MIchael Unplugged- A week in Kyoto (reprinted from the Lotus & Michael company blog) First in our Japan series

 Michael Unplugged- A week in Kyoto

Mission Accomplished and Lessons Learned

Today’s world is full of stress. 

External, Internal. External causes Internal and vice versa.

So how can you be effective, maybe even happy? Whether you can or not will affect you and those who depend on you, whether that is family or staff or both.

It is easy to be plugged in too tight, to be in a constant state of arousal and always uncomfortable. Not sure if this applies to you? Look in the mirror. No, really look.

IF you see what I think you will see, there are two issues to be addressed:

1. How do you unplug? Not just go somewhere for a holiday, if part of your brain is still at work or home, GO somewhere. All of you. Physical AND Mental.

2. In your everyday life, how do you learn the zen of coping with stress, leading others and not falling victim to the inevitable crashes and surprises?

Let’s deal with #1 first. 

First priority is to go somewhere that allows you to unplug and relax. If you go somewhere that features the same noise and crowds (stressful!) that you are used to from home, you wasted your money.

Secondly, the facilities and people should support unplugging. A large hotel with a crowded beach and pool won’t do it. 

So when Lotus said, “Let’s go to Kyoto for Spring Break” I wasn’t sure taking a trip that far for one week wouldn’t be stressful and just be the same stress in a different country.

But, she was right, because the way she designed and curated the trip allowed us to unplug, yet also see the other side of crowds and noise, which we could avoid. Don’t get me wrong, Kyoto is the ancient capital of Japan and receives 75 million visitors each year. So how did we manage to find places to unplug?

The key to the experience was where we stayed—a typical Japanese home on a commercial alley in the Gion district but, like everything else, the commerce and the area was tranquil and nature was preserved. Here’s a look:

 

 

Good start, right? Now where do we go to capture the tranquility we so much want to find in Kyoto? 

We start with the Nanzen-Ji temple, a short bicycle ride from where we are staying. Originally built in 1295, it was rebuilt after burning in 1628. The entire structure, with its gates and gardens, reflects the strength of antiquity and the serenity of delicate handling of nature. What a place to detox your brain and reflect on what is important to you and to the world!

 

 

 

Near the temple, a stretch called Philosopher’s Path which is lined with Sakura trees. Unfortunately, we were a little early in the season, but I still could find one blooming:

 

The detox continues. We take 2 buses (very efficient) to the Cypress Forest, known as Kozan-Ji, and find ourselves among centuries-old trees that are undisturbed and provide air and beauty (and great ice cream).

 

 

 

Can you visualize yourself unplugged—really unplugged-- in this environment?

Good! Treat yourself to an ice cream to sweeten the deal.

  

But, every big city, especially tourist attractions, is a magnet for commerce. With commerce comes crowds and noise. We read that we could find fresh fish at the Nishiki Market; so we went there. What we found was not worthy of buying and was one shop among hundreds in a gridlock of crowds.

People who come for vacation to Kyoto or any other location and do not spend their time with the historic and natural elements cannot decompress and, whether they admit it or not, derive no mental pause after traveling halfway around the world.

Finally, food. My favorite subject. Rather than eat outside every day and leave the quality and taste to someone else (at a high price), we elected to shop the market around the corner and Lotus prepared Japanese-style meals with Japanese ingredients, including the ever-present miso, and the amazingly delicious and healthy natto. Of course, we also took advantage of the local beverages, sake and shochu (Japanese fruity vodka). (See our YouTube video for a real-time look at a day at home and Lotus’ preparation of meals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDaK49AoF_A&t=37s )

What I learned

• When I returned to the US after one week in Kyoto, I recognized that I was part of something I never would have imagined before, all curated by Lotus and provided by Japan and the Japanese culture:

o A real unplugging—by the authenticity of the experience, I was able to immerse myself in a different environment and take full advantage of the serenity it offered.

o How did we find serenity if we lived in the middle of a big city? The answer lies in two things: 

 How we approached it and

 The environment offered by Kyoto and Japanese culture. What do I mean by that? Everything from the supermarket food to the environment in the temples and tourist sites shines with humble quality, where nothing is out of place, and nothing is left to wonder or worry about.

 So this teaches us a valuable lesson for personal and business use: Trust your materials, Trust your thought process, Trust your quality, Trust your peers. Trust. Takes the tension out of everything.

 Most importantly, Trust yourself.

• If I have learned anything through many years of global business and a life that was not handed to me, but in which I had to earn everything, it is that shit happens. Nothing goes as you expected—some may be better and some worse. IF you get your shit together and find your zen, you will overcome. But not by yourself.

• I have always said that business, regardless of technology, is best served by how people work together--relationships. We were positively delighted about how helpful and kind the Japanese people were. Without asking for anything in return.

Look at the results, not your expectations. If better, learn to accept your good fortune. IF worse, and you fall down, get up again. Someone once said that the important thing about falling seven times is what you learn the eighth time when you get back up.

It’s all about you. Like in golf or baseball. It’s just you and the ball. The result is completely dependent on how you approach it.

Same with learning to unplug. It’s on you to understand that breathing out is a necessary companion to breathing in or holding your breath.

Our Kyoto trip was beyond my expectations: I was able to totally unplug and breathe out, plus the unexpected bonus of learning something about what Japan can show us regarding a quality business, quality life and quality existence for our planet.

 Michael Serwetz 2025

Michael Unplugged- Introduction to my upcoming second publication GET IT DONE- YOUR OPERATIONS STRATEGY PLAYBOOK

 

Can you unplug? Stay calm when the other shoe drops unexpectedly? In Operations shit can happen daily, so how do you function? What do you need to know to be effective? This is the mission of my upcoming second publication, Get It Done--Your Operations Strategy Playbook.

My publications change higher ed learning--it is immersion, thinking not reading, learning by doing, totally interactive.

Just as my first publication "The Way of the Unicorn," Get It Done focuses on the knowledge students need to retaiin from the course to take with them into their careers to understand how to Get It Done--the mission of Operations Strategy.

How is this accomplished? Using a totally interactive format that is published and supported by Great River Learning.

I bellieve this is a new paradigm for learning that resonates with today's students (reaction based on surveys has been overwhelmingly positive) since their lives are totally focused online and they don't have the will and the attention span to plod through "scholarly" texts.

Simple. You can assign them, but most students won't read them.  Even if they do, they won't distill the lessons they should learn. This is what I realized about my students at NYU, so I started to pull together my own lessons using the vast resources of the Internet blended with my own global business experience of half a century.

The publication will be released in May for my use in Summer 2025. You can preview the paradigm and some of the ongoing lessons by getting access to my first and ongoing publication, "The Way of the Unicorn."

A recent trip to Japan with my wife and soulmate Lotus inspired me to frame the spirit of the publication with the following Introduction:

Michael Unplugged

Will you be able to do it?

Welcome and introduction to

Get It Done: Your Operations Strategy Playbook

Michael Serwetz 2025

   

Do you feel me? Are you sharing my mood? Good! Read on and see what this publication and The Way of the Unicorn is about.

In the Operations business, the other shoe drops every day.

Those of us who have been around the Operations block a few times learn (or should learn) to expect the unexpected: Shipment is rejected for quality and delivery is tomorrow,  factory is late for a variety of possible reasons or excuses, customer wants to add on to or subtract from their order with ridiculously short notice, lab rejects fabric for miniscule amount over tolerance, etc. I could go on, but you get the point.

Don’t get me wrong—some of the above is all too familiar. The questions for Operations Management are:

1. How do you minimize the occurrence of problems that become obstacles to fulfilling the order on time, with quality, delighting  your customer? (and making some money in the process)

2. How do you react when they do happen?

The answer to both questions is why I wrote this publication: a set of principles and practices—a playbook—that guides your approach to the business of Operations, produces the best possible result as much of the time as possible and gives you a comfort level to solve problems when they inevitably occur—The Way of the Unicorn.

As the title says, as an Operations Manager, VP, etc. your job is to Get It Done. After it is sold, put up for sale, or designed, the rest of the company depends on you to finish the job.

Like a baseball player or golfer, when it is just you and the ball, and it is the bottom of the ninth inning or the eighteenth hole, you have to find the resources within and without to produce an excellent result (which in the Way of the Unicorn is Customer Delight); some of it comes from the Zen within and the rest comes from muscle memory.

So here comes the Unplugged part.

If you are wrapped up and plugged in too tight, you will not be effective when that moment comes. The effectiveness comes from a combination of 1. Finding the calmness and focus within and 2. Leaving the rest to muscle memory.

(The brain is a muscle, right?)

Technically, no. According to Johns Hopkins:

“Weighing about 3 pounds in the average adult, the brain is about 60% fat. The remaining 40% is a combination of water, protein, carbohydrates and salts. The brain itself is a not a muscle. It contains blood vessels and nerves, including neurons and glial cells.” 

That said, if it isn’t a muscle, it certainly controls muscle function. As novelist Stephen King said, “The brain is a muscle that can move the world”.  As the speech by Jesper Petersen, Danish minister, points out, in diseases like ALS we see the relationship of the brain to muscle control. 

So, in answer to the two questions posed above, you can see that the state of your brain and how it is trained has everything to do with how you react when shit happens.

Here’s the connection to Operations, if you haven’t seen it already. IF you are wrapped up too tight and playing fire chief, you will not think about how to approach improving the functionality of your department and finding the Efficient Frontier (explained in Chapter 3) but spend your time fighting for control of daily fires.

But IF your daily work is guided by the principles and practices laid out in this publication, you will remain unplugged and calm because you trust your ability to build a super organization and to have a winning reaction to shit happening, maybe every day, due to what you learned becoming an Operations Unicorn.

Truth: I was not always a Unicorn; I learned from failure as much as success. I built the lessons in this publication over many years in Operations and Sourcing, the Good, Bad and WTF. Nor did I acquire what is laid out in this publication in an academic environment. I got it from thousands of hours on planes and in factories around the globe, the lessons of which are built in to the publication.

If you learn and follow the playbook, staying true to its principles and relying on your own ability, you will also be able to unplug when you are not at work or on vacation; if not, you may never leave the office.

As I finish this publication, I am totally unplugged and in the ancient city of Kyoto, Japan. The Japanese culture embodies the lessons of thousands of years that is also relevant to Operations: Humility, Quality, and an obsessive quest for perfection. 

Take a look at the attached pictures ; in this serene environment, it is easy to unplug. Do you think if you were in my shoes, you could be unplugged? Could you learn, retain and apply the lessons within this publication? If you can do, I believe, given no other issues, Unicornness will direct you, and you will be able to calmly direct your team and partners to success.

This is my intended result, after you read and absorb Get It Done: Your Playbook for Operations Strategy. Oh, and also to enjoy the ride; this is not a “textbook,” it is me coaching you each step of the way in this Playbook.

Send me some emails from the playing field and let me know what happens.

(Note: If you wish to preview The Way of the Unicorn or Get It Done when it is released, send me an email at sourcerer1@me.com and I will arrange it with GRL)

Now take a look at these pics of me in Kyoto- unplugged:

Calm yet?