Gregory K. Tanaka (MBA 1974)
(Illustration by Gisela Goppel)

Gregory K. Tanaka (MBA 1974)
(Illustration by Gisela Goppel)

In a kind of twisted and sometimes painful way, I learned from a Japanese norm how to achieve great things in life, even if the path I took wasn’t always smooth or emotionally easy. This norm is kaizen, and it basically states that whatever you do today is “not good enough.” It is one of the reasons Toyota, Honda, and Sony piled up such quick successes as Japan was still lifting itself out of the rubble of World War II.

My twin brother and I were taught about kaizen by our father. Imagine being told as a child, “You have to get all As next semester. One B isn’t good enough.” For his part, my father was relocated to internment camps for American citizens of Japanese ancestry during World War II. His response? After the war, he became one of the first Asian Americans to get his MBA and have a career as a stockbroker. This is a great accomplishment, to be sure. But what drove it came at a cost to both of us. Truth be known, while he is no longer with us, I keep hearing my father’s message in my head at the age of 75.

At the same time, I am my mother’s son, and she taught me to always look for ways to help others. This also is a worthy goal, but it can be a confusing and heavy load to have both voices reverberating in your head: one saying that whatever you do is not good enough, and the other that you have to help others as you live your life. What did I do with these messages? When I graduated from college, I went to live in a Mexican-American barrio for two years in southern New Mexico. An intern in the National Teacher Corps, I taught sixth grade and joined community projects to help abuelas do positive things for the community. This satisfied my mother’s norm of doing what you can to help others.

Hoping to also satisfy my father, I applied to HBS in the spirit of kaizen. Being admitted promised to change my life in many positive ways, but I felt out of place as a former barrio teacher among classmates who had deep finance and marketing backgrounds. While I kept up a good game face for two years, internally I registered great emotional dislocation. It was difficult to be the only Asian American in a classroom of 80 students. Some of the white students declined to respond when I greeted them with a “Good morning!” I also learned my section professors had been excluding me from monthly lunches at the Faculty Dining Club for student representatives of various activities, despite my role as section rep. After I showed up one day, the lunches were discontinued.

Despite these and other challenges, kaizen—and attending HBS—always gave me the confidence to move forward in my studies and in my career. After graduating with my MBA, I earned a JD from Georgetown in 1980, followed by two PhDs from UCLA in 1996 and 2001. I served as dean at the University of Hawaii Law School and worked as a bank president at the tender age of 37—earning a quiet smile from my father, I suspect. More recently I’ve written 2 books, 10 peer-reviewed articles for scholarly journals, and more than 30 opinion pieces and essays in the fields of education and human development. Recently, I helped Pacific Islanders in East Palo Alto, California, lobby the city council for funding to meet their community’s needs. Over time, all these experiences have helped quiet the voices in my head and convince me I am “good enough” the way I am.

Gregory K. Tanaka is the author and editor of Systemic Collapse and Renewal: How Race and Capital Came to Destroy Meaning and Civility in America and Foreshadow the Coming Economic Depression.

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