From 18th May 2008 to 5th July 2016 my company lost 80% of its value.
This not a post about hacks to win more money.
It's a meditation on the cost of holding on too long, and what you might enjoy if you release sooner.
I've written before about a guy I know.
He runs an organisation, complicated and far reaching.
Over 300 subsidiaries reporting into him.
Serving ten thousand people spanning five continents.
All doing important, emotionally challenging work.
Sitting atop a disintegrating real estate, in constant need of investment and repair.
Yet he does this without a constantly pinging iPhone (shock, horror, no iPhone at all!). Nor an army of deputies or secretarial support.
Just him, a simple structure and the smooth running of his complex organisation which spans the globe.
Want a piece of this, I ask the many CEO's and other leaders in my network?
Yes, they demand!! Please tell me more.
Well, his name is Ajahn Liem, the Abbot of the monastery network in Buddhist Thai Forest tradition.
The Abbot CEO, we might call him.
This not a man holding on too tight, or too long.
His work was pointed to me by a teacher of mine, Ajahn Sucitto.
Sucitto in turn tells a story which explains how this works.
The network was founded by legendary teacher, Ajahn Chah, and has done much to export the teachings to the world. In 1977, touring the west, he visited the UK. Sucitto travelling with him. They were on a fact finding mission. Checking out new markets, we might say. Liking what he found, he turned to Sucitto and said:
"You stay here. Set up monastery. You know what to do. Keep in touch".
And with that, he left.
No blueprints or strategic plans.
Or consultants mapping an expensive future.
Just a trust in two principles running deep and true: personal responsibility and community awareness.
Everything from here.
And, in turn, letting the organisation grow into what comes next.
The human mind is a holding on machine. It's risk averse. Change resistant.
Unfolding between the above mentioned 2008 and 2016 was a holding on. From a high point of a contract win equal in size to our previous five years turnover, to a tumbling out, a distress sale, of sorts, of my shares to a partner, cutting me free, eight years on.
In between, a holding on.
The signs are many.
The business plateaus.
You tired, bored, drifting.
Somehow running faster just to stand still.
These all markers. Markers that the ground beneath you might be shifting to beyond you, inviting you to the same.
Except we don't. Not often.
We double down.
Work harder.
Hold tighter onto what worked previously because that's what we know.
The changing tide asks something different of you, your work, the business. And it'll keep sending you signals until you take note.
Like mine above.
First a plateau in sales.
Then a steady, then quickening decline.
Increasing personal frustration and or flatness.
Luckily for me, the signs were just financial. Weave into this, for others - maybe you - at worst, an illness, at mildest, a tiredness at home, frustration at the kids.
There is much talk in quiet corners of the need to let go. As a wise teacher once said to me, however, it's less about letting go - whether to habits of mind or products in the market place - more noticing where and how we're holding on. Because when we do, letting go is a natural consequence. Not a forced wish.
In the noticing there is a release.
Ajahn Chah or the Abbot CEO are not holding on. Their ability to sit present and patient with the people demanding this or that, needing their support or help, maybe meeting their demands only with quiet, is all about their ability to remain present. Alive and open to the opportunities before them.
But what was missed?
Genuine insight reveals slowly.
The sales declining. The energy waning, these all signs and signals, largely missed or ignored by the holding on. And when we hold, our perspective narrows. We see less and less of the periphery, of our periphery; and on these margins is where opportunity awaits.
The energy with which I ran the last company might be described as a holding on energy. A striving.
Growth is literally happening all around us, all the time. Funny then we employ teams and people trying to force it.
Opportunity might hide in a snatched conversation, overheard in a coffee shop. Or in what a colleague is trying to tell you between the words they say. Or in that niggling whisper you've been avoiding.
This just some of the wins that come from letting go. And what's missed from holding on.
Creating space to lead and learn from trust and surrender. Open to the question each day, how might I best lead today, how might I serve. This is some of what I return to, on the other side of striving.
Sitting in his Kuti - an HQ to you, to him, a monk, his house, home and office - the Abbot sits quiet. A constant stream of demands on his time and attention, met from the spirit of personal responsibility and community awareness.
Like his leaders before him, not a man holding on too tight, or too long.
If this resonates, you're welcome to come and see what we're up to at the Temple On The Hill. Hit reply and I'll tell you more.