In the world of business and entrepreneurship we are always driven to learn more. The dynamic relationships of transformation of society force us to adapt to new circumstances, the implementation of new technologies compels us to master them and use them efficiently.
This is why it is important to have a learning technique that improves our reception of new ideas and skills, and that makes us aware of the new capabilities that we can acquire to master new environments and face increasingly pressing challenges.
Japan, the third largest economy in the world by nominal GDP, is a country recognized for its ability to adopt and implement new ideas and concepts in the workplace. How have they achieved this?
The country of the rising sun will be at the top of the media during the first days of November 2019 because it will celebrate the Rugby World Cup. The players on the field in Yokohama might adopt a new perspective on the game every time they face new opponents, but how many of them will be aware of what ‘shoshin’ means?
What is Shoshin
The term comes from Zen Buddhism, one of the schools of this religion that is widely practiced in Japan, which places great emphasis on self-control and always being attentive.
The Buddhist monk Shunryū Suzuki, who was the first to establish a monastery outside Asia, summarized all these teachings in his book: The Zen Mind, the mind of the apprentice: “In the mind of the apprentice there are many possibilities… but in that of the expert There are few”.
The beginner’s mind.
The concept holds that those who approach life with few preconceptions and prejudices will be able to approach new ideas and perspectives more easily, while those who believe themselves to be experts will only be able to see their own statements about the world – and They could leave out crucial learnings.
James Clear. Author of the bestseller Atomic Habits, he explains it this way: “Who is it that says that the way you learned a skill is the best way? Most people think that they are experts in their field, but they are really only experts in one particular style.
“In this way we become slaves to our own old beliefs, even without realizing it. We adopt a philosophy or strategy based on the ideas we have been exposed to without knowing if it is the optimal way to do things.”
If Rugby players took a formulaic approach to each game, expecting certain things to remain the same every time, based on the wealth of previous experience, they could miss the small windows of opportunity to score a goal.
Why does it matter?
So why is shoshin important to leaders and learners around the world?
We are in a period of global change, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in which digitalization is transforming the way businesses, governments and organizations operate.
In an article for the World Economic Forum, Munozovepi Gwata, the founder of Kukura Capital, an institution that aims to address poverty by teaching financial education, says that in the future, entrepreneurial people will be the most successful.
People like Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, who not only has deep knowledge in a specific field but has also gleaned knowledge from other fields and specialties, are an example of this.
Gwata calls this a “T-formed” person, saying: “The skills they acquire outside their area of expertise offer complementary knowledge that enables them to also enrich their own changes of original experience.”
We will need to expand our skill set in order to be successful, and this requires taking a beginner’s approach to each new skill we learn.
Abrazando shoshin.
But there are ways to cultivate this beginner, “child-minded” state and have an open mind to learning, according to James Clear.
Start by listening more and stop trying to “add value” by constantly contributing “gems of wisdom” from your own experience.
“High-level winners have an overwhelming need to provide value to the people around them,” Clear says.
“But this can be disadvantageous to your success because you will never have a conversation where you sit down, shut up, and have to listen. If you are constantly adding value (‘You should try this…’) then you will kill that sense of ownership that other people have over their own ideas, since you will be able to listen to them and appropriate them appropriately with the novice mind: shoshin.
Similarly, Clear says that our competitive need to “score points” and win arguments means we lose by trying to really see things from others’ points of view.
Use the phrase “Tell me more about that” more often and start from a place of ignorance – we, all of us, have a lot to learn.
