Leadership Wisdom From The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: The 8 Rituals of Visionary Leaders (20 page)

The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

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 grassy 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 harass 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 shielded 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 leadership 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 leadership.”

“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 leadership, 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 leadership discipline to focus on the worthy. You must develop a sense of tunnel vision for your highest leadership 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 leadership and streamline your life.”

“Simplify my leadership. 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 leadership 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 leadership philosophy Julian was sharing with me, I rushed through a partial list of activities that I realized would transform my leadership effectiveness: regular periods of strategic thinking, consistent preparation and planning, professional and personal development and relationship 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 relationships 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 Thoreau 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 shield your hours from the low-impact activities which, over time, will destroy your leadership.”

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

“He sure did. It’s called the Time Model for Visionary Leadership. Quite simply, it is the most effective method I have ever come across for time leadership.”

“You mean time management.”

“No, I mean time leadership. 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 Leadership 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.”