Last night I watched the final episode of the tv series, The Legend of Bruce Lee, a rather detailed biopic of the late kungfu superstar. His character and philosophy of life reminded me somewhat of the definition of productivity that I told you about (here) some time ago; namely:Productivity is, above all, an attitude of mind. It seeks to continually improve what already exists. It is based on a conviction that one can do things better today than yesterday and better tomorrow than today.
(From the report of the Rome Conference - European Productivity Agency, 1958).
If I asked you for one word to describe Bruce Lee’s fighting style, the words ‘fast’ or ‘speed’ will probably come to mind. But it wasn’t just the speed of his movements that made him such an outstanding martial artist. Apparently he went to great lengths to study the movements of the various fighting styles including his own original Wing Chun style. He meticulously refined these movements, cutting away the wasteful “motions”, as what we would call them in Industrial Engineering jargon. He even tried to combine a block simultaneously with a counter-attack.
People thought he was incredibly arrogant when he posted a sign outside his martial arts school saying that he would accept a challenge from anyone, anytime, any place. Actually his primary motive was to ‘upgrade’ and learn from his opponents. And after each encounter he would befriend his opponent and was totally open to share the secrets of his own craft.Thus we see that this man was:
a) Never satisfied with the status quo.
b) Always questioning existing methods of doing things.
c) Always looking for better ways of doing things.
d) Open to new ideas no matter where they came from.
b) Always questioning existing methods of doing things.
c) Always looking for better ways of doing things.
d) Open to new ideas no matter where they came from.
e) Constantly coming up with new ideas and innovations.
Such an attitude is central to the meaning of productivity and we would do well to learn from him. But one aspect of his character which we want to avoid is his stubbornness. He refused to accept advice from his loved ones to seek medical attention even when it became obvious that he had a serious health problem. The rest as they say, is history.
1 comment:
From bruce lee fighting techniques we can relate them to productivity principles. There was this japanese guy who trained himself proficiently in akido hoping to make use of it one day. One night while on his train journey back home his chance came when he spotted a seated drunkard. Hoping to provoke this guy for a fight (so as to practise his akido), he deliberately stepped on this guy foot, expecting him to response. Being a good natured chap, this akido man automatically apologised for his mistake. To his surprise, the drunkard accepted his apology without reacting. So far, he has no chance to display fighting skill for self defence. The chinese use to say: "employ a soft approach first before deploying the hard one". This is specially true as a guiding principle when handling people.
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