If you can lose weight, you can lead an organization. The weight-loss industry has given us not only a personal self-help model, but a business one as well. If you’re one of the millions of folks attending these programs you have readily transferable leadership skills for today’s marketplace.
Just follow these six simple steps and you too can be attractive, successful and the envy of your corporate colleagues.
CAUTION: This advice is not intended to be taken seriously and may be injurious to your health, both personal and financial. Neither the Surgeon General nor Tom Peters has approved these prescriptions. Please contact a high-priced management consultant before attempting on your own. Common side effects may include nausea when reviewing the company’s Executive Compensation Plan, mild depression in implementing “Best Practice” business solutions and acute drowsiness when attending programs sponsored by the Human Resources department. A healthy disrespect for authority and the propensity to trust your innate common sense may be dangerously elevated. On rare occasion, patients have been known to cancel their subscriptions to the “Harvard Business Review.”
1 - Eat small but frequent meals.
Overeating is a long-standing problem for the weight-conscious. So is the insidious danger of eating alone. Food consequently becomes a personal temptation rather than a communal event. This solipsistic tendency has also leached its way into our business life. In our attempts to compete in the global economy, it seems we’ve arrived at a place where we consume lunch at our desks, and often by ourselves. Increasingly, this mid-day repast is abandoned altogether.
We no longer have time to fraternize with coworkers, and have quarantined ourselves to the confines of our offices and cubicles. Coming from a place of isolation, we’re surprised when fellow workers don’t return calls, reply with curt e-mails or become disinclined to help us navigate the bureaucratic maze of business life.
This is to be expected when co-workers don’t know us, haven’t spent time with us and have never been invited to join us for a meal. As every newly minted MBA graduate knows: business is all about relationships. If I don’t know you, don’t like you or have no personal contact with you - I’ve no incentive to go out of my way to try and help. By not sharing meals with colleagues we have fostered a type of corporate anorexia.
We’re starving ourselves to death for want of social contact.
The business suffers. Productivity plummets. Our career languishes. And, not surprisingly, we’re no longer fun to work with.
Things would improve if we regularly resisted the temptation to eat alone and joined co-workers for lunch. Fast-food restaurants should be shunned. Salads (with low-fat dressing on the side) are encouraged.
Whining about senior management is injurious to your heart and to be avoided. A conversation focused on people’s talents increases circulation and reduces harmful saturated fats within the organization.
2 – Drink plenty of fluids.
Research indicates that most of us are walking around the workplace severely dehydrated, so we need to bulk up on our fluid intake. Water is the preferred drink - since coffee, tea and soda further deplete one’s hydration. It’s also a lot cheaper, provided you get it from the tap and not the vending machine. Imbibing vast quantities of water also has the unintended benefit of strategically positioning you before two epicenters of employee engagement: the bathroom and the water cooler.
Both locations seem to be the last vestiges where workers feel free to talk openly and engage in the ancient rite of truth-telling. Frequenting both places provides productive opportunities to stay connected to the rumor mill and ascertain how employees are really feeling.
These activities also have a cost-cutting benefit. You’ll no longer need to conduct another employee survey or host further focus groups to find out the concerns of workers: a savings of both time and money. Merely show up and shut up. Listening to co-workers’ gripes gives you valuable information for taking corrective action and remedying misunderstandings. It also offers a jump-start for offsetting corporate misinformation and destructive rumor-mongering.
3 – Engage in regular physical activity.
Buy a pedometer, clip it to your waist and begin walking around the workplace. As you increase your mileage, your soft body will be better toned and your business mind will be better informed.
If you notice someone who’s recently lost weight and looks better than you, temper your personal jealousy and extend a kindly word of congratulations. At all cost, resist the temptation to once again beat yourself up for being lazy, undisciplined or neglectful of your diet. In emergency situations, repeat the mantra “Oprah would never condone self-flagellation.”
Pay close attention to what’s working well throughout the organization and compliment people on their good efforts. Make special attempts to visit with staff who consistently perform excellent work but get little recognition. Extend your heartfelt thanks and remind them that their contributions don’t go unnoticed. Bring along a box of low-fat cookies to wantonly distribute.
Consider making more extended journeys to off-site locations and even dropping in on some key customers, internal and external. Ask them if they’re pleased with your services and elicit advice for improving customer satisfaction.
4 – Avoid the near occasions of Sin.
The Spanish have a saying: Habits are first cobwebs, then cables. So monitor closely what you do, where you go and with whom you get involved. Temptations abound in both the fights to trim the waistline and lead the organization.
Personal danger spots to be avoided include anything that’s sweet (products or people), gourmet meals, and everything dipped in chocolate (products or people). While they appear momentarily pleasing, lurking just below the surface is subtle peril.
Corporate danger spots include the executive floor, company cafeterias and any business initiative preceded by the term “cutting-edge.”
Recent data suggests that outsourcing excess body weight is more enjoyable than doing it to your company’s call center. Sadly, there still remains no practical business process in place that allows you to consume a whole lemon meringue pie at your desk but have the calories offshored to some hungry, low-paid professional in India.
I understand that Tom Friedman’s next book, The World is Flat … but My Belly Isn’t will address this predicament.
5 - Shun negative people.
While these folks have a necessary place in the world, that place should not be anywhere within a 10-mile radius of you. Cynics, naysayers and devil’s advocates have something valuable to offer, just let them momentarily offer it to someone else. When trying to make improvements to your own health or the company’s, the task at hand is challenging enough without the voices of doom and gloom constantly echoing in your ear. The “truth” these refreshing souls have to contribute is best kept for another day.
Instead, create a support group of like-minded people who understand what you’re trying to do and are willing to offer their passion and advice for a successful outcome. Positive energy is an essential part of any change program, physical or fiscal. Spouses and trusted colleagues can be of tremendous value in this regard. Those going through divorce or recently passed over for promotion, less so. Steer clear of “high-potential” employees or extremely thin people.
6 – Carefully monitor your intake.
We are what we eat. But what’s also become clear is that we believe what we read. So stop looking through Cosmopolitan, GQ and all those other glamour magazines. They profile unnatural bodies and unrealistic lifestyles. The adolescent diets they purport are unworkable, overly simplistic and contain more celebrity fluff than substance.
This likewise holds true for the many business journals that are out there flaunting business Best Practices. This fawning deference to what other companies have already done has become the adolescent bane of corporate life. When we were teenagers, we showed our uniqueness by behaving exactly like all our peers. Best Practices is a throwback to this pubescent model: “You too can be world class by mindlessly mimicking IBM.”
What works for General Electric is most likely not going to work for your company. If it were truly that simple, you would have only needed to purchase Jack Welch’s first book. But he’s already out there selling his second, which contains “new and improved” insights for transforming your business. Rumor has it that he’s close to cutting a deal on his third. Even Stephen Covey didn’t stop with his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He’s now touting the 8th one.
Notice a trend here?
One last thing
If you’re looking for a quick answer on how to lose weight or successfully compete in today’s marketplace, Gertrude Stein offers some sobering advice: “There ain’t no answer. There ain’t gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. There’s the answer!”
As life would have it, we’re all required to work with what we have, play the cards we’ve been dealt and implement change with the flawed humans inhabiting our workplace. Stop looking for answers in the eyes of someone else. Wisdom resides within. We’re better off implementing a mediocre business process that’s embraced by our employees than a Best Practice one sold to us by some outside business guru.
We’re likewise well served befriending the less-than-perfect bodies that the Divine has bestowed on us rather than pining after the ones profiled on late-night infomercials.
Besides, if you were truly that firm, tight, and chiseled – people might be drawn to you based on looks alone.
Fortunately, this is something most of us need not worry about.
P.S. If you’re thinking about writing me, give in to the temptation. I love getting mail ... and being influenced by what you have to say. Please e-mail me at
Kenny Moore is co-author of The CEO and the Monk: One Company’s Journey to Profit and Purpose (John Wiley and Sons), rated as one of the top ten best selling business books on Amazon.com.
Prior to coming to corporate life, Moore spent 15 years in a monastic community as a Catholic priest. Oddly enough, both jobs have proven to be quite similar, except the Incentive Plans vary greatly. Kenny left the monastery because he wanted to get married. Now that he’s married and has two teenagers ... he would like to go back.
The media once asked Pope John XXIII how many people worked at the Vatican. “About half of them…” he said. Moore has discovered that there are common operating principles in effect whenever you’re dealing with large hierarchical institutions, sacred or secular.
Kenny has survived “incurable” cancer and open-heart surgery, largely due to luck and Divine playfulness. Having dealt with both God and death, he now finds himself eminently qualified to work with senior management on corporate change efforts.
Moore is a watercolor artist, poet and photographer. He is Founding Director of Art for the Anawim, a not-for-profit charity which works with the art community in supporting the needs of terminally ill children and the inner city poor. His poems have been published in several anthologies; one was selected as a semi-finalist in the North American Open Poetry Contest. Kenny lives in Northern New Jersey and is married to the “fair and beautiful” Cynthia. Together, they are fighting a losing battle of maintaining their mental stability while raising 2 teenage boys.
Kenny has recently expanded his work to include Stand-up Comedy. This is driven largely by the sneaking suspicion that when the Divine returns, She will find a more receptive audience in bars and comedy clubs than in our Houses of Worship.
Moore is President of Kenny Moore Consulting, LLC. He’s a well-regarded Keynote speaker, executive coach and business consultant for Leadership Development, Change Management and Employee Engagement. He can be reached at kennythemonk@yahoo.com or (973) 956-8210.
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