Honest Warrior, Happy Warrior
IN FEUDAL JAPAN, NINJAS WERE NOT WHAT WE WOULD CALL VIRTUOUS warriors. When they first appear in the historical record they’re the personal agents of regional clans—specifically in the Iga and Koga regions. Over time, as word spread of their skills and usefulness, the ninjas evolved into a professional class of mercenaries. They founded their own guilds, kept their own hierarchies, and otherwise competed with one another for the business of warlords.
By necessity, a mercenary cannot allow himself to be conflicted about matters of right and wrong, good and evil. After all, it’s bad for business. If the evil warlord wants to hire you to help defeat the enlightened ruler down the road, then off you go, happy to have a job. You don’t have the luxury of questioning your employer’s values or whether the war he has started is just.
Nor did ninjas concern themselves with “fighting fair,” like their samurai brethren. Indeed, the ninjas based their entire profession on instilling in others the fear that they would not fight fairly. The conventions of warfare and rules of engagement, such as they existed in feudal Japan, were the very things that gave ninjas their mystique and power: If these standards did not exist, then the ninja lost his competitive advantage.
But even ninjas followed a code of conduct. In fact, their business depended on it. As highly specialized professionals, ninjas clearly had to be disciplined. Their skills were honed over years of intense study and training. Knowing what I know of martial arts, to be an expert in these skills requires a lifelong commitment. Only the most serious minds could expect to reach the professional level. It was to the benefit of the guild’s leaders to demand among their subordinates a commitment to their craft and a standard of personal conduct. It made for better ninjas, which made for more business.
So the ninja occupied a unique moral territory: He was expected to break all rules of conventional warfare to achieve his mission but also was expected to follow a professional code of ethics. Naturally, today’s ninja innovator should occupy the same ground—with some minor exceptions. Breaking the rules does not mean breaking the law, nor does it mean today’s ninja should act like a mercenary, indifferent to matters of right and wrong. Above all, today’s ninja should be a paragon of ethical behavior.
It’s important to note that ethical conduct is not always the same thing as legal behavior. It is illegal to lie to the Securities and Exchange Commission; it is not illegal to lie to your spouse. Likewise, a CEO or entrepreneur who follows every law is not necessarily an ethical businessperson. The most famous recent examples are the unethical executives in the financial industry who (along with government officials and politicians) share the blame for the 2008 collapse of the housing market.
As many on the left continually point out, so far no one from Wall Street has gone to jail because of the financial crisis. The reason is simple: because no laws were broken. But that’s not to say that the executives who played an active role in the housing collapse behaved ethically.
Whether it’s the housing collapse or another example of business behaving badly, many identify greed as the driving sin that makes otherwise good people do unethical things. But I don’t think greed suffices. Greed is just a motivator. Other motivators are providing for your family, achieving power, changing the world, and helping others. I find it helpful to know what motivates people, as everyone is different. I have no problem with those who want to make money, as securing wealth is not evil in itself.
Rather, it’s when the pursuit of riches is accomplished through dishonest means that we have crossed into unethical territory. The ability to remain honest while succeeding is what makes a true ninja innovator. It might seem obvious, but naked honesty is rare, especially when we look at ourselves. This happens in both big and little ways. The little ways are the lies we tell ourselves about our height, weight, or increasing vulnerability as we age. We may ignore challenges in our work or professional relationships rather than deal with them. Honesty with oneself is a tough starting point for any ninja.
Self-honesty begins with emotional intelligence. That is a fancy term for looking at yourself from afar with candor and recognizing the motives behind your actions. If you can observe yourself and describe why you’re reacting the way you are, you have come a long way toward real self-honesty. The opposite of self-honesty is self-delusion. We lie to ourselves to explain away our unethical behavior. And we’re all pretty naïve when it comes to our own lies.
It’s the same way with enterprises. Self-delusion is a commonplace flaw in any company or organization. This is especially true where the culture of an organization is such that obvious mistakes are allowed to go unchecked because no one is willing to speak up. Over a dozen years ago, I was visiting the Japanese headquarters of a major electronics company regarding issues with televisions and the V-chip. While I was there, the company’s executive team asked for my thoughts on its huge investment in recordable CD hardware technology. I was struck by the unanimity among the team over their investment decision. They were all ecstatic about it. As any true ninja executive will tell you, complete, overexuberant unanimity on any decision, much less a major investment, is an obvious red flag.
When I expressed doubts about the consumer interest and market for their investment, they looked at me as if I was from another planet. (I was just from another country.) I don’t think I’m ruining the surprise when I tell you that history proved me right. Recently, I was discussing this sad episode with one of the American executives of this company, who bought into the Japanese excitement. He acknowledged to me that the company had lost billions of dollars because it suffered from “groupthink”—a common malady in a culture that does not allow disagreement with the opinions of others, particularly of your superiors. Groupthink is just another term for self-delusion.
A more clinical term for it is the Abilene paradox. Coined by management expert Jerry B. Harvey in a 1974 article in the journal Organizational Dynamics, the Abilene paradox refers to a group of people who decide on a course of action that is counter to all of the participants’ wishes. To illustrate the point, Harvey used an anecdote:
On a hot afternoon visiting in Coleman, Texas, the family is comfortably playing dominoes on a porch, until the father-in-law suggests that they take a trip to Abilene [53 miles north] for dinner.
The wife says, “Sounds like a great idea.” The husband, despite having reservations because the drive is long and hot, thinks that his preferences must be out-of-step with the group and says, “Sounds good to me. I just hope your mother wants to go.” The mother-in-law then says, “Of course I want to go. I haven’t been to Abilene in a long time.”
The drive is hot, dusty, and long. When they arrive at the cafeteria, the food is as bad as the drive. They arrive back home four hours later, exhausted.
One of them dishonestly says, “It was a great trip, wasn’t it?” The mother-in-law says that she would rather have stayed home, but went along since the other three were so enthusiastic. The husband says, “I wasn’t delighted to be doing what we were doing. I only went to satisfy the rest of you.” The wife says, “I just went along to keep you happy. I would have had to be crazy to want to go out in the heat like that.” The father-in-law then says that he only suggested it because he thought the others might be bored.
The group sits back, perplexed that they together decided to take a trip that none of them wanted. They each would have preferred to sit comfortably, but did not admit to it when they still had time to enjoy the afternoon.1
We’ve all experienced a situation like this in our personal and professional lives. When it’s only a drive to Abilene, then it’s harmless enough. But a company that takes the proverbial drive to Abilene could severely, if not fatally, harm itself. To avoid the Abilene paradox, enterprises must not only have employees willing to speak out against a bad idea but must also have an executive team willing to listen.
I will relate a story that isn’t very flattering to one of the greatest ninja innovators in our time, but it’s instructive nonetheless. At one International CES some twenty years ago, Microsoft’s Bill Gates was the keynote speaker. During Gates’s rehearsal, I was the only non-Microsoft person in the room. Listening to Gates practice, I had a number of suggestions that I thought would improve the presentation. Assuming my opinion would be valued, I shared my opinions with a couple of Microsoft people. After hearing what I had to say, they looked at me nervously and suggested that I speak directly to Gates. No problem.
I entered the room where Gates was with a few of his key people and said I had some suggested improvements on his presentation. As a successful CEO, he immediately recognized the value of neutral input, and he listened to my suggestions, accepted a few, and discounted the rest. That was fine. I should have left it at that.
Instead, I went beyond where I should have ended the conversation and blurted out that I thought the product he was introducing at the show would be one of Microsoft’s most significant products ever. I said I was very impressed with it and thrilled he was choosing to launch it at the International CES.
What I didn’t know until the next day was that the product was the baby of a special employee at Microsoft, Gates’s then-girlfriend Melinda, who would later become his wife. Upon reflection, I surmised it was a delicate internal situation for the top people at Microsoft, who were likely reluctant to give Gates any real feedback or input on the product or how it was being launched.
The product was introduced as Bob but became known—derisively—as the Dancing Paper Clip (DPC). See? I bet you know immediately what I’m talking about. Aimed at teaching users how to use Windows products and capabilities, many users found the DPC an annoying distraction. Even worse, it was difficult to get rid of and was always popping up at the most annoying moments. It soon became the butt of late-night TV jokes and didn’t reappear ever again on a Microsoft product.
The lesson for me was an embarrassing one. First, while my input on how to give an effective presentation was valuable, even to a master of presentations like Bill Gates, my input on a software product in this case was totally off the mark. Second, as successful as you may be, you need to be careful if your top leadership believes they can’t have an honest discussion with you. In this case, the founder’s relationship with an employee may have made criticism of the product off-limits. Third, even a successful company like Microsoft makes mistakes—embarrassing failures. The important thing is to learn from them and keep taking risks.
We are also experiencing a collective Abilene paradox as a nation. As I write this, the United States government is in denial about the scope of its financial problems. The Democrats and Republicans cannot even agree on the facts defining the financial problem, even though the facts are clear.
No Labels (nolabels.org), a group I have been affiliated with for years, has proposed several commonsense solutions to encourage communication and honesty in and from government. Among them is a specific suggestion that the president and congressional leaders from both parties sign a statement of financial facts each year so they can agree to have a policy discussion from the same baseline. It used to be that journalists and the media would be neutral arbiters of the truth. Sadly, that is no longer the case. Like our politics, our news is hopelessly divided along partisan lines, with each side preferring the networks and outlets that cater to its version of the facts.
To be effective as a ninja leader one must establish a culture of honesty within one’s team. A leader cannot tell his team that the mission before them will be easy if in reality many of them won’t likely return. A leader’s honesty is almost always rewarded, even if bad news has to be delivered, with increased loyalty and improved performance. Likewise, if a leader is honest with his team, the team is more likely to be honest with its leader.
At CEA, I try to reward honesty by conveying an organization-wide message that honesty will never be punished. I want my team to tell me the hard truths. Recently, after a speech, I asked a new employee for feedback on how I could improve my presentation. She responded that I did well but had appeared uncomfortable and awkward in a certain section of my presentation. She was right. Her star rose in my eyes. I thanked her profusely because I needed candid feedback. It’s easy to tell someone that they are wonderful; it’s more difficult and ultimately more important to tell them how they can be better.
Honesty is a ninja virtue. But like many virtues, it must be practiced in both personal and professional settings. When an individual, enterprise, or country is honest with itself—when it confronts the truth instead of choosing to believe comfortable falsehoods—then it sets itself on the road to lasting success.
Winning Isn’t the Only Thing
AFAMOUS SPORTS MAXIM STATES, “WINNING ISN’T EVERYTHING. It’s the only thing.” No one is quite sure who first said this, although Vince Lombardi was known to repeat the phrase often. In athletics, the maxim is universal; there are only winners and losers in each game. It makes sense to apply this to success in other ventures as well. But only to a point.
No ninja innovator is going to win every battle. In fact, as I’ve indicated elsewhere, you’re probably going to lose more often than you win. There are enterprise-wide losses, and there are personal losses: the job you didn’t get, the job you lost, or the client you couldn’t lock down. In these instances, winning is certainly not the only thing. In many ways, it’s how you act or perform after the contest is over that is far more important.
For me, when colleagues are down, I do my best to reach out to them. If they lost their job, I call. If someone has a bad story written about them in the press, I ask how I can help. I try to do what I can to help someone when they are truly down and others are abandoning them. People don’t need the help when they’re up; it is most appreciated when they’re down. A true ninja innovator is always thinking long term. You can make a genuine human connection with someone when they are down—despite personal differences on business or policy issues—and that connection will go a long way toward fostering a more effective relationship with that person in the future.
Choosing whether to win or lose can also be an effective strategy. Sometimes letting someone else win in the short term simply makes sense. One common strategy is to let your competitor go first to market. You let them make the investment and learn from their mistakes. You let other companies introduce new products first to the market. You then watch carefully and learn from your competitors’ mistakes and only later introduce a competing—and usually better and less expensive—product.
Another time when ninjas choose not to win is when they are focused on the long-term victory rather than the short-term win. It may make sense to let your competitor win to build up their confidence; indeed, an overconfident competitor is a weak competitor. Having a competitor underestimate your strength can be a competitive advantage.
Take one of the most phenomenal success stories of the past decade: the rise of Facebook. The site is so ubiquitous these days that we tend to forget that Facebook wasn’t at all unique when it first appeared as a social-networking platform for college kids. Other sites like Myspace and Friendster had already tilled the ground that Facebook would go on to dominate. Indeed, in Facebook’s early days, Myspace and Friendster took pleasure in ignoring Facebook, preferring to define the market as a competition between the two of them.
Which was just fine for Facebook. Had Mark Zuckerberg publicly declared war on Myspace and Friendster in Facebook’s early days, then those two behemoths might have taken notice and squashed the upstart (or simply stolen its ideas, which were proving better and more in line with the evolution of social media). As it was, neither Myspace nor Friendster considered Facebook a true threat. This allowed Zuckerberg to monitor carefully both sites to see what they were doing right and what areas they could improve upon. The best part? Myspace and Friendster felt no need to change their approach. They weren’t threatened by Facebook, so they didn’t think anything was wrong with their services.
But, boy, were things so very wrong. Friendster, the original Facebook, was slow and unwieldy. Myspace made the mistake of throwing everything but the kitchen sink at users’ profile pages, which resulted in an assault on the senses for the uninitiated. Moreover, Myspace soon became a site catering to adolescents, which not only alienated the older crowd but also fueled the reputation of the site as a target location for sexual deviants and pedophiles. And while these two Goliaths fought it out, Facebook chugged along, stealing the best parts of both sites and innovating others, while avoiding the missteps that no one really considered until Facebook exploded in popularity.
So while Facebook won in the end, it knew that a quick victory wasn’t the most important goal in the beginning. Getting it right was far more crucial.
And then there are the times when the wiser course is not to take the field at all. Often it is best to avoid a real or contrived match against a competitor. It implies and demands that there will be a winner and a loser, when winning and losing won’t benefit either company. A classic in this case was the very public, very heated feud between Steve Jobs and Adobe over the latter’s Flash technology. We don’t need to go into the reasons why Jobs hated Flash, but loathe it he did. He told his biographer Walter Isaacson, “Flash is a spaghetti-ball piece of technology that has lousy performance and really bad security problems.”2 Now, I have no idea what a “spaghetti-ball piece of technology” is, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want Steve Jobs calling my product that. But as the feud played out very publicly in the media, it began to look less like a critique of a certain technology and more like a personal vendetta for Jobs.
Consumers still gobbled up Apple’s mobile devices, the iPhone and iPad, despite their lack of Flash capability. And yet, the feud allowed Apple competitors, such as Google’s Android software, to advertise their products’ Flash capabilities. The fact is that Flash is the standard in the industry. If you don’t have it, then your browsing experience is greatly compromised. In the end, it’s hard to see how the Apple-Adobe fight benefited either company, and it stands as an example that sometimes it’s best not to fight at all.
As a Washington trade organization, CEA is often battling other industries. Yet in every case, I know and work well with my opponents. I reach out to them when our issues coincide, and I battle them fiercely when we disagree. I invite them to our events and join in recognition of them publicly when appropriate. And sometimes when their CEOs lose their jobs, even then, consistent with my ninja approach to life, I reach out to them as individuals and share my support in their time of need.
Of course I realize that a trade association is a different beast than a company. Our job is to promote the interests of all of our members while remaining agnostic on particular platforms or products. Even when CEA engages an opponent whose interests contrast sharply with our members’, my goal is not to destroy the opponent. Some of my members might disagree, but I’d rather see the U.S. economy full of healthy, vibrant, and competing industries than full of dying industries.
Like the ninjas of feudal Japan, today’s ninjas do not and should not live in a black and white world where everyone is either a good guy or a bad guy. The truth is that everyone views themselves as a good guy, as the guy just trying to get ahead or stay afloat. I might protest loudly against an industry that uses artificial means to stay alive—such as the steel industry or the broadcasting industry (which I’ll get to in a later chapter)—but I do not view them as the enemy. Ninja maturity is the ability to see all shades of gray, to deal with nuance, and to understand that sometimes we must live with ambiguity.
Someone once said, “Show me someone who doesn’t mind losing, and I’ll show you a loser.” The ninja’s approach is different. The ninja can accept losing, because losing itself can and should be a learning experience.
But, of course, winning is the goal; there is nothing sweeter than a hard-fought battle where, when the smoke clears, you have a clear win. It is even sweeter when the victory comes because of creativity, confidence, and hard work rather than through a weak competitor, government intervention, or good luck.
For a ninja, winning is not everything. Victory happens when you believe it is essential. But even before you conclude that you must win, you should consider if and how you can work with your competition. I have found that “co-opetition” is much better than competition. The old saw that you should “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” is true for ninjas as well.
Not All Rules Are Equal
THE VERY BEST NINJAS FOLLOW A CODE OF CONDUCT—BUT ALSO break the conventional rules of the game. They discover ways to surprise their competition. And it’s very common for an outsmarted competitor to accuse the ninja company of unethical or illegal practices. At this point, government usually enters the picture. It’s an unfortunate reality in our present circumstances that government has a hand in everything business does. Barely a news cycle passes without the government investigating a successful company for real or imagined transgressions.
For years, Google famously didn’t have a Washington lobbying office. But then Google became wildly successful and things changed. Competitors began to envy Google’s success, and they called on their most trusted allies: their friends in Congress or the White House. When the government started going after Google—no doubt spurred by well-heeled competitors—Google succumbed to reality. In 2005, Google announced the opening of its Washington office on its blog: “It seems that policymaking and regulatory activity in Washington, D.C., affect Google and our users more every day. It’s important to be involved—to participate in the policy process and contribute to the debates that inform it. So we’ve opened up a shop there.”3
Which is fancy PR-speak for: Fine, we’ll play it your way. Today, Google has an extensive lobbying arm and in the first quarter of 2012, the company spent a record $5 million on lobbying Congress—which was more than Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook combined.4
This is the usual route for any large, successful company. Its initial success is marked by a period of government naïveté, which is quickly followed by a hard lesson in the ways of the world: You want to play, you have to pay. These days everyone is going after Google through private and public channels. Google’s only recourse is to fight fire with fire.
But there’s something more sinister in the need for companies to bend the knee to Washington politicians. The expansion of government into all facets of the free market has led to perverse antibusiness practices. There’s very little restriction these days on what government can do to a private enterprise. A couple recent examples will suffice.
On August 24, 2011, federal agents armed with automatic weapons stormed several Tennessee factories and the corporate headquarters of Gibson Guitar Corporation. It was the second time in as many years that Gibson had been raided by the government. The reason? Federal agents from the Fish and Wildlife Service believed Gibson was illegally importing protected wood from far-off places like India and Madagascar. Never mind that both countries insist that Gibson did nothing wrong. The famed guitar manufacturer has not been charged with a crime. But this still didn’t keep the federal agents from walking away with $500,000 in Gibson products.
Behind the raids is a law known as the Lacey Act, which regulates trade of endangered plants and animals.5 First passed in 1900 to regulate only wildlife, the Lacey Act was amended in 1998 to include trading in wood that has been illegally logged. While the 1998 amendments were aimed at disrupting illegal logging, they also broadened the law to criminalize anyone unknowingly possessing certain rare wood or plant materials.
And that’s the major problem with the Lacey Act. It is broadly written with too few process protections and places the burden of proof on the owner, not the government. The law puts every American who buys antique and wooden products at risk, from musicians to manufacturers to dealers in antique furniture. Some musicians now refuse to travel in or out of the country with vintage instruments, which could be subject to seizure.
Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz explained his frustration: “[The Lacey Act] has nothing to do with conservation, nothing to do with how scarce or not scarce rosewood or ebony is. It has to do with jobs. They have raided us, come in with weapons, and they seized $500,000 worth of product. They shut our factory down and they have not charged us with anything at this point.”6
Henry Juszkiewicz is a true American success story. Born in Argentina, Juszkiewicz rose from the bottom, got his M.B.A., and bought a struggling Gibson in 1986. He successfully turned the iconic American company around and expanded its sales. He went on a buying spree and bought the jukebox company Wurlitzer and the iconic piano company Baldwin, and he recently bought the Japanese receiver company Onkyo.
Like every other ninja innovator, Juszkiewicz makes mistakes. He had an idea for connecting all electronic devices in a handshake system requiring product registration. It would have satisfied record company piracy concerns but was complex and not embraced by electronics companies. He tried and failed but went on to make his company bigger and better.
Of course Juszkiewicz’s biggest challenge today is not his business—it’s the federal government. Instead of meekly bowing to the federal bully, Juszkiewicz innovated in his own way by responding differently. He stood up to the bully. When the federal government refused to explain or apologize for its actions, Juszkiewicz went to the media. He told his story in print, on the radio, on television, and on blogs. Speaker of the House John Boehner invited him to attend a speech President Obama gave before a joint session of Congress in September 2011—a clear message to the Obama administration that business owners had had enough.7
Juszkiewicz says it well: “It’s not easy to compete on a global basis. We’re competing with Chinese, European companies. We’d like to feel like we’re respected and help create jobs.”
Exactly. What would possess a federal agency to storm a successful, iconic American company on the flimsy excuse that it might be illegally importing protected wood? Does that require federal agents armed with automatic weapons to storm private property and cart off hundreds of thousands of dollars of product? This has to change.
Rules are necessary, but if they are ambiguous, unclear, or give too much discretion to their enforcers, they stifle business and innovation. Juszkiewicz’s case proves he has been wronged. He has put too many resources into defending himself from the government and paying legal fees and a fine, when he could have spent those resources on growing his business.
While Juszkiewicz and Gibson settled the case with the U.S. government in August 2012 for a few hundred thousand dollars, it is clear the settlement had little to do with an intentional legal violation and everything to do with Juszkiewicz trying to save his business from fighting the federal government in the courts. The Gibson press release quoting Juszkiewicz says it all:
We feel that Gibson was inappropriately targeted, and [that this was] a matter that could have been addressed with a simple contact by a caring human being representing the Government. Instead, the Government used violent and hostile means with the full force of the U.S. Government and several armed law enforcement agencies costing the taxpayer millions of dollars and putting a job-creating U.S. manufacturer at risk and at a competitive disadvantage. This shows the increasing trend on the part of the Government to criminalize rules and regulations and treat U.S. businesses in the same way drug dealers are treated. This is wrong and it is unfair.8
And then there’s the famous example of Boeing, another iconic American company. In March 2011, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint against Boeing for opening a plant in South Carolina instead of Washington State. In effect, the NLRB was trying to stop a private company from doing business. Why? Because, said the NLRB, Boeing was just “retaliating” against Washington State union workers, who had gone on strike in the past. Since South Carolina is a right-to-work state where workers can choose whether to be in a union, Boeing allegedly was just trying to stick it to Washington unionists.
It’s a dangerous precedent when the federal government says where a company can and can’t open its factories. The South Carolina plant was going to generate thousands of jobs, but to the Big Labor allies at the NLRB that was less important than staying in good standing with one of the Democratic Party’s largest donors.
After the issue was finally resolved and the complaint withdrawn, GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman summed up the sad, sorry episode best when he said, “The NLRB decision is a victory in a battle that should have never been fought. Their action against Boeing in South Carolina was an unprecedented attempt to interfere in the free market, and an attempt to politicize companies’ decisions as [to] how and where they create jobs.”9
Even if they break the rules, ninjas follow the law. That doesn’t mean that the laws are just or sensible. If the laws are unclear, arbitrarily enforced, harmful, or simply unethical, ninjas will find a way to put their case to the people, just as Juszkiewicz and Boeing have done. But we shouldn’t forget what their experiences suggest about our supposedly free-market system. A government that actively works against the interests of business and job creation is a government that is immoral and unethical—and the enemy of ninja innovators everywhere.
Ninjas Pay It Forward
AS A FINAL NOTE ON THE IMPORTANCE OF BEHAVING ETHICALLY, WE cannot overlook the value of sharing wisdom with others. Mentoring, formally or informally, is both an obligation and a joy for anyone who has succeeded.
The most successful organizations have a culture of sharing and training. This means that the more experiences and success a person has, the greater the obligation to impart wisdom and pay it forward to the next generation. Sharing with, mentoring, developing, and teaching others are what a ninja must do to achieve the marks of a great leader and become a successful person.
Ninjas should also know that the very act of teaching and engaging with others is itself a broadening experience. Although it may seem like mentoring and sharing are unselfish acts, in reality they are wonderfully joyous and produce great satisfaction for the mentor.
A corollary to the value of mentoring is that you’re never too old or too successful to be taught yourself. I recently had lunch with an accomplished and slightly older CEO who had served as board chair of the corporation at which I had my first senior position. Not having seen him in years, I was delighted to catch up. But I was exhilarated when he expressed personal interest in my career, observed my success, and challenged me to reach higher. Upon parting, I blurted out awkwardly, “Thank you so much for your advice. It was so great to hear, as all my mentors have died.”
I wasn’t just trying to be nice; what I said was entirely true. Other than my wife and a few close friends, I am—and have been for a few years—mentorless. It’s an unsettling experience, particularly because I have been blessed with so many wonderful role models in my life. If anything, this realization has pushed me to continue sharing my wisdom and mistakes with others, who someday will be able to pass it on to an even younger generation.
Several years ago I enjoyed a memorable dinner in Las Vegas with the two people whose advice I valued most: my father, Jerry Shapiro, and my mentor and friend Jerry Kalov. I loved both men and will never forget that evening sharing stories and discussing life. Jerry Kalov, while running a public company himself and serving as my lead board member, told me that despite early successes, I would fail, and he would stand by me when I did. This allowed me to take risks, and of course many of these risks led to spectacular failures. He supported me, and I grew from each failure.
Sadly, within several months of that dinner, both Jerrys passed. I often wonder what questions I would have asked had I known their time was so limited, what they would have said, and what advice they would have given. Even today, facing tough situations and decisions, I often ask myself: What would Jerry say?
As I counsel and mentor younger CEOs, I encourage them to never stop seeking guidance from others, even those not in their industry. After all, you never know what you can learn from a trusted outsider—someone whose only stake in your success or failure is based on pure friendship. As I said in chapter 4, ninjas should never stop listening to others.
Above all, this means staying engaged. Continue making friends, look for others in your organization to mentor, and never forget that you are where you are because someone helped you along the way. Being mentored and mentoring is part of the life process of giving back. Even I, a lifelong learner who knows that luck plays a role in life, realize the amount I don’t know increases with my maturity.
Every tae kwon do black belt on their way to becoming a true ninja will also have to be a teacher to the less experienced students. Teaching classes, even at a lesser belt level, I was so conscious that my form had to be perfect, my kicks sharp, my katas precise. You learn so much more how to do something well when you teach it. Which is another way to say that when you mentor someone else, you’re also helping yourself.