Ask Turak

Mr. Turak, Your work profoundly moves me. In fact, it has motivated me to try and guest work at a Trappist monastery next year as you did. Thanks for putting such good idea out there!

I’m 29 years old and I own two coffee shops and a translation company in Austin, TX. I have been a daily reader of Forbes, Fortune and Businessweek online editions for about 7 years, constantly scooping up the wisdom to be found in their pages.

Up until reading Business Secrets of the Trappists, probably my favorite article I’ve read was this one by Fortune editor Geoff Colvin about the mechanics of people achieving greatness. At the end of the article, the topic turns to what in the hell motivates those who achieve demonstrable greatness to work so hard. Then comes the following paragraph:

“The authors of one study conclude, ‘We still do not know which factors encourage individuals to engage in deliberate practice.” Or as University of Michigan business school professor Noel Tichy puts it after 30 years of working with managers, “Some people are much more motivated than others, and that’s the existential question I cannot answer – why.’”

Your monks at the Mepkin Abby could probably answer the why question. Your voice is unique in everything I’ve read and, at this point, I’ve read pretty much everything I can find by you. I applaud your work and look forward to your future articles, as they are the only business articles that have brought me to tears : )

Will you have any speaking engagements in Texas in the upcoming months? I would love to attend.

Best Regards,

Ryan McElroy

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Tagged , Ask Turak, Austin TX, Business Secrets of the Trappists, Correspondence, Educational System, Forbes, Geoff Colvin, Motivation, Ryan McElroy, Thunderbird Coffee

August, I think you’re absolutely right that space *was* your suggestion, and of course we could come up with a dozen more. And you’re absolutely right that the Arab Spring argues for you instead of against; it shows people in developing countries organizing around a common cause just the way we used to when we were developing, but don’t any more.

The issue of kids is a bit more problematic. If most people have kids because “I really need some help running this farm” then that’s a conservative-in-the-bad sense motivation that we’re better off without; it certainly isn’t ambitiously progressive. And I think that Georg’s point is well taken that a lot of people seem very excited about new worlds that technology is opening up.

But the main reason I so strongly agree with your article is because I work with high school students, and I ask them what they want to do with their lives. They don’t want to be astronauts, go to Mars, discover cold fusion, find God, build a better mousetrap, or write the next Google. What they want to do in droves, boys and girls alike by the way, is become a doctor, save the life of one ailing child who is forever grateful, and make a ton of money. I remember hearing a statistic that I will probably quote wrong, but something like 50% of students studying at UNC-Ch are studying health care in some form. Our main ambition as a culture seems to be keeping each other from getting sick.

Kenny, All this stuff about health care reminds me of the point Becker made about advances in care that might one day lead to the end of sickness and the ability to rebuild the body.  He said this quasi immortality would not make people less anxious and more risk friendly but more risk adverse since accidents would be so devastating.  It seems that the longer our life spans become the more we cling to them.

When I read history I’m always amazed at how hell bent for leather people used to live when living to fifty was something of a miracle.  A regal whim or the slightest misstep could bring down the quite literal axe yet men still played the game with gusto. August

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August, your Forbes.com article, Goosebump Leadership and the Death of the Big Idea implies that the reason we’re not getting goosebumps is that we don’t have a goal worthy enough to be universally motivating.

But why, exactly, did the nation get galvanized by NASA’s mission of space flight anyway? It was Sputnik that galvanized us . . . not just the idea of space flight itself. It wasn’t just that we wanted to go to space – we needed to go to space, because if we didn’t the Russians were going to rain destruction down upon us from above. Yes, space flight is very cool and very sexy and very exciting – but that wasn’t enough to make it a generational mission. There has to be some urgency involved.

By that standard, I would say environmentalism is the closest thing we’ve got to a generational, unifying goal. Everybody and his dog is trying to show how they are getting on board with the collective effort to save the planet. There is a lot of attention and excitement about alternative power, not because most people are that excited by kilowatts, but because it represents the technological race with the highest stakes in world right now. Whoever solves nuclear fusion is going to bring world peace. It’s technologically interesting, but everyone is also feeling some urgency about it because they think (rightly or wrongly) that the end of the world is nigh if we don’t solve this problem.

Why are people nostalgic about Second World War? Because everyone pulled together to avert a threat to everything we held dear.

It doesn’t really matter what the proximate goal is. What matters is that everyone recognizes, more or less all at once, that something needs to be done. It’s the fact that everyone is all together that makes it exciting. I agree with you that it is the job of leadership to envision a future that will get everyone together. But it’s not the ideas that are lacking these days – just the leadership to articulate them.

Georg Buehler
Solutions Architect
Relevant Automation
http://www.relevantautomation.com/

Right you are, the real challenge is the paradoxical problem that peace brings. To wit, what will a PEACEFUL society use to replace the urgency that war used to provide?  Again as I point out in my essay, peace and environmentalism are essentially conservative.  They seek to conserve human capital and resources. But for what?  What will we apply these resources to?.  Again peace and environmentalism are not missions. They provide optimal conditions for the next Big Thing.

I also feel that the frontier of the mind is the flip side to the exploration of outer space.   The urgency to explore the mind is created not by external threats like green house gas, but by the internal threats we see in the pandemic of depression, obesity, drugs, alcohol, and the billions spent of porn.  So much of this is the wasted energy of a civilization that has “too much time (and money!) on its hands.”  The World Health Organization just named depression as the number one disease afflicting western civilization.

By the way, part of Kennedy’s genius is that he didn’t just react to the Soviet threat by arguing for something like a Star Wars defense or a technological solution.  He aimed past that target toward putting a MAN on the moon.  This is the way vision works.  This is why I don’t buy all these eminently practical scientists who argue for unmanned space exploration citing the fact that we can get all the knowledge we need that way.

Finally Big Ideas and the Leaders to articulate them are one in the same thing.  Saying we have great ideas but no one to articulate them is like saying I have a great product but no one buys it.  Somehow being bought is essential to being a great product.  So saying we have no leaders to articulate Big Ideas is really just another way of saying we have no Big Ideas. August

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August, I read your article, Goosebump Leadership and the Death of the Big Idea on Forbes.com. I have responded to your article below. I included quotes from your post, followed by my comments for each quoted selection. I welcome any further correspondence on these points. Regards, Georg Buehler, Solutions Architect at Relevant Automation

“The real problem is that the war, tyranny, and disastrous social experiments of the 20^th century destroyed our faith in Big Ideas.”

That’s a juicy statement, but I’m not quite sure what you mean. The collapse of Communist Russia certainly made people lose faith in a certain political ideology, but the Great Recession of 2008 has got people questioning the value of Western economic principles as well.

“People may cite myriad reasons for not having children, but at heart it symbolizes a crisis of faith in the future.”

To be honest, I don’t buy this argument. There may be some people who “don’t want to bring children into this messed-up world,” but for the majority I think it’s for exactly the opposite reason: industrialized society removed most of the economic motivators for having kids, and most people would rather enjoy their wealth and leisure-time on themselves instead of kids.

But peace is not a mission.  Peace (like environmentalism) is a means, a set of conditions that should provide a jumping off point for some new and wonderful mission for mankind.

At this point I’m thinking: Ok, hit me with your best shot. What is your best guess as to what this new and wonderful mission is going to be?  Either you have to put forward some suggestions, or admit that you don’t know, but you can’t just leave it hanging.

A mission that reminds us why we are together, what it means to be human, and what kind of future we are collectively called to build. A mission that gives us goose bumps.

For what it’s worth: I see a lot of young people full of aspiration and excitement and hope, and they didn’t have to wait for some politician to tell them what to get excited about. Computers and communication keep getting more and more phenomenal. Lots of people are dreaming of artificial intelligence. We’re cloning creatures right and left, opening a whole new realm of the biological sciences. The Arab Spring has once again affirmed that people everywhere want freedom. For the moment, our politicians are talking about the real issues of fiscal responsibility, and building an education system that really works.  We’ve grown up in a world in which twenty-something’s become billionaires because they had one good idea.

I agree that there is no UNIFYING vision of something we are all working towards. . . other than the “usual” American vision of freedom and prosperity for all. Maybe we just need to keep focused on that . . . it’s an old hat for us, but still a profoundly new thing for much of the world.

Georg, Thanks for your comments on my recent Forbes.com article, Goosebump Leadership and the Death of the Big Idea. You are correct. We have not just lost faith in Communism but in all “isms” including our own except perhaps cynicism.  And you can’t run a culture on cynicism.

However, I was dismayed by your comment that I failed to “hit you” with my best shot. I was hoping my introductory stuff about space exploration covered that.

I also was fully aware that I was suggesting that we need a top down solution and to some extent we need a politician even though I hauled in Martin Luther King as an example of a non-political Big Idea person. I do see the possibility for bottom up Big Ideas, but I still think a vibrant society needs an exciting overarching mission that knits it together in the face of all the forces of atomization.

I recognize the changes in the Arab Spring, but the question still remains as to what mankind is going to do with itself once all earth has achieved what the West has. To date history shows that people don’t know what to do with peace and prosperity besides self-indulgence and the decline it engenders.

Finally I think you make my point when you point out that one reason for not having more kids is to enjoy life in the here and now. This represents faith in the present over faith in the future. Instant gratification over deferred gratification. Spending millions on the Louisiana Purchase that the early US didn’t have as Jefferson did, represented a vision for the future that Jefferson and taxpayers would never live to see. But it “captured the imagination” so much that they were willing to make the down payment. Kinda like that Cathedral in Europe that took three generations to build. Net net, your comments are very provocative. I’d love to interact and correspond with more of my audience in this way. August

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Hi August,

Listened to you on Mike Collins this morning. It was excellent. Reinforcement of the talk you gave to the Charlotte marketing group. Now I have two sets of notes from your presentations of that information. After listening to you originally, I realized how on track you are with this concept, but couldn’t understand how it could be implemented. Now, after hearing it again, you’ve clarified that it is the process, which is different for every organization, that will change the feelings and behavior (or perhaps the behavior and the feelings, in that order).

So to summarize, building a culture of selflessness requires transformational behavior specified by a process. The process matches the organization’s high overarching mission to the behavior of the ordinary people in the organization so they become extraordinary people creating an extraordinary culture, and, by default, an extraordinary organization. The value of a truly great leader or executive lies in his or her ability to create this process and inspire ordinary people to buy into and embrace the necessary action of the process. This in turn leads to ordinary people practicing the overarching mission of the organization with enthusiasm and passion.

In my less transformed and humble opinion, the difficulty lies in the ability of the executive to create the process. They must first lead by example, which means they must be enlightened enough themselves to practice the process of the high overarching mission. Once that practice becomes habit, inspiring ordinary people is not that difficult; we want to be transformed, after all. A month of regular practice creates a habit, …so, wait, …you could potentially change the entire global workplace within one month. There’s something kinda cool about that.

Charity

Dear Charity,

Your summary of our mission is so good that I must strain to add anything. My summary of your summary lies in what I refer to as a Transformational Organization. The trajectory of individuals, organizations, economics, and even civilization is from selfishness to selflessness. In its simplest form this means realizing that it is in our own self interest to forget our self interest.

All Transformational Organizations despite different specific missions share three traits:

1. A mission that is high, overarching, and worthy of being selflessly served.

2. This mission clearly offers those who buy in an opportunity to be personally transformed from selfish to less selfish individuals.

3. All Transformational Organizations offer a distinct methodology (what you call “process’) for bringing about this transformation in people.

My only tweak is to your last sentence: “This in turn leads to ordinary people practicing the overarching mission of the organization with enthusiasm and passion.”

It does indeed, but we must remember that the movement is not just bottom up but also top down. The mission inspires and draws people into the process. The process transforms people so that they dedicate themselves ever more deeply to the mission. It is an ever reinforcing spiral between people and mission where both are causes and both effects.

Your final point is well taken. Yes, we need a critical mass of leaders to go first. But we must not lose heart. Capitalism, as selfish as it may seem, is far less selfish than Mercantilism with its win/lose abhorrence of free trade.. However Capitalism also needed Adam Smith and a critical mass of adherents before it transcended Mercantilism. Similarly Service and Selflessness faces the same uphill battle to transcend Capitalism. But with all our communication benefits getting to critical mass should actually be easier than what Adam Smith faced.

To get to critical mass we must lead by example and document through case studies that organizations that adopt Service and Selflessness outperform those who don’t. It is amazing how quickly ideas catch on when they are linked to success.

Thanks so much for your wonderful comment. This comment in regards to the NPR radio show was so great I wanted to respond to it and clarify any ambiguity, keep sending them in!

August Turak

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Posted in Ask Turak, Transcending Capitalism
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Where do I find the inspiration to live a better life?

Most people think inspiration leads to action. While this occasionally happens, most of the time action leads to inspiration. We never arrive at the gym on the first day woefully out of shape with a spring in our step.

Yet as we see results we get more and more excited until we look forward to going and spend more and more time there. While inspiration is a wonderful thing, my first teacher constantly warned against the human tendency to only work when we are inspired. Like coaches the world over, he would say that spiritual excellence is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. What we need at least as much as inspiration is faith because it is so hard to imagine that something that seems so difficult today could become so natural and effortless tomorrow.

The secret is modest initial expectations and the patience to take it one step and one day at a time. And again, as I mentioned above, surrounding yourself with a coach and the right kind of people who share your dream is incredibly helpful.

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Posted in Ask Turak, Career Success
Tagged , Action, Coaching, Excellence, Expectations, Faith, Inspiration, Patience, Persistence

How do I become a better person?

Watch your thoughts because they become your actions. Watch your actions because they become your habits. Watch your habits because they become your character. And watch your character because it becomes your destiny. Besides this aphorism, I would add that it is essential to surround yourself with the kind of people who want the same thing. Becoming a good person is like becoming a thin one. It is a process of chipping away over time in a context of positive feedback. Whether it is losing weight, getting in shape, making money, or becoming a Marine, human beings always seem to do better when working in a group.

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Posted in Ask Turak, Career Success
Tagged , Actions, Character, Community, Destiny, Habit, Marines, Thinking, Transcendence

Are all faiths saying the same thing?

Depends on how you look at it. At the level of doctrine religions are very different while at their mystical core they are very similar. However, we should be careful in our tolerance not to reduce religion to a matter of taste. What is most important is being honest with ourselves about why one religion or another appeals to us. Does Yoga really make sense or do you just like the girls in the Yoga class? The poet T.S. Eliot defined spirituality as “one long purification of motive.” A purification of motive that leads us to a “condition of complete simplicity costing not less than everything.”

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Posted in Ask Turak, Personal Transformation
Tagged , Authenticity, Motive, Purification, Religion, Simplicity, T.S. Eliot, Yoga

Is it OK to doubt God, my faith, or other faiths?

The agony of life is uncertainty and the rationalization is that uncertainty is certain. All religious impulse originates in man’s doubt. The true task of religion is to provide the certainty that transcends mere belief. Doubt is more than OK, it is a necessary ingredient. Doubt is an antidote to wishful thinking and self-deception.

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Posted in Ask Turak, Personal Transformation
Tagged , Certainty, Doubt, God, Rationalization, Religion, Self Deception, Spirituality, Transcendence, Uncertainty

Can I be spiritual and not religious?

Spirituality is not about checking off all the right belief boxes. It means validating or invalidating belief through experience. Being spiritual does not require a religious pedigree and church attendance. However, all too often people who opt for “spiritual” over “religious” simply want to sleep in on Sundays. Father Christian, my spiritual director, once said, “Spirituality is easy, religion is hard.” Individualistic spirituality must never be an excuse for lazy thinking and even lazier morality. Going it alone and doing it right is actually harder than religion. It means doing all the work of a Christ or a Buddha for yourself without a teacher or faith community to act as a check on your thinking.

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Tagged , Belief, Buddha, Christ, Community, Experience, Hard Work, Morality, Religion, Spirituality, Teacher, Thinking

How much of the current economic crisis is a crisis of spirituality?

It would be trite to come up with a simple cause and effect explanation. I will say that Western Civilization is suffering generally and that the problem is not economic. Our biggest problem in America is thinking our problems are economic and that they can be solved as such. Of the sum total of everything we need to be fulfilled, economics is a very small percentage. The fact that we are fixated on the idea that what we need is more jobs when the problems are not economic but psychological, sociological, and spiritual shows how off track we are. Spiritual people tend to do well economically because they do not let economics dominate their lives. What bothers me is not our economic situation but all the prevalent signs of a general spiritual decline in our society and culture. Service and selflessness, promise and fulfillment, character and trust have more power to remedy our predicament than does prosperity alone.

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Posted in Ask Turak, Transcending Capitalism
Tagged , Character, Economic Crisis, Fulfillment, Promise, Service and selflessness, Spirituality, Trust

How does someone in middle management take the message of service and selflessness to senior management?

You don’t. Start with yourself. The biggest obstacle to service and selflessness is that we think of all the other people who need to change first. The last thing we think about is who we may need to apologize to.

When I was in middle management at a subsidiary of a much larger company, Data Broadcasting, I changed the dynamic within my department by personally speaking to every other department head and asking how we could make their jobs easier. Immediately, my department was viewed in a new light, as being committed first to serving the company in a spirit of selflessness. I did not involve the president who hired me on any of this. I did not make it his problem. When he saw what was going on, he liked it so much that he called in all the department heads and told them to do whatever they could to help me. Then a corporate jet came in and I went to a bigger job in New York. I put my own house in order first.

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Posted in Ask Turak, Career Success
Tagged , Commitment, Follow-through, Initiative, Leadership, Service and selflessness

How do you get employees to buy in?

Do a lot of listening. What are the people feeling? What are their common values? Where is their hunger for a mission or purpose and how are they articulating it?

The problem every executive has is the same problem a congressman has: are you elected to reflect your constituents’ wants and desires or to form their wants and desires? No congressman should just poll his constituents and base his leadership on the popular idea of the day. His job is to persuade them that what they really want is that which is most substantially beneficial for them, and to articulate his rationale in a way that galvanizes the support of the people. The best examples of this in a company are those where the employees can take credit for their role in shaping the principles that form the company’s mission.

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Posted in Ask Turak, Transformational Organizations
Tagged , Accountability, Employee Buy-In, Leadership, Mission, Purpose

Does service and selflessness begin with a mission statement?

No. It starts with a question: Are you serious? Don’t start by sending it to committee or making any grandiose announcements. Start by deciding on a few ways you can change your behavior tomorrow and then do it. After you have done that, take a division or a department, something small that you can get your arms around, and experiment with it. Try different ways to inculcate an attitude of service and selflessness and let it germinate. Come up with a mission for that department and watch how it impacts the rest of the organization. The last thing I want is a high-minded mission statement that gets shoved into a drawer and forgotten. Instead, start small and simply and build something contagious.

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Posted in Ask Turak, Transformational Organizations
Tagged , Commitment, Mission Statement, Service and selflessness

How do you incorporate spiritual principles into a business without scaring people away?

Spirituality doesn’t need to be overtly discussed. At RGI we spoke openly about spirituality and infusing it into the business, but the company was really about fulfilling promises, pushing yourself to the limit, and finding out who you really are. It all gets back to aiming past the target. The SKS students that came into the company wrote thank you notes, were the most courteous, and always showed up on time. When I asked them what they wanted, most would say, “I want to get into grad school, make a lot of money, travel.” I was trying to teach them that they should want a toolkit for life – to want to be open and honest, to be wise, responsible, reliable, good people who could make a promise to themselves and keep it. If you have a good toolkit, you can apply it to anything. At RGI, we put these principles into play by making it a place where they could develop that toolkit and learn something about themselves.

Companies should have high missions that people can buy into, something that allows individuals to serve something larger than themselves. Once you have that, then you incorporate the principles of service and selflessness by translating those ideals into doing everyday tasks with excellence.

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Posted in Ask Turak, Transformational Organizations
Tagged , Accountability, Aiming Past the Target, Business, Character, Excellence, Fulfillment, Mission, Promise, Service and selflessness, SKS, Spirituality

Should all employees be trained alike?

IBM once thought it could train all executives in the exact same way. What they found was that the best executives were all extremely different. When tested they each fell at the periphery of the bell-shaped curve. The best candidates were generalists, curious about everything and interested in other people. Their skills and tactics varied, but they shared a common set of values that allowed for authentic diversity, divergence and growth.

Rose always complained that people would ask for his advice and then not take it. So one day I told him that whatever he advised I would do it. He looked at me intensely and said, “Good – learn to think for yourself.” This could be considered extremely dogmatic, but it is also divergent. The best companies transform employees through a process of formation based on common values and attitudes, allowing diversity and divergence to create a fertile environment for growth.

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Posted in Ask Turak, Transformational Organizations
Tagged , Curiosity, Diversity, Formation, Growth, IBM, Richard Rose, Thinking, Transformation

What does the monastic process of transformation have to do with business?

What people essentially want is transformation. Change of heart is what people go to the monastery looking for and what the monastic experience provides. Most people think the monks go to the monastery as content people who know what they want out of life. The truth is most of them don’t stay because formation, or the process of becoming a monk, weeds out those who are unprepared or ill-equipped for the serious work required. The monastery is not a static point. You go there to be changed. But it is not just the monk who is looking for transformation. We all want to be transformed. Transformation is the essence of drama because it is the essence of life.

We aren’t really looking for money – we hope that once we have money, a transformation will occur. Most people only transform other people’s impressions, which is why so many of the rich and powerful are so unhappy. Fame, money, and power do transform perceptions, but then the pressure to maintain those perceptions in the absence of true inner transformation exacts a deep psychological and spiritual toll.

The reality is that most successful organizations are transformative. New associates come in on one side, they are pushed through the corporate culture, and someone else emerges from the other side. However, this process is usually unconscious. The problem is, if I say you should work for me because you will be transformed, then people automatically think I am brainwashing you. Training, formation, and acculturation do not mean making everyone the same. Of course, some of that is necessary. Effective formation is actually an individuating or divergent process that illuminates who we are, what we want, and how badly we want it.

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Posted in Ask Turak, Transformational Organizations
Tagged , Business, Corporate Culture, Fame, Formation, Money, Monks, Power, Transformation, Transformational Organization

What does service and selflessness have to do with money?

The most important aspect of service and selflessness is that it produces trust. Trust comes from promise and fulfillment. The promise implicit in the dollar bill is that when I take a dollar for an hour of work, I will get the same value when I pay someone else for his hour of work. There is no inherent value in a piece of paper. What we invest in is the promise behind the dollar. On profit and loss statements, accounts receivable are promises other people made to you and accounts payable are promises you made to others. There is no actual money – only promises. You can measure the value of a company, a relationship, or one’s character within the context of promise and fulfillment.

Society suffers from a breakdown of promise and fulfillment and an erosion of trust. Look at marriage and the high rate of divorce – all promise and no fulfillment. When a society has to have cops and lawyers forcing people to keep their commitments, it is the sign of a diseased culture. It all comes back to promise and fulfillment.

Let’s look at it on an individual basis. Richard Rose used to say that the most important thing anyone can be armed with on a spiritual path is character, and he defined character as how well you keep your promises to yourself. Character and trust, the by-products of a healthy system of promise and fulfillment, are essential to the success of any organization. Money is only the measure of how effectively the organization is fulfilling their promise to selflessly serve the needs of others.

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Posted in Ask Turak, Career Success
Tagged , Accountability, Business, Character, Commitment, Divorce, Fulfillment, Marriage, Money, Promise, Richard Rose, Service and selflessness, Spiritual Path, Trust

Can money be an effective motivator in business?

Only a small percentage of people will say all they want is money, and even those people will tell you it wasn’t what they really wanted when they get it. Money primarily serves to take care of our physical needs. The physical is important. Eating, having a roof over your head, making sure the kids have warm clothes…all of that is important. But it will not satisfy. People will do things that are meaningful that they would never do for a paycheck alone. The question presumes that money is all you need. What does that MasterCard commercial say? Priceless. For everything else there is MasterCard. People are looking for the priceless stuff in life. Providing a way for people to work for the priceless things is the best method to motivate people effectively.

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Posted in Ask Turak, Career Success
Tagged , Business, Meaning, Money, Motivation, Purpose, Satisfaction

What is wrong with business for the sake of business? What is wrong with being in business just to make money as long as you are not breaking the law?

Nothing. I am a capitalist. Money is simply a storehouse of value. In the earliest times we bartered, which eventually evolved into a system of IOUs. If I give you my basket of apples, you will give me your bundle of wood three months from now. The IOU became a paper note and money was born. What we are really doing with money is storing value.

Not only is there nothing wrong with making money, but in a good capitalistic system both sides walk away with more value than they had before. Transactions should always be win-win, increasing the total amount of value in the environment. However, while there is nothing wrong with making money, you can’t just go into business “to make money.” The second question that comes up – how are you going to make money? – takes you back to service and selflessness. You have to find a way to serve.

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Posted in Ask Turak, Transcending Capitalism
Tagged , Business, Capitalism, Money, Profit, Service and selflessness

What does service and selflessness have to do with money?

The most important aspect of service and selflessness is that it produces trust. Trust comes from promise and fulfillment. The promise implicit in the dollar bill is that when I take a dollar for an hour of work, I will get the same value when I pay someone else for his hour of work. There is no inherent value in a piece of paper. What we invest in is the promise behind the dollar. On profit and loss statements, accounts receivable are promises other people made to you and accounts payable are promises you made to others. There is no actual money – only promises. You can measure the value of a company, a relationship, or one’s character within the context of promise and fulfillment.

Society suffers from a breakdown of promise and fulfillment and an erosion of trust. Look at marriage and the high rate of divorce – all promise and no fulfillment. When a society has to have cops and lawyers forcing people to keep their commitments, it is the sign of a diseased culture. It all comes back to promise and fulfillment.

Let’s look at it on an individual basis. Richard Rose used to say that the most important thing anyone can be armed with on a spiritual path is character, and he defined character as how well you keep your promises to yourself. Character and trust, the by-products of a healthy system of promise and fulfillment, are essential to the success of any organization. Money is only the measure of how effectively the organization is fulfilling their promise to selflessly serve the needs of others.

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Can money be an effective motivator in business?

Only a small percentage of people will say all they want is money, and even those people will tell you it wasn’t what they really wanted when they get it. Money primarily serves to take care of our physical needs. The physical is important. Eating, having a roof over your head, making sure the kids have warm clothes…all of that is important. But it will not satisfy. People will do things that are meaningful that they would never do for a paycheck alone. The question presumes that money is all you need. What does that MasterCard commercial say? Priceless. For everything else there is MasterCard. People are looking for the priceless stuff in life. Providing a way for people to work for the priceless things is the best method to motivate people effectively.

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What is wrong with business for the sake of business? What is wrong with being in business just to make money as long as you are not breaking the law?

Nothing. I am a capitalist. Money is simply a storehouse of value. In the earliest times we bartered, which eventually evolved into a system of IOUs. If I give you my basket of apples, you will give me your bundle of wood three months from now. The IOU became a paper note and money was born. What we are really doing with money is storing value.

Not only is there nothing wrong with making money, but in a good capitalistic system both sides walk away with more value than they had before. Transactions should always be win-win, increasing the total amount of value in the environment. However, while there is nothing wrong with making money, you can’t just go into business “to make money.” The second question that comes up – how are you going to make money? – takes you back to service and selflessness. You have to find a way to serve.

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Posted in Ask Turak, Transcending Capitalism
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