Some of my favorite moments in Japan have happened before the day really
gets going.
I've developed a little routine while I've been here. I get up in the
morning, head down to the hotel lobby, find a comfortable place to sit, and
drink a cup of coffee by myself.
No meeting. No agenda. No laptop open with seventeen things demanding my attention.
Just coffee and time to think.
Like a lot of business owners, I'm not particularly good at doing
nothing. There's always a problem to solve, an email to answer, a new idea to
chase, or something at CloudMinders that could be improved. Even when I'm
technically "off," my brain usually hasn't received the memo.
But sitting quietly in hotel lobbies halfway around the world has given
me something I didn't realize I was missing:
Space to wonder.
A few weeks before leaving for Japan, I had the opportunity to hear
Patrick Lencioni speak at a conference in Nashville about his concept of the Six
Types of Working Genius. The idea is that each of us has certain kinds of
work that naturally give us energy, while other types of work drain us.
I learned that my two Working Geniuses are Wonder and Invention.
If you know me, the Invention part probably isn't much of a surprise.
Give me a problem, and my brain immediately starts trying to build a solution.
Sometimes several solutions. Occasionally solutions to problems nobody actually
asked me to solve.
But the one I've been thinking about lately is Wonder.
Wonder is the ability to look at something and ask:
Could this be better?
Are we missing something?
Why are we doing it this way?
What if we tried something completely different?
Those questions have felt especially appropriate here in Japan because
they remind me of another concept I've believed in for years: Kaizen.
Kaizen is often translated as "continuous improvement." It's
the idea that meaningful progress doesn't always come from one enormous
breakthrough. It comes from constantly looking for ways to make something a
little better.
You can see that philosophy everywhere in Japan. There's an incredible
attention to detail here, from transportation to hospitality to food and, yes,
even that cup of coffee.
There's always an opportunity to improve.
That's Wonder.
The problem is that Wonder requires something most of us don't have
enough of: space.
Think about a normal workday. We wake up and immediately start consuming
information. Email. Text messages. Teams. News. Meetings. Notifications. By the
time we arrive at work, we're already reacting.
We can spend an entire day being incredibly productive without spending
five minutes asking whether we're being productive about the right things.
That's particularly interesting to me because I own a technology company.
For years, the technology industry has sold businesses on productivity.
Faster computers. Faster networks. Cloud computing. Mobile devices.
Collaboration platforms.
Now we're entering the age of artificial intelligence, and the promise is
even bigger.
AI can write the email. Summarize the meeting. Analyze the spreadsheet.
Answer the customer. Automate the process.
At CloudMinders, we're spending a tremendous amount of time thinking
about how AI and automation will change the way our clients work and how
they'll change the way we work.
But sitting over coffee in Japan, I've started thinking that maybe we're
asking the wrong question.
The question shouldn't simply be:
How much more can technology help us do?
Maybe the better question is:
What are we going to do with the time technology gives back to us?
Because if AI saves us an hour every day and we simply fill that hour
with another 60 minutes of email, I'm not sure we've accomplished much.
The real opportunity might be using technology to create more room for
the things humans are uniquely good at. Building relationships. Having
meaningful conversations. Creating something new. Thinking strategically.
Helping someone.
And, yes, wondering.
That's also changing the way I think about what we do at CloudMinders.
Our job isn't just keeping servers running, protecting businesses from
cyberattacks, or answering support tickets. Those things matter enormously, but
they're the foundation, not the destination.
Great technology should remove friction from people's lives. It should
make repetitive things easier, make information easier to find, and automate
work that doesn't require someone's creativity or judgment.
Most importantly, it should give people some of their time back.
Technology is changing faster than at any point I can remember. AI alone
is going to reshape jobs, businesses, and entire industries. In moments like
this, our instinct is often to move faster.
But perhaps there's a lesson from Kaizen here too.
Improvement doesn't always mean doing more. Sometimes it means stopping
long enough to notice what could be better.
You probably don't need to fly to Japan to do that.
Although I highly recommend the coffee.
Maybe it's 30 minutes before everyone arrives at the office. Maybe it's a
walk without your phone. Maybe it's sitting somewhere with a notebook and
absolutely no agenda.
Whatever it looks like, create some room to wonder.
Ask what isn't working. Ask what could be better. Ask what you're doing
simply because you've always done it that way.
Then make it a little better.
And tomorrow, do it again.
Because perhaps the greatest promise of technology isn't that it allows
us to do more.
Maybe it's that, when we use it well, it gives us the space to think
about what is worth doing in the first place.
