“As entrepreneurs, we move a thousand miles an hour, seven days a week and it is not good to move so quickly all the time. To practice Tai Chi, you have to slow things down. This translates to slowing things down and taking the time to breathe and concentrate in the business world which leads to better decisions and relationships.”
Ray Madronio, Entrepreneur
Founder and CEO, Local Bigwig LLC
Tai chi has many valuable lessons that can be applied to an entrepreneur’s skill. Let’s see how tai chi might help us out to create profitable businesses.
William Baumol, a New York University economics professor, defined an entrepreneur as the “the bold and imaginative deviator from established business patterns and practices” (2007). Howard Steveneson, a professor and Senior Associate Dean of Harvard Business School, defined entrepreneurship as the “pursuit of opportunity beyond the resources you currently control” (2006).
Tai chi is a completely experiential exercise. It is a series of relaxed, slow moving martial arts shapes that looks like a Chinese dance. Because it is not conceptual, the lessons learned are extracted from the principles of tai chi which create balance, relaxation and alignment. These express themselves organically in life. We become what we practice. My discussion here looks at what a tai chi practitioner experiences and then applies that potential to the work of entrepreneurship.
There are two essential exercises in tai chi. The first is the form itself. The second one is an exercise called “push-hands” where two individuals move in an interlocking pattern. The pattern affords each the opportunity to push the other one out. If you are attacked, you need to find a way to prevent yourself from getting pushed out. The real challenge here is to accomplish this without the use of force. You never get tense or hard, always remaining flexible and supple. This is a technical as well as a mental achievement.
Innovation. Some might not see “innovation” in tai chi. Innovation can be incremental, modular, architectural or disruptive. Tai chi is actually disruptive. That new idea is using relaxation and non-doing as the key to getting things done. The doer disappears into the action, and action becomes effortless effort. The product is a new body that functions along the lines of this new idea. As expressed in tai chi, this is not an idea at all. It is a way of dealing with the world. The subtle difference here is that tai chi teaches you to deal with the world on the world’s terms, not yours. By accommodating the world first, you have access to better solutions and ideas that would not be there if you dealt with the world on your terms. The needs are more apparent and creative thinking can evolve by this recognition. Once you see your innovation, the idea leads and the organization follows.
In order to see how tai chi can help the entrepreneur, I will oscillate between high level tai chi principles and how these relate to the needs of the entrepreneur and business. Warning: tai chi is a high level system used to achieve a simple result. In other words, it is so simple, it is hard to do. The gap between “idea” and “result” can be huge. You take a leap of faith in pursuing tai chi and only learn by doing. I would guess the same is true for entrepreneurial pursuit….
I asked a small business owner who has ventured into the world of restaurants and bars. Jean-Pierre began as a pastry chef and opened one business that lead to another that lead to another in New York City. To ground this discussion with a real world example, he practices tai chi regularly, despite a busy schedule involving his business ventures and a family life. Tai chi gives JP a sense of balance and centeredness that helps him in dealing with lawyers, accountants, NYC government officials, banks, fire department regulators, health department inspectors and the like. Each bears down on him with specific pressures. JP feels better equipped to handle them without reacting to them. This helps him to deal with many problems directly. Tai chi helps him to keep a clear head and to stick to his goals. He feels he has learned how to keep moving forward and not look back. The basic benefit of tai chi is better health and less stress. JP has both.
Stick and follow. OK, you may assume entrepreneurs lead and innovate and they do. But the best leaders know how and when to follow. With their nose to the ground, they hear what needs to be heard. They gather research, ideas and opinions. They are focused on what is going on now, and that only clarifies their ultimate vision. “Feel the pulse” may be another way to look at this. In tai chi, we stick and follow with a group of practitioners – our fellow partners – and become one unit, and we stick and follow with an individual partner in push-hands practice and become one unit. Rarely does success come from a vacuum.
Listen to your partner(s) and receive what you hear. This is a high priority in push-hands practice and any business venture. You need to know enough to discern the real from the false, the good from the bad, the useful from a time waster. But we welcome all information in order to make better judgments.
Total awareness. At any point in time during the tai chi form, we are also aware of where this moment is heading. NOW tells us about NEXT. The mind is aware of what is going on everywhere and has some vision of the future, where it wants the body to go. Your business has to attend to this step now, but this is to serve the movement of the whole enterprise to reach its end goal. While we don’t put the cart before the horse, we do direct that horse down the path to get to where we want to go. There is a path. Both ends of this equation are included in what is going on right now.
Here leads to there. Being here fully will give you a clearer sense of there. There is the end point, but it may be altered because of the information that you are getting from here. Neither place needs to be static. Just the opposite. Both are in relational motion and changing.
Commitment. A large component in learning tai chi is having enough commitment to get you through the rough spots. Tai chi is a slow process and the foundation in tai chi is a long term project. Those who try to rush it often quit or entirely miss the point. Knowing you are in for the long haul pays many many dividends. How long does it take your business to take hold? Most often, unless you have something that is really easy to execute, this takes a great deal of commitment. The director to the hit movie Precious hounded the author for the rights to the film for 9 years. Sylvester Stallone carted Rocky around to producers for years before it was accepted. Bill Mayer notes that a comedian hones his craft for years before success.
More work than you may think needed. In tai chi, as that article from Entrepreneur.com noted, the masters of tai chi give the basics a lot of time. In business, you may need to slow down from time to time to do the same. Business is a large and complex undertaking.
Adjusting as you go along. There are constant adjustments in going through the moment by moment process. You have a goal in mind, but mostly you are following the small steps needed to accomplish this goal. As you go along, you are very very attentive to the changes that are happening and carefully moderating your responses. You will change course a bit here or there, change speed, follow the lead of the group, hold back to get in sync with the group or business partner and so on. This serves the longer term goal of getting to where you want to go.
In tai chi, this statement is as clear as a bell. With enough attention, your business will be following the same principle. The modulations here imply the other principle of total awareness. You are in touch with your immediate need, but you are also aware of what others are doing at the same time. This is WHY you are making adjustments. Taking some time to slow down from time to time may be exactly what your process needs. It opens doors. You can see, feel, hear, know, understand and be more fully present to clarify your goals.
Don’t be “double weighted”. In tai chi, this means that your weight is never on BOTH feet at the same time. It always shifts from one foot to the other. The reason is simple. When you are on both feet, your hip joints are locked and you lose the ability to turn and be flexible. In business, you also need to be flexible. So those things that lock you into place could be seen as a double weighted position. You have to move, turn, rotate, alter plans, redirect goals, add needed functions, change, change, change as new information, economic drivers, social conditions and so forth change.
The mind and the center are working together. Tai chi emphasizes moving from your center, literally below the navel about a third the way into your body from the front. This is what physiology would call your “center of gravity”. The parts of the body, like the steps in creating a new product and getting it out on the market, have to move in sync with each other. They need to communicate with each other intimately so that everyone is working towards the same goal, through this center, with impeccable timing. Internal squabbling is wasted energy. Getting back on course makes the whole structure accomplish what needs to be done with much much less effort. In fact, the effort required is minimal when all the parts work together. That is an obvious statement, but how easily we forget it and are not aware of parts that are not functioning with the whole.
In tai chi, the central control of all of that is the mind. It observes and redirects the parts when it sees that those parts are not working together correctly. We are trying to eliminate wasting valuable time and energy that would better serve the whole by working in unison. The mind is creative and emotionally feeling and conceptually aware of what needs to happen in order to achieve success. In the best businesses and the best tai chi, the mind can disappear and join hands with the body (the workers, the building you work in, the computers and desks, etc.) and not be “directing” from above. It permeates all that is happening.
Another way to say this is that all the parts are reflecting the mind’s intent. In that way it lets go of control (but may have to reassert itself more visibly should conflict take over or redirection is needed.) The most successful enterprises are not really aware of the mind’s activities. The mind (business leaders, creator) should be more focused on the creative effort of where the body needs to go: the end product. The parts know what they have to do without being told. They know why they have to do it without being told. They know how their activity fits into the larger picture of the organization.
I am not suggesting this is an automatic event. We study tai chi to realize these goals. This is a highly skilled balancing act of physical and mental coordination. I know of one entrepreneur who tells me that he takes a great deal of care when hiring new employees. The right fit with the organization is a high priority. Obviously it is easier to take time to establish working principles early in the process. This way, each employee knows intimately what needs to be done without constant external guidance. I think if more businesses took the time to have this level of internal understanding in place early on, they would have greater success later on. The skill of the entrepreneur plays a key role in defining the parameters of the business, how it functions, and how it can grow.
This is more than aligning strengths to the tasks at hand. This is aligning strengths to the goal (innovator’s dream, business leader’s ultimate targets.)
Tai chi is very efficient in its use of effort. It is interesting to read Carl Roger’s book on A Way of Being. Early on, his group process is NOT efficient or easy. But it results in a group of people that can buy into a large idea. It unifies, creates purpose and creates satisfaction. The messy work of human collaboration takes place early on. It reminds me of the confusion that most tai chi students experience at the beginning of their study. Once that is over, tai chi creates vitality and order.
An entrepreneur can do the same.
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