Musashi's Dokkodo (The Way of Walking Alone)

Businessman:
Due to revolutionary new technologies, a global economy, workforce
demographics, a patchwork of international, national, state, and local
rules and regulations, and ever evolving consumer preferences, the
speed of business is unprecedentedly fast, far quicker today than it’s
ever been at any time since the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution. Product lifecycles are continuously growing shorter too,

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hence the need for unremitting innovation in product and service
offerings that can keep up with ever changing demand. In order to
remain relevant and profitable through all this churn, agility is
paramount. Businesses that cannot keep up eventually fall by the
wayside.
While rapid change is part and parcel of startups, for more
established companies this can be highly problematic. For example,
while filmmaker Kodak has been around for 127 years, the company
was forced into Chapter 11 Bankruptcy restructuring in 2013 in large
part because they missed out on the digital photography revolution.
Today they are a fraction of the size they used to be. Tens of
thousands of employees lost their jobs while stockholders took a
beating on their investments. They simply couldn’t react as fast as
they needed to in order to remain relevant and the results were
disastrous.
This velocity imperative affects everyone in the marketplace, and it
creates a tremendous strain on business leaders. Decisions must be
made faster and faster, oftentimes without adequate data or
evaluation time. While we must learn from the past and plan for the
future, the focus in business oftentimes must be on the now, the
things that are urgent and imperative at the present moment or that
we believe will be in the very near term. We need to be able to make
decisions quickly, oftentimes without the benefit of full information,
and move on. In many instances if we were wrong we can course-
correct afterwards, but not always, and rarely without cost.
Nevertheless, even if we know we’ll be able to get things back on
track it’s hard to “fire and forget,” knowing that we may be harming
our business and/or our careers in the process.
We can never know for certain ahead of time what decisions will
prove benign and which ones may blow back to haunt us. For
example, when former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao fired Victoria Taylor, a
popular moderator of the company’s “Ask Me Anything” section of
their website, the user base immediately revolted, ultimately costing
Pao her job. In trying to reign in internet trolls Pao wound up in the

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crosshairs of hundreds of thousands of them and buckled under the
pressure. This isn’t just a management thing, however, it affects
everybody. Even folks on the lower rungs of the corporate ladder can
materially impact a business as well as its employees, suppliers, and
customers by the manner in which they make decisions every day.
For example, while a bad strategy, failure to innovate, or poor
product design decision at the executive level may sink a company,
something as seemingly insignificant as a rude response to a
customer inquiry or complaint by an entry-level call center employee
can do much the same thing, costing millions of dollars in lost
revenue or adverse publicity.
Nobody’s perfect. We all make mistakes from time to time;
inadvertently reaching suboptimal or ill-thought-out conclusions
hence making poor decisions that with benefit of perfect hindsight we
wish we could go back and reconsider. Overly focusing on or
handwringing about past failures makes us fearful, however. Rather
than leveraging previous errors to grow in wisdom and up our game
to take on the next challenge, this often leads to analysis paralysis,
where we timidly over-study and underperform. While it’s great to
have data, to analyze markets, build business cases, and put
together a holistic and comprehensive plan before acting, business
simply moves too fast for that nowadays. We need to learn to trust
ourselves and our team, make the hard choices quickly without the
benefit of full information, and not regret what we’ve done.
This is not easy, but oftentimes it helps to put things into perspective.
One mistake is a learning experience. It’s only if we make the same
mistake twice that we should consider it a failure. In other words, the
more we are willing to take measured risks and do the best we can
with the information and time available, the better we can become at
rapid decision-making under pressure. If we truly want to keep up
with the pace of business these days it’s vital to be willing to forgive
ourselves, our bosses, and our subordinates when seemingly well-
thought-out but ultimately ill-conceived decisions are made so long
as we’re willing to learn from them and move forward. This is not to
say that callous, unethical, or foolhardy choices should be tolerated,

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but rather that well-intentioned actions of goodhearted people should
not be penalized.
More often than not it’s not the mistake that kills us, it’s the way we
handle the aftermath. The cover-up is worse than the crime so to
speak. The first step in recovering from a mistake is to own up to it,
take responsibility, and apologize. The next step is to make things
right. This not only means making amends and fixing the problem,
but also putting steps in place to proactively safeguard against a
reoccurrence. This may require changes in process or procedures,
but it should also include documenting the lessons we learned and
communicating them to others who can benefit from our experience
because they will likely find themselves in the same boat someday.
In this fashion we turn the error into an event that adds value for both
ourselves and our company.
In business what gets measured gets done. If we want our
organizations to embody the kind of dynamic culture that can defeat
the competition it is vital to value measured risk-taking and assure
that everyone is able to develop the business acumen and
experience necessary to do it well. Aflac Insurance has repeatedly
been honored at or near the top of Fortune magazine’s “Most
Admired Companies,” Forbes magazine’s “America’s Best Managed
Companies,” and Etisphere magazine’s “World’s most Ethical
Companies.” Their CEO Dan Amos wholeheartedly embraces this
philosophy, saying in a 2010 interview with reporter Jerry Grillo of
GeorgiaTrend magazine, “If you’re not making a few mistakes, you
aren’t taking enough chances. You want to make decisions that push
the envelope a little bit. If everything you do is right, then maybe
you’re in too safe a territory. Lot of times, people are scared to make
a mistake, worried that they’ll be punished. Around here we don’t
have that attitude. What gets you into trouble around here is if the
mistake is there and you don’t correct it.”
Like Aflac, we must all put in place a structure that rewards those
who further the goals of the company and supports them when hard
choices must be made. After all, if heads roll at the first mistake

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(metaphorically speaking, of course) no one will stick their neck out
to take chances, even really good ones. Ultimately this will turn even
the most dynamic enterprise into a hidebound relic of itself.
Conversely, if we set folks up for success, prudent risk taking will
become part of the organization’s DNA and we will not have to regret
what we’ve done
That’s the ultimate interpretation of this precept for business.

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