The Art of Business Judo

Your company faces a much bigger rival. Is there a way to turn your competitor's size into an advantage for you? Your fiercest opponent is gaining momentum in the marketplace. How can you turn that momentum against him? Your arch rival keeps beating you to the punch, cutting into your business with superior speed. What can you do to flip the situation around and win back your customers?

Jimmy Pedro knows a lot about flipping things around and a lot about winning. Pedro, the 1999 world judo champion, is the first American in 12 years -- and only the third American in history -- to win that title. A three-time Olympian and the 1996 bronze-medal winner, 30-year-old Pedro has been the top-ranked American judoka for the past decade, winning five national titles.

Judo (Japanese for "the gentle way") emphasizes winning in combat by using your opponent's weight and strength as weapons against him, while preserving your own mental and physical energy. It embodies the principle that good technique can win out over sheer strength. In a judo match, a slight person can overcome a heavier, stronger opponent. There are no kicks or punches. Instead, after a bow to begin the match, players score points by "throwing" their opponent or by using a hold-down, a choke, or an armlock.

Judo was created in the late 19th century by Jigoro Kano, a Japanese educator. A pacifist, Kano modified the ancient samurai art of jujitsu ("the gentle practice"), a system of weaponless defense, by changing some dangerous holds and dropping others altogether. Seeing judo as a mental discipline as well as a physical one, Kano founded his own judo school and instituted a strict code of ethics and humanitarian philosophy.

Pedro officially retired from the sport after the Sydney Games and is now working as a marketing VP for Monster.com in Maynard, Massachusetts, where he manages the company's 2004 Olympic-sponsorship program. It's Pedro's first 9-to-5 job after years spent running his judo studio in Andover, Massachusetts, training, and competing. While he still runs the studio, Pedro's latest mission is to help former U.S. Olympians make the transition to the world of business using a Web-based community and mentoring system that connects current athletes to former athletes, lists job openings, and provides a place to post resumes.

Pedro recently coached Fast Company in the business application of judo: how to let your opponents beat themselves.

Minimum effort with maximum efficiency

It's a main tenet of judo: "Minimum effort with maximum efficiency." Instead of resisting force, use it to your advantage by going with it and adding your own strength. Don't fight back when you're attacked. Yield. It sounds counterintuitive, but you want to be attacked. When someone shoves you, that person is a little off balance and can easily be thrown. If I'm on the mat with someone and he's not attacking me, I somehow need to get him to act. I might push him a little bit just to see what he does, and if he pushes back, I'll use that movement against him.

Judo is a full-contact hyperspeed chess match. Matches run for five minutes or until someone scores a point -- whichever comes first. Because judo is incredibly fast moving (you can lose an entire match with one split-second lapse), you have to maximize every opportunity. And you have to think several steps ahead all the time. You must anticipate what your opponent is going to do so that you can either counter his move or execute an attack before he does. The moves are logical and sequential: action, reaction, action, reaction. If I'm pinning somebody, there are certain escapes that my opponent is capable of performing. As he's trying to get out of my grip, I switch my hold, and now there are different possible escapes. If I'm ahead of him when he starts to make his next move, I can counter it and stay in control of the situation.

Study the competition

How do you make great split-second decisions when you're under a huge amount of pressure and every move counts absolutely? By knowing the competition before you step out onto the mat. I have videotapes of every single person who has competed in an event anywhere in the world in the past year. Even if I don't attend an event, someone's there taping for me. Of course, when you're studying the competition, you want to see how that person performs against competitors who are similar to you. I'm a medium-sized lefty, so I study people fighting medium-sized lefties. I note their strengths and weaknesses. I look for concrete qualities like stamina -- whether they get tired if they're pushed. I look to see how aggressive the person is. I pick out the main techniques that each person uses and which throws he succumbs to.

I take notes on all of these details so that I can create a game plan before a competition. You have to know what your opponent is capable of beforehand in order to make good decisions quickly. Know your own strengths, know your opponent's strengths, and use both of them to your advantage.