The busier you are, the more important it is to stop and read this story.

One day, an expert in time management was speaking to a group of business students and, to drive home a point, used an illustration those students will never forget.

As he stood in front of the group of high-powered over-achievers, he said: “Okay, time for a quiz.”

He then pulled out a one-gallon “wide-mouth” mason jar and set it on the table in front of him. Then he produced about a dozen fist-sized rocks and carefully placed them, one by one, into the jar. When the jar was filled to the top and no more rocks would fit inside, he asked “Is this jar full?”

Everyone in the class said: “Yes.” Then he said: “Really?”

He reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel. Then he dumped some gravel in and shook the jar, causing pieces of gravel to work themselves down into the space between the big rocks. Then he asked the group once more: “Is this jar full?”

By this time the class was on to him. “Probably not.” one of them answered. “Good!” he replied.

He reached under the table and brought out a bucket of sand. He started dumping the sand in the jar and it went into all the spaces left between the rocks and the gravel. Once more he asked the question. “Is this jar full?”

“No!” the class shouted. Once again, he said: “Good!”

Then he grabbed a pitcher of water and began to pour it in until the jar was filled to the brim. Then the expert in time-management looked at the class and asked, “What is the point of this illustration?”

One eager beaver raised his hand and said, “The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, if you try really hard you can always fit some more things in it.”

“No”, the speaker replied: “That is not the point. The truth this illustration teaches us is this: If you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in at all.”

What are the big rocks in your life? Your children. Your spouse. Your loved ones. Your friendships. Your education. Your dreams. A worthy cause. Teaching or mentoring others. Doing things that you love. Time for yourself. Your health.

Remember to put these BIG ROCKS in first, or you’ll never get them in at all.

If you sweat the little stuff (i.e. gravel, the sand) then you’ll fill your life with little things you will never have the real quality time you need to spend on the big, important stuff (the big rocks).

So, tonight, or in the morning, when you are reflecting on this short story, ask yourself this question: What are the big rocks in my life? Then put those in your jar first. Have a nice day.

I don’t know the author of this piece, but wanted to share it anyway.

——

A few weeks ago, what began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it.

I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind; he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whomever he was talking with something about “A Thousand Marbles.” I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say.

“Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you’re busy with your job. I’m sure they pay you well but it’s a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. Too bad you missed your daughter’s dance recital he continued.” “Let me tell you something that has helped me keep a good perspective on my own priorities.”

And that’s when he began to explain his theory of “A Thousand Marbles.” “You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.”

“Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime.”

“Now, stick with me, Tom, I’m getting to the important part. It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail”, he went on, “and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays.

I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1000 Marbles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear.”

“Every Saturday since then, I have taken one Marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focus more on the really important things in life. There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.”

“Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last Marble out of the container. I figure that if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time.”

“It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your family, and I hope to meet you again here on the band. This is a 75 Year old Man, K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!”

You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow singed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next Club Newsletter. Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. “C’mon honey, I’m taking you and the kids to breakfast!”

“What brought this on?” she asked with a smile.

“Oh, nothing special, it’s just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. And hey, can we stop at a toy store while we’re out? I need to buy some Marbles…”

——

If I used the CIA’s WORLD FACT BOOK, Life expectancy at birth of a Canadian Male is 78.72 years (it was certainly less than that when I was born – which should be my benchmark). Then, I have 1100 marbles left – on the outside. The positive side of this is the adrenalin rush to continue to make a difference in the lives of people around you.

In a previous post I talked about what would make a Great CEO and concluded that a Great CEOs, those in the top 2% of the Bell Curve, would have had a broad experience. Well, there is more to it than just a broad experience. A Great CEO for me has some personal characteristics uncommon on many people. I know that, as a CEO, I was certainly conscious about improving these aspects of my personality. So here are the top characteristics I would consider an exceptional combination:

Stamina – Not age. Ideally your looking for someone in its 50′s with the energy of a 35 year-old go-doer. The job of a CEO is very demanding, meeting challenges after challenges, analyzing situations, making decisions, aligning all staff towards common goals, traveling, and keeping the family happy in the process. The CEO regularly clocks in 12 hour days, often working 6-7 days a week. This is not a job for the faint of heart.

Educated – Not Necessarily Formally. MBA maybe, well read for sure. The CEO needs to stay current on the stock markets and on industries, on leadership, on people management, on marketing, on technology, on performance management, on micro economics and macro economics. The CEO must have an insatiable thrust for learning. The worst CEOs know it all from the get-go.

Visioning – Balancing Reality and Execution. There is no future without a strong present, that’s a given. Yet, the CEO must have very clear idea as to where he/she is taking the organization, not this quarter nor this fiscal years, but in some distant future. He/she must be able to articulate a very compelling image of what I call the Envisioned Future and to articulate the several stratagems that will be deployed to ensure the vision will be met. The Envisioned Future and the stratagems must be anchored into a reality, that itself generates a sense of urgency, a need to change and a desire to move forward. The CEO must also focus on the immediate imperatives on the journey to the Envisioned Future. It is this ability of a CEO to go from 30,000 feet (seeing the future, the big picture and the strategic plan) to the street level (selling and executing) and back up to 30,000 feet that keeps the organization moving forward on their tracks.

Listening – Really Listening. Listening for what is said, and what is not. Listening to the vibes. Listening to the atmosphere. It is by listening that the CEO can fully appreciate the challenges experienced by the organization, the divisions, the individuals, the competitors. Listening to what is not said is just has important. When a competitor fails to announce any wins for several months, after announcing wins every month before, speaks a lot. Employees that leave for other opportunities, say a lot if you care to listen.

An eye for talent – First Who. As Jim Collins says “First Who then What”. The best CEOs surround themselves with right people, with the right personalities, and put them in the right seats. This way, the efforts are not spent on moving people forward, but are expended moving the company forward.

Passion – Adhocracy Not Autocracy. Great leaders do not tell what to do; they communicate their passion for the end result, for the ways to get there, for how to behave. They are charismatic, but not in the flamboyant sense. It is their passion that people fall in love with. Their passion is infectious and allows them to sell their vision, to communicate pride of accomplishments or learning in failures. Passion is paramount for creating a sense of urgency. It allows what would seemingly be ad-hoc decision making to be I perfect alignment with expected outcome.

Discipline – Not Hopes. “We’re not sure”, “I hope”, “we expect”, “may be” are not favoured terms; instead they would prefer “we plan to …”, “we are doing …”, “we’ll be done by …” and “we’re done”. Hope is not a strategy and MBH (Management by Hope) is not a discipline. A great CEO is looking to empower the organization while establishing clear empowerment fences imbedded in plans, structures and processes. A great CEO declares a culture of discipline and accountability.

Communications – Walking The Talk. Yes, walking the talk is communicating. Certainly, the CEO has to communicate with great coherency, consistency, relevancy and frequency. But the magic occurs by looking at how one behaves. Nothing is worse than a CEO that says one thing and does otherwise.

Follow through – Controls are important. Great CEO’s are “control freaks”; but not in the pejorative sense of the term. He/she does not want to be in control of everything; he/she wants everyone in control. Because lose-ends are biologically unacceptable, a great CEO will follow through on commitments made, to/by him/her.

Technical, Selling and Leadership – in one suit. Credibility obliges. The perfect CEO grew through the technical ranks (regardless of the industry), developing a set of muscles necessary to sense when the offerings are aiming right. The perfect CEO gets that there is more to selling than picking up orders. He knows to be directly involved in the revenue generation process. For Great CEOs, Selling Strategically means going at it with method and discipline. The perfect CEO gets what leadership is about. He/she has to know that, despite the years of experience, he/she is the prime conductor and that others are needed on the bus to deliver the results.

Controlled Emotions – Not Faked Emotions. Yes a great CEO is a person of passion, but controlled passion. Sometimes parked for greater impact, other times wearing emotions on his/her sleeves for greater impact, the Great CEO will control the display of emotions to achieve the expected outcome. Do not confuse this trait with faking emotions, because it is not; it is calibrating the outburst of genuine emotions for the right reasons.

Adaptability – or the Board will take care of that. It is often said that a specific CEO can only take the company from A to B, and that another one will be necessary to take the organization from B to C. In an ideal world, that won’t be the case, because the CEO can learn and adapt at a faster pace than will be needed.

Level 5 Leadership – Not Big Ego. CEOs that can build enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will is what Jim Collins calls Level 5 Executives. CEOs are rarely directly responsible for success, but are always directly responsible for failures. Great CEOs use the word “we” with “successes” and “I” with “failures”.

Ethics – Taken For Granted. Visibly always walking the high road, from the mundane to the real serious stuff. Much like with children, your staff will imitate what you do, not do what you say.

Of course, an experienced and successful CEO would have all of the personal characteristics above, so let’s focus on the CEO’s experience. Right? Well not really. The reasons CEOs have been successful are numerous and varied – hence the hundreds of books on the subject. Knowing why they were successful is more important, ensuring they were successful by exercising the traits above, and not by some series of coincidences, would be reassuring to me.

We all know the power of the brain. No one would argue that humans can achieve the seemingly impossible when they apply their collective brain to a problem. Since the beginning of human kind, countless proofs of the power of the human “belief engine” can be found in everything that surrounds us, from harnessing the power of fire, to the invention of the wheel, to landing a spaceship on a moving planet traveling at 87,000 km/h, 36 millions miles away.

Beliefs shape how we act in our everyday life. Albert Einstein had beliefs, despite his Cartesian approach to science, based on logical analysis and mechanistic interpretation of physical phenomenon. He had postulates [hypothesis assumed without proof] on which all of his work is based. He believed, for example, that the speed of light [c] was constant which is a fundamental premise for his famous E=mc². He even believed in God, as he repeatedly said “God does not play dice”, referring to the predictability of outcomes.

It has been said that faith can move mountains. I grant you that faith is necessary to move mountains, yet we all know faith alone is not sufficient. You do need to believe but you also need the right equipment. Furthermore, we can also agree that having the best equipment is insufficient, and that without belief one is likely to fail.

This belief power, works both ways. If one believes that something cannot be done, that person will be absolutely correct. If you believe you cannot do something, you will be right all the time. Beliefs set our individual frontiers for the possible, and it is very rare that one can go beyond these imaginary frontiers. Now, why is that? Because we won’t try. Because of the fear of failing.

Let me tell you a real story.

In 1993, I had hired a sales rep from a competitor. His largest transaction with his former employer was in the neighborhood of $250K, which was considered an extremely good transaction size for his company. His surrounding was not encouraging him to belief in something bigger. In our company, the average transaction size of the time was $750K, which was very annoying to me [as it was way too low for the value I believed we brought to organizations.] One day, he came to me for help. He had secured a meeting with the CIO of a larger electric utility company in Eastern Canada, and was very anxious about this opportunity which was coincidently neighboring $750K [by far the largest contract he ever had to secure]. So we did a review of everything we knew about the account and everything that had been done with them. The prospective customer wanted to replace their legacy accounting system and the proposed transaction reflected the expressed requirements.

I accompanied him to his half-day meeting with the CIO. Not only did we end-up spending the whole day there, we uncovered different types of needs. We spent hours with the COO as he spelled out his aspirations for the organization; the replacement of accounting system was their perception on how to get there. By probing, by listening, by imaging, by daring, we allowed them to paint a much larger picture of what was possible; they sold themselves on a much broader project. At that moment, they realized that they were not looking for a software vendor, but for a partner; the very partner that had taken their blinders off. We walked away with a $5M order covering all of their needs for the next few years. But this is not the end of the story, it is the beginning. Not only did the customer’s blinders come off, so did the sale rep’s.

From that moment on, that sales rep had different beliefs about what was possible in a sales process. He went on to sign a $10M order and then a $17.5M order. We had removed his blinders. We had created a difference frame of reference, a different belief. Other sales rep took notice, shattered their own blinders and before long, the largest single transaction had become $30M.

Beliefs apply to organizations as well. An organization’s fundamental belief is linked to its mission. Why do we wake up in the morning? Why do customers buy from you? Why do investors invest in you? Because they share beliefs.

At SAP Canada of the mid-1990s, we had the collective belief that legacy enterprise systems used by Canadian organizations were an old collection of patched, broken, inflexible un-integrated systems beyond the point of repair. Furthermore, we believed that this state of affair would hamper their ability to adapt to a globalizing world, and as Canadian we cared passionately about that. So we set our mission, our raison d’être, to “make Canadian organizations better”. This was our sense of purpose. This was why people came to work for us. This is why employees came to work every morning. This is why customers bought from us. This is way our customer satisfaction rating was second highest n the world (second to the Mexican subsidiary, which was an order of magnitude smaller). This was, in part, why SAP Canada, then, significantly outperformed other much larger SAP subsidiaries.

Corporate beliefs drive passion in the organization’s sense of purpose or mission. So the message to CEO’s is this: make you beliefs clear.

Believe is or not, it is your call. In either case, you’re likely to be right.

Let’s start with the premise that CEOs are not all equal.

Like in any population, the population of CEOs is grouped according a standard Bell Curve. 2% are exceptionally good, 14% are good, 68% are average, 14% are not good, and 2% are exceptionally bad.

What gives an extra edge for a CEO?

I submit it is a broad base of experiences.

You are looking for a CEO that has successfully acted in multiple industries and varying types of organizations, and doing so, has developed different sets of muscles.

He/she has experienced selling fewer larger ($10M+) transactions as well as smaller and high volume transactions.
He/she worked in complex (Outsourcing/ERP/Engineering) solutions, or simple over-the-counter consumer transactions.
He/she dealt with sophisticated customers (Governments/Corporate America) and sold over the web, where there is hardly any interaction.
He/she ran organizations operating with 80% gross margin and 25% EBITDA and in those with 25% Gross Margin and 10% EBITDA.

You want the same CEO to have also run companies in different geographies, against different political backdrops.
He/she has also lead a start-up company, did turnarounds and sat atop a large corporation.
And he/she has run a subsidiary for an American as well as for a European company.

You want someone who has lived through fast growth, but also knows what it feels like to fire 25% of the staff, or to take a company out of stagnation.
You want some who has run both a private and a public company.
And yes, you want someone who has come very close to missing payroll.

Evidently, no single CEO has all of that. And if you ever find one with all that experience, he/she has to be what Jim Collins calls a Level-5 Executive. Someone who has built enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.

So may be, hiring someone from the industry is not all that great after all. Someone who knows that success is always shared with the executive team, and failures never can be. So where do you find someone like this? Not necessarily in your industry!