Archery Practice Hones Your Business Skills

Don’t Focus on Your Target

That’s a nice sentiment, but how does it relate to your business? Chouchan notes that archery and business require aiming at targets. In archery, targets are, well, physical targets. In business, you shoot to hit certain goals, whether they’re sales or revenue goals, cost reductions or customer retention. It’s natural to shoot for those goals.

But much as archers see their accuracy suffer if they worry too much about aiming, business owners who obsesses over hitting goals lose sight of what matters. In an interview with Duke Corporate Education, Chouchan stressed focusing on yourself. That is, archers should focus on their form, and your business should focus on its corporate practices.

“The target is 28 meters away!” Chouchan wrote.“If you concentrate on where you are now, you will hit your target, which is at a distance. But if you are thinking about the distance, you will not perform properly – and you will not hit.”

That’s how Chouchan doubled Godiva Japan’s revenue. His target goals were not ambitious. The company sought to grow 2 to 3 percent annually. Had Chouchan focused on achieving those numbers, he might have succeeded, but he would have fallen far short of the 15 percent growth he achieved annually by focusing on his business practices.

Become the Customer

“If you sincerely care about the customers, and if the whole organization focuses its efforts toward customer happiness, positive financial results will follow,” Chouchan wrote.

If you asked business leaders if they care about customers, each would say yes. Of course they do. But through Kyudo, Chouchan learned about “nonduality.” To hit the target, the archer becomes one with the target. He applies that concept in business by trying to become the customer.

In the Duke interview, Chouchan said: “In business if you become like the consumer, you suddenly get good ideas and better products. There is no longer this distance – ‘I am here with a product I should push to you’ – instead I myself become the person who will buy my products. There is a state of unity. The distance between the company and the consumer becomes less and less, and that is where the hit happens.”

That’s an important distinction. Instead of pondering how to sell a product to a customer, consider what your customers want to buy. Are their preferred products on your shelves?

Chouchan identified four ways to satisfy customers: Offer the best products, create the best stores with the most attractive displays, develop the best marketing strategies, and use the best techniques for selling. By eliminating distance between himself and customers, he provided a better customer experience in those key areas.