Julian invited me to share some thoughts on slow time from the viewpoint of an aikido sensei.

Cusumano and Yoffie have just published an article on "judo strategy and Internet time" in the Jan-Feb (1999) Harvard Business Review. From the quoted phrase, you would infer that they're saying everything has to happen faster. You do have to comb the article carefully to find their warnings that managers should not persist in fast movement just for movement's sake or if it causes a loss of focus; and that quickness can't substitute for quality.

Indeed, we usually associate speed with quantity, and slowness (slow dancing, slow-cooked barbecue, etc.) with quality. Business can't be all speed. Like an aikido technique, it has natural beats of quickness and slowness.

Perhaps parochially, I find aikido a richer source of metaphors for business than judo. Judo is usually taught as a tournament sport, meaning (i) it has rules, (ii) bouts are of a fixed duration, and (iii) when it's over, there's a winner and a loser. As Julian has taught us, in business it's never over, and a winner/loser mentality is limiting. None of the three features of sport judo are true for aikido, or for business.

When attacked, an aikidoist's response often has three phases. The first, "tai sabaki," is fast. It places the defender in a position that is both momentarily safe from followup attack, and advantageous for a takedown or throw. Second is the setup, leading the attacker to an unrecoverable posture. The setup is usually slow, because the defender is in the middle of a circle and can revolve in an almost leisurely way while the attacker must travel the circle's circumference on increasingly difficult footing. Third is the finish, which is fast so the defender can turn his/her attention to other attackers. More complex techniques involve repositionings that make for additional beats of slow and fast.

In aikido we believe "if you can't do it slow, you can't do it fast." This means that new students who attempt to do techniques fast will never learn the control, energy flow and finesse that will make aikido work against an attacker who is even bigger, stronger and faster. Nor will they develop a philosophical framework that will help them understand what they know and what they don't know.

Aikido is Zen martial art. Students must sit zazen as part of the training, and thereby realize that "time isn't all it's cracked up to be." After all, do we sit fast or do we sit slowly?

Fred Phillips
Professor and Department Head, Dept. of Management in Science and
Technology http://www.ogi.edu
OREGON GRADUATE INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Mailing: P.O. Box 91000 Portland, Oregon 97291-1000 USA
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Phone 503/690-1353 FAX 503/690-1268 Internet: fphillips@admin.ogi.edu