The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

by Randy Komisar

It was another instance in which, were I still Lenny's age, I would have agreed with him. Sure, business was about money. That's what makes it business. But first and foremost, to be successful, business is about people. It took me a while to learn that lesson.

And we did. What you noticed about Bill, after you worked with him a bit, was that he spent a lot of time talking about people. He ate, drank, and breathed people. You couldn't talk about anything at Claris without the issue coming up. I found it irritating at first, a distraction. Whenever we sat down to make decisions, somebody always asked, How is this going to affect that individual, or this group of people? What are they going to say? To feel? Will they know why you made that decision or will they think you did it arbitrarily? When we talked about product support, it wasn't evaluated as an expense line. It was a service—for people. The focus was always on the value you could deliver to your customers, employees, partners, and shareholders—and what they and others thought about it and about you. You might not hear it in the first session. You might not hear it in the second session. But, unless you were deaf, by the end of the first few months, you heard the theme loud and clear. Bill had an underlying faith that if we focused on the people issues, worked hard, and did a great job, the business would take care of itself. That was Campbell. In the beginning, despite my respect for him, I resisted Bill's philosophy. I strongly believed in the notion of business as a manageable, predictable, and quantifiable process. I believed everything should be crisp, clear, and buttoned down. Managers made the trains run on time. Campbell's approach seemed inefficient to me. Too many...

But I gradually began to internalize Campbell's frame of mind, and some of my own personal values, long subordinated to the bottom line, began to resurface. I couldn't argue with Bill's results: What appeared to be a sometimes inefficient process was creating extraordinary success. Our customers liked us. They valued our products. Our partners respected and trusted us.

Why was I there late? Because I needed to finish my piece of a project, so I could hand it over to somebody else, so she could get on with what she needed to do, so the next person could do what he needed to do, so the company could achieve its objectives. There was an intense sense of loyalty, responsibility, and camaraderie; a locking of elbows with everybody around you.

Mark Twain quotes: “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.” Likewise, in a short time I had learned what wisdom Campbell carried; he could do things I couldn't quantify. He had a highly intuitive sense of people. He could inspire them to be better than they already were and to work together as a whole to create something greater than the sum of the individual parts.

I started to pay attention. I made a break with my old legal habits. I began to apply Campbell's thinking to doing deals. My job was to find intersections of interest between the negotiating parties—not differences, but commonalities—and to build them into a solid relationship and transaction. I started zeroing in immediately on those requirements of the other party that were consistent with my requirements, and I threw my energy into bringing them into the deal, instead of ignoring them or reactively opposing them in order to use them as bargaining chips later. My focus became less on just satisfying myself and my company and more on satisfying the other party as well. Sure, certain points were bound to be contentious, but negotiating became a creative opportunity for me to solve problems and build relationships, not to play poker.

But it was a Pyrrhic victory. With our spouses, we all gathered at the home of one of the founders to celebrate our good fortune. Together we drank the celebration into a wake. We were proud of the price we'd gotten from Apple—there was reason to celebrate—but when we looked around the room at each other, the deal's downside hit us: it was unlikely we would ever work together again. The exhilarating experience of the Claris startup made few of us eager to return to the larger Apple fold. Our checks were in the bank, but we were morose. What the heck was that, I wondered?

Claris gave us, as a team and as individuals, a platform for growing and a chance to build a legacy and a culture that would contain our DNA in its values for decades to come. You couldn't put a price on it, and I didn't realize that until our company was dead and buried.

BUSINESS, I told Lenny and Allison, is about nothing if not people. First, the people you serve, your market. Then the team you build, your employees. Finally, your many business partners and associates. Sever the chain of values between leadership and the people translating strategy into products and services for your customers, and you will destroy your foundation for long-term success. The culture you create and principles you express are the only connection you will have with each other and your many constituencies. It may not be Allison's utopia, but it was a far cry from Lenny's soulless machine.

Silicon Valley veterans share a tacit understanding that what a startup needs isn't one CEO, but three—each at successive stages of the startup's development. Given my deep regard for man's best friend, I tend to think of each in terms of best of breed. The first CEO is “the Retriever.” From the muck she must assemble the core team, the product or service, and the market direction—all around a coherent vision. She must also raise the money and secure crucial early customers and partners. She is prized for her tenacity and inventiveness. The second CEO is “the Bloodhound.” He must sniff out a trail—find the market and prove the business. He needs to build an operating team and establish a market beachhead. He is prized for his keen sense of direction and company-building skills. The third CEO is “the Husky.” She must lead the team, pulling an operating company that grows heavier by the day with people and public company responsibilities. She is prized for her constancy and scalability. None of these, to me, is top dog. All are equal in importance, just different in skills and temperaments.

But this was a startup. It would take an inspirational leader to rally a team and supporters to build something worthwhile. So far, Lenny had failed to inspire any of us.

Management is a methodical process; its purpose is to produce the desired results on time and on budget. It complements and supports but cannot do without leadership, in which character and vision combine to empower someone to venture into uncertainty. Leaders must suspend the disbelief of their constituents and move ahead even with very incomplete information.

Importante

Like Lenny, I had, early in my career, failed to appreciate the crucial distinction between leadership and management. Luckily I had the good fortune to work with Bill Campbell long enough to learn the difference.

I wanted a role full of creativity, where inspiration was more valued than perspiration.

I was a wise, old hand when it came to solving tactical issues. That had always been my job as a manager. Now I was being asked to lead and motivate, to create a vision that could attract and inspire talent and partners. Managing—vigorously driving execution—is a rare skill, Debbie told me, but rarer still is the ability to lead, inspire, and motivate people.

If Steve had ceded his visionary leadership to an operating manager early on, Microsoft probably would never have bought WebTV. Limiting ourselves to the Internet television business would have shortchanged Steve's larger vision, and WebTV would have had to struggle with building a much smaller and just as risky business on its own.

For me, the moral of the story of Steve Perlman and WebTV is the need to emphasize visionary leadership over management acumen in the formative stage of a startup. If you turn a visionary startup into an operating company too early, you throw out its birthright. It will never be as big, as grand, or as influential as it might otherwise be. It will be much harder, perhaps impossible, to expand the vision later, when performance is being measured quarter to quarter against operating plans, because then there's too much at stake. Steve was the right leader, the only leader, to take WebTV through its formative years.

Importante

In the Deferred Life Plan, by definition, you postpone risking what matters most to you; that happens later, if it happens at all.

The question he seemed to have answered was not, How can I make a difference? but, What's the least risky path to financial success? Ironically, he had assumed the biggest risk of all in Silicon Valley, the risk of mediocrity. He had dug his own grave.

Lenny didn't understand how the Valley thinks about business risk and failure. Instead of managing business risk to minimize or avoid failure, the focus here is on maximizing success. The Valley recognizes that failure is an unavoidable part of the search for success.

Silicon Valley does not punish business failure. It punishes stupidity, laziness, and dishonesty. Failure is inevitable if y...

Reducing your downside risk will not warm the cockles of their hearts. Business failures are unfortunate but necessary steps in the search for those few huge successes.

For some of us, Silicon Valley's forgiving attitude toward failure rests on a more profound realization: Change is certain, and in a world of constant change we actually control very little. When there are important factors outside your control, the risk of failure always looms, no matter how smart or industrious you are. We delude ourselves if we believe that much of life and its key events fall under our control.

When you experience the vagaries of success and failure firsthand, it is as hard to accept credit for success as it is to accept blame for failure.

there is only one element in life under our control—our own excellence.

If you're brilliant, 15 to 20 percent of the risk is removed. If you work twenty-four hours a day, another 15 to 20 percent of the risk is removed. The remaining 60 to 70 percent of business risk will be completely out of your control.

If you're excellent at what you do and the stars are in alignment, you will win. Of course, you may run out of time first, but, if you're excellent every day, you will have furthered your chances of beating the house as much as they ever can be. That should be your primary measure of success — excellence — not simply the spoils that come with good fortune. You don't want to entrust your satisfaction and sense of fulfillment to circumstances outside your control. Instead, base them on the quality of what you do and who you are, not the success of your business per se. Unless you understand what is truly outside your control, you are likely to make serious mistakes, misallocate resources, and waste time.

I ENCOURAGE PEOPLE to think about all the risks involved —personal risks as well as business risks. When I talk to candidates as part of recruiting outside management talent to the Valley, the issue of risk often comes up. Prospective managers usually fear that the venture won't be a blockbuster or, worse, that it will be forced to close its doors. Some recruits fixate on that business risk to the point of indecision. They strain to research all the facts, but at some point no additional information or assurances will offer them any further clues into the business's ultimate success or failure. Uncertain, they freeze and stay with the status quo, no matter how unsatisfying it is. After all, it's what they know.

And then there is the most dangerous risk of all — the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.

probability of failure multiplied by the cost of failure. Sure, this turns out to be a subjective analysis, but in the process your own attitudes toward financial risk and reward are revealed. By contrast, personal risk usually defies quantification. It's a matter of values and priorities, an expression of who you are. “Playing it safe” may simply mean you do not weigh heavily the compromises inherent in the status quo. The financial rewards of the moment may fully compensate you for the loss of time and fulfillment. Or maybe you just don't think about it. On the other hand, if time and satisfaction are precious, truly priceless, you will find that the cost of business failure, so long as it does not put in peril the well-being of you or your family, pales in comparison with the personal risks of not trying to live the life you want today.

Work hard, work passionately, but apply your most precious asset—time—to what is most meaningful to you. What are you willing to do for the rest of your life? does not mean, literally, what will you do for the rest of your life? That question would be absurd, given the inevitability of change. No, what the question really asks is, if your life were to end suddenly and unexpectedly tomorrow, would you be able to say you've been doing what you truly care about today? What would you be willing to do for the rest of your life? What would it take to do it right now?

Now I work with inventors, entrepreneurs, and others highly skilled in their own right but not necessarily capable of bringing their ideas to the commercial light of day or achieving the impact their ideas could and should have. This is the creative edge of business — startups, working with a blank canvas to challenge the status quo and make change happen. I work with brilliant entrepreneurs who have a vision for how things can be better and who can't resist doing the next great thing. I am their consigliere.

I looked through the plan. They had made assumption after assumption about the services offered, sources of revenue, their ability to enter alliances with traditional brick-and-mortar businesses and organizations to form the crucial referral networks, the potential fees and charges. Lenny must have been uncomfortable with those leaps of faith, but the plan also laid out a timetable that identified both the crucial steps and what they hoped and expected to learn at each stage. They were candid and detailed about what they didn't and couldn't know at this point, and they identified how they would refine and reshape the plan as they continued to educate themselves about the market. The plan was a reliable compass, as it should be, not a road map.

Less tidy and tightly wrapped than the Funerals.com presentation, this plan was a bit raw. All in all, though, not a bad job for ten days' work. Most important, the plan communicated a stronger vision, an idea with a wider horizon focused on meeting a critical need. For all its loose ends, it had real potential.

The web of life. The forces of technology pull us apart, and yet that same technology provides the means of staying together.

WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE, the journey is the reward. There is nothing else. Reaching the end is, well, the end. If the egg must fall three feet without a crack, simply extend the trip to four.

With four to five months away from the habits and routines that I had chained myself to at home, this was precious time. What was the sense of rushing down a beaten path with a map I had cribbed from others? This was my trip, my life, and I needed my own journey. I decided to throw away the itinerary and see where this might lead.

Amsterdam from there and that Freddie Laker would honor my ticket to New York. I had never been to Amsterdam. Why not extend my journey another foot? No time to waste.