In the great Zen tradition of teaching stories, Marc Lesser relates his own personal and professional trials as he navigates the delicate path of managing a successful business while staying true to his spiritual roots. Struggling through a difficult economic climate, he also faces the usual challenges of running a growing company -- meeting payroll, balancing cashflow, hiring and firing employees, and maintaining relationships with vendors and customers. Guiding him through these difficulties while providing strength and insight is the practice of Zen. Utilizing his training as a Zen practitioner, Lesser learns to apply specific teachings such as the eight-fold path directly to work and life. In chapters such as "Work: The Impossible Request," "Appreciating Uncertainty," and "Accomplishing More by Doing Less," ZBA: The Zen of Business Administration provides readers with intimate, helpful advice, while acknowledging the paradox of applying spiritual practice to the business world.
Entrepreneur Marc Lesser built his company, Brush Dance, from a tiny recycled-paper venture operated out of his garage into a multimillion-dollar publisher of greeting cards and calendars. Armed with an MBA, this founder and CEO grappled with the usual challenges of running a company: meeting payroll and balancing cashflow, hiring and firing employees, and maintaining relationships with vendors and customers. Informing every decision was Lesser’s commitment to Zen practice. As an ordained Zen priest, he has practiced and studied Zen for thirty years. In Z.B.A. he follows the great spiritual tradition of teaching stories to beautifully describe the delicate path of living a working life as a spiritual practice.
A certain kind of busyness is crucial to life, allowing us to earn a living, create art, and achieve success. But too often it consumes us and we become crazy busy, nonstop busy, and we expend extraneous effort that gets us nowhere. Marc Lesser’s new book shows us the benefits of doing less in a world that has increasingly embraced more — more desire, more activity, more things, more exhaustion. Less is about stopping, about the possibility of finding composure in the midst of activity. The ideas and practices that Lesser outlines offer a radical yet simple approach to transforming a lifestyle based on endless to-do lists into a more meaningful approach that is truly more productive in every sense.
What would your work and your life look like if you knew how to stay focused yet flexible, if you got more of the right things done, and if you were helping to create a more peaceful world at the same time? “A mindful leader makes the work environment a generative social field in which compassion, connection, and creativity thrive. The seven accessible practices in this book can teach you how to become just such a leader.” — from the foreword by Daniel J. Siegel, MD, executive director of Mindsight Institute Today’s leaders are grappling with the pace and complexity of change, the challenge of supporting healthy collaboration and alignment among teams, and the resulting stress and burnout. The practice of mindful leadership may be one of the most important competencies in business today if leaders are to move beyond fear, anxiety, nagging self-doubt, and the feeling of constant overwhelm. Marc Lesser has taught his proven seven-step method to leaders at Google, Genentech, SAP, Facebook, and dozens of other Fortune 500 companies for over twenty years and has distilled a lifetime of mindfulness and business experience into these chapters. This incredibly practical yet accessible book draws on Marc’s experience as a CEO of three companies, as cofounder of the world-renowned Search Inside Yourself (SIY) program within Google, and as a longtime Zen practitioner. The principles in this book can be applied to leadership at any level, providing readers with the tools they need to shift awareness, enhance communication, build trust, eliminate fear and self-doubt, and minimize unnecessary workplace drama. Embracing any one of the seven practices alone can be life-changing. When used together, they support a path of well-being, productivity, and positive influence. Practicing mindful leadership will allow you to achieve results — with more energy, clarity, meaning, and connection. Your intentions and actions will be more aligned. You will accomplish more with less wasted effort. After reading this book, you’ll understand why some of the world’s most successful companies routinely incorporate the Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader, integrating mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and business savvy to create great corporate cultures, and even a better world.
Our brains seek order and resist the unexpected, inconsistent, and counterintuitive. But life is more often paradoxical than predictable — which is why formulas for fulfillment and success often fail. Instead of fighting the tide of contradiction and confusion, Marc Lesser asserts, we can learn to understand and even embrace them using the simple tools he presents in these pages. Readers learn to master five core competencies: Know Yourself, Forget Yourself; Be Confident, Question Everything; Fight for Change, Accept What Is; Embrace Emotion, Embody Equanimity; and Benefit Others, Benefit Yourself. The result is balance, a version of Buddhism’s “middle way,” which prompts understanding of what is required in any given moment and actions through which we skillfully “dance” with paradox in enriching and joyful ways. Bolstered by the latest in neuroscience, this guide is nuanced and direct, profound and practical.
Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader evolved out of Marc Lesser's work helping to create Search Inside Yourself, a mindfulness-based emotional intelligence program at Google. In this transformative book, he distills a lifetime of contemplative practice and business experience into seven simple, powerful practices for optimizing mindful leadership at work, as well as living a full and meaningful life: • Love the work • Do the work • Don't be an expert • Connect to your pain • Connect to the pain of others • Depend on others • Keep making it simpler
We all yearn for clear-cut answers to life's problems, yet we rarely get them. Formulas fail and contradictions mount. In 'Know Yourself, Forget Yourself', executive coach and mindfulness teacher Marc Lesser shows that understanding and embracing the points where life feels most confusing, most contradictory can lead us to more satisfaction and joy.Lesser provides clear guidance and simple practices for embracing five central paradoxes in life and navigating them to increase our effectiveness and happiness. Influenced by the revolutionary mindfulness and emotional intelligence trainings he helped develop at Google, 'Know Yourself, Forget Yourself' is a profound book about cultivating the emotional skills to understand the right path through difficulties and challenges.
The Good Company tells the stories of over 30 inspiring companies around the world that are among the ethical leaders in the industry. The broad positive message is encouraging and enervating; each of the companies seeks to live up to the highest standard. The authors tell the steps they have taken and what has motivated them or enabled them to pursue such noble aims. "At last, a book that tackles the topic of sustainability in the global travel industry, but with a real understanding of its economic importance as a better alternative - a must read."--Michael MCloskey, Former Chairman, The Sierra Club "This much-needed work is essentially a cookbook, filled with inspiring recipes for sustainable travel. This will be a valuable resource - for everyone from students to industry leaders - for many years to come."--Jeff Greenwald, Executive DIrector, Ethical Traveler
