Buddha CEO - Howard M. Cox (best book recommendations TXT) 📗

and then gently but firmly getting your organization, its systems and its people back the correct trajectory.


Moderate, Contemplate, Celebrate & Renew

Before we transition to Perfect Word or Communication tools, I want to leave with a collection miscellaneous thought tools. The first is the Buddhist principle of moderation or “The Middle Way”.

Buddha taught to avoid being caught or entangled in any extreme. He taught non-duality; “Be not elated by success nor depressed by failure”. The middle way is accomplished through the “Eight Fold Path”

Buddha taught that the wise man learns to meet the changing circumstances of life with an equitable spirit, being neither elated by success nor depressed by failure. Thus one realizes the truth of non-duality.

The Dalai Lama defines the middle way like this in “The Art of Happiness”.

True happiness is stable and persistent despite life’s ups and downs and normal fluctuations of mood, as part of the very matrix of our being.

The eight fold path is subdivided into three different sections as follows:

Wisdom

1. Right understanding – know that all is not right; identify what is wrong and replace it with what is right.

We are responsible for our own destiny; only we can change the way we are! We cannot change circumstances or people, but we can change our reactions to them. Holding a right view will lead us to right action and to a true liberation.

2. Right resolve or intention – the honest decision to do something to improve oneself.

It is your commitment to your commitment.

Morality

3. Right speech – the elimination of idle chatter, gossip and backbiting; harsh speech and lying.

This is simply living the golden rule that if you don’t have something nice to say or can not be constructive and compassionate when engaging in difficult communications, please refrain from communicating at all for the time being.

4. Right action – acting with honesty, compassion and humility.

Be a lovecat in action with everything you say and do; always be helping others to grow and succeed.

5. Right livelihood – one that helps you develop your unique potential and the understanding of those around you.

You can not separate your work life from your spiritual life. Only you can determine what this means to you. For me, this would include a prohibition from involvement in organizations that promote gambling, alcohol or tobacco products.

6. Right effort – the development of insight and will power; the discipline to change.

Right effort is embodied in Jim Collin’s “Rinse your Cottage Cheese” metaphor (See Good to Great). It is your personal discipline.

Meditation

7. Right mindfulness – learning to be constantly and acutely aware of your thoughts, words and actions.

This requires constant vigilance and mind control. You are not responsible for the negative thoughts and emotions that pop into your head moment to moment. You are responsible if you allocate your current mental resources to focus on these negative thoughts and emotions as opposed to replacing them with positive thoughts and emotions.

8. Right meditation – routinely taking the time to enjoy nature and calm your mind to the point that you are thinking about nothing at all.

This is part of the rest and renewal process necessary to achieve enlightenment. This is one of the biggest differences between eastern and western cultures. Sometimes doing nothing is the most productive thing we can do.

The eight fold path can also be organized with the perfect thought, perfect word and perfect deed structure as follows:

Perfect Thought
Right understanding
Right resolve
Right mindfulness


Perfect Word
Right speech

Perfect Deed
Right action
Right livelihood
Right effort
Right meditation

The disciplined observance of the eightfold path will lead to “the middle way” which is the key to successfully executing the intangible elements of enlightenment which are moderation, contemplation, and renewal.

The eightfold path within itself adequately addresses moderation and contemplation. It addresses renewal through meditation which is a critical element of renewal.

However, in our modern times, renewal is about more that it was in Buddha’s days. In out modern culture, we have to add proper diet and exercise into our daily routines in order to maintain ourselves as elite corporate athletes. This is Covey’s seventh habit of “sharpening the saw”. I would also refer you to the “The Power of Full Engagement” by Dr. Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz.

The most passionate voice for the value of celebration in business is Jack Welch. He discusses this tool in depth in both his books “Straight from the Gut” and “Winning”. Properly executed this team building exercise does not violate the concept of the middle way.

Perfect Word Tools – Communicating the Mindset

This is the second step in the process. This involves leadership and a deep believing in the mindset created in step 1. You must communicate the value proposition to your stakeholders so clearly that everyone begins to believe it. If you have the right team members and value chain partners, the rest will take care of itself.

The Two Page Business Plan

The first communication tool we will cover is the Two Page Business Plan. I suggest printing this on the front and back of an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper so it can be communicated concisely on one sheet of paper.

Please go to our website @ buddhaceo.com and print the Two Page Business Plan template and completed example for Buddha CEO, LLC. We will work through the form together.

Logo

The business plan starts with the Company Logo. This is a critically important communication tool for your organization that is grossly under appreciated. You should allocate appropriate time, effort and money to your logo development.

It is the visual advertisement for your business. It should invoke in the viewer a sense of who are and what you are all about. It should be unique so that it will carve out some creative space for your branding. A good logo makes brand development much easier.

Hopefully, the Buddha CEO logo is an example of this. As opposed to some visual representation of Buddha or anything along those lines, I choose a visual representation of our goal of creating happiness. The organization is not about Buddha at all. We are simply using some of his teaching to help you create happiness

Name

Next is the name of your organization. Again, I highly recommend allocating resources, financial and creative, to the establishment of a quality company name. Along with the tag line discussed below, a successful company name will make your marketing and branding much more efficient and save you a ton of money in the long run.

The name should clearly communicate something about your mission and be consistent with your vision. It is an important communication tool in your advertising for team members, customers, value chain partners and stockholders.

The Buddha CEO name is intended to invoke an immediate understanding that our mission is about business and using the Buddha’s teaching to be more successful in business.

Tag Line

The next element of the Tow page Business Plan is the tag line. In advertising, the headline is the ad for the ad. The same principle applies to tag line development.

The tag line is the ad for the mission statement. The tag line needs to create interest in your organization so that you can pull stakeholders into learning more about you. It needs to be as succinct as possible and still clearly communicate the pure essence of your mission.

For Buddha CEO, this is accomplished by the tag line “Creating Happiness”. For Mann Properties, the tag line is “Creating value in real estate. At Somerset CPAs, the tag line is “Passionate about your success”

The test of a good tag line is if the statement rings true for all the stakeholders of the organization. The tag line is an ad for all of them and therefore must communicate your core value proposition to your customers, team members, value chain partners, the community as a whole and your stockholders.

At Buddha CEO, we want to create happiness for all of our stakeholders. Mann Properties goal is to create value for all of its stakeholders. At Somerset, they are passionate about the success of all of their stakeholders.


Vision, Mission, Values and 5 Purposes

The rest of the first page is simply an organized place to restate the work that you completed in the Perfect Thought phase of the book; just type in the Vision, Mission, Values and Five Purposes that you have already created.

Critical Processes:

Page two of the Two Page Business Plan begins with another example of how to use Pareto’s Law as a focusing tool and your Two Page Business Plan as a concise communication tool. There are many processes involved in operating a business every day. You answer the phone, greet people as they come into you business, stakeholders go to your web site, you place orders, fill orders, etc.

However, of all of the individual process that occur in your organization every day, only about 20% of them are critical to the delivery of your promised value to your stakeholder group. All of the rest of them are ancillary to your core mission. They are important or you should not be doing them, but they are not by definition, mission critical.

This section is the space created in your business plan to definitively list what you believe to be the mission critical things you must get right in your organization to successfully deliver on your value proposition to your stakeholders. This is immensely useful to make sure that everyone on your team and in your value chain is on the same page.

Often times we get frustrated in the execution on the front lines of our business in the heat of the battle on a daily basis. Team members don’t necessarily make the decisions we want them to make when we want them to make them. This creates a lot of frustration. This frustration can largely be eliminated with proper communication and training associated with the mission critical processes in your business.

If you have failures in a non-critical process there will be ramifications, but they will not have anywhere near the same effects as failures in critical processes, so you can not afford to allocate the same resources to communication and training in these areas.

Performance Standards:

The next logical step is establishing performance standards for your critical processes. This reinforces the communication and facilitates the training involved in executing on our critical processes.

In addition to defining systems that simplify our business and provide for more consistent and predictable service delivery, well documented performance systems and training substantially increase the value of your organization in the marketplace.


Key Performance Indicators:

Just as form follows function in great architecture, an appropriate performance measurement system must support the infrastructure of well defined critical processes and performance standards.

Just like the NASA mission example, you might only be on course 3% of the time and that will be ok if you have a timely, relevant and accurate information system for your management team. This will allow them to quickly and decisively get