May 2, 2019

What I Learned from Great Sushi Masters about Business. (Prelude)

When suffering from acute monomania, it's difficult to come by hobbies or commit to social time where my work or passion does not seep through my pores. To get out of myself, I try to incorporate other leisure and learning activities that double up with my daily routine. For example, I listen to fiction audiobooks while showering, toileting, or gearing up to enter my land of dreams. Eating is another good activity for catching up with friends (if they don't mind me chewing on FaceTime) or just catching up with my other personalities.

Eating out alone used to be scary to me. I've been at restaurants with friends who pitifully point out other patrons dining by themselves.

Look at that guy over there cutting his own steak with the glass of wine... Is anyone with him or is he really just alone. Wow, I hope I'm never that guy!

I think I became that guy. Traveling by myself necessitated eating alone. I would usually seek venues that had bar seating with a TV. If there was no bar, I'd pine for eavesdropping on the lives of others. When smartphones became big, that changed things a lot. One could dine in any seat or table, without nearby patrons, without a TV, drooling and scrolling through the droll projections of social media. And that gets old. Or my enlightenment came early.

I started looking for food experiences that could entertain me. Sit at a bar conversing with my drunk neighbor as they tell me their life stories, tall tales, and buried skeletons as they sought my independent absolution. This is really not what I intended to write about here so I'm going to get to the point. Enough about me. I came here to talk about work, ethics, kokoro, monozukuri, and sushi. So let me start.

In my solo dining experiences I've gone to a lot of sushi restaurants. Partly because the Japanese seem not to treat you like a total weirdo eating out by yourself. Go to a fine French or Italian restaurant by yourself and the staff will be afraid of you. Go to a Mexican restaurant and the staff will try to be your pal because you must be devoid of love. Go to an Indian restaurant and you'll be seated awkwardly at a table for 8 alone (maybe a true story). So yes, sushi – and Japanese establishments in general – are prime safe zones for introverted solo diners.

Sitting at sushi counters you can order through a variety of ways. Order directly with the chef, sous chef, a server, a form card with a pencil, or even an iPad. Ordering is sometimes an interesting experience.

I've become fascinated by sushi chefs over the last several years. This was my portal into Japanese culture, values, and craftsmanship. It's taken a lot of time to find the words to articulate my appreciation. This first attempt and verbose preface is probably too much anyway – so I'll make this Part 1.

Pride and the art of making things.

Monozukuri can be interpreted as “the art, science, and craft of making things." This can be something seemingly as simple as a handmade greeting card for a friend or designing and building an automobile. The combination of monozukuri with pride and profit incentive is a unique combination. Balancing those three are complicated.

Building is often eschewed by people or considered too dirty of work. As companies grow, business owners must transfer and pass their knowledge and skillset to others in order to scale. If a business owner never did the dirty work, that means they either threw excessive money/people/resources at the problem that led to extensive waste and risk, or they risk not understanding the solution or problems itself. Lack of resource can be a limiting factor.

Pride is a matter of your heart and soul. Some people have few qualms about lying or cheating if it achieves their end goal. Sometimes they are best at lying to themselves to protect the precious ego and their image. You can work hard and pour your heart and soul into building, or deceiving.

Profit is the driving force to create income from our creativity, hard work, and dedication. This is the nature of our capitalistic system where our social positions and freedoms expand as we obtain wealth. We can coast on our own coattails if we achieve a certain position.

Scaling with sacrifice.

The reliance on the leader identity is a real problem for a restaurant. If your success is due to your heart and soul, successful scaling is difficult to extend. When you become a chain, you have to somehow transfer your knowledge, cut corners, and accept a certain degradation of standards. You can be comfortable cashing in without concern. Likewise you can work unsustainably harder and impose your standards on new people. Today with unemployment so low, I wish you luck finding employees who follow your standards without your watchful eye.

Rather than scale you can raise your price and increase margins rather than scale. But you have to make sure you don't diminish your demand. But if your accolades are vaunted and demand is high, raising your price too much can create a backlash. This way you shut out your original clientele and invite the hiso clientele who visit as a result of their status or for the purpose of status updates, without appreciation of your artistry. That lack of appreciation can create indifference towards cutting corners since our new client can't tell the difference between exceptional and good.

Ambition is the greatest challenge. We must face the capitalistic impulse to "grow or die."

Not everyone wants to be Morimoto.

Morimoto walks in on the red carpet to his new grand opening wearing a couture onesie and Gucci boots. He's opening his new restaurant today. Along the way to building the new restaurant the concepts, designs, menu, management hiring was fed to him with ivory chopsticks by intricate layers of Placaters, Coattail Riders, and Shadow Whisperers. His brand has become the art. Vapidity embraced. Mediocrity bolstered by the brand, the man, the sake magnate, the Japanese food guru. He's done it well.

Apply the same to Lady Gaga. Stephanie Germanotta was an amazing artist before she became Lady Gaga. Her morphing into a gross capital art project is perhaps the most well calculated exemplary modern treatise on the matter. But it tasted so good and triggered our worse impulses -- just like McDonald's French Fries or crack. Her own vapid brand created an eternal fame where she navigated into her more natural artistry. Her new art isn't as well known, but her notoriety is preserved for a generation.

Effects of capitalism and scaling art.

Losing one's self: We try to uphold standards as we attempt scale, creating friction and eventual self destruction of your personal and professional life.
Losing one's heart: We somehow balance some acceptable standards and find technical efficiencies to enforce those standards, enjoying the fruits of moderate success. Knowing that we must continue to growing causes anxiety as we focus attention on mass production.
Losing one's pride in the art of making things: Pride doesn't evaporate, it just morphs as a result of self-rationalization that the pursuit of wealth and power was worth it altogether.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the latter. It's a respectable path and if I were to judge it I would be a hypocrite.

This can apply to almost any business. The answer I wish for is that we didn't have this innate drive to grow out of fear of loss. We must grow because if we don't someone with more drive will do it. And in the end that will take resource from us. This is how our evolved human survival mindset fits within the capitalism. It would be a shade different if this were an agrarian or socialistic society. Maybe we wouldn't desire growth at scale because it makes you a target of your own success. Or maybe the fear of being cast into laolai status is motivating enough.

The graceful fall into success.

I fall into the losing one's heart category. I never dreamt of becoming a manager of people, books, or hiring. I make food for hungry people. Yet I most enjoy serving it to them or seeing it served to them as I watch their face approve or disapprove. If they disapprove, I try to do better next time. If there is a split, I try to create a choice or variation. Or I just create a disclaimer upon selection.

The satisfaction from gaining the approval of customers drove me to do better. The satisfaction of watching competitors – who had been serving uninspiring food for years – scramble to compete, improve, or throw shade is also most exhilarating. When faced with competition, you can really see what humanity is made of.

Now I can't watch most people's faces. I get fed most information by Placaters, Coattail Riders, or Shadow Whisperers. Recently I found myself digging into systems and processes on the menu that I originally conceived, and found it had morphed into something new and unfamiliar for me. I used to know the trenches because I built them. Now I'm asking for directions around the trenches. Placaters help me in am uncomfortable groveling posture. Coattail Riders obscure information to cover their own lack of skill and knowledge. And Shadow Whisperers misdirect out of a malcontent desire to witness bumbling leaders to use for their own gain.

Leading while traversing the trenches in a 24 hour day is tough.

Most people say "Get out of the trenches" but that makes me feel blind. At some point, the information you receive isn't as valid as your own instinctual perceptions on the ground. And at some point, our skills, our perceptive powers, experience becomes replaced by our own vapid brand.

But at least we have several cars, houses, and mistresses to show for something.

Coming soon