Hi,

I came across a story this week about the oldest company in recorded history. A Japanese temple builder called Kongo Gumi, founded in 578 AD. One family. One craft. Forty generations. 1,428 years.

They survived wars, famines, two atomic bombs, and a government that actively tried to eradicate their entire customer base.

Then in the 1980s, when Japan’s real estate boom made everything feel possible, they borrowed heavily and started speculating in property. The bubble burst. By 2006 the world’s oldest independent business was gone.

Here’s the part that stays with me: as late as 2004, temple building was still 80% of their revenue. The craft never failed them. They just decided, after 1,400 years, that it wasn’t enough.

I’ve been thinking about that story in the context of my own 19 years working in people, performance, and culture.

watts on my mind this week:

So much has changed. Technology. Generations. COVID. Hybrid work. The way people communicate, what they expect, how they want to be managed. Our service offering has evolved to keep up with it.

And yet.

When I sit quietly with nearly two decades of working inside businesses, watching leaders struggle with the same things over and over again, what strikes me is how little the actual problem has changed.

People need clarity about what’s expected of them. They need honest, timely feedback. They need to feel seen and appreciated, and they need to know what success looks like in their role and be given the resources to deliver on it.

That’s it. That’s been it for 19 years.

I’ve watched businesses implement every tool imaginable, every initiative, every new approach to engagement. And the ones that work aren’t the ones with the most sophisticated systems.

They’re the ones with a leader who commits to the fundamentals and keeps showing up for them even when it’s tedious, even when something shinier is whispering that there might be a better way.

Because here’s the other thing 19 years teaches you: even when you get it right, people are still people. Your best person can be brilliant for years and then something happens in their life that turns everything upside down. No system prevents that. No leader controls that.

What a committed leader does is create the kind of environment where people have the best possible chance of doing their best work. And then they keep doing that, quietly, consistently, without waiting for it to feel exciting.

The temple builders built temples for 1,400 years. Thirty-nine generations of leaders looked at the shiny thing and said no. Not because they weren’t tempted. Because they understood that the boring thing was the thing.

I think about that a lot.

Have a week of going back to basics!

Sel Watts

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