Three Simple Steps: A Map to Success in Business and Life (19 page)

Nature is a unified network. When you step into it often enough, you become part of it. Connected, you have access to the infinite source of nothingness, which, therefore, gives you unlimited potential to attract anything you want, including great ideas.

In business, we seem to have an inherent desire to disconnect from nature. We spend hours trapped in a box-like room that is made of dense materials and lit by artificial means. The ornamental plants are made of silk. Water is served up in plastic bottles. The view, if we have one, is hidden behind closed blinds. We turn our backs to Mother Earth, focusing not on gaining energy but in exchanging energy with the people around the
table. It is hardly an environment conducive to fermenting ideas.

Small changes can make a big difference. Open a window. Let the sun in. Rearrange the furniture so people can see outside. Bring in some natural plants. Take frequent nature breaks, and encourage everyone to take their coffee outside for ten minutes. If you are running a meeting, I guarantee you will get better solutions and have a happier team.

With particularly difficult business decisions to face, I recommend breaking the traditional meeting room format. In 1997, I joined a start-up company that was staffed mainly by scientists. The company had little cash on hand, a high cash-burn rate, and no concept of direction. The new CEO, Bob, recognized that the company’s prior management had accepted every research project that had come along. In effect, they had fourteen projects at a similar level of development, and none anywhere near to generating revenue. It was a juggernaut rolling steadily down a hill to the edge of a cliff.

Bob invited me to discuss the situation with him, and I was delighted to learn that the meeting was not going to be in a gloomy indoor environment but on his yacht. My previous company boasted a corporate, floating gin-palace, but I was never high enough up the food chain to be invited on a trip. With this opportunity to join Bob on his yacht, my ego went into overdrive, and I felt I had finally arrived. It was somewhat disappointing to discover that the yacht was a ten-foot dinghy, and because of my Navy background, he expected me to be an expert sailor.

At least I did not run us aground, and the few hours spent casually sailing in a light breeze proved to be critical to the company’s survival. There is just something about being closer to nature that ignites those neurons. The company vice president joined us, and between us, we talked Bob into accepting that ten of the projects had to be stopped or sold off. We had four
that stood a chance of making it, within the available budget, to start generating revenues and save the company.

We drew up a new company structure that could achieve the goal, be more cost-effective, and meet shareholder expectations. It was a unique approach to developing products in that industry. What makes it particularly impressive is that no one in the yacht had a scientific background. Bob came from the banking world. The vice president had been a nurse once, and grew into her role without business qualifications. I was a business development guy. I have no doubt that if we had tried to hold that meeting in a traditional office environment, the company would have been doomed.

In 2002, I faced a similar dilemma with a company that had three projects at similar stages of development. The senior executive team spent hours in the confines of a windowless boardroom, wrestling with the puzzle of moving these projects forward within a limited budget. The three scientists who ran each project had sizeable egos and spent much of the time talking over each other.

As an invited consultant, I convinced the team to take a break and walk with me around the block. The company lawyer thought I was just a nutty consultant and tried to escape back to his office to answer emails. I literally had to manhandle him out of the door.

Outside, I deliberately did not keep the business conversation going because I wanted the serenity of outdoors to rebalance the egos and reenergize the neurons. This sounds very new age when I write it, but it worked, so I just go with it now. I noticed how the posture of the three scientists changed as we walked. They became more upright. Their expressions opened up. It was like watching heavy weights fall off their shoulders. The tension left the team, and someone said something that made everyone laugh.

As we turned to head back to the office, the human resources manager, who had not uttered a word in the meeting room and appeared overawed by the scientific jargon flying about, spoke up. In an apologetic tone, he asked what was wrong with stopping two projects and putting all the eggs in one basket. At least, he said, they would stand one chance of making it as a company. I expected the three scientists to jump down his throat, but to my surprise there was a period of complete silence. Astoundingly, the scientist who had defended his project the loudest back in the boardroom now admitted that his team was losing faith in their ability to resolve certain challenges. He turned to a colleague and suggested that if he added his team and resources to one of the other projects, the combined team would stand a chance.

Back in the meeting room, the team drew up a new business plan to present to the board, and called it the “Texas Hold-’Em, All In plan.” A week later, the board approved the idea. I received a lot of praise for getting this result from three scientists notorious for being difficult to work with. I did not do anything, however, except take the team outside for some fresh air. I understood very little about the science. In business, I find the solution to most problems already resides in the minds of the people struggling to find an answer. The secret is simply helping them to let it out.

For most people, life is pretty chaotic, and there just are not enough hours in the day. Life in the quicksand can feel that way because so much energy and time goes into the struggle to stay afloat. On top of that, now I am asking you to get up half an hour earlier and dedicate time to yourself.

There can be no compromise in taking quiet time. You made a covenant, a solemn promise to yourself, to change, and this is the way to do it. It is the only way I know to regenerate neurons. I am also going to encourage you to change routines and dedicate time to get back with nature. These are just small changes in lifestyle that will make a big difference to your life.

When your life is busy, you have to find a way to change schedules. The time you spend in the office taking a coffee break could be spent going outside for fresh air. Notice the clouds. Touch a tree. Smell a flower. Hear the birds. Each sense is a reconnection. Take your lunch to a park or sit near a body of water. No one but you needs to know what you are doing or why you no longer hang about at the coffee machine to gossip.

A child feels more connected to the planet than an adult. Walking barefoot on grass or playing with their hands in the dirt is as normal as eating and sleeping. You don’t have to jump in puddles, but maybe you can walk part of the way to work instead of taking the bus every day.

Take a break from television and go outside to watch a starry sky. Five minutes is all it takes, and you will probably only miss a commercial break anyway. When was the last time you climbed a steep hill to take in the view? Now and again, take your shoes and socks off and walk on the grass. There are some people who believe doing the latter can cure any illness. All I know is it connects you a little more to nature and feels really good. Who doesn’t get that giddy, child-like feeling when they see their bare toes in the grass?

When you touch the walls of your office, there is not much to connect with. Being of dense materials, they emit lower energy. With you vibrating at a higher frequency, you give more to the wall than it can give to you. There are many reasons why people who spend all day and night indoors become listless, weak, or
ill, and this is one of them. They give their energy away without finding a way to restore it.

When you touch a tree, however, you fire off connections like an army of archers storming a castle. Because the tree is connected to the Earth through its roots, all of nature fires back. Your rewired neurons use nature’s network in the same way the tree uses its roots.

Once a week, you would benefit from immersing yourself in nature for an hour or so. That means dedicating some time to really reconnect with nature, not just the glimpses and glances I’ve been encouraging up to this point. Go to a beach or a national park, and spend time just walking or sitting on a wall to take in a view. Perhaps one evening you can take your family for a walk together after dinner. I know that in our hectic lives it sometimes seems impossible, but these are not options. If you want to achieve success and a greater quality of life, it is essential to take the time and make some effort. For me, watching a sunset with my wife and dogs creates the same quality of stillness as holding a baby or taking quiet time.

When I was in my midtwenties and chose to take control of my destiny, many family members warned me that the higher up the food chain we go, the harder work it is. People at the top, they told me, have to work 24/7. I can tell you that the higher up the food chain I went, the more I used my brain over my body, and the more time I had to reconnect with nature. I also enjoyed my work so much that it ceased to feel like work at all.

Once again, I remind you that we are not trying to become masters. Simple, subtle changes to routine are all that are required to succeed. Change a little, change a lot. None of this is painful or expensive. Rather, everything I am suggesting is free, fun, and energizing.

I
T TOOK ME A
while to pluck up the courage to ask my future wife on a date. I thought she was engaged to someone, and she thought I was with someone else. The hospital staff knew differently and conjured up every trick they could to throw us together.

They finally succeeded; on our first date we did nothing more exciting than go for a late afternoon walk by the shore. When it was dark, we sat in a pub nursing one drink each until the landlord forced us out. We just never stopped talking and have not stopped since.

While she worked on the in-patient wards, I worked in the radiotherapy department in the same teaching hospital. The patients often lived far away and would stay in the hospital for several weeks while undergoing treatment for cancer. It was a rewarding experience to be part of their lives during those times.

I worked in a predominantly female department. Cliques had developed, and the environment away from the patients was one of toxic gossip. I wore my mentality shield all the time and separated myself from the background politics. It did not make me a popular workmate, but I was able to focus on what was important, which was the patients’ welfare.

The department head had been in the job for more than thirty years and felt threatened by the fast pace of technological change. She gave promotions to anyone who swore their fealty, and I was certainly not considered a supporter. New ideas to improve effectiveness or patient experience were not welcomed, which was an issue for me, because I had new ones every day as a result of taking quiet time.

By 1987, I was tearing my hair out, and I felt I had to move on. During the previous twelve months, a few pharmaceutical companies contacted me about switching to a career in pharmaceutical sales. I turned them all down simply because I had allowed my mentality to form a negative image of what it meant to be a salesperson.

George and Harry had been salesmen off and on. When Harry ran the tire depot, I took my vehicle in for one replacement tire. One of his partners inspected the car and assured me I needed four new tires instead. Having no clue myself, I went along with it. After the job was completed, and I had paid in cash, I overheard him joking with my father that he just talked some sucker into buying four new tires he didn’t need. My father looked outside to see who the sucker was. When he saw me, he slunk back to the safety of his desk without another word. That was his style. Whatever he could get away with was a triumph to him, no matter who was the victim. I also bought auto insurance from him only to discover after a traffic accident years later, and a subsequent court summons, that he used my cash for other things.

He sold mortgages to people who really could not afford them. He was only interested in making commissions and did not care what happened to his customers after that. Having never had a mortgage himself, he lied to them about his experience and most fell for it. Those observations had my neurons wired with a negative impression of the character required to be in sales.

At the same time, my wife was feeling a bit burned out after twelve years working on a cancer ward. She needed a break and, at the very least, a vacation, but our combined salaries barely covered the mortgage, and we had too much debt. Finances were tight and we lived on convenience food of the “just add water” variety. We were in financial quicksand. One of my dreams was to travel and experience other cultures and companies, and somehow that was not happening. I needed a rethink.

After taking quiet time one day, I somehow decided that I would take the next sales job offer that came along, and do it for only a couple of years until we recovered financially. That seemed like a good idea, and a compromise that could get me over my hang-up about salespeople. That might not sound like a moment of brilliance, but at the time it felt like it. If I could survive the military, I figured I could be a salesman for a couple of years. We would get back on our feet and also have some money for a vacation or two.

Not having a vehicle at that time, I cycled to one of my favorite scenic spots, a pond in the center of a village green. Once there, I went through a
commitment to change
ritual, exactly as outlined in this Step Two. Whenever a good idea comes to me, I do this exercise and write out a new statement that fixes the new idea in my mind. The formality of this commitment always seems to trigger an increase in small daily miracles.

Within a week, I had received several unsolicited phone calls about potential sales jobs. Then I was invited to interview with the UK division of a large French pharmaceutical company that was expanding its sales force. There was a vacancy right where I lived, and the salary plus benefits were enough to double our household income. The phone call came out of the blue, as a result of someone at the hospital recommending me to a sales manager they had met months earlier.

Family and friends warned me against taking the job. They said I had a secure position at the hospital and that in sales, people were let go all the time. They told me I was not cold and calculating enough in that dog-eat-dog world. Their fear for me was out of a genuine concern for our welfare, but I still needed to filter out that energy and choose my own reaction. I chose to follow the synchronicity that had just shown up, and I accepted the offer.

I started off as a trainee sales representative, which, despite the better salary, was something of a step back from the fancy title I had at the hospital. In many ways, the hospital position had been a cliff fall below where I was in the Royal Navy. In everyone’s view I was going downhill fast, but I didn’t see it that way. I was already aware of the way of the winding staircase in my life. That did not stop the criticism or gossip all around me, and I had to work hard to tune it out.

On the five-week training course, I stuck with my Taking Quiet Time discipline, and to my surprise found that I was a natural. Ideas, answers, and solutions all popped into my head when I needed them. More surprising was the fact that I found myself thoroughly enjoying the experience. The high integrity of my peers and bosses surprised me and completely changed my mental image of what a successful sales person is all about. These people really cared about the patients as much as their own success, and most had a medical background.

When I was let loose on my sales territory, I found that the customers I called on liked the fact I had experience of the hospital life, and appreciated that I knew the limitations of our drugs as much as the benefits. I discovered sales was not about “taking,” as my father seemed to think, but about “giving,” by satisfying customers and their needs.

I never looked back. I woke up every morning excited to go to work. Six months later, I was sunbathing in Spain after winning my first sales prize. Within a year I was in Nassau for a
week, and the following year, I learned to ski in Switzerland. Travel was back on the agenda.

Within a few months, I was promoted to professional sales representative, and then to executive representative by the end of the first year. Taking quiet time was easier now because I had a company car. If it was too noisy at home, I would drive a half-mile to a quiet spot and find stillness for twenty minutes before driving on to my first sales call.

My regional manager was easy to work with, but he had been in the job many years, and he was counting his days to retirement. Great ideas for improving efficiency and success kept popping into my head, and unlike the hospital staff, he was receptive to it all, so long as I did the work to implement them. He came to rely on me to take any new recruits under my wing, and for the general organization of the region. I was promoted once more, to district manager.

At the end of 1988, less than eighteen months since I made the
commitment to change
, I was promoted a fourth time to regional manager in charge of a team of seven salespeople, all older than me. Next, I found I was being head-hunted by a progressive company, and I was able to instigate more bright ideas to improve our success as a team. At that company, a global conglomerate, I won manager of the year three years running. I enjoyed the recognition, but more than that, each prize came with an extra week’s vacation and four thousand dollars in travel vouchers. My wife and I had some of our best travel adventures ever.

Then in 1991, I was the first sales manager ever to win the UK marketing professional of the year. The people in the marketing department were furious about the award, but their fury was born of embarrassment that none of them had even been nominated. Reluctantly, they attended a big awards ceremony in London when, with my mentality shield firmly in place, the corporate president presented me my prize on stage. There was a
bronze statue and a sealed envelope. Given the multi-billion dollar profits made by the corporation, I felt sure that envelope held my financial freedom. In the privacy of a restroom cubicle, I nervously tore open the envelope and then stared in disbelief at my prize—a single share of stock (worth about ninety dollars). Rare is the person who gets rich working for someone else!

I introduced my early version of
Three Simple Steps
to the sales forces and watched with pride over the next years as many went on to enjoy similar success. In my experience of sharing this philosophy, I found most people readily accepted Steps One and Three but struggled with Step Two. It seemed possible to have some success by implementing part of the program, but I wonder how far they might have gone if they could have got over their discomfort at something as innocuous as taking quiet time for twenty minutes a day.

Success continued for me after moving to the United States in 1994; before long, I was enjoying the high life with a mid-six-figure salary, a job I enjoyed, and the sort of travel and adventure my wife and I had dreamed of in our courting days. Since seeing that look in Harry’s eyes in 1983, I had done nothing more profound than add Step Two and Three to my life. The changes in my life were incredible. I had not acquired any new skill or talent or won the lottery, but people we knew thought I must have.

After seeing Harry in that state of near-homelessness, my siblings and I rallied for a few years to help rebuild his life and self-esteem, each doing their bit to try to keep the pretense of family unity. He found work as a taxi driver. Soon, he met a female passenger who had recently lost her husband to cancer. They bonded. She needed someone to care for, and he needed to be taken care of. He moved into her neat cottage and lived a normal life again with good food, clean clothes, and an endless supply of cigarettes.

Harry continued with his shady dealings, some of which required me to attend court to plead my innocence of fraud. Eventually, I had to make one of the hardest decisions of my life and switch that negative input off. Sometimes, it is the only solution, and I kept my communications with him to a minimum from then on.

His lifelong smoking finally caught up with him when he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 1995. He was admitted to hospital for surgery. I flew over from the United States. My sister was at his bedside and looked concerned when I walked onto the ward. She knew there was tension between us, but I simply kissed him on the forehead, and he greeted me with the same “Hello, Son” as when I encountered him in that hovel, and as if he had been expecting me all along.

He died in 1996. Three people attended his funeral: his girlfriend, his aunt, and one of his children. He is buried next to Audrey.

At the only funeral home in the nearest small town, my siblings were taking care of duties when the director said that he recognized the family name, and started turning pages in a dusty ledger. “I believe I arranged the burials for his father and mother many years ago,” he said while scanning lists of the names of the deceased. He stopped on a page. “Ah, yes, here they are. George Frederick, 1971. Emily, 1976.” He paused, peered over his spectacles, and made an embarrassed cough. “I’m afraid your father never paid for any of the funerals.” It was fitting irony, and my siblings said they tried not to laugh as they handed over a credit card.

In 2000, I made a return trip to the United Kingdom, and met up with my brother and sister at the graveyard. Harry, Audrey, George, and Emily’s graves all had a great view of the old farmhouse. After paying our respects, we crossed the fields and went to see what had become of the derelict home. It had
been eighteen years since I last saw it. Shortly after Harry had been evicted, I took my wife-to-be out there to show her where I grew up. Within minutes, a local farmer, wielding a heavy hammer came charging at me while yelling, “We don’t want your sort here anymore.” My wife must have wondered what she was getting into and I had not been back since.

No one came to chase us off this time. Part of the roof had collapsed, and the outbuildings had turned to rubble, but it looked very much the same to me. My brother squeezed through an open window, and then appeared at the front door, pale with shock. Behind the door was a pile of final demand letters and unpaid invoices two feet high. Harry had left no forwarding address, and the owners had simply shut up the house and let it go to further ruin. No one thought to tell the mailman that no one was home.

The inside of the house resembled a ghost ship. The kitchen table was set for breakfast as if we had been transported back in time to 1982. Harry’s bedroom was still made, the covers turned down as if he had just got up. Harry’s bed gown lay across the duvet. In an airing closet, I found a pile of his shirts still ironed and neatly folded. None of us were prepared to find our home that way.

We walked around in a surreal silence, my sister unable to stop tears spilling down her cheeks, my brother and I just pointing and shaking our heads. Our old toys littered the playroom. Our bedrooms were as we left them, beds made up awaiting our return. The cot where Audrey had spent her last few days was still set up in the lounge. Beside the hearth were her slippers and mittens as if still warming.