Samir Arora

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

Win, then Strike: the Art of Strategy, Takuan Soho Writings from a Zen Master to a Samurai

ArtofWar

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war

Defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.

If there is but one Art of Strategy I would use before launching a product, a company or going up against a competitor, it would be this one. Far too many times you see people jump into a conflict, without thinking through the strategy of how to win. Once you are in the battlefield, Art of Strategy reduces to the Art of Street-fighting and its too late in most cases other than a lengthy drawn out conflict to easily win.

Ultimately, if possible I would change the first rule to: Win, without striking. Asking the question, Are you likely to succeed. If so how, and if not, what can you do to succeed.

Many a warrior has used this technique. Part of it is getting ready in mind or in attitude to win. But the art is actually deeper.

My path to understanding this came after many years at Apple, where we launched product after product, only to find ourselves always getting killed by Microsoft. True the products were always better in design, quality and ease of use. Yet we would find Microsoft at every step, out flanking any move that Apple made. It was only later that Apple changed its strategy, instead of Macintosh “for the rest of us” it became Macintosh for “design and desktop publishing” In doing so, Apple survived and grew to be a great company, only to almost lose it all, and then like a phoenix, rising again under Steve Jobs.

By the time I was running Glam, this was used very effectively by the team. Glam became #1 before it went out and became known as the leader. The focus was to reach Number One, or win and then strike right through it in the market.

How does one build the Art of Strategy? How does one learn to think like that? How does one bring the Way of the Warrior in everything you do?

tsuhaChozenji

Tshua-Roshi Starts by placing the arrow

Quick, look, has the arrow already struck the target?

Where?

Just like Al Ries says in the Positioning: the battleground of the mind- Winning in positioning is meaningless, unless one wins in the minds of the people.

It starts with your attitude and then your thoughts. Have you won in your mind? Are you sure this is something you can and want to win? Are you being realistic and honest, yet pushing yourself to your maximum limits? Do you consider success as a reality?

In many ways, this is one of the most common things I see with leaders, visionaries, CEO’s, and founders. The ability to see the future and plan for it.

The Art of Strategy goes deeper. Not just to win in your mind, but to be able to see you and the world in a way victory is possible. This is the most elusive part. Josh Stein, one of the talented VC’s at DFJ says this many times- “You are dealing with running the company now, but are planning and working through things 6 months to 1 year ahead of time.” Winning in your mind is not just seeing the future, it is seeing the present, the full real Now, and every step along the way, the world around you and your competitors, their mind and moves, and the work it will take to win, the execution and the follow through to ensure the victory.

Fudochi Shimmyo Roku

Takuan Soho

Essential Dialog for Developing the Mind

In the writings on the way to train your mind in Fudochi, or unmovable wisdom, the question is asked “where to place your mind?” For me this has been a source of tremendous learning and focus. Lets take the example of Win, then strike. Is your mind placed on the winning or the striking? One of the reasons we hold training to build the team on Art of Strategy is that this is a path that needs learning, time and experience. (Takuan Soho is the zen master who also known for the little yellow daikon pickles “takuan” that you enjoy in Japanese Food!)

For beginners, the mind is asked to be placed at one place or focus on one step at a time. At work, this would mean taking a long term goal, and as Steven Covey suggests, break it down to mid-term an then to short term baby steps. The mind is placed on these baby steps, as we learn to build ourselves. With time, the mind can be placed at the whole. Sort of like hearing Bach’s music without following one of instruments in a Fugue, or seeing the sky not only the moon. Then with time, the mind can be placed anywhere- seeing the whole or parts without loosing the experience. Finally the mind can be free to be anywhere and nowhere. Always, as we transcend through the barrier, there is always a duality that breaks through our beliefs. That is the goal of learning the Art of Strategy and practicing it in our everyday lives.

Takuan says: “If you place your mind in the action of your opponent, the mind will be taken by the action of the opponent. If you place your mind in the sword of your opponent, it will be taken by the sword. If you place it at the intention of the opponent, it will be taken by the thoughts of the opponent to strike you. If you place it on your own intention of not being struck, it will be taken by your own thoughts. If you put it in the posture of the opponent, it will be taken by the other person’s posture.” What this means is there is no place to put the mind. Not stopping the mind is the object and essence and takes training and discipline. Put nowhere, the mind can be everywhere. If not restricted to one direction, it can be in all.

Once we have found a way to place the mind nowhere, it becomes our tool and we are free of it. Again, another path that leads to the way. But how to train the mind? That is another story, one with kings, treasure and gifts…

There is the story from The Zen Ways to Martial Arts of the king that wanted a fighting cock that would always win, so he asked a zen master of the samurai to help teach it the techniques of combat. After a few days the king asked if it was ready at which the zen master replied:

“No. He is strong, but his strength is empty. All he wants to do is fight.”

After a few days the king asked again to which the response was “No, not yet. He is fierce now, and looking for a fight to to test his strength.”

Again after days of training the king inquired if it was now ready. “Now, it may be possible” said the zen master. “He remains calm , his posture is good, and yet it has a lot of power deep within.”

“So we should go ahead with the fight.” said the king.

To which the zen master replied, “Possibly”.

So all the great fighting birds were brought together and the combat started. But not one would come near that one. They all looked at him and ran away terrified and he never needed to fight.”

Or as the koan goes:

Although it does not

mindfully keep guard,

the scarecrow

does not stand in vain

Tags: art of war, Business, CEO, Martial Arts, Startups, the way
Posted by sa at 3:42 am Links to this Post

Saturday, August 22nd, 2009

Total Immersion in a Single Act or the Art of War: My encounter with Miyamoto Musashi

ZanMaiHosokawa

Zanmai

Samadhi

Through total immersion in a single act

Zen Master Ken Yokoyama laughed.

He was reading a passage from Miyamoto Musashi’s A Book of Five Rings at the Zen-do Daihonzan Chozen-ji for the training in Budo. In the Book of “No-Thing” Miyamoto Musashi says “In the End, All Ways are One.” As Ken explained, after remaining undefeated in his entire life, Musashi gives us a short opening to how with the right awareness and total concentration, even the path of warrior can be “The Way” to develop oneself.

KenChosenJi

My first encounter with Zen was very young. I had just read the book Gödel, Escher, Bach given my love for composing music, math and the draw to game-theory and the start of computing. “Hofstadter discusses Zen koans. He attempts to show the reader how to perceive reality outside the normal confines of their own experience and embrace such paradoxical questions by rejecting the premise.” It was much too early, and I had not had enough life experiences to be able to appreciate the sound of one hand clapping was not about the hand or the sound or the clap at all. It was about challenging our thinking about our mind’s way of falling into the trap of thinking about the role “I” play in my own mind. Or in the words of Eckhart Tolle “I could see I was looking at myself, so who was “I”?

For me the experience was in Omori Sogen’s words “Zen without the accompanying physical experience is nothing but empty discussion. Martial ways without truly realizing the “Mind” is nothing but beastly behavior.”

So what was Roshi Ken talking about?

In my own simple way, I learned the following from him: A spiritual path without an everyday practice is simply empty thinking – just like everyday work in business without following a path or principles to develop oneself is beastly behavior.

In either case, the path should lead to the same place.

This is the gateway for us “warriors on the business path” or the Budo of Work. Given we spend most of our lives in some type of professional work or careers – there is a lot we can learn from the Book of Five Rings or the Art of War. Not just the Art of Strategy, which is all about how to win externally and competitively, but the art of the way, or how to develop yourself.

In the beautiful voice of Robert Redford “In the end, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.” And on the question on how does one get on this path, that is another post…

Tags: art of war, energy, Martial Arts, the way
Posted by sa at 6:19 pm Links to this Post

Friday, August 21st, 2009

Passing Through the Impassible Barrier: my time with Al Huang at Esalen

: Kan

Kan: The Barrier or Gate

Nanboku to-zai katsuro tsu-zu

Once you break through the barrier:

Free to all directions

It was is the early 1990’s, I was returning to Esalen for a long weekend. The drive as usual was long and winding like a slow unfolding of your life itself. The view spectacular, the sky blue and the ocean reaching and touching the sides of the steep hills.

All my trips to Esalen started like this. Driving out of Silicon Valley, through Santa Cruz, then going past Monterey and finally Carmel. At that last stop before the long stretch to Big Sur starts always felt like the post to leave everything you didn’t need behind. It was with these thoughts I drove, windows open, taking in the raw power of nature surrounding this coast.

The weekend was with a man had had read, but never met before. What does one feel when one knows you are about to be in the presence of a true master at the end of the road you are on? I kept my excitement high and assumptions low as I completed the drive.

Al Huang at Esalen

“I am not here to to teach you about Tai-Ji, I’m here to teach you about your “Ha-Ha” place,” were the first words I heard from Al Huang. He then proceeded to show the most graceful movement art I have seen – the slow dance of Tai-Chi. As we were to learn later, the “Ha-Ha” place as he calls it is our energy center, the elusive Tanden, Tien, Hara, Kandasthana/Pranayama or The Core as many call it.

What an amazing reversal. Most things in life are about “form” first. Every martial art, business, profession is like a spiral path in which the first years are all about the “doing” or learning by repeating, repeating, repeating. Eventually experience kicks in, and the form starts to become second nature, moves from the focus on the one thing to more “no-mind”. In the movie Karate Kid, the words wax on-wax off were a great demonstration of this- while he is working on waxing, he is actually learning the kata. Almost all disciples need this stage, where you are learning the form. After this you can work on the essence or the deeper reason we learn the form.

Al Huang decided to fast forward the form to give us a glimpse of the essence of Tai-Chi in a way only a real master can do.

In a laughter filled room called Huxley

next to the kitchen, we were thrown into ways to feel the Chi or energy that the form of Tai-Chi aims to help you connect with. Movement after movement, it was not move your hands up, then in a circle and down – breathe in your hara, now pull the energy up, now move it around and now sink it down.Over and over. In all kinds of ways.

As someone who was brought up in a scientific no nonsense background, I had already learned in my prior visits to Esalen that Human Development was just starting and that it was best to keep an open mind and ask questions. At a simple level, my experience of Al Huang was a deep concentration on breath, focus on the hara, and a deep “zen-like” moving meditation that was astonishingly simple.

By Sunday morning, everyone had found there “Ha-Ha”place and we were all rosy cheeked, glowing with warmth, and moving in sync like a Broadway Chorus-Line. Al was like a conductor who had somehow brought a group of people with nothing but an open mind to break through the barrier or “Kan” and get a glimpse of a new freedom in movement and connectivity
.

Book by Al Huang

His words were always simple. Everything in the universe is made up on Energy. We all have the potential to connect to this, but we have forgotten it in modern times. With the right intention and practice we can connect to the source of our power deep inside us. In connecting to our power, we connect to the power in the universe. The circle is complete.

In our everyday life, we have all kinds of barriers- internal and external. External barriers are the most visible. Overcoming them is what life is about. Internal barriers are our own limitations. Breaking through these reveals our true selves. Elusive as it sounds, it is, in fact, very very simple.

What happened next? Little did I know, once you pass through a barrier like this one, and with the help of a master like Al Huang, connect to your hara, you pass through a gate. It’s like opening a door that you did not even know existed, let alone know what lies through it. That, of course is another story…

Tags: energy, esalen, hara, tai-chi
Posted by sa at 2:41 pm Links to this Post

Sunday, August 16th, 2009

Magnificence in Life: my story of Bill Campbell at Apple now at Intuit

HosokawaRoshi38

Ro: Present, Appearance
Do-do: Magnificent

Magnificence in Life: my story of Bill Campbell.

How one man helped me take the leap to do a startup

Bill Campbell

Apple BOD

Chairman, Intuit

Former CEO Claris

Former CEO Go Corporation

EVP Apple USA, Sales & Marketing

Former Coach (In real life )

It all started in 1987, when I was called to fly to Ann Arbor, Michigan. One of Apple Computer’s potential large customers we were trying to convert to Macintosh Domino’s Pizza was having some problems. A big presentation was schedule for Friday, and here it was Monday of that week and things were simply not working. I was on a plane Tuesday morning- my first visit to the Domino’s campus.

Dominos pizza

It was typical, software on PC’s was still evolving, and applications for pre-web e-commerce and brand catalogs were all done as one-offs. Tuesday to Thursday was spent in this beautiful FLW Prairie Style offices working to show how Macintosh could completely change the way Domino operated.

Friday came, a beautiful sunrise hit us as we raced to finish the last 3 days and nights work. Physically exhausted, but charged we walked into the conference room. A tall man, dressed in a suit with a big smile on his face walked over to me- giving me a big hug and loud pats on the back.

“Hello Samir, I’m Bill Campbell. Thanks for the work to help Apple USA out today.”

And that’s the first time I met Bill.

apple_logo_(640x480)

Over the years Bill became a very important mentor to me with his attitude, energy, coaching and of course the twinkle in his eyes. Probably the most important time, when I was trying to decide to do something at Apple or so a startup- Bill was at Claris as CEO. Over lunch, I remember his words clearly to this day:

“There are only two types of companies- startups and departments of large companies. Decide what you want to be and do it 100%”

These are simple but very power words that had a deep impact on me. Coming from someone at a large corporation that had started in a garage, it really summed up what I needed thinking through. I realized I wanted to go back to my roots as an entrepreneur, and this was one of the most life changing decisions I made.

Following this period in history, Bill left Claris to become CEO of Go, as Apple did not spin-off Claris completely- it remained in Bill words, a department of a large company. Bill went on to become CEO of Go, then Intuit, and finally returned to Apple as Chairman of the Board and helped many companies and CEO’s like Google in Silicon Valley.

I chose the words Magnificence in the present or appearance as it captures this wonderful person. I remain very fond of Bill, as he continues his path as Chairman of Intuit and on Apple Computer’s Board helping people everyday through his essence.

Here are some words from Bill from his article in Fortune by Jennifer Reingold:

Think big with talent

Campbell believes startups often hire “early stage” people without thinking about whether they will succeed as the company grows. They should instead hire major players who know how to scale up. Once they’re in, Campbell uses a review system that measures four areas: on-the-job performance – the typical quantitative goals; peer group relationships; management/leadership, or how well you develop the people around you; and innovation/best practices.

Be honest – and accountable

“I remember him describing me as a human missile,” says Danny Shader, CEO of Jasper Wireless, who at the time was a disgruntled employee at Go Corp. Campbell, the CEO, sat him down, saying, “Here are a bunch of things you need to do to improve yourself and things that I need to do.” By talking straight with employees – and committing to helping them succeed – Campbell helps create a team dynamic.

Skip the chief operating officer

Most Campbell-led or -mentored companies (Google and Intuit, for example) have no COO. Campbell thinks the COO often takes over management details that the CEO should be deeply involved in. And COOs often end up isolated, with star managers insisting on reporting to the CEO.

Invest in the future

Campbell believes technology companies should never slack on innovation. “He is a huge advocate of having to be on the leading edge,” says Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, Opsware, and Ning. “He was always on us [at Opsware] with the budget about having to invest more in R&D.”

Empower the engineer

Campbell thinks engineers are the innovation core of any tech company. Giving engineers the freedom to create, free of marketing dictates, is critical. On Campbell’s suggestion, Intuit CEO Brad Smith gave his engineers four hours a week of unstructured time. The result: six new products in the past year.

In closing

Bill has spent years behind the scenes in Silicon Valley as a friend, mentor and coach to many people. As Intuit founder Scott Cook said once, “This is a story that needs to be told.” He is really a magnificent human being and someone that really helped shape and mentor my management style and the desire to give back by helping mentor and see the potential in people as future leaders.

Tags: Business, CEO, Entrepreneurs, mentor, Startups
Posted by sa at 2:42 pm Links to this Post

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Kaiseki Dinner at Masuda Kappo in Kyoto, Japan

Word: Master

HosokawaRoshi17ToBeMasterEverywhere

Zuisho ni shu to naru

To be the master everywhere

It is amazing to see a master at work. Born out of years of dedication to a cause, the doing looks like a dance, in perfect balance. Being around a true master at work brings up a Zen saying to me: Zuisho ni shu naru or To be master everywhere, a calligraphy by Dogen Hosokawa Roshi, mounted by Jikyu-an in Kyoto, both students of Omori Sogen.

What does it mean to be a Master Everywhere, or as I think about it, Anytime? I have had the fortune of meeting many “masters” in their craft- from Aikido, to CEO’s, to Designers, to Actors. Over time what I have found is that there are three distinct stges: being a student, becoming a master, and then bringing the learning to your everyday life. Finding people in the last stage is very rare. In simple terms, being blissfull at a spa gazing over an ocean with no care in the world is a step, but bringing the state of bliss to your everyday life is another. To be a master everywhere is to bring the level of awareness and fous while winning in the finals of a tennis match to your everyday life.

I have always wanted to start by a post on one of the best kappo (”counter”) kaiseki chef’s in Japan: my friend Masuda-san. Thanks to Yumi, I have some photos that give a sense of the range of food Masuda whips out at incredible speed. Masuda-san is a true master at what he does, but is also one of those rare people I have met whose energy and kokoro extends to everyday life. Over many sake’s (for me) and scotch roku (for him) his true essence shines. Is it that he is a master that he is so good at what he does, or is it his essence that makes him good at what he does? Take a look at these photos and think about it:

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