Beauty and the Beast
When I wake up now, my routine after my most basic ablutions is to go into my study (conveniently located off our master suite) and check on the state of my world. I start by understanding how much sleep I have gotten. My CPAP machine nicely records that, and while I like to get seven hours, I’m satisfied with anything over six (I have yet to go much over eight and that is a rare event). Next I ask if anything hurts excessively? I am blessed with few ailments yet so the answer is most often no, though an occasional stiff neck or sore lower back evidences something foolish I did the day before (in the case of this morning, it was my ride of my Kawasaki Versys 1000 motorcycle up and down a mountain too fast and twisting around to look at something). I am reminded of Jay Leno saying that he is at an age where if he turns his head and yawns too quickly he suffers for three weeks for it. Then I check the all-important work emails (there are three, but only two with regular flow). Once I deal with those, it’s a glance at Gmail to see if anything important has snuck into that inbox, knowing that the unimportant ones will get processed out over the day with as many “unsubscribe” filings as I can stand to administer. OK, once in a while I get hooked on some theme or product that catches my fancy so I have to leave those to ponder.
That then leaves me to step outside on the porch of the study, which looks eastward. The sun is rising over the patio and the hot tub and the beauty of the Madagascar Bottle Tree, a horticultural marvel of a specimen tree that has grown to impressive proportions perhaps measuring a girth of fifteen or more feet at its widest center point. That setting alone would put most idyllic private resorts to shame as a place to enjoy an English Colonial breakfast or a croissant and jam. The gurgling of the man made brook that cascades down from beneath the massive reddish stone boulder to the iridescent tiled hot tub is lovely even though it does not pretend too hard to be a natural setting. The privacy of my hot tub with its border of massive natural boulders and an array of variegated cacti makes for a calm setting in which to soak myself for enough time to review those emails and maybe even write a story or draft some strategic work document. This morning it was the setting of a long and important call with the CEO of a tech company in which we hold an investment and with which we want to consider merging. The calm and beautiful setting actually helps with the state of mind and lends a certain gentility to whatever conversation gets engaged. I like to think that the beauty keeps the business beast at bay.
My office work space works the same way. I have a desktop computer from my NYC apartment that is still in the garage and I haven’t moved it onto my desk yet. The monitor must be 34 inches or more compared to the Dell laptop that I use now that, while a large screen for a laptop (17” or so), is dwarfed by my desktop monitor. My biggest hesitancy of bringing it out and setting it up is that it will block some of my view out the window directly ahead of my desk. Right now I can look over my laptop screen and still see the view of the hillside and the distant San Gabriel and San Jacinto Mountains. Do I really want to ignore that much beauty so that I can have a more magnified version of my work? Hard to say that’s a good trade.
I am reminded every few days that the business beast still lives inside of me. I do not think this is a beast I was born with, but rather it is a beast that is part of the learned behavior of business. For years on Wall Street, I was told that I was “too nice” for Wall Street. I’m sure there are plenty who would disagree. Someone once introduced me as a wood sprite dressed in the clothes of a banker. I’m not sure how many 6’5” 350 pound wood sprites there are, but I liked the comment nonetheless for the kinder, gentler sentiment. By the same token, One of the toughest bankers I ever worked with, a friend from Wales who played rugby and specialized in bar fights, once told me that I was the one guy he did not ever want to make mad. His point was that there was a beast inside that wood sprite that was as nasty and dangerous as any he had encountered.
I’m not sure either extreme is correct, but I do know that there is a wild man inside of me that can come out, occasionally without my control or desire and at other times as part of a command performance I can invoke for effect. I have had to reassure my wife at times that I am not mad as a wet hen just because she heard me rant at some thing or somebody over the phone. I cannot say if that characteristic is unique to Wall Street bankers, but I suspect it is not. Being a beast seems somehow necessary in business, but I am more than prepared to prove that wrong by trying to be a more even-keeled business person now that I am surrounded every day with so much beauty.
I believe it is possible to be a passionate business person and leader without being a crazy man beast to people. Some managers think it is a necessity to be tough at all costs and at all times. They think tough equates to good business. My experience is that the less someone is naturally inclined to be tough, the more they are prone to acting tough in business situations because they think its expected of them and that its the only way to be recognized as a good business leader. It’s a shame and most often a mistake. The only thing more disastrous than a naturally nasty person at the helm is a person who thinks they need to be nasty and who does not come to it naturally.
I believe that our setting and surroundings set the stage for our psyche. There is a reason why people surround themselves with beauty. It isn’t just for relaxation, but rather also for better business. I have always found that being a person people want to be around is a much bigger benefit than being a tough guy who people supposedly respect and are happy to deal with out of necessity. That is a hard dimension of business to measure, but I am nonetheless sure that over time it works well and perhaps most importantly, it keeps you and everyone around you from needlessly burning out prematurely. It’s as tiring being a beast as it is coming up against a beast.
Beauty is all around us. I may have found my beautiful spot on this Southern California hillside, but that is me and this is here. But that is not enough. The beast can follow you anywhere. The only answer is to choose the beauty over the beast. That is my current mission.