Kai-zen! The Clash between Judo and IT!

I do Judo (the Gentle Path is it's English translation from Japanese but my back is telling me something a little different today!) , I love it! It's been good to me even when I left it for 20 years and came back, then and only then in a moment of great epiphany did I finally realise that... from the moment I initially stepped onto that tatami and did my first throw to when I came back to the mat years later, what it had taught me...

The Japanese have a word that embodies the search to perfect oneself and one's skills to become better, stronger and faster at what you are and what you do, to strive for continuous improvement and that word is Kai-zen.

Kai-zen means "Change - Good" every change should make you better, it's slow, but it's cumulative, by rejecting what doesn't work and accepting that which does, by taking every failure as a lesson in what should not be done and an opportunity to search for that which will, by not succumbing to the insanity of trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

It's a lesson in seeking what is good and what works in life and in business, it teaches you to never accept what is not optimal, what will hurt you over and over again and instead create a collection of experiences and knowledge of that which works and is good.

Now before I get too spiritual it has some real practical purposes as well:

• When something goes wrong take it as an opportunity to change things so that it won't go wrong the same way again!
• Don't limit yourself or your processes to what is, think of how it should be and make it so;
• Believe that things don't always have to be this way and you can make it right.

You can make things better and sometimes with just this belief you can set yourself on the right path.