On the teaching of having a position without a position......

Last week I learnt a salutary lesson based on the above teaching of Musashi. It wasn't fencing related but took place at work where in my job I run a lot of meetings focussed on gathering business requirements for IT projects. Essentially it is my job to make sure my engineer colleagues get the information they need to build the system that our business colleagues need. I have recently been assigned to a new project as a senior member of the team and my first task was to plan and deliver a series of workshops to kick things off. It was quite important to get a good start and there were several important stakeholders present so as such I was keen to get it right and a bit apprehensive. However, the first day went well as did the next two, in fact Day 3 went really well indeed (which should have warned me....) All was going to plan until Day 4 where things (in my opinion) were off plan and not working and I did the worse thing a faciliator can do; I got emotionally involved. My plan (and ergo my ego), which had been going so well, was not working the way I thought it should which got me agitated. As it turned out the group carried on delivering whilst I got more into the problem. Very poor show indeed and being the introspective chap I am, one that nagged at me.
The next day I flicked open my desk copy of the Book of Five Rings and it fell open at the section in this post's title and I read "in large scale military science, the arraying of troops is also a matter of positioning. Every instance thereof is an opportunity to win in war. Fixation is bad. This should be worked out thoroughly". It also said "it is crucial to think of everything as an opportunity to kill". What this rather brutal statement taught me was that I had become fixated on my plan and not my objective, which was to get a positive result. Every change of plan or circumstance should be regarded as an opportunity to win, not as an obstacle or problem. I shall make every effort to bear this in mind from now on; in work and on the piste!