Five Reasons Tai Chi Should be Taught in Top Business Schools

                                               ....for a generation of future-proof executives....

This post draws on my 10+ year experience as an innovation professional and Tai Chi [1] instructor to explain why business schools around the globe should seriously consider the inclusion of Tai Chi in their curricula as an invaluable tool for facing some of the major strategic challenges of the decades to come.

We are living in a time in which the combined effect of a number of technical, political, environmental and socioeconomic trends are exerting significant changes to life as we have known it so far. Some prominent long term effects of such trends are briefly summarized below: 

• The pace of change has moved from linear to exponential and this has radical consequences. To exemplify, the average lifespan of a company listed in the S&P 500 index of leading US companies has decreased by more than 50 years in the last century, from 67 years in the 1920s to just 15 years today [2].

• The world is experiencing higher levels of interconnection and interdependence. This is true at international level - due to the globalization of economic processes - but also at a local scale where more and more companies blur their organizational boundaries to tap into collective intelligence through open innovation practices.

• The reduction in communication and transaction costs brought by a wide diffusion of information and communication technologies coupled with a need for more flexible and agile organizations is generating an increase of network structures. Such shift requires interactions to be based on a connection and collaboration paradigm rather than the command and control logic typical of hierarchies [3].

• The aging of population and workforce is putting a significant pressure on welfare systems, and at the same time is reducing the ability of organizations and society at large to adapt to frequent, significant and abrupt changes.  

• The notion of performance is moving from purely financial metrics to include social and environmental ones, gradually evolving towards a triple bottom line framework [4]. A complex challenge requiring leaders to widen their mind-set and embrace the notion of circular economy.

In such scenario, business schools should carefully ponder how to revisit their curricula in order to offer tools and skills necessary for the creation of a new breed of executives capable of understanding, managing and successfully overcoming the challenges posed by modern times. At the same time, the increasing rates of obsolescence make it hard to identify the proper knowledge to offer and the risk of irrelevance is very concrete. For this very reason, it is paramount to go at the roots of wisdom to guarantee enduring usefulness.

Going back to the title of this post, what role may Tai Chi play in the situation depicted above? And, above all, what value may it offer to present and future generations of executives in addressing the above-mentioned challenges? Below I attempted to articulate a compelling, yet non-exhaustive, answer in five brief points:

1. Tai Chi is based on a number of simple yet very profound philosophical principles (e.g.: yin/yang, wu wei, eight directions, five elements) that go back to the essence of life and survived the test of time. A theoretical - yet practical - framework that promotes a circular approach to life and allows to gain an enhanced clarity of vision in the assessment of key long term aspects.
2. Tai Chi promotes an ecosystemic style of leadership based on roundness and gentleness (not to be mistaken for weakness), capable of letting go of control and engaging people across boundaries by appreciating similarities before acknowledging differences. In other words, by considering boundaries as points of contact rather than points of separation.
3. Tai Chi is the art of flexibility and adaptation in the constant flow of change life is made of. But flexibility is a property that emerges from a regular training of both mind and body (as a stiff body results in a rigid mind-set and vice versa). Thus a mere theoretical study of resilience and change management is not enough to deeply modify a person’s attitude and to counterbalance the gradual rigidity that comes with age.  
4. Tai Chi is also known as the boxing of supreme polarity as it is about finding a dynamic balance between opposite yet complementary aspects. Therefore, its practice allows to move out of a mono-directional view of the world (i.e., more is always better) thus embracing the notion of decreasing marginal returns. In other words, it increases the ability to balance a plurality of personal and organizational constraints (e.g., self-assertion and integration, strategy and operations, social impact and profit) contributing to generate open, ambidextrous, socially responsible and sustainable business ventures.
5. Tai Chi helps focusing on the positive aspects of life and on the causes of problems rather than on the effects (as we often complain about effects but we nurture causes) thus contributing to significantly increase people’s wellbeing and effectiveness.

The above arguments are just a small appetizer of the depth and wealth that the practice of Tai Chi may offer. Nevertheless I do hope they are compelling enough to entice the reader into further exploring the social and individual benefits that can be drawn from a wider diffusion of such discipline. To conclude, Tai Chi may be considered an activity generating significant economies of scope at both professional and personal level, therefore it represents an effective way for executives to allocate their precious time (being it a scarce and non-renewable resource). 

Enrico Ferro

REFERENCES:

[1] Tai Chi definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai_chi
[2] Foster R. & Kaplan S. “Creative Distruction: Why Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the Market--And How to Successfully Transform Them” Doubleday, N.Y., USA, 2001.
[3] Friedman T., “The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-fist Century” , Picador USA ,2005
[4] Savitz, A.W. and Weber, K., “The Triple Bottom Line: How Today's Best-Run Companies Are Achieving Economic, Social and Environmental Success—and How You Can Too”, Jossey-Bass, 2006

The Tao of Academic Research

                                               ...the path to high quality research...

As a Taiji (Tai chi) practitioner, I have always being amazed by the depth of oriental teachings and by the many positive externalities the study of Taiji generates on different aspects of a person's life. From a methodological point of view, I have always been convinced that my Taiji experience had significant value to offer to my professional life. Therefore, I recently decided to test this belief and below you may find the main results of my endeavor.

One of the most important preachings my Master (Wang Zhi Xiang) often stresses is: find the root and focus on it!  A very simple sentence but with extremely profound implications. The first obstacle in applying this teaching is to truly understand what root means. The root is represented by a law of universal validity that provides you with some practical guidelines on how to behave. Such law is common to all human activities but requires some contextualization in order to become useful. In Taiji, the root is contextualized through a number of principles, one of which being the tridimensionality of movements, that is: the ability to move in a number of opposite directions at the same time (forward-backward, upward-downward, to the right-to the left). The practice of Taiji also requires to develop the ability to conjugate other opposites among which: softness and hardness, tension and relaxation. In other words, the essence of Taiji is about learning how to keep opposites together, that is why it is also known as the boxing of supreme polarity.

Thus, the universal law from which Taiji derives its principles may be expressed as follows: the search for a dynamic equilibrium between opposite yet complementary elements (in other words, the yin and yang of the Tao).  If applied to everyday life this law may be contextualized as follows: to conduct a sound and happy life it is necessary to find a balance between isolation and sociality, giving and taking, pleasure and duty, etc.

Moving now to academic research, in order to derive useful indications out of this universal law I had to find along which dimensions the search of a dynamic equilibrium between opposite yet complementary elements could be contextualized in this field.

I approached this search by looking back at my ten-year carreer in research and tried to represent the most common mistakes I committed in terms of unbalances between two opposite elements. Below you find the eight dimensions I identified:

•   Reuse of existing knowledge  vs.  original content production
•   Abstraction vs. practical exemplification (the aim should be meaningful and convincing generalization)
•   Precision vs. relevance (sometimes going beyond a certain level of resolution may provide little or no additional value)
•   Correctness vs. clarity (of language) 
•   Competence in a specific field vs. the ability to see things with a fresh look 
•   Ideas generation vs. ideas execution
•   Planning vs. adaptation
•  Collaboration vs. competition (often called coopetition)

Although there is no expectation of exhaustivity, this list represents a first indication of useful aspects that researchers should keep in mind during their daily work. An important thing to stress is that each research endeavor requires to find a specific balance, and difference balances may be needed in different points in time (remember: we are after a dynamic equilibrium).

Finally, the proposed approach may also turn useful for managing discussions. As a matter of fact, in the western world we tend to adopt a dichotomic and alternative approach to problem solving. Some good examples are immigration and crime. In the first case we have commentators that are in favor of closing borders while others are more inclined to helping needy people coming from more disadvantaged countries. When discussing crime management, instead, some people are in favor of severe punishments while others believe that crime reduction may only be attained through the diffusion of education and culture. Of course, in both cases the solution may not be found in a single answer but rather through a mix of policy actions, nevertheless the need for such balance is rarely acknowledged in public debates. This attitude often leads to fruitless discussions. The approach proposed may be a useful tool to find a way out of the impasses generated by the fact that people tend to polarize their opinion by positioning themselves on one of the opposite elements failing to recognize the importance of keeping  the two ingredients in balance.
To conclude, the Tao (i.e.: the way) of academic research consists in the identification of a list of relevant opposite elements and their dynamic dosage throughout the different phases of any given research endeavor.

Enrico Ferro

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