Karate Assets

Until relatively recently the word "asset" was mostly confined to the the world of business, describing something that is owned, usually physical property such as real estate, reserves of wealth such as cash, works of art, or large chattels such as motor vehicles. The dictionary however extends the definition to mean "anything owned that has value". Therefore literally anything of actual or implied value can be considered an asset either to an individual (house, car, paintings, shares) or to a group (national treasures, parks, city infrastructure etc).

Increasingly we hear about lesser tangible assets such as intellectual property or unrealised wealth in the shape of an undeveloped idea or even a known solution that is being held under wraps, in other words dormant stuff that could be used to increase wealth. This is usually a person or groups knowledge, something of potential monetary value or something critical to the security of a nation. But even with this less concrete description, we are still mainly in the realm of commerce.

Information is worth money. Stories abound about man already having the cure for some disease or other, such as Cancer or HIV AIDS, but that it won't be released until maximum profit can be made from the sale of a new drug whose chemistry is known only to a few. We are not buying into this argument, simply illustrating that such 'property' can be so important that in the right or wrong hands, it could change the course of history and therefore be worth fortunes. But that is only one aspect of an assets value.

So what else is there? Well, without trying to redefine value, which is too often aligned to money, we can attribute the word asset to our health or to our relationships or to the knowledge we have of a subject or a certain ability that does nothing more than simply please us. Worthless to everyone except the holder, but to him or her these assets are the most important of all.

In terms of Karate, our assets fall broadly into 2 areas; what practitioners know and what we have around us - our teachers, seniors, peers, juniors, our association, our tradition and our values. This is what has given us our knowledge and created the environment for continued learning. When the conditions are right, both of these combine to become a very powerful single asset - the source of greater knowledge.

There is a saying in business that 1+1=3 meaning, when 2 businesses come together in an acquisition, that their combined resources don't just add up to a bigger organisation (2 x one million dollar companies joining to become a two million dollar company) rather, the result should have a quantum effect, ie something far more than just the sum of the two. This works, it happens every day for the benefit of big business. The only pre-requisite is that both parties need to be like-minded or complementary in nature.

The same applies with knowledge and certainly with JKA Karate. The depth and breadth of a seniors experience combined with the aspirations and hunger of an exuberant and ambitious junior brings a level of quantum knowledge to both, albeit more so to the junior, that is valuable indeed.

If you have identified your personal Karate assets, you will have realised they do not stop with yourself. In the end, sure it's all about the individual, but how can the individual grow and prosper without maximising his knowledge by using his assets effectively, by paying attention to them, by simply knowing that they are there and keeping close to them. The dark alternative is that the asset may ultimately become a liability.

The unregulated Karate landscape is littered with the carcasses of individuals and hastily arranged makepiece "groups" who have not valued their own assets enough, or shunned them choosing not to grow with them. Who have taken the view that they are in themselves so asset-rich that they can start afresh something hundreds of others have started before them. Re-inventing what has already existed for ages. How many versions or "new interpretations" of JKA Kata have emerged because yet another new Chief Instructor needs to justify his actions by adding some highly explainable technical variation?

The Karate "species" is already established, evolution will do the job of refining it, so why do so many try to reinvent the same wheel over and over? What a waste of time.

The Japan Karate Association is extremely rich in assets. Not as a business but, as we have seen, the less tangible the asset the more valuable it is. The "potential" that exists in this association with it's countless years of experience, countless quantum combinations of expert knowledge and countless future possibilities is way beyond priceless. Yes, the JKA family is asset rich indeed, all we have to do is be aware of it and the future will be anything we want it to be.

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