Dealing with Complexity: Lessons from Aikido

Martial artists have spent thousands of years discovering special skills that would enable them to respond to life’s challenges quickly and with maximum efficiency.  Aikido, which in Japanese means ‘the way of uniting Ki spirit’ is an art that does just that. I practiced Aikido for eight years and this Aikido practice has given me much practical counsel that I still use today.  Some of the most vivid lessons I learned the day I first participated in randori.  Randori is an exercise where, instead of defending against just one partner, several people attack at once.  Imagine seven large men running at you, throwing punches and strikes.  Business complexity often arises from a similar spirited interaction of many players with independent motives.  Thanks to guidance from my sensei, I emerged from my first randori session overwhelmed, bruised but victorious. The lessons seared on my brain offer a useful approach to turbulent events.

1. Keep your center.

In Aikido, your center (or hara) is a physical place where energy and balance originate.  It's also a state of mind.  Staying calm, one avoids overconfidence, anger, and fear – those destroyers of intelligence.  Keeping your center means you will always act from the position of your greatest power.

2. Start in a logical place.

Complex situations, like randori, throw lots of stuff at you simultaneously. Like many people, my natural instinct was to react first to the nearest danger.  I call this the LIFO reaction to complexity.  LIFO people (last-in, first-out) react to stress by abandoning important objectives for whatever threat lands in their lap next. However, this reaction allows opponents to dictate the situation.  In randori, a LIFO reaction gets you blown hither and yon, frustrating you and accomplishing little. Randori taught me to start proactively in a thoughtful place - at one end, regardless of the onslaught’s source. In complex situations, picking a logical entry point for action (the highest priority? the task with the longest lead time? the player with the most influence?) puts you in control.

3. Keep moving.

A mass of attackers comes at you from all sides. Your gut screams - what are you doing walking into that swarm?!  But your gut is wrong. One of my early senseis, Art, who mashed up Aikido technique with a little street fighting, said, “When you’re in a knife fight, you are going to get cut.  Your objective is not to die.”  I scrupulously avoided knife fights, preferring to practice with friends in the dojo. But I learned from Aikido that you can’t succeed if you fear moving forward.   In complex business situations, inexperienced people tend to freeze up.  A common reaction is completing only the minimal requirements in hopes that the situation will resolve itself.  Randori wisdom teaches that even when things are extremely uncertain you must act.  You must constantly move forward, proactively seeking a better position of power.  

4. Anticipate.

Randori throws you into a pack of circling wolves.  You definitely do not want to end up in the middle.  Keeping attackers in front of you could save your life.  But randori attacks are fast and random. You can’t plan maneuvers. As the Star Wars sensei Yoda said, “Always moving is the future.” I found this positioning task the greatest randori challenge because it requires an extraordinary degree of anticipation.  You have to sense where your opponents will go next.  Aikido trained me to anticipate by extending my attention beyond the action in front of in my face to see the larger situation. Everyone can do this - otherwise we'd be watching the windshield wipers instead of the road.  In business, this is an information task. Expanding your horizons with diverse experiences and data from a wide range of sources helps you envision a more accurate future.  This dynamic vision gives you a place to anchor information gathered as the wolves circle.  You can prioritize actions and make better choices.

5. Extend Ki.

Finally, randori requires you to reach out to the world with gusto.   Ki (the energy force) transforms the situation in an inexplicable way. Situations with energy cycle through to resolution while situations without energy muddle endlessly.  We often underestimate how much power we add to the environment simply with our own personal force.

A version of this article was first published on the Forbes website. I practiced Aikido at a dojo affiliated with the Pacific Aikido Federation of Mountain View, CA.