This is the first part of a four-part series running over four consecutive days.
For more than 12 years I have been going to a Trappist monastery in Moncks Corner, S.C., called Mepkin Abbey. As a monastic guest, I wear a habit and temporarily live the life of a Trappist monk. I go primarily for spiritual reasons, but as a businessman and entrepreneur I am fascinated by the worldly aspect of the monastic life.
Mepkin, like monasteries the world over, runs a business. These monastic businesses are invariably based on just the kind of low-margin, highly competitive "me too" commodity products--cheese, fruitcakes, eggs--that any first year MBA student would "wind down" and "exit" as fast as possible.
Yet these monastic businesses are hugely successful. The demand for their prosaic products far outstrips supply, giving monastic businesses the kind of pricing flexibility usually associated with dominant brands or patent protection.
Most important, the monastic business model is far more than a curious anomaly. My own experience applying the monks' lessons demonstrates that the magic behind monastic businesses can be universally applied with equally impressive results. Business executives everywhere should be learning from the monks.
First, some background.
An essential part of the Rule of St. Benedict, the founding and still-definitive guide to monasticism written by St. Benedict in the sixth century, is that all monasteries must be self-sufficient and self-supporting communities. Trappists accomplish this primarily through manual labor. Indeed, the Rule of St. Benedict calls monks to manual labor as an essential part of the monastic experience. Orare est laborare--to pray is to work--is a principle that new monks quickly learn at Mepkin.
Mepkin Abbey has several thousand acres of woods, pastures, gardens and forests. Until recently, the monks ran an egg business with 40,000 chickens; they recently transitioned into the mushroom business. The manure from chickens is collected, processed, bagged and sold as compost, and the trees that cover much of the monastery are managed as a renewable forest.
The land, a gift from the family of the publisher Henry Luce and his wife, Clare Boothe Luce, back in the 1940s, came with a magnificent garden along the Cooper River that the monks meticulously maintain. The Abbey has a beautiful church, a wonderful library, a conference center, a guest center, a gift shop and more than a dozen immaculate retreat houses. The monks entertain a constant stream of retreatants, guests and sightseers while cooking for themselves and caring for their aged and infirm in a spotless state-of-the-art infirmary.
Impressive as this sounds, what is most amazing is that all these accomplishments represent the part-time effort of a couple of dozen elderly men living and working together mostly in silence. They attend church services six times a day and spend hours in solitary prayer, contemplation and sacred reading. Because their mission is to live a life of silent contemplative prayer, they work only part time.
All too often our organizations fail to reach their potential because people spend too much time looking over their shoulders. What is so striking about Mepkin is that the monks are never looking over their shoulders. They are passionately committed and totally focused on the task at hand, and they know that their brothers are doing the same. As a result, they are highly efficient and get an enormous amount done in the four hours a day they dedicate to earning their living.
Yet if we allow ourselves to be impressed by the monks because they manage to accomplish so much despite their single-minded dedication to their mission, we make a common but cardinal error. It is because of their focus on mission that they operate a multimillion-dollar business with a degree of frictionless efficiency that would drive most profit-driven executives to distraction with envy. And if we are willing to learn from the monks, our secular corporations can do the same.
Service and Selflessness
What we must learn from the monks is a management philosophy that I call "service and selflessness." It has seven basic aspects.
The first aspect of service and selflessness is having a high overarching mission worthy of being served.
The second principle is selflessness. At Mepkin the mission is so noble, well articulated and continually inculcated that the monks are inspired to focus on it selflessly.
The third element of service and selflessness is a commitment to excellence: At Mepkin Abbey every single egg is packed with a "prayerful attitude."
The fourth principle is a ruthless dedication to the highest ethical standards.
The fifth secret is faith. Every day, regardless of booms and busts in the larger economy, the monks risk their lives and livelihood faithfully serving their principles while trusting that business will take care of itself
The sixth aspect of service and selflessness is trust. The monks continually amass and replenish their treasury with the most valuable capital that any individual, product or business can possess: trust.
The seventh and perhaps most important secret to service and selflessness is living the life. Service and selflessness are just words on a page without a rigorous methodology for constantly reinforcing these principles, right down to the last egg. And, as luck would have it, the monks have a 1,500-year-old method called the Rule of St. Benedict that supplies just that.
Read "Business Secrets Of The Trappists, Part 2" here.
Read "Business Secrets Of The Trappists, Part 3" here.
Read "Business Secrets Of The Trappists, Part 4" here.
August Turak is an entrepreneur, consultant, writer and speaker who divides his time between New York City and his farm in North Carolina. His writings include "Brother John," winner of the John Templeton Foundation’s Power of Purpose Essay Contest, also inspired by his experiences at Mepkin Abbey. See more at www.augustturak.com/forbes.
