Business Bushido
Michael Canic, Ph.D.
“Bushido is the code of moral principles and law written on the tablets of the heart.”
Inazo Nitobe
It might, at first, seem strange for a business column to be entitled, “Business Bushido.”
After all, in the social hierarchy of feudal Japan, business people - merchants - occupied
the lowest level, below samurai, farmers, and artisans. Still, Bushido (the way of the
warrior) reflected a code for daily living. It is worth asking what lessons this ancient
code might provide to business people today.
Honor
Central to the code of Bushido was honor. Honor manifested in the words and actions of
the warrior – honesty and integrity. Is this applicable in today’s business world?
Consider the past few years. Serious breaches in honesty and integrity – the cases of
Enron, WorldCom, and ImClone come to mind – had severe consequences. Confidence
in business leaders plunged. This amplified the economic downturn. Investor confidence
sank. Accounting statements were likened to works of fiction. Equities markets were
viewed with suspicion.
All social institutions, such as business, rely to one degree or another on honor. True, the
necessity of laws and regulations makes clear that reliance on honor alone does not
guarantee the integrity of an institution. But neither do laws and regulations. There
needs to be confidence in an institution and its role models aside from laws and
regulations. When the foundations of a social institution are compromised, the institution
itself becomes vulnerable.
Discipline
Samurai were rigorously trained to develop psychological, physical and spiritual selfdiscipline. Discipline was viewed as essential to ensure right judgment and right action
regardless of the circumstance.
How disciplined are we in business? Do we have the discipline to apply our values and
principles in good times and bad? Do we have the discipline to sustain the effort required
to build great companies? Do we have the discipline to confront, not avoid, difficult
situations? Do we have the discipline to do what is necessary to succeed? The answer to
each of these questions is, too often, no. Take organizational change efforts – IT
implementations or mergers, for example. It is well documented that the majority of such
initiatives fail. Yet in most cases, they do not fail because they are conceptually flawed,
but because we lack the discipline required to effectively implement the desired change.
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Business is a never-ending obstacle course of challenges, pitfalls and traps. To survive
and ultimately thrive requires disciplined judgment and disciplined action.
Civility
The Bushido code of civility stands in dramatic contrast to many social practices today.
In place of restraint, we now value “giving someone a piece of our mind”. We even have
created terms for such behavior: road rage and air rage, for example. In place of humility
there is gloating and excessive celebrations of the ego. In place of sportsmanship there is
trash-talking.
Does any of this matter? It is useful to remember that relationships are at the core of
business. Relationships with colleagues, customers, and vendors, and even to regulators
and competitors are critical. Our success is rooted in the strength and breadth of our
relationships. Giving someone “a piece of our mind” serves only to feed our egos in the
short term. Yet it poisons the future of a relationship as well as the present. It limits
possibilities. And it produces fiercer and more destructive opposition.
Gloating over successes can cause us to become complacent even arrogant. This deprives
us of the edge we need to anticipate and successfully wage the next battle. It keeps us
from respecting existing and emerging threats. It dulls our sensitivity to the changing
needs of our customers. And it weakens our drive for ongoing improvement. Humility,
on the other hand, keeps us balanced and tempers the fluctuations that undermine our
effectiveness.
Responsibility
Samurai were imbued with a strong sense of responsibility. Not to take ownership for
their actions, or not to accept and acknowledge the consequences of their actions was
considered a great disgrace. Taking responsibility reflected courage. Avoiding
responsibility evidenced cowardice. In extreme circumstances, samurai took ultimate
responsibility for their actions by taking their own lives – seppuku.
Sadly, many business people today seek to avoid responsibility. In the interests of
“career management”, cowards believe that by avoiding responsibility and avoiding
blame, they will be viewed more favorably. Of course, the opposite is true. A wellcredentialed colleague of mine was turned down for an executive job with a major
corporation because he could not acknowledge any failures in his background. His
history was regarded as too perfect, too clean. In short, it was not real.
Making well-intentioned, well-conceived mistakes is no disgrace. Trying to escape our
responsibility for them is. Taking responsibility liberates us. It fuels our growth,
especially when we strive to answer two questions: what have we learned, and what
would we do differently the next time?
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The age of the samurai is long past. Yet if we look deep inside ourselves, we would find
that we still value many of the principles of this storied time. It is simply for us to act in
concert with these principles. After all, who would admit to not valuing honor,
discipline, civility and responsibility?
© Copyright 2004, Edge Consulting Services, inc., all rights reserved