy force yourself to improve all the time! Never stop improving! Actually continually ask yourself:
Could it be better?
Can it be smarter?,
Why we do it like we do now?
Is the chosen target is still the best destination?
Short test everything and retainthe good!
Is the destination still where we want to go? Is the result we strive for still what we want to archieve? Because better to turn back on our past descisions than to be proud and afraid to admit we made a false start! And keep driving into a dead end at increasing speed!.
Constant innovation, inspiration, chalenging each others idea's, questioning our common goal, learning and improving and not being afraid to ask any question keeps yourself and the people in your team sharp and on the ball
If you make a concerted effort to get the best out of every teammember by challenging eachother all the time with respect and constructive chalenges you can archieve whatever you want!
Good is the greatest enemy of better. Dare so constantly challenge what you are doing and keep trying and testing there is always room for improvement! Everywhere!
Based on continued improvement, tomorrow you will know more and better than today so an excellent decision today may become obsolete tomorrow for changed circumstances.
And remember, a good decision today is 100 times better than a perfect decisionnext week!
Not cackle but lay eggs!
If henns keep cackling and not get on laying eggs there will never be an omelet!
Sometimes it seems prestige comes from attending meetings! Now as of today avoid meetings like the plaque!!
Meetings are too often the ultimate excuse for cockups! If you have discussed everything fora ges and it goes sour in the end, you have your ass covered! Sorry boss, it really was a team descision and I hired expensive experts to give us advice and they said we were making the right descisions, you se what I mean?
Meeting notes are also great to prove others wrong in case of failure. Many people go back to find meeting notes to prove somebody else wrong incase of trouble. If they made a mistake, most of the time they have lost their notes!! How obvious, so I think meeting minutes should be banned!!!
However meetings have one great advantage! As long as we attend meetings we do not take descisions and carry out tasks what an ideal way to stop us from making mistakes and be excused for it?.. I haven't had time to do this or that, you know?. I was tied up in meetings from dusk till dawn!!!
If you are sitting in meetings all day, than when do you find time to work!
Patton once said: "A good plan executed today beats a briljant plan that is discussed for the rest of our time" so cut the **** and lets get on with it!
The best option is to charge attendance fees for meetings taking part of the meeting will cost you money out of your budget! Meetings are not to discuss **** but are there to take discisions!
Meetings never have more than 5 attendees. There should ben o chairs in meeting rooms. Stand and talk and get to the point. The room should have glass walls so everybody can see you are there and will be available in maximum 15 minutes. If you cannot come to a descision within 15 minutes, don't do it fin dan easier solution!
Making people accountable!
Yep everybody is always responsible for his own actions!
But should you chop heads for every mistake? Like many large Americain organisations do?
The American approach is, one mistake too many = head off!
Lets calculate the cost of chopping heads too fast!
Samourai love their sword but hate to use it and that is wise!
Now many people say we need to focus on the bottom line and mistakes cost money!
I think a culture of accountability often kills innovation.
Who will dare to innovate and take a risk if his head will be chopped of if things go sour?
Would you chase improvement if a mistake can be fatal?
Would you dare to as kif we are not rushing into a dead end street if the messenger of bd news gets executed?
If your team gets afraid of experimenting and is afraid to report mistakes you cut of both your feet!
Experience is the accumilation of mistakes according to some gurus!
And if your staff is afraid of reporting mistakes, mistakes get swept under the carpet! And think about what happens if all mistakes get hidden under the carpet?.. than as a manager you need to look under all carpets every day and still wonder want went wrong without you knowing about it. And if you do not know about it, than how can you do something to fix it??
You willingly make yourself blind and cut of your ears if people are afraid to tell you they have made a huge expensive mistake!
Thank them for reporting mistakes! Do not chop their necks, not even if emotion makes it tempting!!
Remember a good team can hide more mistakes than you can ever find! So encourage your team to share their mistakes with you and their colleagues!
Once you have created a culture where people are not afraid to climb the stage to admit they have made a mistake you are a winner!
If somebody comes forward and admits a mistake, make shure your team responds in the right way by saying:
Fred, sorry to hear your experiment went wrong!
How can We help you to fix the problem and clear the mess?
What can we learn from this?
How can we make shure nobody here makes the same mistake in the future?
How can we limite the negative effects?
And how can we get things back on track as soon as possible?!
Do not accept people saying:
I told you so, I sa wit happening, it was emminent to go wrong, how could you bes o stupid etc.
Fire that person on the spot!!! If he knew it was going wrong, and did not help us to prevent it going wrong I call it sabotage! And sabotage is a deadly sin. A samourai would chop heads for that!
Remember at all times No mistakes is little risk! Little risk is the result of fewer experiments. Fewer experiments in less innovation. Less innovation is less progress. Less progress is less results!!!
Killing mistakes is killing innovation!
The half-life of knowledge causes stagnation in innovation therefore quickly leads to rapid deterioration. And remember the half-life of knowledge is a quadratic curve.
Perhaps this demonstrates accountabillity an go too far as well!
However, do not forget to promote originality! Encourage your team for inventing new mistakes rather than repeating old mistakes over and again!
If you want your company to do beter and better all the time?. Keep making mistakes, keep learning from them and keep challenging what you have learned?
And never forget ??.
If you want to make new discoveries?. You will need to keep crossing new frontiers? for leaf clovers will not grow in the high street!
Corporate turtles
If people feel insecure with their colleagues and bosses and are afraid to get stabbed in the back by colleagues, or managers chopping of heads or fingers being burned whilst experimenting they will avoid risks and protect themselves. They pull in their neck and pull in their limbs and protect their backs with s shield and wht do they than look like??. Yep? a corporate turtle!
Turtles survice, however they move slow, and I never meet people that state that turtles are smart, good looking, succesful and innovative!
So make sureyou do not transform your team in a bunch of turtles!
Show your weakness and demonstrate your ultimate force!
Nobody is infallible!
If you claim never to make a mistake your surroundings will do everything to prove you wrong. If you call that you're only human and could use help turn those same people around you suddenly very helpful. There is more courage to be human than to be arrogant. Arrogance is the disguise of emptiness. Ambition is a hole in your ego. An empty place that must be filled. Too often people fill it with being over assertive. You think you can make things hapen by force and people will admire you for enforcing things. Perhaps you should consider to be like water. Follow the stream of events, be patient and tear down water by continued errosion.
Realize above all that it is very lonely at the top! So why not get in touch with the base of your organisation again.
Yep you may seem important, but what are you without your tribe?
If you try to portray an immage of infallibillity people will make an extra effort to drop you into it.
Make yourself humble and vounerable and know your limitations and people will be happy to help you and survive!
A samourai will always be willing to sacrific himself and by doing just that others will protect him and want him to survive!
Success is never yours, success belongs to the team. Immagine what you could archieve alone and what you can archieve as a team and find out the power of sharing victory. Ever enjoyed a one person raving party?
1. Every dog has his day and every dalmatian has his spots!
If you look close enough you will find something to critisise on everything. Every Dalmatian has a spot we say.
Imperfectness is the ultimate perfection!
Succesfull people are admired and highly successful people are adored and the best performers are worshipped like gods?
However is there than no more room for improvement?
Is that superman or woman indeed the best person for the job?
Imagine someone that you think that belongs to the absolute top in his field. Who did you choose? Johan Cruyff, David Beckham, Lyndon Wood, Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra or Mother Theresa?
Now find your memory ever wonder about any errors that the chosen person has ever made. Refer to if necessary also via Internet. Definitely you will find a few!
Seedorf missed that crusial penalty from only 11 meters,
The stig crashed a car
Madonna doesn't sing hits all the time.
Does that disqualify them as the best in their trade??
True profssionalism is daring to acknowledge your limitations!
I myself am pretty good in sales and management. However if you want to ruin a company, put me in charge of administration and be astonnished!
Now if somebody admits to his or het shortcomings you have a few options?..
The easiest option is to fire that person and find a better recruit
Experience shows in most cases managers will select a person who is particularly good in the weak areas of the old person.
If the person we fired was a lousy communicator, we make shure that the new recruit excells in communication. We probably find ourselves the best communicator money can buy!
Now lets think for a while?. Shall we??
What are the weaknesses from the new person, we know he is a briljant communicator, but how about his selling skills and how about his loyalty.
A lot to discover!
What if we had just kept the previous person and send him on a communication training or asked a coworker to assist him when it came to communication. We knew exactly what he could and couldnot do well. All this we have to learn and discover with the new hero!
2. Make the person that showed a weakness look rediculous? make fun of him or her and put his weaknesses in the spotlight!
Very effective if you want the team to look at that person rather than you! If all attention goes to that person perhaps your weaknesses will not be discvered or highlighted. So the more attention you can put on that other person the less risk that your weaknesses are discovered! So always look carefull at people making fun of others!!!
If you will allow those funmaker to be successful the organisation will endup going through option 1 afterwards!
3. Offer the person help to overcome his weaknesses!
You can offer help from co-workers, offer training, boost selfconfidence, team the person up with a buddy, there is so much you can do to cover that blind spot of a person. The person will be loyal forever, do better, get more confidence and develop in a positive manner. Sol ets be proud of our weaknesses and show them!
The U-turn!
A pointing finger is mercilesly cut off. A helping hand is gladly accepted. If you point only 1 finger at somebody else, than always remember at that moment you ar pointing 3 fingers at yourself!
Find the solution within yourself rather than pointing fingers at others!
First think how you can do better! Think what extra you can do! How you can assist others! Give credit to others rather than blame!
This will not only create a better athmosphere but also generate better results in the end!
Lead the way by giving the good example with your own behaviour!
I'd like to share with you some examples of experiments I have successfully tried in the past in order to boost my business!
Please feel free to try them as well, they just might work for you to!
1. If you get new team members in your company. Take the time to explain to them the rules of engagement. (if you adopt the samurai approach, you need to explain this to people before they get lost. It realy is an unorthodoxe way of working!
2. Never point fingers! At least make a huge effort never to point fingers! It may be tough, but keep trying and enjoy the results!
3. If somebody makes a mistake and somebody else takes advantage. Do not hesitate! Give the person taking advantage an immidiate formal warning! And fire him or her i fit happens again! It is sabotage if they saw it coming and did not prevent it from happening!
4. Never takes minutes in meetings, they are only used to prove other people wrong if things go sauer! Only write down descisions! Saves a lot of time as well. Anyway the meetings are so short since we do not waffle and just stand together to come to a descision that we do not even need to write down what we have been waffling about! And we do not need minuted to prove to others how we have been wasting our time do we?
5. Put locks on all meeting rooms and if people want to meet let them dare to get the key from you.. if more than 4 people want to get into the room?. Throw away the key!
6. If people can not explain to you in 30 seconds what descision they want to meet about? throw away the key!
7. If people can not explain why they must be involved in that descision send them back to work!
8. If people need a break, make shure they do not have a meeting! Let them hav a break and socialise with colleagues!
9. If somebody wants me to take a descision I want him to tell me what he wants me to take a descision about, what options he thinks there are, and what are in his vieuw the pro's and con's about the different options. Than ask me if I see other alternatives?. I I do not see any ther alternatives we might as well cut the knot!
10. If I'm not there to descide, the person asking the question should descide himself without hesitation baring in min dit were his own company and his own money involved!
11. If somebody has lost me a lot of money by making a wrong descision but can prove to me he has given it careful consideration and can explain his line of thinking in a logical manner, why should I be angry!!??
12. If you do not agree with our strategy, speak now or forever?? help us archieve our goals!
13. Being the boss does not make me right! For gods sake dare to disagree with me!
14. If somebody makes a mistake? do not take him of the job, but let him find the right people to help him fix it. It will grow his responsibillity and make him learn from his mistakes!
15. Always keep asking questions? why do we do this the way we do it?? is there a way to do it better c.q. more effici?nt? What would you do i fit were your business? What can I do to make your job easier, more fulfilling, more challenging etc. etc. and than ask more questions!
16. Respect your colleagues at all times!
17. Always think what you can do to inspire others to improve!
Darwin and companies
Darwin said that species must adapt in order to survive!
Corporate Darwin is just a bit different!
Always adapt quicker than your competitors
Never adapt to their standards!
Corporate Darwin requires a few specific qualities to turn yourself in a succesful economic species!
1. Challenge everything around you
2. Use your senses! If you see something, take notice and think about what you saw! Do not only hear but listen! Do not only smell but sniff!
3. Use your instincts!
4. Remember God designed us carefully! He gave us 10 fingers, two eyes, two ears one mouth. Please remember to use the in that proportion! Write 5 times more than you look and listen! Listen and observate twice as much as you speak. Sniff out every opportunity first! That why your nose is in front of your face!
Keep an open mind at all times:
Try to keep your mind open to all your senses. And do not ignore the signals in advance that you get from your subconscious. Sometimes the abdomen is an important signal that the consciousness (yet) be explained. Instinctively, you tend to take an action. Consider it more often respond to it. According to Darwin's theory are species that successfully adapt in time the winners. Animals are thereby largely depend on their instincts, so never underestimate its value! Your gut feeling is also a kind of instinct, dare something more to follow!
If you need to change or addapt and do not know how? always remember?something is only impossible because nobody has given it enough thought to find a solution!
If you throw the same solutions at the same old problems, than do not be disapointed of you bang on the same lousy results again! So Why not take a chance and try something new!
Passion and drive put into perspective of the samourai!
Do not waste your time on entering battles that are not yours to fight!
Do not enter battles that can be avoided without the risk of not geting to your goal
Do not bring more dammage on your enemies than you have to. If you overkill your enemy will want revenge! And you have waisted resources!
If you want to shine, make shure you reflect!
Selfreflection is the true virtue
If you want to shine, you need to polish yourself?. Make shure you can withstand the heat of getting polished!
Never think you cannot improve further or do better? if you are running as fast as you can? running really very hard?. Ask yourself if you could run any faster if a hungry tiger would be running after you!
Guts!
Dare to do the unexpected and the unusual!
The first farmer that climbed on a tractor was considered to be a nutcase! Horses were the standard. Tractors were strange dangerous and highly unusual.
Nowadays only the Amish plough their land with horses!
Dare you to continue where others you crazy?
Evolve is often accompanied with disbelief, incomprehension and indiscriminate responses from your environment. Incidentally the guts to sometimes return to your steps as anything ever turns out differently than expected is also very important. Sometimes your environment than underdone ready with slogans such as "see you", "I did not predict" and similar. One will like to say that such "foolish" experiments are doomed to fail.
But people who are against such experiments are not latent "Amish". Finally, if there is not anyone ever been so crazy horse for the car to replace an engine behind we are now on the highway many horses and chariots see and Shell would sell fresh oats.
Perseverance:
Deviate from the beaten paths is sometimes scary!
It is often easier to go along with the crowd and do what everyone else does. It reduces the risk of errors and gives you a safe feeling. However, the development is also quiet!
It is often not easy to do things differently, you will sometimes t**** situations and falls into unexpected pitfalls. But often the satisfaction afterwards it becomes a lot bigger!
So dare to go when things get difficult and do not give up too soon!. But do not ever be stubborn! Dare to challenge what you are doing!
Self-reflection:
Also in innovative behavior is a healthier dose of introspection in place.
Is this really an improvement, (different is not always better!)
Is this realy bringing us where we want to go?
Do I continue because I am still making progress o ram I just afraid to admit I'm up against the wall?
Can we improve even more tomorrow and again the day after?
Dare to reflect
Polish an opportunity to find the diamond in your strategy.
Stay critical If polishing a stone for quite some time does not make it shin, you might be mistaking a diamond for a pebble!
Succes is never yours to own! It might only be your companion for a while. Nurrish it with hard work, protect it with your loyalty, enjoy it while it is there keep a close eye on it, it may be gone before you realise!
I hope you are now happy to live and die by your own sword!
Sayonara!
Fred Rutgers
I have been in marketing and sales for most of my life.
Helping salesmanagers reach their targets and exceed them is what I love to do and have done succesfully many times!
If you check the blogs you can find many blogs I have written about this and other sales and marketing related subjects.
Thanks for reading my content!
Kind regards,
Fred Rutgers
Doorzetter1960@gmail.com
+31651542222
Also check out my details on linkedin and xing
P.S. let's get connected!
If there is anything I can do for you, Just ask!
Source: http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=180142
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