The Thinking CEO's Survival Kit

What you need now -- personally -- to build a business and find peace of mind at the same time

I may not run a company, but I am like you in more ways than I'd care to admit.

We won't go into detail about the kids' soccer games I've missed or the friends' calls that went unreturned; I'm not ready for that kind of public confession. But let's just say I let work loom larger in my life than is good for me or my family. I have the uneasy feeling that they didn't have people like me in mind when they coined the term Renaissance man.

Peace of mind? Sense of being in control? In this, the last decade of the most frenzied century mankind has ever known? Right. As soon as this cover story is finished. As soon as you've restructured the business or set up a rep network or hired a chief financial officer. Isn't peace of mind for wimps?

Not if you're smart, it isn't. No matter how chimerical it may seem, peace of mind is not a luxury anymore, especially for company builders, who are the makers, not the instruments, of company policy -- who are the role models, the culture creators, the surrogate parents to that little community of workers each business brings together. And who face those challenges in an age of unprecedented flux (global competition, ever-changing technology, ever-growing regulation, and employees in the new participatory economy who ask of their leaders skills not yet learned).

And as a company builder you face all that largely alone, without the help of peers and supervisors that the rest of us routinely lean on for encouragement, instruction, perspective, and relief.

A few chief executives know all that -- and dream of having kaleidoscopic lives, anyway: of retaining or renegotiating an identity, personal and financial, that's separate from their companies. They make the time to turn acquaintances into friends. They seek new ways to stretch their intellect, aerate their spirits, and find an enduring sense of fulfillment.

What's more, they know that along with all its personal benefits, peace of mind is good business, too. They recognize what too many CEOs don't: that in all probability they're their company's single biggest asset. They know that running a company is too hard nowadays if you're not finding ways to become wiser than you were last year and more knowledgeable than you were last month. It's too hard if you can't keep your perspective or sustain the emotional and intellectual energy that good leadership requires. It's too hard if you're not taking care of yourself.

And anyway, if you're not taking care of yourself, then building a business isn't worth the trouble in the first place.

Consider this article a well-meaning intervention, a catalog of tips that reflect Inc.'s collective sense of how entrepreneurial leaders might achieve and sustain peace of mind. Consider it an admonition, too -- even a plea. Be good to yourself. Have faith that cultivating your own peace of mind is the wisest thing you can do for your company.

Oh, and it will feel great, too.

* * *

Contents:
1. Your obituary (in a survival kit?)

2. A board of advisers that meets once a month (your customers will gladly serve)

3. A confessor who's available for regular dates and more concerned about you than about your business

4. One night a week to learn a foreign language (naval history? the principles of architecture?) with no homework required

5. A two-week family hike (annually, to where there are bears)

6. A plan to manage your money as carefully as you manage your company's

7. Your latest LDL cholesterol number (checked twice a year)

8. The name of your successor (and the date he or she takes over)

9. A weekly lunch date with your switchboard operator

1 0. An eight-point guide to a harmonious workplace

11. Twenty minutes a day to meditate (to let great ideas in)

1. Your obituary

Here Lies the CEO

We agree: seeking perspective by writing your own obituary today is the biggest cliché in the book. Gravestone as touchstone? Inscription as prescription? Puh-leeze. Nevertheless: what do you really want to be remembered for?

If marble citations are too much of a downer, here's a more, uh, lively way to handle it. You could scribble down a "purpose statement," as Sheila West, CEO of ACI Consolidated, in Monroe, Mich., has done. West has, over several months, outlined her many roles in life: mother, wife, community leader, company CEO, and more. For each role, she has decided what she wants to become, and she gauges herself periodically against those goals.

Monuments or memos -- the format doesn't matter. The point is to find a simple but enduring way to acknowledge that there's more to you than being skipper of your sleek little corporate vessel. (There isn't? See "Getting a Life," page 3.) It is to provide a tangible mechanism for measuring your growth as a multidimensional creature, as distinct from your company as a mother is from her child.

Your employees want you to be three parts Churchill and one part Gandhi, spiced with a dash of Letterman. But there's a broader way to define yourself, using questions like these: Without the company you gave birth to, is there any you there? Who do you want that person to be?

2. A board of advisers

Shoulders to Lean On, Part I

When they said it was lonely at the top, they didn't mean Jack Welch at GE or John Smith at GM -- they meant you.

Down there at the apex of your growing company, there's no policy manual on how to fire your banker and no MIS director whose neck you can breathe down when the system crashes. You have no boardroom buddies you can kvetch with. Not until you create them, O Zeus among company builders.

But there are ways to combat the sense of isolation, to get the inside scoop from industry veterans, or simply to get some distance from the week's crises. You might divide the support needed into two kinds: the succor that helps patch up your psychic and emotional self (see "Shoulders to Lean On, Part II," below) and the more formal, project-specific assistance that addresses the tactical and strategic wants of the company.