Two pervasive Silicon Valley beliefs:
- Excellence is now required rather than desired. If you are doing something mediocre, it is usually not worth doing.
- Innovation is essential. If you are doing something that already exists, you are unlikely to succeed in business.
Meet Jiro and his different path to greatness. There are over 30,000 sushi restaurants in Japan. Jiro Ono’s 10-seat hole in the wall of a Tokyo subway station earned 3 Michelin Guide stars multiple times (only about 130 restaurants worldwide get that recognition) and continues to attract customers from all over the world.
This documentary is intriguing, restful and stirring. Sure, it is about someone at the pinnacle of his field, but the path he chose is within our reach. Good deal: Spend an enjoyable hour and potentially gain a path to greatness.
So what is that path? I was initially tempted to say: Sometimes, if you pursue Excellence relentlessly, you can outcompete innovators, without even paying them attention. But, that describes what happened; it doesn’t describe why it happened. Jiro is no big-talking self-promoting Food Network chef who sought to “dominate” his space. The title points to the more valuable truth: Jiro turned his job into a vocation and then into an art.
Jiro was sent out on this own to work at age 7. How does a child laborer turn into a supreme designer, researcher, and manager with the ability to reach previously unknown heights in sushi? The film doesn’t ask and answer such questions explicitly. Part of its appeal is that it is largely observational. You see Jiro, his sons, the restaurant in operation and the views of experts and customers. You see minute incremental changes that he still makes, which, on top of thousands of prior minute changes, produce the magic that customers taste. He does not look elsewhere for inspiration. Rather he looks again and again at the inputs, the processes, the tools, and the outputs and sees possibilities that others cannot dream of.
See it: Netflix, Prime, ITunes, other
Learn more:https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/jiro-dreams-of-sushi/
Better You Value: Big Goals**** Story *** Love and Life ** Business **
