Leadership Wisdom From The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari Part 9

CHAPTER NINE.

The Ritual of Personal Effectiveness

Your task it is, amid confusion, rush and noise, to grasp the lasting calm and meaningful and finding it anew, to hold and treasure it Paul Hindemith It had been many years since I had been to the old military base just off County Road Number 27. My father used to take me there as a boy. For hours we would sit on the high hill that overlooked the compound and watch the soldiers performing their drills with pinpoint accuracy. I still don't know what he found so absorbing about the spectacle. Maybe it was the pageantry. Perhaps it was the precision of the exercises. Maybe it was the simple fact that the outing offered him rare time alone with his little boy. One thing was for certain, however, I sure did miss him.

As I parked my BMW in the empty lot, I scanned the grounds for Julian. It was 8:00 P.M. and I was right on time, but my old friend was nowhere in sight. The only people I could see were young cadets marching across the field with their youthful-looking drill sergeant shouting commands at the top of his lungs.

For a while the soldiers remained at the center of the gra.s.sy area, but then they started marching in my direction. I wondered why they would be coming near the parking lot when they had the whole compound to practice their routines. Soon it became obvious that they were headed straight for me. As the cadets drew closer, their strides quickened. I remained in my spot, not moving a muscle. As they neared, I could see that many of them were smiling. Some were even laughing as streams of sweat trickled down their faces, the salty by-products of rigorous exercise and the evening sun.

I still couldn't see the sergeant who was running the show, but I decided I would give him a piece of my mind. After all, these were the people who were charged with protecting this great country and their drills should have been taken seriously. Surely they had better things to do than hara.s.s an innocent civilian. Then the cadets all stopped. While they kept their smiles, none of them looked at me, preferring to fix their gaze on a point off in the distance. I decided I would take the initiative, so I started walking down the line of people, searching for their leader.

Finally I reached the end. Though his face was s.h.i.+elded by the brim of the hat he wore, I could see that he was in perfect shape: tall, lanky and trim, with a ramrod-straight posture to match.

"What's going on here?" I questioned in the gruff tone that once made my employees twitch. "I just pulled into the parking lot to meet a friend. Why have you marched your people over to me? I wasn't in your way."

"We have come to interrogate you," came the firm reply. "There is a question we must ask you. If you answer it correctly, you are free to do as you please. If, on the other hand, you give us the wrong answer, we will have to take you into custody."

Surely this had to be a joke. All I had done was drive into their parking lot. I was the CEO of one of the largest corporations in the country. I paid my taxes and followed the law. While I might not have been a great leader, my sins did not warrant incarceration.

"Look, I don't know what this is all about, but I think you have the wrong guy. I'm a businessman. I run a big software company. I'm here to meet an old friend who was supposed to be here at 8:00 P.M. It's not like him to be late. Perhaps you and your men saw him on the grounds. You couldn't have missed him. He would have been wearing a red monk's robe."

The men all started laughing, quietly at first and then much louder. The drill sergeant maintained his composure and continued, "I still need to ask you this one question. As I say, if you answer it correctly, you can do what you want to do."

"Okay, let's hear it," I replied in utter frustration.

"Did you bring the fifth piece of the puzzle?" asked the soldier.

"I beg your pardon?" I stuttered.

"You heard me, Peter, did you bring the fifth piece of the puzzle? How can we continue with Yogi Raman's formula for visionary leaders.h.i.+p if you don't have the next piece of the puzzle?"

I immediately reached over and ripped the long-brimmed hat off the man's head. I was shocked to see who it was. It was Julian! He swiftly slapped me on the back and laughed while the recruits, who were obviously in on his elaborately crafted ploy, began to cheer.

"Welcome to Yaleford Military Base, Peter!"

"You're unbelievable, Julian. How did you get everyone to go along with you? And what happened to your robe? I thought you never took it off."

"Only for special occasions like this," he smirked. "The base commander and I are old friends. We went to Harvard together. He owed me a favor and I decided this was the time to call it in."

The cadets returned to formation and headed back to the barracks while Julian and I walked to the center of the field, just as the sun was setting on yet another beautiful summer's day. By now, I had calmed down and begun to see the humor in Julian's prank.

"I did bring the fifth piece of the puzzle, though," I said.

"Great. Tonight's lesson is another essential one if you truly hope to enrich your leaders.h.i.+p."

"And what exactly does Focus on the Worthy mean?"

"Let's say I had the power to grant you any wish. What would you ask for?"

"That's easy. Like most other leaders and managers I know, I'd love to have more time. Just give me an extra hour a day and I'd be one happy man. With all the meetings I have to attend, all the reports I have to read and all the problems I have to solve, I never seem to have time to do the important things that would really allow GlobalView to excel. I mean I can't remember the last time I had a few hours to simply sit back and strategize our future. There always seem to be a hundred tiny brush fires to put out and the deeper issues that I know I need to think about always get put over to another day. So my wish would definitely be for more time."

"You've got it," replied Julian.

"Just like that?"

"Well, I already told you how to get it: Focus on the worthy. The secret of having more time to concentrate on the necessary things is to have the courage to neglect those that are unnecessary."

"Is it really that simple?"

"It is. It's the habit that every visionary leader before you has mastered since time immemorial. One day, the great inventor Thomas Edison was asked the secret behind his extraordinary success. He pondered for a moment and then replied, The ability to apply your physical and mental abilities to one problem incessantly without growing weary.' You do something all day long don't you? Everyone does. If you get up at 7:00 a.m. and go to bed at 11:00 P.M. you have put in sixteen good hours, and it is certain that most people have been doing something all that time. The only trouble is that they devote their time to a great many things, while I devote mine to only one. If they took the time in question and applied it to one object, they would succeed.

"Visionary leaders have a clear sense of their destination and exactly what things they need to accomplish to reach it," continued Julian. "They know intimately their high-yield activities, those that result in the progress they need to make in order to get to where they want to go. Anything else is a waste of their precious time and they disregard it. You see, Peter, the real secret of personal effectiveness is concentration of purpose. As Emerson stated, 'Concentration is the secret of strength in war, in trade; in short in the management of human affairs.' In leaders.h.i.+p, there are activities that are worthy of your energy and attention and there are activities that are unworthy of them. Once you figure out which ones to focus on and then have the self-discipline to do it, your effectiveness as a leader will be liberated."

"In business school I remember reading Peter Drucker's admonition to 'switch from being busy to achieving results,'"I offered.

"Correct. And he also wrote that 'there is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.' The oriental philosopher Confucius made the point even more simply when he said, 'The man who chases two rabbits catches neither.' Yogi Raman put it yet another way when he told me, 'The person who tries to do everything achieves nothing.' So the real secret to getting things done is knowing what things need to remain undone. And that's what Ritual 5 is all about, it's the ritual of personal effectiveness. To find the time to do what you should be doing in order to get where you are going, you must have the leaders.h.i.+p discipline to focus on the worthy. You must develop a sense of tunnel vision for your highest leaders.h.i.+p priorities. Once you do, you will never be the same again."

"Can you give me an example of worthy activities?"

"Only you can decide on those for sure. Let me just say that any pursuit that somehow advances you closer to the vision you have of the future is time well spent. Any task that actually gives you a solid return on the time invested and gets you nearer to the outcome you are ultimately aiming for should be considered. It's like the old law you must have learned in business school that held that 20 percent of your activities deliver 80 percent of your production. So focus on the things that count, those pursuits that are worthy. And the magic of the concept is that by saying yes to the worthy, you implicitly say no to the unnecessary. You automatically simplify your leaders.h.i.+p and streamline your life."

"Simplify my leaders.h.i.+p. I really like the sound of that one."

"It's like a Zen monk once said, 'Most people I know try to become more clever every day, whereas I attempt to become more simple and uncomplicated every day' The simpler your leaders.h.i.+p focus, the more effective you will be."

"Okay, let me try to come up with some of those high-yield activities that will link me to my mission and advance the compelling cause that I've come up with since we met a few weeks ago. What if I spend time communicating my vision and helping my people understand how achieving it will help us touch the lives of others?"

"Definitely high-yield. Good answer," Julian remarked, clapping his hands like a game-show host.

"How about spending time with my managers asking one another how we can motivate our people by Rewarding Routinely and Recognizing Relentlessly?"

"Well done, Peter. Another fine idea."

Sensing I had the gist of the leaders.h.i.+p philosophy Julian was sharing with me, I rushed through a partial list of activities that I realized would transform my leaders.h.i.+p effectiveness: regular periods of strategic thinking, consistent preparation and planning, professional and personal development and relations.h.i.+p building.

"And the funny thing is," added Julian, "that the more time you spend on these high-yield activities, the less time you will have to spend on all those crazy little emergencies you've complained of that seem to suck away your precious time."

"How so?"

"Just think about it. If you spend your days communicating your message and building richer relations.h.i.+ps rather than micro-managing as most leaders do, there will be fewer misunderstandings and less conflict. By spending more time praising and rewarding your people for behavior you want to see repeated, quality, productivity and efficiency will skyrocket. Again, saving you time. And if you devote more time to strategic thinking and improving your own knowledge base, you will become a better thinker, making wiser decisions in the process. Again, smarter decisions mean fewer crises, which means that you save time. It's actually a brilliant concept that the sages came up with. I still can't believe how powerful it is."

"Why do you think most of us don't apply it?"

"Well, first, most people are so busy that they've never stepped back to consider how they could improve their own effectiveness. But as Th.o.r.eau said, It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The real question is what are you so busy about?' Most people are ant chasers rather than elephant hunters if you get my metaphor; they spend their days concentrating on trifles that don't contribute to the advancement of their objectives rather than going after the big game that would really get them to their professional and personal goals. They just don't focus on the things that count. The second reason is that they don't know where to start. They've been squandering their time for so long that they have no idea how to turn things around."

"I'm all ears."

"The trick is to have a system. Effective systems ensure inevitable results. What I'm really trying to tell you is that if you want to focus on the worthy, you must first ritualize the worthy You need a system that will allow you to integrate your high-leverage activities into your day, every day. Only in this way will you be able to s.h.i.+eld your hours from the low-impact activities which, over time, will destroy your leaders.h.i.+p."

"Did Yogi Raman give you a system to ritualize the worthy?"

"He sure did. It's called the Time Model for Visionary Leaders.h.i.+p. Quite simply, it is the most effective method I have ever come across for time leaders.h.i.+p."

"You mean time management."

"No, I mean time leaders.h.i.+p. Every sane person in business today has some way to manage time. But only the visionaries have discovered how to lead their time. Visionary leaders have the wisdom to understand that if you don't lead your time, it will lead you.

"Interesting thought," I noted. "So how does this Time Model for Visionary Leaders.h.i.+p work? It sounds complicated."

"Actually it's incredibly simple once you get the hang of it. 'Simplicity is the highest form of elegance,' my Himalayan friends would say. The first thing you must do is set aside a period of time for what Yogi Raman called 'a weekly planning practice.' This might be a half-hour on a Sunday night or first thing on a Monday morning. My recommendation to you is that you do it on Sunday night. The weekend's activities have come to an end and it is easier to find a little quiet time for yourself."

"Easier than on Monday morning, that's for certain."

"True. Once you've figured out when you're going to do your planning every week, there are five key steps you must follow to ritualize the worthy and ensure that every action you take during the coming week brings you closer to your ultimate goal. Step One is to revisit your future vision. Silently consider both the vision statement you have developed not only for your company but also for your life. Envision what ultimate success will look like both professionally and personally. This will remind you of where you are going and renew your sense of purpose. Deeply connect to what GlobalView will be when you reach your destination and how your family life will look once you become the kind of husband and loving father you hope to be. Revisiting your vividly imagined future will keep you inspired and focused on the things that count."

"I'm with you so far. What comes next?"

"Step Two then requires you to review the annual victories you have determined are worthy of achieving this year."

"Exactly what are annual victories?"

"They are the objectives you have set for yourself after figuring out what uses of your time will have the most impact on the advancement of your future vision during the current year. They are your annual goals. By reconnecting with them, you will remind yourself of your best practices, those pursuits that are certain to deliver you and your company to your predetermined destination. And you will begin to have a much clearer sense of those low-yield activities that wise leaders never even go near. If there's one thing that can be said about the new era of business we find ourselves in, it's that leaders are facing more choices than ever before.

"On any given day," Julian continued, "there are a hundred possible opportunities to consider or a hundred new changes to implement or one hundred possible trade magazines to read. There are one hundred possible things to do at the office and one hundred possible channels to watch on TV and one hundred possible books to read in whatever spare time you have. We are being overwhelmed by choice. Just the other day I went into the grocery store and noticed there were fifteen different kinds of bread! The only way to survive the incredible barrage of choice coming at us is to have a predetermined game plan. If you have one, you will have created a framework that will allow you to select only those choices that will advance your purpose. You will begin to be the master of all the choices rather than their servant. As the novelist Saul Bellow once wrote, 'A plan relieves you of the torment of choice.'"

"That's a powerful way of putting it."

"And Victor Hugo said this about the importance of having clearly defined goals and a firm plan, 'He who every morning plans the transactions of the day and follows out that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy day. The orderly arrangement of his time is like a ray of light which darts itself through all his occupations. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merrily to the chance of incidents, all things lie huddled together in one chaos, which admits of neither distribution nor review.'

"My point is that smart leaders have already predetermined the best uses of their time. And in so doing, they are better able to manage the army of choices they are faced with. It's easy to say no to something when there's a better thing to do. As I said earlier, the secret to getting things done is knowing what to leave undone. This is the ancient Law of Planned Neglect and it is a law that has been mastered by every visionary leader since the beginning of time."

"This is really intriguing, Julian. What you are sharing with me is an almost scientific process to get important things done in an age where there are too many things to do."

"That's right and that's precisely why I say that the model helps you to ritualize the worthy."

"And Step Three in the process?" I inquired.

"Once you have connected to your future vision, either by imagining it in your mind's eye or reviewing it on paper, and taken a quick glance at the specific victories you plan to achieve this year, you must ask yourself a very powerful question: 'What minor victories or little goals must I accomplish over the next seven days for me to feel that this week has advanced me in the direction of both my professional and personal vision?' Your answer will give you what Yogi Raman called a series of 'weekly wins.' Those goals are what you must focus on through the week. They will allow you to have the self-discipline to sacrifice the good for the best. These weekly objectives will concentrate your energy and attention on the worthy."

"What do you mean when you say coming up with my weekly wins will help me sacrifice the good for the best?"

"Well, all too often leaders let their good intentions dominate their best ones. Rather than constantly asking themselves whether they are making the best possible use of their time they focus on activities that are simply good uses of their time. And believe me, there's a big difference. Visionary leaders focus on the best and delegate the rest. Never forget that."

"And by focusing on the best uses of my time through your weekly wins concept, every day of the week and the week itself will serve some purpose, right?"

"Yes. Most people let their days slip by without realizing that the days slip into weeks and the weeks slip into months and the months slip into years. They put second things first and major in the minor. Pretty soon your whole life has slipped by simply because you didn't take charge of your days. As the sages used to tell me, 'If you don't act on life, life will act on you.'"

"That's so true," I replied, growing reflective.

"No only that, they also believed that every day is nothing but a miniature version of your life. In life, at the beginning you are born and at the end you die. Similarly, in your days, in the morning you wake up and at night you go to sleep. But what you do in between those daily periods determines, in a very real way, whether your life will be one that is well lived or wasted. Never forget the importance of each and every one of your days, Peter. As you live your days, so you live your life. Don't waste even a single one of them. The past is history and the future is just a figment. This day, the present, is really all you have."

"So setting weekly wins each week will bring me closer to my annual victories, which, in turn, will advance me in the direction of my future vision, right?"

"Exactly."

"Wow. That means that if I follow this simple process, every single one of my weeks will count for something."

"Right. And your life begins to be flooded with a sense of fulfillment and energy because you know you are steadily moving toward the place you have dreamed of being," noted Julian.

"So once I've determined my weekly wins, what comes next?"

"Step Four of the Time Model for Visionary Leaders.h.i.+p requires you to integrate the weekly wins you have promised yourself you will achieve over the coming seven days into your daily schedule. You see, by actually writing your weekly goals into your schedule, much as you would a meeting with your best customer, you will be sure to follow through on them. By carving out specific times to achieve your weekly wins before less worthy things get scheduled, you will be certain to give your priorities the priority they deserve. Remember this time leaders.h.i.+p truth, if your priorities don't get put into your planner, other peoples' priorities will get put into your planner And by practicing the simple time planning discipline I am suggesting, every one of your days will link you that much closer to your future vision. It's the ultimate tool for a life of achievement."

"I guess the real challenge would be to stick to the plan once the days start getting busy, as mine always do."

"That's right. The golden key to time leaders.h.i.+p is really doing what you planned to do, when you planned to do it Like every other one of the leaders.h.i.+p philosophies I've shared with you, the starting point is self-discipline."

"Really?"

"Absolutely. Self-discipline is the DNA of visionary leaders.h.i.+p. Self-discipline is the common trait of the best of the best. Self-discipline is what allows a leader to go beyond knowing to doing. Like I told you, it's not what you know that's important. Success comes from acting on what you know-and self-discipline is what stirs visionary leaders into action."

My father used to talk about the importance of discipline and self-control when I was growing up. I still remember him telling me that 'the tougher you are on yourself, the easier life will be on you.' And, to use Julian's terminology, my dad's 'video was in synch with his audio.' He would wake up at 5:00 a.m. every day of the week and go out for his daily run. He didn't smoke or drink and lived a simple but honorable life. He never spoke ill of others and always kept his promises. He truly believed that the dissatisfaction most people experienced in their lives could be traced back to a lack of discipline, whether that meant not having the self-control to eat well or not nurturing key relations.h.i.+ps or not having the courage to take some risks and follow one's dreams. 'Maybe that's why he loved bringing me to this military base,' I thought. These soldiers are models of discipline. They are trained to get things done and never back down from what they know to be right. They come up with a plan and then have the inner power to follow it to completion. I shared my thoughts with Julian.

"That's precisely why I brought you here this evening," he replied, delighted with my insight. "The ritual of 'focusing on the worthy' requires tremendous self-discipline and inner conviction. The greatest battles we fight take place within ourselves. These soldiers and their commitment to keeping themselves on a short leash, to getting tough with themselves, will always remind you of that. You see, Peter, it's a complete waste of time to go through the planning process I'm sharing with you and schedule periods to carry out your highest-yield activities and then, when push comes to shove, let something else intrude. There's no point in strategic planning if you never carry out the plan. I know it isn't always easy to do what you planned to do when there are so many distractions that might be so much easier to pursue. But you must do what you know to be right. The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don't like to do,' remarked essayist and thinker E. M. Gray. They don't like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.' The nineteenth-century English writer Thomas Henry Huxley arrived at a similar conclusion noting, 'Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.'"

"Those are absolutely brilliant observations, Julian."

"That's what self-discipline and personal courage are all about - doing the things we must do, even if we don't like doing them. Deferring those things that are easy to do and preferring those things that are honorable and right to do. I'm not saying you shouldn't be flexible. If something unexpected comes up, by all means attend to it if it's the best use of your time at that particular moment. Like I said when we were discussing how to manage change, flexibility is one of the most important disciplines for visionary leaders.h.i.+p. But just make sure you focus the majority of your time on the worthy things, on the right things."

"So back to the Time Model for Visionary Leaders.h.i.+p. I just write the weekly wins I have to come up with into my daily planner and then have the courage and self-discipline to stick to them?"

"Yes and no."

"C'mon, Julian. I'm serious. I really need to learn this process. I have a feeling the sages were onto something very powerful."

"I say yes because you must note your weekly wins into your organizer. I say no because it's actually a little more sophisticated than that. I call the technique of integrating your weekly wins into your days strategic time blocking."

"Sounds fascinating," I replied.