Thursday, March 12, 2009

Crappy Analogies - "The Talented Hawk Hides It's Claws"

Many a young ambitious Japanese worker has been reassured by these words spoken by seniour management when the organisation has proved perplexingly resistent to innovation and change.
'The Talented Hawk Hides It's Claws' basically means in practice that to avoid causing jealousy amongst your superiors you should basically operate as a dumb robot until 'the time is right to strike'. The first problem with this advice is that Japan on the whole has produced about 5 innovators in the past 5 decades. Soichiro Honda, that guy from Nintendo, The guy that designed the walkman, Nigo of BAPE and the guys from 'Mr. Children'.

It would seem that oportunities to strike are few and far between.

Furthermore I like calling analogies into literal contexts to evaluate their merits.

I put to you that whilst this particular piece of advice seems all mystical and nature inspired, if you look at nature there isn't a single furry little thing that isn't petrified of Hawks, and generally speaking any bird. They know exactly how dangerous a fucking hawk is whether it is hiding it's claws or not. Even if it is a harmless seagull most of the creatures labelled as 'prey' are not going to take that chance.

The Hawk infact hides it's claws for aerodynamic reasons. The act of hiding it's claws gives it greater speed and manueverability in the air which if anything should make its appearance more terrifying not less.

The fact that such a well known analogy could have such a gaping flaw calls into question why it has permeated so fa. Why does this stupid meme replicate?

Well because the analogy should be 'The first born shark eats all the feotuses' Someone who is already 'there' as in occupying a managerial position doesn't want any young talent rocking the boat. So the idea is simply to crush people when they are young into accepting a whole stack of norms designed primarily for preserving the status quo.

In other words, wait around so long to get to the position that I will be old and retired and won't care if you have it anyway, by then you will be such a bitter disgruntled prick that you will put all your energy into ensuring the next generation have no chance to shine either.

The system works, unless you are actually in business to make money. Japan has always been wonderful at designing incredibly tight self sustaining systems of power. Since the Tokugawa shogunate though they have also always been terrible at percieving the proper scope of systems they are within.

The only surprising element of Japan's sinking into depression is that they actually admitted it, which means they must actually be sinking into some kind of calamity, since they've been really great at hiding true unemployment in superflous construction work, pretending bad debts are in fact good.

And I would leave a lot of the blame at the feet of a system that expends far more energy preserving an image than actual productive efforts. From Education right through to retirement Japan spend 60-80% of time and effort establishing 'cultural norms' such as 'The Talented Hawk Hides It's Claws' but if you think about this A hawk would have to be incredibly talented to eat a rabbit without using it's claws at all. The most likely outcome for most hawks using this advice would be a slow painful death at the hands of starvation.

Better advice is that of Mark 'Marky Mark' Twain: "Respect your superiors, If you have any."

Exactly the people who could have saved Japan have been successively discouraged and crushed by this 'sage-like' advice. The business of business is business. It simply is never 'about you' and the irony of this notion, that business should concentrate on business is that if followed correctly then the human cost would be much less if companies did actually pursue profits instead of all the other petty human concerns such as status, power, seniority, recognition, political influence, street cred etc.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You must be american.. horrible analysis.

ohminous_t said...

I have to admit, I wrote this a long time ago and the epistemic humility isn't there, but that's a bad habbit of mine and I'm lazy when it comes to blogging. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants when it comes to the conclusions I draw - books like Dogs And Demons, Straight Jacket Society, Shut Out of the Sun... Japanese culture and it's ability to reinforce it is well documented. Plus their economic track record for three decades is well known.

I know that an absence of evidence that my analysis is wrong doesn't mean that it is by default right, nor that it is 'not horrible' but the point is that a saying like 'the talented hawk hides it's claws' just shouldn't fucking exist because it has no merrits in a competitive world. It urges false modesty instead of modesty, it doesn't allude to hubris, it suggests there is no hubris.

You must be a racist... America has produced far better thinkers than my country, or Japan.

Anonymous said...

The basic point of this proverb is that it is better to hide your elite skills than to alert the enemy of your capabilities.

True, the vast majority of hawk prey are aware the predator [hawk] is dangerous. But this is based upon a generalisation of hawks ▬ the individual hawk in question cannot help it. It is simply a property of the world; hawks hunt their prey. The prey are aware of this.

However, which particular hawk is the most dangerous? If you are a little rodent who MUST secure food on the other side of the ridge, and you have to cross a path of hawks, when the hell do you go? When Hawk A, B or C is in your way?

This is key to understanding the proverb. Suppose C is the most skilled predator of the 3 hawks. He has a vested interest in keeping this knowledge from the rodent. He must hide his talent. To the extent that he can do this, he will be able to spring a surprise attack, the rodent being caught unaware by the most skilful of the 3 hawks.

Hawk C also has a vested interest in keeping his elite skills a secret from Hawk's A & B [i.e. the competition]. Once they are aware just how skilled C is, they may adjust their tactics accordingly, or simply take him out. This way he has a relative edge on both other hawks.

Really, the proverb is of more use in a military strategic-type situation, than the business world, where [some amount of] co-operation and open discussion of ideas is essential for maximal productivity.

♣ Bangla-Abdul

Sara said...

What a shitty blog lol