A few years ago, I delivered a major customer service training program to a large company in the Midwest.
When the going got tough, as they always seem to when you’re trying to introduce radical change for hundreds of workers, one of my contacts at the company, exasperated, asked:
“Why don’t you give us an award and go?”
It seems the very service unit you were struggling to fix was unfortunate enough to have received a “Best in Service” award from an industry survey company the year before.
From then on, many of the workers were simply uneducable. They thought they knew it all, that they were already wonderful, and that they really couldn’t move on. Also, they didn’t want to get better at what they did for a living.
At my own expense, I flew to New England to interview the president of the company that awarded the award to that defective piece of equipment. Along with some of his key partners, we had lunch and in a very relaxed moment I asked him, “What would happen if your company stopped giving out customer service awards?”
He looked at me to check my sanity and then said, barely suppressing a laugh, “Why would we go bankrupt?”
I had it, and I knew it.
I then asked him, “So you really are in the AWARDS business even more than you are in the survey research business, right?”
Knowing he was cornered, he forced a smile and admitted, “I guess we are.”
I offer this elaborate story to ask you a question, especially if you own or belong to a martial arts dojo.
Are you in martial arts boot camp or in the “belt business”? And what would happen if you decided to eliminate the different ranges of belts, which go in most cases from white to black?
Would you go broke too?
I happen to believe that the belt promotion system, while extremely popular in the United States and in many countries, is fundamentally flawed and also leads people to aim for the award rather than the underlying capabilities that it awards, in In this case, the belts mean.
These are not sour grapes. After eight arduous and self-sacrificing years, I earned my black belt in kenpo karate.
But many aspects of the belt chase backfired, and if I were to do it again, I doubt I’d join a dojo that uses this recognition and advancement system. As I noted in a recent article:
“Belts make the trainee impatient and greedy for the next promotion, for acquiring the next color in the martial arts rainbow. Belts create competition among peers to become the first to try out for the next higher level, causing a certain amount of conflict, accusations of favoritism or subservience, and the occasional injury as contestants compete for increasingly distinguished and relatively unpopulated careers on the status ladder.
“You may find it interesting to note, in the last paragraph I alluded to, possibly six of The Seven Deadly Sins, articulated in the Bible and by various theologians throughout time, including Pope Saint Gregory and Buddha. These are vices that the Sages have said that mortals are wise to avoid indulging in: Pride, Greed, Envy, Wrath/Wrath, Lust, Gluttony, and Sloth.Makes you wonder if the Enlightened One would feel comfortable meditating under the bodhi tree with a martial arts sash tied around them. of his waist!”
Perhaps getting rid of the seat belt system would leave only the students who really want to learn and the teachers who want to teach. Instead of focusing inordinately on the symbols of achievement, perhaps we could focus on the real thing.