Practice makes perfect, the saying goes.

This week I'm in Asia and made a stop in Shenzhen to visit the CLO of Huawei. They are making an impressive investment in their people as they explode onto the international business scene. The facility we visited had more than 200 classrooms. Between technical and professional training, they have over 900 trainers globally. 900 is not a typo.

Clearly they are serious about ensuring their people have the skills to compete globally, as shown not only by their financial commitment but also by the priority Huawei's chairman has put on skills development in their annual goals: It's one of the top two objectives.

As we reviewed their philosophy and practices--which uniquely demonstrated a commitment to the integration of Eastern and Western management theory--they stressed how strongly they believe in the power of practice as preparation for on-the-job performance.

That led us to a philosophical discussion of practice. As many before me have pointed out, the truth is that practice makes permanent. If you practice perfect form enough times, you will permanently encode into memory the ability to perfectly perform when needed. If, however, you practice with imperfect form, you instead lock into permanence something less than ideal. Proof positive: my less than-perfect, ever-slicing golf drive, which has been practiced hundreds of times to the same sorry effect.

So practice makes permanent. If we want perfection, it takes perfect practice. That means we need a feedback loop, which is the value provided by a great trainer--or a great embedded trainer--such as the one in my Wii Fit.

I've been practicing a strength pose that requires balancing on one leg, and she's constantly saying to me, "You put your foot down, didn't you?" My response to her is not "fit" (pun intended) for corporate blogging. Maybe someday I'll be able to perfectly practice that exercise.