Down With Blackberry! The Quest for a Meditative Mind
from
November/December 2006
by Craig Mellow
What do directors think? Here’s a tougher question: How do they find time to think? This is, after all, the world of 500 e-mails a day and wireless devices that deliver them to you, like it or not, anytime and almost anywhere.
The answer: It’s difficult but possible, directors say, if you fight for scraps of serenity. Undivided attention—for others’ and one’s own unhurried and unharried thoughts—is the unsung precious resource of 21st-century business, according to eight directors who discussed the subject in depth with
Corporate Board Member
. The paths to finding it are as varied as personalities. Breakthrough ideas can come while tumbling out of bed at dawn or leafing through a business publication in a favorite chair in the evening, roaming the woods of Northern California or commanding a dressage horse in Connecticut. But they all involve momentarily unplugging from the multimedia maelstrom and putting the Age of Interruption, as
New York Times
columnist Thomas L. Friedman recently dubbed it, on hold.
“There is a category of things that I call big thinking, which is an important part of everyone’s business,” says Karen Horn, 63, a senior managing director at Brock Capital Group who sits on three boards, including Eli Lilly’s, where she is lead director. “I know a few people who seem capable of constantly multitasking and getting that done too. But there are many more people who need to turn off their BlackBerrys and pay attention.”
The most pressured executive can find time to “create small quiet spaces in the day to be by oneself in one’s own thoughts,” says Edward J. Ludwig, 55, chairman and CEO of the New Jersey-based medical-products manufacturer Becton Dickinson. For half of his drive to and from work, about 30 minutes in each direction, he shuts off the radio and bathes in silence. During the noontime workout that he takes most days in the company gym, he makes sure to shut off the TV in front of him.
Ludwig also tries not to let technology rush his decisions. “Part of the electronic age is that it creates a false sense of urgency that’s not always appropriate if you’re not a trader on a desk,” he says. “You have to be able to say, ‘We’ll sleep on that for two days and get back to you.’”
Judith L. Estrin, 51, chairman of Packet Design Inc. in Palo Alto, California, and a board member at FedEx and Walt Disney, preaches a similar take-a-deep-breath gospel amid the frenzy of Silicon Valley. “During the Internet bubble, people saw time shorten. Everything was about getting to market faster to take advantage of growth,” she says. “I don’t think people’s thinking ever readapted after the bubble.”
Much of the big-thinking wisdom that directors offer their companies percolates from the time-honored quality of mental discipline, updated to cope with new and insistent distractions. Kevin Sheehan, 61, a partner at CID Equity Partners in Indianapolis and non-executive chairman of industrial-equipment maker Flowserve, stresses the importance of doing one thing at a time. “I think and work like a rolltop desk with lots of cubicles,” he says. “One thing I do to keep the other cubicles shut while one is open is to not own a BlackBerry.”
Most directors don’t go that far, though they do find the wireless e-mailer a more insidious temptation than the cell phone—it’s easier to peck at unobtrusively when you should be focused on something else. Blocking out chunks of the day to be offline is a near-universal antidote, particularly early in the morning when the mind is fresh. “For over 20 years, I’ve found the only time that I can think and reflect is before most people are awake,” says Bernie Sucher, 46, an American financier who is chairman of Alfa Capital Asset Management in Moscow, Russia. “That’s why I wake up when the city I live in is just about going to sleep, at 4:45 in the morning, and guard that part of the day so jealously.”
Voluminous offline reading still ranks high among corporate leaders’ priorities, not only as a window to information but as a meditative exercise in itself. “I do a lot of my thinking through reading,” Sheehan says. “I save a stack of nonspecific reading—the world economy and politics—for the evening, so I can take my time with it and think about how I might or might not be affected.”
Many pressured businesspeople seek relief more actively. Here directors seem to break into two groups. The first are free-associaters looking to turn off their minds, relax, and float downstream. For Judith Estrin, this means walking four miles a day, the time and location of the ramble varying with circumstances. She takes her cell and BlackBerry with her for bona fide office emergencies, but the more-often-used accessory is a pencil and notepad for scribbling unbidden inspirations. Sometimes she invites a collaborator or subordinate along. “A walking meeting produces different content than sitting down and eating lunch,” she says.
Esther Dyson, 55, a New York City-based technology publisher and investor who sits on seven boards, including that of the big advertising and public-relations company WPP Group, communes with herself in a similar fashion, only underwater. Dyson swims for an hour a day, preferably at 5:30 a.m. More often than Estrin, she takes a specific agenda with her. “If I have a speech to give, I’ll generally compose it in the pool that morning,” she says. “Some people might say it shows.”
The second group finds release in leisure activities requiring what Karen Horn calls “acute attention”—restoring the business-related sector of the subconscious by completely occupying the conscious mind elsewhere. Horn’s therapy is dressage riding, a sport where “if you let your mind wander for a second, it’s very visible in the horse.”
Edward Ludwig goes sailing. Bernie Sucher plays basketball. Stuart Levine, 59, a Long Island-based consultant and author who is lead director at the hospice-care provider Gentiva Health Services, recharges by switching to a different kind of work: “I probably attend three outside seminars a year on topics I don’t know anything about, and I sit on nonprofit boards like the Nature Conservancy. It’s a source of renewal when you’re taken out of your day-to-day context and are thinking about the world in a different context like land use.”
Directors disagree on some ancillary serenity-related issues. One is whether the rejuvenating thinking born of solitude can also be engineered in a group. Ludwig is among the optimists here, praising retreats aimed at an “organized creative process.” A skeptic’s view comes from Warren Batts, 74, a retired CEO of Tupperware Corp. who sits on the board of Methode Electronics and teaches at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. “Offsites have to do mostly with building rapport, not creative thinking,” he says.
One thing our respondents agree on: Multitasking and staying connected 24/7 are losing ground as power symbols in the business world. To find the real player, you may want to look for the person who’s just come in from a long walk or a sail.
