Dojo means “house of the way” or “place of enlightenment” and it usually refers to martial arts or Zen meditation training halls. So what does it have to do with customer insights, marketing or business?

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Organisations can learn a lot from a high quality dojo about creating the right environment for insight development.

In addition to the obvious capabilities such as problem structuring, using the right market research techniques, and providing well synthesised recommendations, creating insights that lead to action requires many soft skills. It is in this respect that a dojo serves as a powerful metaphor.  

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This idea struck me when I was training for my black belt in Karate; I had this visceral sense that I was improving not only because of my own or my teachers’ effort, but because of the hard practice of all the other students – I felt like a wave in an ocean that was being pushed ahead by the force of other strong waves around me. I have this recurring image of all of us training hard and becoming part of the space that pulsates with the energy of our effort. Co-creation, a vital ingredient for effective insight development in organizations, is at the heart of the dojo experience. Empathy, another quality required to create insights, is developed during the course of training.  Even as people practise combat, they are trained to tune-in with sensitivity to their opponents' state of mind and movements.

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There are no losers in a dojo. Everybody wins. Each individual is on his or her own path of mastery, and as they progressively improve, the whole dojo reaches a higher level of performance. Such an experience is created because people deeply care about what they do, quality is attended to mindfully, there is a learning and growth path for each person, the environment is inclusive and non-comparative, leaders serve as strong role models, and the focus is simultaneously on the present moment and the long term. Not surprisingly, great dojos comprise many students who have been practising for decades.

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However, we live in an intensely competitive world, and it is difficult for many businesses to follow the principles outlined above - they are in a hurry to grow quickly, promote aggressive internal competition usually accompanied by insecurity about performance, over-mechanise processes, and often have high employee turnover built into their structure. Even employees who remain for a longer tenure are constantly changing roles to do the next big thing, and quickly getting bored of what they have done in the past. Accumulated knowledge is codified, transferred to libraries and robbed of the experiential wisdom that can reside only in the human mind. Everybody runs, yet nothing moves. Great insights, by their very nature are elusive, and shy away from such environments.

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Changing the culture of an entire organisation is not easy. However, our aspiration is to create a conducive environment within our company and within our clients' organisations, even if it's on a project basis, to develop powerful insights to inspire change. That ultimately leads to substantial positive impact on business performance. Ever since the inception of Insight Dojo almost a year ago, we have worked in this manner on a project co-creating a communication campaign for a new innovation in women's health, and are confident about the effectiveness of this approach in solving practical commercial problems.   

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A dojo looks deceptively unchanging over the years with the same people in their white uniforms and belts doing seemingly repetitive motions. Yet, nothing is practiced mechanically in a dojo; concentration is intense, and students undergo genuine transformation that makes them live more effectively in their daily lives.

The values of a dojo have inspired our way of working.