Kata

In Japanese, Kata is a series of moves practiced over and over in attempt to achieve perfect form.  They are often used when teaching Karate, with the student being counseled to visualize the potential enemy attacks and their responses.

Kata provides a discipline to changing your habits.  That’s important, because changing our habits is one of the hardest things to do.  No matter how hard we try, we often quickly fall back on old ways.  And it is the old way that keep us stuck.

Kata manifests itself in Toyota Motor Corporation as a two-week improvement cycle in which every work center supervisor must improve something every two weeks.  The continual practice creates a pattern that is second nature.

The need for daily repetition to create habits and change outcomes is well established in many domains.  Repetition and practice are prerequisites to mastery.

You can’t go to a motivational seminar once a year and expect it to make a difference.  You can’t write whenever you feel like it and expect to write the next great novel.  Construct a Kata for the changes you want to make in your life and in your business and then, by repetition and practice, turn them into habits.

I believe the biggest problem most of us have in making our business grow isn’t lack of knowledge about what to do, it the inability to commit fully and pattern ourselves to make it happen.

What things do you need to do to make your business successful?  What will your Kata be to make them happen?