Leadership Wisdom From The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: The 8 Rituals of Visionary Leaders (21 page)

“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 Leadership 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 leadership 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 leadership is really doing what you planned to do, when you planned to do it
Like every other one of the leadership philosophies I’ve shared with you, the starting point is self-discipline.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely. Self-discipline is the DNA of visionary leadership. 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 relationships 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 leadership. 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 Leadership. 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.

“It’s a totally new way to make sure the weekly goals you set for yourself actually get done, when you planned to do them. It’s a great way to cultivate the self-discipline you need to become a visionary leader when you might not have developed as much of it as you should have. Strategic time blocking will profoundly change your personal effectiveness and revolutionize your productivity. Most leaders suffer from a dreaded disease. Any idea what it’s called?”

“Haven’t a clue, Julian.”

“The disease I am referring to is the disease known only as ‘dilution of focus’ — and it is one of the most dangerous diseases known to humanity. By diluting their personal focus and trying to be all things to all people, these leaders get nothing done. By diluting their focus and trying to do too many things in too many different directions, they become the victim of their good intentions. Focusing on the worthy and only on the worthy will set your leadership free. It will allow you to do all the things you have wanted to do and dreamed of doing. And strategic time blocking will help you do it.”

“Okay, so how do I do it?”

“The first thing you need to do is designate the different days of your week in terms of different areas of focus. It’s almost like building a mold according to subject matter for each day and then pouring specific activities into it. If you do so, you will no longer waste your days scrambling to do a hundred different things. Instead, you will focus on a particular area each day and then
devote your time to it. For example, Monday could be your day to concentrate only on issues and initiatives that involve your employees. You might label Monday Human Relations Day. Then make sure that any weekly win dealing with that subject gets scheduled on that day. Don’t think about sales issues or work on new product development on that day. Stay focused. Next you might designate Tuesday as your Business Development Day. Again, that day will be strictly reserved for activities relating to generating new business. Wednesday might be your day reserved for marketing or finance-related issues. Thursday might be your Open Day, meaning you will be free to deal with any crisis that might come up or to catch up on general administrative issues or just be available for anyone who needs you.”