by Mike Martyn, Shingo Academy Member and Faculty Fellow
Over my 20+ years with the Shingo Institute, I have had the fortune to work with hundreds of organizations on the journey to excellence and coach thousands of leaders in the systems and behaviors that contribute to a sustainable culture of continuous improvement. But after years spent dedicated to designing and building amazing cultures worthy of recognition, many of our clients are left asking, “What’s next?”
After “reaching” excellence, organizations can find themselves searching for the next challenge and struggling with sustaining the level of maturity they spent so much time and energy achieving. If you are one of the organizations that have achieved Shingo Prize-winning maturity levels (operating at Level 4 or 5 on the Shingo Behavioral Scale) and aspire to “level up,” the next frontier is moving beyond maturity toward true mastery.
But what is mastery? Admittedly, it is an elusive concept, and while considerable research and writing has been done to help explain mastery at the individual or skill level, it is far more difficult to apply the concept at an organizational level and for a topic as broad as excellence. In this article, I want to focus on how an understanding of the difference between maturity and mastery can significantly improve your excellence journey and your ultimate outcomes.
Let's define:
Maturity, in an organizational or professional context, refers to the degree to which a person, system, or organization has developed stability, reliability, and adherence to established best practices. It is the process of growing or progressing toward an ideal state of proficiency, typically within a structured framework. Maturity is often measured by observable behaviors, consistency, and alignment with predefined standards, principles, or benchmarks. It emphasizes predictability, refinement, and continuous improvement within an existing system rather than transformation or groundbreaking innovation.
Mastery is a high level of proficiency, expertise, or skill in a particular subject, field, or activity. It implies thorough knowledge, deep understanding, and competence acquired through dedicated practice, experience, and continuous learning. Mastery goes beyond technical proficiency—it embodies an intrinsic grasp of underlying principles, a capacity for innovation, and the ability to push the boundaries of what is known or possible. It represents the culmination of years of deliberate practice, discipline, and dedication, often accompanied by the ability to teach, mentor, and shape the future of the discipline or industry.
To help illustrate the difference between maturity and mastery, take the following example: In Japan, the concept of mastery is highly tied to the lifelong commitment to the innovation of your craft. The Japanese call these “master craftsmen” Takumi. While conventional wisdom says it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to master a skill, becoming Takumi is far more in-depth and requires a minimum of 60,000 hours. To become Takumi is to deliberately choose a path for your life and wholeheartedly commit to your craft with purpose, passion, and persistence. This commitment and relentless pursuit of perfection separates mastering a skill versus becoming a master of the skill. Becoming a master swordsmith in Japan beautifully demonstrates the difference between the maturity of a skill and mastery of your craft.
The process of making a Japanese katana has been elevated to an art form that requires significant skill and expertise, and becoming a swordsmith is an arduous process with a minimum of 10 years of learning under a master. There are only 150 active smiths across the country; of those, only 30 are skilled enough to make a living. A swordsmith who achieves this level of maturity is an exceptional artisan recognized for skill, precision, and reliability. They are trusted to create swords of the highest quality, but their work exists within a structured, known system and is evaluated by a set of criteria. While becoming a certified swordsmith is an amazing accomplishment, even this level of skill and proficiency does not constitute Takumi in Japan. That title is reserved for Mukansa (translated as“without rival”). A Mukansa swordsmith is something entirely different. Once a smith has been deemed Mukansa, they are considered above judging and treated as a separate category. They operate at a level others may never reach, questioning and pushing the limits of what is possible. They do not just refine the blade—they redefine what a blade can be. Since 1958, only 39 smiths have been awarded this designation.
Like becoming a swordsmith, maturity in your excellence journey is about excelling within an established framework, ensuring stability, predictability, and refinement. Mastery, however, is about transcending the framework, creating new possibilities, and influencing the future of the field. Mature organizations strive to achieve and sustain excellence, while organizations committed to mastery strive to redefine excellence.
Here are five questions to help you differentiate maturity from mastery:
Once you decide to take your organization beyond existing best practices, achieving mastery requires intense commitment, dedicated effort, and cultural alignment. Here are three steps that you can take to move your organization beyond maturity to embrace mastery.
Adopt the Right Mindset - Shift the organizational mindset from achieving excellence to pursuing excellence; from reaching benchmarks to redefining them. Define a leadership philosophy that balances people and performance, aligns ideal behaviors with ideal experiences, and ensures teams have both autonomy and accountability. This lays the foundation for a learning culture, driven by engaged people who own their development.
Create the Right Vision - Paint a picture of the future culture you aspire to build: driven by the desire to become a thought leader in your industry and dedicated to helping each person develop deeper knowledge, intuition, and insight about their work, their role, and their contribution to a shared future. Help each person connect their work to your vision of this future.
Foster the Right Environment - Implement a daily management system that focuses on curiosity, passion, and development cycles. Stop defining success by milestones and maturity levels and focus more on measuring learning, exploration, and innovation. Make calculated risk-taking an expectation and allocate 10% of people’s time to working on challenges that stretch their knowledge and beliefs.
Receiving the Shingo Prize and achieving Level 4 or 5 maturity is an incredible accomplishment—but it is not the final destination. Organizations that shift to a mastery mindset move beyond organizational excellence into industry-defining innovation. Mastery ensures that excellence is not just sustained but continually redefined, allowing the organization to remain at the cutting edge for decades to come.
By shifting from maturity to mastery, your organization can transform from being a world-class performer within an existing framework to being a pioneer that reshapes the future of its industry.
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