The Difficult Path

In 1959, Honda opened its first American office in a rented storefront in Los Angeles. A continent away from headquarters, there was no dealer network or brand recognition. American automakers barely noticed.

With that decision, Soichiro Honda did something unusual: he committed to the difficult path.

The words on that dealership wall — now displayed as a piece of company scripture — weren’t written in retrospect. They were the operating philosophy from the beginning:

We have consistently chosen a most difficult path filled with hardships. We must possess the will to challenge difficulties and the wisdom to create new values without being bound by established standards. We do not wish to imitate others.

Read that again.

It makes a great motivational poster. And it’s also a strategic declaration.

Most institutions — schools included — are organised around the opposite impulse. We watch what high-performing districts do. We adopt tried and true frameworks others have validated. We benchmark against peers.

Learning from others is important. But there’s a big difference between learning from others and waiting for others.

The difficult path Honda describes means refusing to let existing standards define what’s possible.

Showing up before the road is paved.

We see versions of this philosophy in schools:

• The program that had no model to follow, so an innovator built one.

• The teacher who couldn’t find a mentor so became one.

• The policy someone challenged because the data said it wasn’t working, even though everyone else still followed it.

That’s the difficult path.

Chosen deliberately, repeatedly.

Honda went on to become one of the most innovative companies in automotive history, in part because they envisioned a different relationship with difficulty.

This week I’m wondering: Where is your school choosing the difficult path, and how is that supporting students?

Choose the difficult path. That’s where it gets interesting.