Overview
Overview
Father Malachy, a gentle monk in his eighties, worked with me in the monastery’s grading house. Day after day he unfolded and stacked the cardboard crates for the egg-cartons that I was busily packing. As we became friendly, I saw only a simple man and simple monk engaged in a simple task.
One day Malachy mentioned that the abbot once asked him to write English summaries on a box of theological books written in French that someone donated to the monastery.
‘Well,’ Father Malachy said softly, ‘Abbot Francis thought I spoke French but I didn’t. But he’s so busy I didn’t bring it up. I just stayed up late for a few months, taught myself French, read the books, and wrote the summaries.’
Then he humbly returned to his boxes leaving me slack jawed with envy and abject awe.
Throughout his long business career August Turak has listened as executives bemoan the shortage of talent in the work place and the difficulties involved in attracting and keeping talent. Talent is not in short supply. What is missing is the matrix of overarching values that inspire ordinary people to extraordinary results. And Turak has never seen it done better than at Mepkin Abbey.
We are now almost two years into a worldwide economic crisis. But however distressing rising unemployment and plunging home prices may be, what is worse is the sinking sense that we have run out of ideas. After spending much of the 20th century on disappointing even disastrous experiments with Nationalism, Fascism, Communism, and Socialism, the so-called Reagan Revolution was touted as the “final victory” of Capitalism. Yet barely 20 years later we are angrily attacking Capitalism and anxiously wondering “now what?” What we need is a socio-economic model that addresses the contradictions of Capitalism while preserving its productivity.
August Turak’s article, The Business Secrets of the Trappists, appeared in Forbes.com and set out to answer the following questions: How do a couple dozen aged monks working only part time and in silence achieve such amazing business success? Why have monastic businesses thrived for over 1500 years when modern corporate success is so fleeting? How do monasteries produce and sell “me too” commodities like fruitcakes, eggs, and cheese with the kind of pricing power usually associated with monopolies or patent protected products? Why does demand for these prosaic monastic products consistently outstrip supply? How do monks compete so successfully in the open market while maintaining only the highest ethical standards? And most importantly, how do we apply these Trappist secrets to our corporations, non-profits, families, and even our personal lives with equally explosive results?
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Service and Selflessness
Service & Selflessness
The short answer is that the monks have discovered a secret: It is in our own self interest to forget our self interest. Paradoxically, the reason the monastic tradition creates and maintains so many diverse yet highly successful businesses is that they are actually not in business at all. Instead they are utterly committed to a high overarching mission and a management philosophy Mr. Turak calls Service and Selflessness.
The monks are not profit driven people who happen to think about higher purpose once in a while. They are people passionately committed to their mission of selfless service who happen to have a business. Business success for the monks is merely the by-product of living a life of Service and Selflessness. This radical reorientation of priorities, a secret Turak calls “aiming past the target,” makes all the difference.
Service and Selflessness lies at heart of the monastic tradition and every Trappist business success. This 1500 year-old monastic tradition represents an ancient yet emergent socio-economic model that keeps what is positive and productive about Capitalism while transcending its ethical limitations and internal contradictions.
Using August Turak’s thirteen years of experience with the monks of Mepkin Abbey, his extensive background as a successful corporate executive and entrepreneur, and the example of other Transformational Organizations, our mission is to teach others how Service and Selflessness not only builds dramatically more successful individuals, families, and organizations but provides a sustainable solution to our current economic crisis as well.
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The Transformational Organization
Transformational Organization
As a monastic guest, August Turak worked side by side with the monks, often living at the monastery for as long as three months. He also had the rare privilege of studying organizational development as the protégée of Louis R. Mobley the founder and first director of the IBM Executive School. And it was his life- long passion for personal transformation that drew him to Mobley and Mepkin Abbey in the first place.
Our goal is to reach leaders and individuals who want the same passionate intensity and commitment to excellence for themselves and their own organizations that is so prevalent at Mepkin Abbey and other Transformational Organizations like The Marine Corps, Alcoholics Anonymous and The IBM Executive School. Motivating people is the toughest leadership task there is, and a key benefit to Service and Selflessness is a radical new solution to this age-old problem presented in a practical way.
Service and Selflessness is a simple bottom-up approach to success that does not require massive amounts of political will and corporate resources. We offer examples, suggestions, analogies, and techniques that any individual or organization can use to achieve quick and measurable results.
Most importantly, as a business executive and entrepreneur who knows all too well what it means to make a payroll, Mr. Turak uses his straight from the trenches business background to insist on financial benefits for Service and Selflessness. This hard edged approach to what may seem like a lofty subject, from a person who has lived their challenges, is what many business people find so surprising and refreshing.
We are also reaching out to people from all walks of life looking for something more than a paycheck from their life’s work. You will discover that all the organizational benefits of Service and Selflessness are applicable to individuals and families as well.
Finally, by presenting a hopeful vision of our economic future based on a more ethical form of capitalism, we offer a positive alternative for everyone frustrated by the current, often acrimonious, struggle among our existing socio-economic models.
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Capitalism and the Urge to Transformation
Evolved Capitalism
The problem with Capitalism is that Adam Smith was only half right. His static model of human motivation insists that human beings are essentially selfish. Service and Selflessness is a dynamic model that assumes that we all long to be transformed from a selfish person into a selfless one through “losing ourselves” in a higher purpose.
Service and Selflessness is not about endless sacrifice in the name of some nebulous ‘common good.’ Service and Selflessness is just damn good business and a more successful way to live our lives.
Every baby starts out selfishly shouting “mine, Mine, MINE!” but every human being goes from here to some level of selflessness. And mankind as a whole is on the same trajectory. At a philosophical level, Service and Selflessness argues that despite the relativistic notions that would reduce life’s purpose to a matter of taste, the purpose of every human life, whether we realize it or not, is a transformation from selfishness to selflessness.
When a thirsty man drinks he transforms his condition. When a poor man hits the lottery he transforms his circumstances. And when Mr. Scrooge wakes up on Christmas morning an utterly new and selfless man he has experienced a transformation of being.
It is just such a transformation of being that we all long for. It is this transformation of being that monks go to the monastery to achieve. And it is by offering the opportunity for a transformation of being through mission and methodology that Transformational Organizations inspire ordinary people to produce spectacular results.
The benefit to such a transformation individually and collectively is not just more responsible corporations and a more ethical form of Capitalism: It is also the kind of passionate individual performance we see in Father Malachy and the extraordinary business success of Mepkin Abbey.
Service and Selflessness is not about endless sacrifice in the name of some nebulous “common good.” Service and Selflessness is just damn good business and a more successful way to live our lives.
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