Work, values and success — Lessons from the Japanese (4)

Have you ever been in the same space with compulsive perfectionists? Unknown to them, while they think everyone else has a problem, people around them find them irritable, cynical and overtly critical of others who don’t measure up to their esoteric expectations. Their colleagues give them a wide berth, minimising interactions with them to only work-related, perfunctory engagements. Marriage to one is like a living hell, devoid of joy, fulfilment or any form of empowerment. When they join a church or community, they are very critical of its leadership and in time, of other members because they always see “errors” that they have no plan to assist in remediating. Their expectations, not necessarily their performance, are their only driving force. What perfectionists do not understand is that the moment they join a collective, their relational imperfections make the environment imperfect!

Earlier in this series, we saw that the Japanese concept of “Shoshin” implies having an open mind, or “a beginner’s mind.” Closely related to “shoshin” is the concept of “Wabi Sabi”, derived from two Japanese words: “wabi” and “sabi.”

In its original context, “wabi” was used in relation to the loneliness of living in the pristine environment of nature, away from larger society and its potentially corrupting influences. With time, it has come to be associated with a simple, understated rustic beauty undergirded by a sense of solitude and quietness. “Sabi” means “withered” or “lean.” It implies the aesthetic value and the minimising values that come with age, wisdom and the passing of time. In its application, “wabi sabi” helps us to appreciate the beauty inherent in transience of life, its stages and its various imperfections.

Generally used in relation to nature and aesthetics, “wabi Sabi” recognises that beauty and aesthetics in nature is fluid. Contrary to the Western culture that encourages the pursuit of happiness through a relentless drive for utopia, “wabi sabi” encourages a mindful appreciation of the natural cycle of birth (or creative essence), growth and eventual decay or death. The beauty of creation or creative enterprise lies in the permanence of impermanence. In other words, change and evolution of ideas, inventions and people are the only constants of life. This recognition helps us to better appreciate every idea, relationship, experience and stage of life that we must navigate, because each of them is a thread woven into the tapestry of whatever we eventually become. True growth is neither fixed nor fixated.

Wabi sabi is anchored on four main planks: impermanence, imperfection, incompleteness and simplicity. Impermanence helps us to recognise that all things in nature are transient; nothing on earth lasts forever. Institutions, people, inventions, nations, enterprises, relationships, all have their time-imposed limits. Several corporate behemoths of even the recent past have become history. Ask anyone who is under 20 if he remembers the name Kodak and film-roll photography where you had to submit rolls of photos to a studio for development. I doubt if he would say yes. Yet, before the advent of digital photography, the Eastman Kodak Company was the market leader in photography and everything related to the business, from cameras to films and the technology that drove the industry.

Circuit City was the computer retail store that gave Best Buy a run for its money. It is one of the companies featured as a model for good business practices and corporate growth in Jim Collins bestseller business book Good To Great, published in 2001. Jim profiled over 1,400 companies and singled out 11 of them for spotlight attention on why they outperformed others. Circuit City made that highly competitive cut. Eight years after the book was published, the company went out of business.

Radio Shack was my favourite store for shopping for household electronics whenever I visited the USA in the eighties to the early twenties. It had outlets in almost every city in the USA. It went out of business in 2015 and every subsequent effort to revitalise it failed.

Change is the only permanent feature of nature and anyone who does not appreciate that will be caught holding the short end of the stick. Those who don’t change will in time be changed.

Wabi sabi finds beauty in the unlikely simple things that perfectionists consider mundane and imperfect. In Japanese art, whether it is in painting or home décor and furniture, one would notice the ample use of natural materials in their natural state, complete with what one may see as their flaws, cracks, lines and irregular shapes. To the Japanese, these are not seen as irregularities but as masterstrokes on the canvass of whatever was being designed. If you enter a Japanese home, you will find home décor achieved with natural materials like stones, clay, sand, wood, pebbles and furniture specifically chosen for their reflection of wear and use (even if new). For the Japanese, functionality is more important than form.

Wabi sabi helps us to recognise that life is not a finished project. Growth is unending and lifelong. Development, whether personal or corporate, must be prioritised if we want to be the difference that we seek in the world. Many businesses have died because of executive inertia arising from the assumption that there was nothing to add. The dangerous assumption is that if we have built a business that the entire corporate world is celebrating, with spotlights on our structures and a stamp of authority from institutions like Harvard, Forbes, Stanford giving us resounding endorsement that make us the “go-to” in our industry, what else is there to aspire to? Very dangerous place to be! When you get to the top of the ladder, wabi sabi gives you the realisation that you can always create additional steps that challenge you to keep climbing. Growth is a continuous project and an unfinished business.

The simplicity and minimalist dimension of “wabi sabi” strips away the cumbersome adornments of objects, furniture and other things around us to focus on the simple but most profound things that we often miss in our frenzied efforts to complicate our own lives with unnecessary but bogging trivia. Attend the average business seminar or MBA class in an academic environment and see the sheer volume of graphs, statistics, complicated and convoluted information being churned out. You will come out asking yourself how many of those theories you can apply in the everyday grind of meaningful and impacting enterprise. Any wonder why most MBA holders don’t own their own businesses? Wabi sabi is about focusing on what really matters in a way that leads to laser-focused clarity and ease of execution.

On a personal level, wabi sabi helps us to realistically come to terms with who we are, along with our inherent imperfections which form the totality of our unique persona. This epiphany helps us to know what needs to change and what we should have no apologies for. A proper view and appreciation of ourselves help us to appreciate and accept others for who they are without us feeling that we must make them conform to our own mould. Nobody was created to fit our expectations. Understanding this helps us to live with others with compassion and a willingness to be enriched by the uniqueness they bring to the table… continued.

Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!

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