What Can Business Learn From Martial Arts
“I don’t know for certain that they want me to fail, but I do know for certain that I need to manage them as if they want me to fail.”
When your innovation work experiences some skeptics, contrarians, or infiltrators, you need tools that neutralize without injuring. Some martial arts are in order.
In an ideal world, all stakeholders support your innovation, and their behavior demonstrates that. The reality is that some stakeholders directly or indirectly undermine the work. They are contrarians. Some contrarians have self-centered goals, some lack sincere commitment to the mission of the project or organization, and some just act in bad faith. It’s important to have straightforward tactics to neutralize contrarians.
Many martial arts teach practices that injure your opponent. The martial art of Aikido is different. Instead of injuring the opponent, Aikido aims to neutralize them. It’s the same in our workplaces. Commit to not being a victim to your opponent and look for ways to merely neutralize them.
Once you identify the contrarian and recognize that they are not accountable to the value proposition, determine what they do want. Once you can see they are not accountable to you, figure out who they are accountable to. With elegant simplicity and transparency, openly exaggerate their momentum in that direction - toward their sponsor or toward a dead-end value proposition. The equivalent in physical combat is accelerating a fist or foot toward a nearby wall. “Oh, you wanted your fist in that direction? Let me help!” Bring their efforts into the open. Execution’s two best friends are simplicity and transparency.
A typical tactic of a contrarian is to undermine the speed and quality of documentation. Be prepared to adopt some vicious compliance, suspend some valuable work, and glamorize a lack of documentation. In the spirit of “fail fast, fail small,” you might need to inject some absurdity into the environment before a good-faith, empowered leader intervenes and reinstalls healthy routines into the work. Navigating a contrarian might require temporarily diluting or abandoning the value proposition. Once the team recognizes a deep dysfunction, it will be easier to avoid it occurring a second time.
A less dramatic, less combative strategy is to diffuse workstyle differences via educating about the Myers-Briggs personality framework. For example, Introverts reliably feel that Extroverts over-communicate, iNtuitives feel Sensors are caught in minutiae, and Judgers feel the Perceivers lack structure. Inverse feelings go the other direction of course.
A contrarian typically loves ambiguity. Use the Five Verbs to keep clarity for assignments. Consider stripping assignments away from a contrarian, relegating them to the two verbs that quickly depreciate: talk and email.
Contrarians often create ethical dilemmas for ensemble members, even leading a person to quit from misery or out of principle. Instead, good faith employees should experiment with a Martial Arts mindset, some tools for team dynamics, and make contrarians their “practice” before restoring healthy routines of an Agreement Factory working toward an Asset Portfolio. Be willing to lose a battle on your way to winning the war. Even if you feel like a sellout in the short-term, you will keep your self-respect for the long-term. Whatever contrarian you face today is far from your last. There is no need to be martyr and aim for a knockout blow. Live to live another day.
Don’t lead innovation with naivety. Know that some stakeholders want to undermine the work. Adopt a martial arts mindset. Adopt tools that don’t injure but neutralize the contrarian.
“I am here today to cross the swamp not to fight all the alligators.”