I’m not a martial art guy by any means, but few weeks ago, my co-worker friend, who is a hardcore Jiu-Jitsu practitioner, shared this very interesting video how Jiu-Jitsu combat principles can be applied in business scenarios.
The person in this video is Rener Gracie, who is obviously coming from the Gracie line of family. If you practice Jiu-Jitsu, you will definitely know him and you know how passionate he is about Jiu-Jitsu. I hope we all can learn one or two things from him for our business today. Enjoy!
If you have no time to watch the video, let me summarize it for you.
In the business world, many things could happen. Some are good things and, unfortunately, some are bad things. Through out Rener’s experience in practicing Jiu-Jitsu, there are 3 things that he learns from Jiu-Jitsu that he applies also in his role as a business owner.
- Position Before Submission
From what I’ve seen, Jiu-Jitsu is a game of strategy. In order for you to win the match, you need to plan and position yourself.Sometimes you can be at the wrong (disadvantage) position, which is normal.The question is what would you do now as you are in that “disadvantage” position? You need to change your position in a way to allow you to do another move that will, now, make you at the advantage position.
You could have all the technique mastered, but if you are at the wrong position and at the wrong time, none of those technique will work either.
So how you can apply this to your business? If you are stuck in your business, maybe you need to evaluate your brand/product position.
By changing simple things in your business, it could hugely impact the way your brand/product being perceived by your customer (ex: changing price, unique selling point, color, etc.)
It could be that there’s nothing you should change about your product. The thing that you need to change could be the target audience instead.Whatever it is, re-evaluate your product and services to see if they are a fit for your target audience.
- Failing Forward
When you are in a fight, you might be in the disadvantage position. You could be losing the game. However, being in a disadvantage position is not the end of your game.If you know the right technique, you can turn a disadvantage position into another move that will put you on an advantage position.In the business world, you might be at the top or you might be also at the bottom now.
The question is what you are going to do about it? Most people out there will feel depress and mourn about it, but only 2-3% of the top population that think of it as an opportunity for the next big thing.
When something bad happens to you, you have the control to decide whether you want to keep going down on a spiral path, or asses the situation and see how you can leverage the situation to find a tiny window of opportunity and get out from that mess, back on your feet, and moving forward with better ideas, better products, and better services.
The choice is yours. Hopefully that choice is to keep moving forward despite of your falling. - Comfort in Chaos
In the video, Rener invited a guest to help him on stage to do a simple demonstration. This person is laying down on the ground with Rener mounted on top of him.This is a very bad position to be in the fight, since you are in the disadvantage position and things could go wrong easily if you are at the bottom.
The guest tried to wiggle around to dismount Rener with all his might, but he couldn’t. *Considering he was mounted by Rener, this outcome is to be expected.
However, after Rener demonstrated a simple technique that will allow the guest to break-loose easily without exercising too much energy, the guest tried out this technique, and sure enough, he can easily dismount Rener.
The key here is to be calm when you are in your “business chaos”. Most likely, what happens in your business is not some sort of a new problem that no body has seen and found solution for before.
You just have to find the right solution or technique out there that will help you to solve that same-old problem. You have to believe that you can overcome the problem and find the right solution for it.
Every problem or “chaos” is just another opportunity for you to find the right technique for solving it and becoming a better business person out of it.
Those are the 3 combat principles in Jiu-Jitsu that you can apply to your business.
You might have heard these principles before. Nonetheless, hearing them is something, but seeing those principles alive and demonstrated in front of your eyes is something else.
I recommend you to watch the video to get the full grasp of the principles.
Are you practicing Jiu-Jitsu? If you are, share some of the Jiu-Jitsu principles that others like me, who are not a practitioner, could learn and apply from them 😉