* * *
5:15 a.m. In summer the sun is up (in winter it's still down, and the temperature's below zero to boot) as Joseph fires up the Lexus and heads to the Flagship Athletic Club, 15 minutes away. The club is already bustling with gray-templed executives reading the Wall Street Journal as they trot in place. Joseph sets his treadmill for an eight-minute mile and joins the rat race, a dozen machines wide. His legs are primed to pump for seven getting-nowhere miles, but if his zeal flags, he seeks inspiration from the person jogging next to him. That that person is the fifth jogger next to him since he began doesn't spoil the illusion. "If I give up, I feel defeated," he says. While his companions listen to stereo headsets, Joseph tunes to the "hypnotic rhythm" of his own breathing. In through the nose, out from the mouth, nose, mouth, nose, mouth -- a mystic's Top 40. "Breathing is a life force that unifies mind and body. The fitter you are, the easier breathing is, the less your body gets in the way, the more powerful your mind becomes.
"I have an Eastern sense of values," Joseph says. "The Japanese have influenced me tremendously. The side of Japan I've seen that most Americans haven't seen -- that most Japanese haven't seen -- is hard-core samurai, what the Japanese culture really was, the martial part. Ever since I started, I was taught, 'Never show hurt, never give up, never show fatigue; the mind will lift the body.' " Karate is efficient -- there's no extraneous movement, no extra energy. "The Japanese reduce everything to its basic form and make it simple and powerful," he observes, "and then repeat it over and over again. They do it in martial arts, and they do it in manufacturing."
* * *
7:15 a.m. Back in the locker room Joseph changes into tennis whites. Today he'll be an hour later to the office than usual to fit in a biweekly tennis lesson. Until recently, Joseph's last experience with the pastime was at 16, when he was beaten by "a pudgy overweight marshmallow far less fit than I." And not by a slashing, smashing assault that, in young Moses' opinion, was the way all challenges should be answered, but by lifting dinky lobs high over the net. The tennis pro's unsuspected task is not to refine Joseph's game but to hone his patience. The lesson comes hard. "In tennis, you're supposed to stop and say, 'Nice shot.' No way!" Joseph protests. "That's like stopping to say, 'Nice punch' in karate."
* *
9 a.m. After a breakfast (lunch?) of cereal and milk, the CEO, at last in an executive suit, arrives at work. He catches up with the news (via an on-line gopher) and reviews the day's calendar. A meeting with employees regarding stock options (everyone gets them) has been postponed: some venture capitalists want him for most of the day.
* * *
Noon For an hour twice a week, when the hands of the clock go straight up, the hands of Joseph go straight down, forming the base of yoga poses calculated to exercise a different set of muscles but the same set of mind as karate. He misses his yoga session today. "If I stray from my regimen, I lose an edge," he says. "I don't have as clear a mental map of my priorities, and I find myself waiting for the day to end so I can regroup that evening." Just before his 10 p.m. bedtime, he'll pencil tomorrow's challenges into a journal the size of War and Peace.
* * *
4:15 p.m. Off comes the jacket, down goes the necktie, and Joseph's karate-scarred elbow bends with the best of them. Once a week he picks up the tab for a B-Tree bull session at a local pub. Two-thirds of the employees show up. It doesn't rattle Joseph that as high-tech CEOs go, at 37 he's ancient. His employees barely average 30. They talk not business but fast cars, a sign that the gathering's collective mind is relaxed, the way Joseph wants it.
Joseph keeps all company circumstances, no matter how adverse, in open books and accessible through open doors. "If I want them to respond to me just like that" -- karate snap! -- "I have to share all the news, the bad as well as good." He intends to forge a business organization that will have the instincts of a karate champion, with each component reacting instinctively, swiftly, autonomously, accurately, and dependably to whatever exigency might arise. "A company anticipates pain as does a human," Joseph says. "It's threatened by outside forces. But a company that understands its markets, that's gutsy and solid, that has come together such that everyone cares about and believes in one another, that communicates well -- and believes in the CEO -- it's hard to make that company feel pain."
* * *
6 p.m. The Lexus glides back into the driveway, delivering Joseph to two inviolate hours at the hearth. "Family first, that's my priority," Joseph affirms. "Most people do the opposite. They get straight in their business, then scramble in their personal life. But you can't be effective at work unless your personal life is in order." Not everything on the calendar got accomplished, but the unflappable CEO has more important things to do. "The day I became a father I lost the passion to fight every day. Today when I finish work I want to go home and play with the kids." A typically serene suburban scene -- except for one detail. He's teaching karate to his 5-year-old daughter, and lately she's gotten this notion of whupping him. According to the doctrine, if she thinks she can, she will.
