Marc Lesser: Accomplishing More By Doing Less - YouTube

Marc Lesser: Accomplishing More By Doing Less

And when I was at college at Rutgers University in the 70s,

I took a one-year leave of absence and headed to

California and proceeded to spend the following 10 years

living at the San Francisco Zen Center.

And my 10th year at the Zen Center, I was director of a

place called Tassajara.

How many of you have heard of Tassajara?

It's a great place in the summertime, if you haven't

been there.

Fabulous, hot springs resort, food.

A great place to do less.

So a big part of this talk is looking at ways to do less.

I discovered during my 10th year at the Zen Center, when I

was director of Tassajara, much to my surprise, I

discovered that, though I thought I was this Zen monk

and Zen practitioner, that I was also a business guy.

I was running a resort and monastery that had about a $1

million budget.

There were all the problems and issues of managing people,

of budgets, of projects.

We were building some bridges and changing the hot baths.

So not only did I discover that there didn't seem to be

any real conflict between spiritual practice and

business practice, it looked to me like they

could be great partners.

And naturally, since I had just had 10 years of training

in spiritual practice, it was clear that what I should do

next was go to business school.

And that's what I did.

I went right from Tassajara to the East Coast and went to NYU

business school, came back out to the West Coast and I

started a publishing company called Brush Dance that makes

calendars and greeting cards mostly with spiritual themes.

One of our best-selling greeting cards said, if you

think you're too small to be effective, you've never been

in bed with a mosquito.

That was one of our 15-year best-selling cards.

We also license the words of the Dalai Lama and to not harm

poetry for me It was a really terrific company that I

started and ran for 15 years.

And then about three years ago, I got into the the

coaching and consulting business, and that's what I do

these days.

And I'm a coach here at Google.

I've been coaching here for about a year.

It's a program that Merrill Blanchards is mentoring,

starting, just kind of seeing it along, growing this program

here at Google.

And it's been a really wonderful experience for me to

meet people here and work with people, particularly on issues

of leadership and communication.

And I feel like a lot of what I'm doing often is around this

topic of accomplishing more by doing less.

I wanted to talk about just a few little stories, a few

little images that come to mind about this topic.

One is a story that I heard over the weekend, which was

about sawmills, about making wood in sawmills.

And someone was describing to me how--

I guess it was about 50 or 60 years ago--

that sawdust was this huge problem, that sawdust was just

piling up as these trees were being milled.

And the sawdust was being just put into landfills, and it was

a big issue.

Well, at some point, someone had this brilliant idea that

sawdust could be used and made into plywood.

And this was, I thought, a really wonderful way to

accomplish something by doing less.

And in fact, it's also a really good example in that

it's taking garbage, it's taking something that looks

like it's not needed and making it into something that

is really, really useful.

And I think this is a really good metaphor in our lives.

Most of us don't want to look at the garbage in our lives,

and it's that garbage in our lives, or that stuff that's

extra, the stuff that we do that's automatic--

for example, I was with a coaching client just a few

days ago who said, my day tomorrow is horrendous.

I really have this horrendous day tomorrow.

It's going to be hectic and busy.

I'm going to be going from one thing to another.

And I immediately got into a discussion about priming, and

what I've been calling the power of positive priming.

Anybody familiar with this term, priming?

It's become quite popular because Malcolm Gladwell, in

the book Blink, talks a lot about priming.

Priming is like, if I were to yawn, or if I were to use the

word yawn, many of you without even-- like

someone's yawning now.

No, not really.

But words like yawn or tired, or words like hectic and busy

and stretched.

Now, in our culture, and I'm sure this doesn't happen here

at Google, but in general, these words, and being so busy

that you can't get to everything, is kind of a badge

of honor, right?

If you're not running from one thing to another, if you're

not constantly on the go, then you're kind of a

loser in our culture.

And there's kind of this--

imagine if someone said, what are you doing today?

And you said, hanging out.

Or if you said, I'm thinking about--

I'm doing some creative work.

One thing I would ask you to think about is when and where

did you have your last really creative and interesting idea?

Just think about that for a moment.

What was your last really creative idea?

What comes to mind?

What was the idea, and where were you?

AUDIENCE: Well, I can't talk about the idea.

MARC LESSER: I understand.

AUDIENCE: I was driving north on 101 Avenue.

Unpleasantly early hours, I would rather be asleep.

MARC LESSER: Yes.

So driving, I think driving is where many great ideas--

showering, I've noticed.

It's good to spend a lot of time in the shower.

Great ideas seem to happen in the shower.

Rather than rush through your shower--

or even things like washing dishes is another place where

great ideas often occur.

Another image I wanted--

yes.

AUDIENCE: I was going to say, I actually had an idea while I

was sitting here.

Just taking time away from your desk in the day-to-day,

having a pause.

MARC LESSER: I find that the most creative time that I have

is when I sit down on an airplane.

When I get on an airplane, the world is different.

And suddenly, I'm out of my usual environment and I have a

completely different perspective on things.

And I usually start writing and start doing my planning

and goal setting during that time.

I wanted to talk about one other image that has been a

really important image to me, that I think is very relevant

to this accomplishing more by doing less topic.

And this was something that occurred while I was a Zen

student, living at Green Gulch Farm in Marin County.

And my job there, which was quite surprising that I got

asked to do this work, I was in charge of the draft horse

farming project up at Green Gulch.

And particularly surprising, I had been a student at

Tassajara and I had gotten tapped on the shoulder one day

and asked if I would go be in charge of this draft horse

farming project.

And I thought for sure that someone must

have misread my resume.

Because though I was pretty good at gymnastics and the

horses in high school, I had never at all seen a

four-legged horse.

But one of the really important skills that was

needed while being a horse farmer at Green Gulch was the

skill of welding, was learning to weld and fix this old horse

equipment that was lying around Green Gulch.

And I was very lucky to have a terrific welding teacher who

was actually a Yurok Indian-trained shaman as well

as a Ph.D-trained agronomist at UC Berkeley.

And he told me one day that the secret of welding is to

realize that the natural state of metal is liquid, that it

just happens to be frozen.

And that welding is applying heat to this metal and

returning it to its natural state, which is liquid.

And that once you do that, once you've softened this

metal, you can shape it easily.

You can accomplish a lot by doing very little with this

softened metal.

And as my teacher-- his name is Harry Roberts-- as he told

me that, he would let out this loud belly laugh and say, this

also is the secret of being a human being.

That we and our lives and things appear solid, that we

get into this state of seeing everything as fixed and solid.

And that the secret is to apply, in this case, the heat

of our attention, putting our attention on things and seeing

that the world is actually much, much more fluid than we

think it is.

And I think this is a really good image and starting point,

that image of fluidity and the image of the sawmill, and

having this creative way of turning garbage, turning

what's not needed, into things that are useful.

And now I want to segue into what I think of as--

I want to talk about seven different practices, seven

different things that I think are quite practical, and ways

that you can take this accomplishing more by doing

less into your daily lives, and particularly into your

work lives.

The first is, I would call, retreat to get ahead.

Retreat to get ahead.

And I almost always in my coaching practice--

one of the first things I do with people that I'm working

with is suggest strongly that they have some kind of a

meditation practice in their lives.

And it can just be 10 or 15 minutes in the morning, or 10

or 15 minutes in the evening, when you take some time to

just appreciate being alive.

And meditation is really no more complex than that.

It's taking the time to stop where you're not doing

anything and you're just being completely with your own

breath and body.

Being with your own breath and body and having a spirit of

curiosity and appreciation.

What a marvelous gift to be able to give to ourselves in a

daily way, to take that time of having--

to be able to spend some time with that spirit of curiosity

and a spirit of appreciation.

And in addition to a daily practice, I also highly

recommend that you take some kind of retreat in your lives.

And this is different than a vacation.

You hear over and over again that vacations are usually so

much about doing.

A retreat is to take some time where you're

actually not doing.

And there's some real wisdom to the Jewish Sabbath, the

practice of taking from Friday night--

imagine having a day a week where you

weren't doing anything.

And we did this in my family, particularly when

my kids were young.

We had just a few rules that made a huge difference.

One rule was, no spending money.

Another rule was, no getting in the car.

Those two rules are--

imagine having a day where you don't get in your car and you

don't spend money.

What would you do?

What you would do is, life gets a lot slower when you're

not a consumer and when you're not traveling by car.

So some kind of retreat.

And again, I know for most people, once a week is

probably not very realistic.

But I think once a year--

even Bill Gates, I read, takes two weeks off as a retreat,

where he literally does not go on

vacation but goes on retreat.

I heard a really interesting quote the other day, and I

heard this was something that Gandhi had said, that when

Gandhi became-- the more he became known and recognized as

a public figure, he, of course,

became busier and busier.

And someone asked him, how is it that you handle all of

these demands on your life?

What do you do?

And his response was, well, I used to take one month off

every year as a retreat.

But now I've gotten so busy, I have to take two months off.

And I thought that was a really terrific answer.

So that's practice number one.

Retreat to get ahead.

The second practice is what I call investigating reality.

The practice of investigating reality.

And by this, again, I simply mean that you take the time to

look at basic things like, what is it

you are really doing?

What is it you're really doing?

So like I find with coaching clients, it's really

interesting to see that if I'm coaching someone who is a

leader, say, they're a leader in the engineering department,

they might not get that their job, what they're really

doing, should not be writing code, as much as they love

writing code.

That someone who is overseeing a team has a leadership

position, and their job, their main job may

be inspiring people.

Their main job may be mentoring,

guiding, and listening.

Or their main job may be team building.

So this is a really interesting question, I think,

to be asking.

I did a talk recently for some insurance agents, and I had

just happened to have more contact with the insurance

world than I wanted to, as I was looking into car insurance

and liability insurance.

And I got a whole new perspective on

what insurance was.

And there I was in a room with insurance agents, 50 insurance

agents, and I asked them, what business did they really think

they were in?

And it was startling that most of them didn't really know

what business they were in.

And it looked to me like they were in the business of

compassion, that they were in the business of really helping

to reduce risk of people.

And just asking those most basic questions was really,

really useful.

Part of this investigating reality goes back to something

I mentioned earlier about what I call priming,

and positive priming.

So look and see what kind of priming do you do?

How do you set up your days?

How do you set your intention?

What is your intention during the day?

Is your intention to be busy and overwhelmed, or is your

intention to get a lot done with ease?

What about that?

Who says that getting things done and accomplishing has to

be really difficult and hectic?

We've just heard that some of the best ideas in this room

came from when you're in your car, or when you sit down in

an airplane, or when you take an hour out of your day and

sit down for a talk.

This is where accomplishments often happen.

So there's a lot more I could say about

investigating reality.

I'll give you one other piece.

I would say that this is also where

mindfulness practice happens.

The practice of really paying attention, really paying

attention to not just the things in your room and not

just to other people, but paying attention to

how you show up.

Your own presence will have such tremendous effect on what

you accomplish.

So being aware of how it is you show up, how

are you being present.

Now, I was just lecturing someone this morning.

Someone appeared at my house, pulled up in my driveway,

jammed on the brakes, was on the cellphone, and it just

felt like such a setup to be doing so many things at once.

So an assignment I gave this person was to please show up

at my coaching meetings not on the telephone, on time, and

driving at a normal pace.

What would that be like?

And this is part of priming yourself for success, priming

yourself for accomplishing more by doing less.

So retreat to get ahead, investigate reality.

The third is about routines, and it's what I call create

routines that mint gold.

Creating routines that mint gold.

This expression comes from a poem by the 13th century

Persian poet Rumi, where he says, all

human beings have routines.

Why not create routines that mint gold?

And I would say that--

all of these seven steps, these seven practices that I'm

going to speak about, are very much interrelated.

So an example of a routine that mints gold, I would say,

is a meditation practice.

Having a retreat.

Positive priming.

But what about having positive priming as a routine?

Something that you do every day, maybe noticing that you

may already have some other kind of priming routine in

your life about, oh, isn't this going to be a

horrible, busy day?

Or, I'm really having a lot of second thoughts and fears

about this day.

And you're entering this day in some way where you're

afraid, as opposed to, I'm really

feeling a lot of courage.

I'm going to face into fears today, and I'm feeling a lot

of courage in my day.

So all kinds of routines.

And it starts with paying attention to what routines you

do have. Routines like, what is it that you eat?

What are your routines about food?

What are your routines about exercise?

23:07

What are your routines about communication?

How do you speak to people?

How do you start the day?

Like when you arrive at Google, do you have a routine?

I used to find it really useful that when I get to my

office, when I start my day, I usually spend five or 10

minutes of just looking at what my plans are.

Just being aware of my own breath.

Just feeling what it's--

just being consciously in my body is what I find a really

useful routine to start the day.

I often find that, in meetings, having some kind of

routines about connecting with people, often just having some

way that you bring people into the room, into their bodies,

into some kind of connection, into--

again, a way to prime the meeting is to maybe ask people

about a creative idea.

Ask them something that they've done that has been of

some accomplishment that they had.

Something that they solved.

So routines is the third in this accomplishing more by

doing less practices.

The fourth is what I call communication matters.

Communication matters.

And you've probably noticed this, that nothing happens

just by yourself.

Everything about our lives, inside and outside of work,

involves other people.

And of course, this is obvious, and there's so much

that I could say about this.

But I'll say just two things.

One is to be aware of your emotional wake, like to be

aware of your own emotional presence.

What messages are you giving?

Are you someone who creates stress, or are you someone who

helps relieve stress?

Are you someone who thinks that in order for there to be

a lot of energy, that there needs to be stress?

Or can you show up in a way that's present and energetic

without a lot of emotional wake?

In Zen practice, there's an expression that says, don't be

a smoky fire.

Be a fire that burns clean.

And I think this is really talking about your own

emotional wake.

So is there some kind of a trail as you walk from one

building to another, and you have these discussions with

people, what kind of emotional trail are you leaving?

Are you aware of it?

And what kind of emotional--

what about leaving a positive emotional wake?

What about people feeling good when you show up?

What about people wanting to engage and feeling safe and

energized in discussions?

The second piece I want to say about this communication is--

and it's similar, but the image I have is if you can see

yourself in a discussion with someone, or you're watching

some kind of communication, to notice the

balloon that's there.

And you often see these cartoons where two people will

be saying something, which is the content, and the balloon

is the emotional piece, and it's also the identity piece.

And I think the identity piece, in

particular, is so important.

So even asking someone, can you have this report--

if you're a leader and you ask someone, can you have this

report for me today?

How you say that, the tone of your voice--

27:23

we humans are so amazing at picking up on every little

idiosyncratic tone, gesture.

There's a really interesting book called A General Theory

of Love, which is a book about how it is that we read each

other's energy.

Like I know standing up here, it really doesn't matter at

all what I say.

It's really about--

I hope it matters what I say, but I'm aware of how important

my energy is, like how I show up.

And in some way, I think of these talks as like, ideally,

I'm having a conversation with-- we're all having a

conversation.

Even more than what I say, it's how I show up.

And it's like, you've probably heard that when you interview

someone for a job, that it's so often within the first

three to five seconds, you've maybe not come to a decision,

but you've learned a lot about this person.

In the book Blink, he talks a lot about speed dating.So speed dating is a way that has made use of how it is

that, within just a few seconds or a few minutes, we

have the way of deciding, are we in sync with this person

who's in front of us?

So I'm suggesting being aware of more than just the content

of your conversations and communications.

Be really aware of the emotional piece and the

identity piece.

The identity piece is how you feel about yourself.

Are you feeling some positive self-esteem?

Are you feeling good?

Or are you really feeling kind of crappy?

And it's not about always feeling good, and it's not

about never feeling crappy.

It's about really being aware of what it is you are feeling,

and what it is you are communicating to

people in the room.

The fifth piece is small changes for big results.

Small changes for big results.

And I recently met with someone who works at Fidelity

mutual fund company, which is a company

that has 40,000 employees.

And I was surprised to hear in my conversation with this

leader at Fidelity that-- he said it's not written

anywhere, but that it's on the lips of all 40,000 at almost

all times in Fidelity.

And it's this word, which maybe some of you have heard,

it's called kaizen.

Kaizen.

And it's not the zen from Zen.

This particular zen means good, and kai means changes.

So it's changing things for the good.

And it's making small changes constantly.

And I've noticed for myself, like it's, I think, really

astounding, that, what if you actually

put this into practice?

It's easy to say, but I want to suggest that you actually

think about what are some small changes that you could

make in your work life today?

Like today?

What would be one or two small changes that

you could make today?

And how might that change your ability to accomplish more

with greater ease if you had that as something that was--

you were looking at on a daily basis?

What small change can I make today?

And that you were writing that down, that you were holding

yourself accountable.

And that maybe you were holding the people around you

accountable.

Like what changes, what positive

changes did we make today?

What did we--

and it can be really small, very,

very incremental changes.

But it's amazing how--

I notice I've just recently started putting that into

practice, and I found it to be really, really useful.

And it's not just a bunch of words if you make it not just

a bunch of words, if you make it what small changes can I do

today that would make a difference?

The sixth practice--

this is an interesting one.

This is what I call integrative thinking.

Integrative thinking.

And again, this is one of those things that I think that

we do all the time, but it's bringing it up into more

consciousness.

And I think it really adds power to it.

So integrative thinking is holding two--

what look like contradictory ideas in your mind, and not

being caught by thinking that you have to

decide one or the other.

There was a study--

I think this was in a recent Harvard Business Review--

they talk about this study that was done about what makes

business leaders exceptional.

What is it that business leaders do that is

exceptional?

And what this person who did the study found was just this,

that they were always holding these competing ideas and not

being forced into deciding.

And in fact, what often ended up happening, the longer they

held and massaged those competing

ideas, something emerged.

Some decision emerged that maybe had elements from both

of these, what looked like competing ideas.

And I think there's many, many ways to use

this in your own life.

There's a terrific Walt Whitman poem from Leaves of

Grass where he starts, I am a contradiction.

I am a contradiction.

So I suggest that all of you write that poem for yourself.

Look at the way that you are a contradiction.

If I look at--

I notice like at work, I take a long time to make decisions.

I'm very slow in making decisions.

And I can be very decisive and quick when I need to be.

At work, I can be completely--

I aspire to be completely myself, and I'm aware that I'm

always playing some role.

It wouldn't be true to say that I'm completely myself,

because I'm playing a role.

We all are playing a role at work.

And it wouldn't be true to say that I'm

not completely myself.

In maybe a more pragmatic way, when I started my publishing

company Brush Dance many years ago, we started as an

environmental products mail order catalog, and then began

to morph into becoming a wholesale company as our

customers told us that we just were not a mail order catalog.

We were a wholesale company.

And it really worked.

We continued to morph back and forth between trying to take

the best in both.

And I know Google does that in so many ways, as there's--

what are the ways to use a search engine?

What is a search engine?

And it's, as you all know, it's much more

than a search engine.

There are many, many contradictions to how basic

business models can be used and morphed and grown.

And again, to be able to hold these contradictions in your

thinking, and to really bring them forward.

So integrative thinking is what I have as the sixth of

these practices.

And the seventh, the seventh is something that comes from a

lot of the creativity and innovation literature.

The seventh is the practice of asking dumb

or penetrating questions.

Asking dumb or penetrating questions.

And this starts, I think, with asking yourself dumb and

penetrating questions like, what is it

you're really doing?

Or what is it you're doing that's extra?

Or how are my leadership skills really?

What leadership skills do I need to grow in myself, and

how would I go about doing that?

What is it I really want to accomplish?

So we're talking about accomplishing more.

What t t t

What is it you really want to accomplish?

Why do you want to accomplish more?

More of what?

For what sake?

Accomplish more for what sake?

What does it really mean to lead a happy, authentic life?

What does it really mean to help other people?

How is it we can practice things like compassion?

So I think this is about having the courage to ask

really, really dumb questions.

I see now that most of you don't have your

laptops in your lap.

37:15

So I want to end by teaching you three yoga postures.

So if you are willing to, just put down things

and how about even--

is it OK to stand up?

Will that work?

So how about if everybody stands up for a second?

So I want to teach you three yoga postures that I think are

really important in business and are a good way to help you

accomplish more by doing less.

The first is a posture called courage.

And what you do, it's really simple.

Just stand up straight, take a breath.

How about another breath?

Bend your knees slightly, put your hands on your groins,

hands on your groins.

Head straight, eyes looking ahead, and think courage.

Let the word courage come into your body and mind.

Courage.

OK.

The second is the warrior pose.

And this is about being a warrior.

There's many, many ways of doing the warrior pose, and

this is one fairly simple one.

How about taking your right foot and point your right foot

forward, and turn your left foot perpendicular to it.

Bend your knees, so you're kind of going to bend-- right.

Great.

The whole room just bent there.

That was terrific.

And left hand behind you and up.

And right hand forward like that.

And you're almost lunging forward like a warrior.

Back straight.

So this is a warrior pose.

This third yoga pose, this is not in any yoga book at all.

You'll never see this in any yoga book.

And this, I think, may be the most important yoga pose, and

it goes like this.

It's a pose that requires movement and voice.

You step forward, arms in the air, big smile on your face,

and go, I failed.

Try that with me.

I failed.

One more time.

I failed.

Once again.

I failed.

You guys are great.

You can sit down now.

The thing about failure is, guess what.

If you want to make any kind of change, if you want to do

anything differently or better, you're

going to fail at it.

And why is it, in our culture, we get so tight, we get so

tight and we cringe and our bodies kind of collapse any

time we make a mistake, as though making a mistake isn't

a good thing.

What if--

I got this from improv classes that I've been taking, because

I needed to have more places in my life

where I could be terrified.

But improv really allowed me to, over and over again, to

feel terrified and to fail, and to feel good about it.

In improv, people don't want to see you look good and look

like you have it together.

And they don't want to see you screw up and

feel bad about it.

What they really want to see is for you to screw up and

feel good about it.

And imagine being able to take risks and try things.

And again, this is about, over and over again, making lots

and lots of little mistakes and learning from them.

So all of these practices, you will fail at

all of these practices.

You may set an intention that you're going to have a

meditation practice every day, or you're going to change your

routines, and you revert into old routines.

I've noticed in some workshops I've done, once people get

this, I failed, they really get into it.

But it really completely changes the dynamic if you

could see failure and see making mistakes as something

to learn and grow by.

And again, there's an expression in the world of Zen

that the life of a Zen teacher is one continuous mistake.

One continuous mistake.

Again, it's that image that you may have heard about, like

a good pilot, a good airplane pilot, is constantly--

it looks like they're just going a straight course.

But when you look really closely, they're constantly

correctig.

Constantly correcting, learning from that mistake and

correcting.

So please practice.

I hope you'll practice all of these at home and at work.

We have some time if there's questions,

comments, concerns, anything.

Yes, please.

AUDIENCE: The last thing you were saying about mistakes

reminded me of something that I overheard when I was

starting graduate school.

Shortly after starting graduate school, I heard,

around the corner, a couple of the professors talking about

different graduate students.

And one of them said, well, who do you like among the new

graduate students?

And he said, oh, well, I like this one particular guy.

And he said, really?

You think he's the smartest one?

He said, oh, no, he's not the smartest one.

time he fails, he gets right back up and dusts

himself off and keeps going.

That's why he's the best.

MARC LESSER: That's great.

That reminds me of the--

there's a little story about the bee and the fly, right?

If you put a bee in a jar and you put a fly in a jar, who

will get out first, and why?

The bee is a lot smarter, and therefore the bee will never

find his way out of the jar.

It will keep going into the light of the

glass until it dies.

The dumb fly will try everything possible, and will

eventually find its way out.

I think it's the same kind of story.

Thanks.

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dlinsin 5 years ago
summary:
1. retreat to get ahead
2. investigate reality
3. create routines that mint gold
4. communication matters
5. small changes for big results
6. integrative thinking
7. asking dumb or penetrating questions

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Tuesday, January 8, 2013