CHAPTER THREE
Wait! Then Pick Your Moment
Yesterday is gone.
Tomorrow has not yet come.
We have only today. Let us begin.
HAVE YOU EVER waited twenty years to begin something? Have you ever had the patience to wait and pick your moment? Mother Teresa did. Nearly twenty years passed from her joining the Sisters of Loreto in Dublin to her starting the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta. The road was long, and in more than just miles. Starting a new religious order within the Catholic Church is not an easy task.
Aha!
When a vision emerges from a place deep within you, and it is aligned with your core value system, you can’t get it out of your mind. Suddenly, you are open to a whole new world of possibility, and your brain screams, “Aha!” Once the brain takes charge, the thought changes from “Can I?” to “I can.” That is the defining moment—but it does not necessarily mean you can start right away.
Mother Teresa knew in her heart that she was meant to help the poor, but she waited to start her own unique mission until the time was right for her. The “right” time may not be convenient, but when the inspiration comes, it’s important to listen. For Mother Teresa, a call from God en route to a retreat in Darjeeling enlightened her that it was time to begin what she knew she was meant to do. But those of us who don’t have God’s number need to pay attention to the pearls of wisdom from those around us, as well as keenly observing our own behaviors and habits.
Mother came to open a home for the dying in Kalighat after she met a woman dying on a sidewalk. She wanted to alleviate the woman’s suffering and let her die with dignity by offering her a bed. Mother Teresa brought the woman with her, gave her a bed, and let her die in peace. This simple act of love led her to open the Home for the Dying.
Readiness
As a leader, once you have determined your vision, you must ask yourself a number of questions and make a number of decisions. Whether you are starting a new organization or taking leadership of an existing one, one of the first questions to ask is, “Are we ready?”
Once Mother Teresa had her vision of serving the poorest of the poor, she had to address a number of factors before being ready to move forward. She knew that her vision could not be accomplished within the existing Catholic organizations. A new order was necessary. One of her most pressing challenges was to receive authority from the church to create that order. This process was long and involved many levels of approval. She faced repeated resistance from the church hierarchy, locally and in Rome, and from the leaders of the Sisters of Loreto. Armed with a clear vision, an unrelenting focus, and unswerving commitment, she did everything they asked her to do in order to move toward her goal.
Readiness is a complex state. In the corporate world, whether you are launching a new organization or seeking to establish a new direction for an existing one, a myriad of financial, legal, and human resources requirements need to be met. In the nonprofit world in the United States, the paperwork to secure tax-exempt status for purposes of collecting donations also must be completed and filed. Governments and NGOs must meet their own often detailed requirements before embarking on new programs. Extensive public hearings and comment periods add to the time it takes to get even the simplest new government programs up and running.
How Ready Are You?
While there is no universal set of requirements to guide you in assessing your readiness to begin, there are some guidelines. There are three linked categories to consider: emotional, financial, and operational. If you or the organization falls short on any one of the three, then you must decide how to proceed. Do you decide this is not yet your moment, and continue your preparation? Or do you press ahead, recognizing that you have now changed the probability of success and the risk profile of the organization? Leadership requires understanding risk and reward when making decisions. These are threshold decisions.”
Emotional readiness is the ability to successfully and rapidly adjust to constant and possibly extreme emotional swings from high highs to low lows. Emotional readiness for an individual or an organization is often challenging. For Mother Teresa it was critical. She was the catalyst for the new order. Her dogged determination enabled her to overcome the church’s continued insistence that she could do her work within its existing infrastructure. Her ability to withstand its pressures and keep moving toward her vision showed that she was emotionally ready to tackle the other challenges she would face in creating and building the Missionaries of Charity.
A balance between action and reflection is critical to keep focused during the emotional ups and downs of leadership. When reflecting, ask yourself if you are moving toward your vision, laying the groundwork to ensure you are ready once the time is right. Mother Teresa used the time it took to obtain church approval to prepare herself and her organization. Thus, when she finally received the approval, she was ready, and the Missionaries of Charity was begun.
RUMA’S STORY: One of Mother Teresa’s houses was Prem Dan, a long-term convalescent facility. Like the Home for the Dying, Prem Dan was a place where people had the comfort of being surrounded by love before they left this earth. The work involved was labor intensive and emotional. People were dying every day. When I first arrived, the sisters sought to make sure I was ready to deal with the emotional hardships of being around death daily. I was confident of my readiness. After all, I thought, they had told me that the people didn’t need pity, but love. How difficult could that be? But I was wrong. Nothing had prepared me for this. I had the privilege of feeding, bathing, and spending time with people rejected by society and suffering alone. The experience was not only humbling, it was overwhelming. I had nightmares. I was angry with God. I didn’t understand how such immense suffering could exist in our world. In short, the sisters’ intuition was right—I was not ready.
Financial readiness is the ability to access enough money to move the organization forward and achieve its plan. How much is enough? The answer will vary widely, depending upon the organization. Mother Teresa started with just five hundred rupees. She struggled to raise enough capital to fund some of the earlier programs of the Missionaries of Charity. As we learned earlier, sometimes to get to the angels, she had to deal with devils.
Mother Teresa realized that the Missionaries of Charity was not financially secure when it started. However, readiness does not mean having the answer to every question and having everything exactly as you would like it. It means understanding your organization’s current condition and the associated risks and then deciding it is time to act.
Mother Teresa’s vision of serving the poorest of the poor compelled her to move ahead. She did so knowing her financial situation and understanding the risk. However, she had not only faith, but a plan to raise the money the organization needed to fund its operations. In contrast, entrepreneurs starting companies often exhibit blind faith. They don’t understand financial readiness but are convinced they will raise the capital they need in time for everything to work out. Many never do.
LOU’S STORY: I worked for a CEO of a software company that was always trying to raise the capital it needed to grow and to realize its vision. For over eighteen months the CEO was convinced that the next big investor was going to put a lot of money into the company. However, during my time there, the company never had the money to hire the people it needed or to market its solution effectively. It was not ready. Consequently, it struggled to even keep the people it had. The big investor never came, and all but two people left the company. Those two people and the CEO worked for no pay for months. The CEO continued to raise money in small amounts, but it has never been enough to give the company a real opportunity to realize its vision.
It is almost always the CEO who must lead the effort to secure the funding necessary to move the organization toward its vision. The leader must raise this capital while continuing to provide day-to-day operational guidance. This is a difficult balance. Capital is the lifeblood of early-stage companies. Without it most will die, some more quickly than others. It is the leader’s job to ensure that the company is financially ready to not only survive but thrive as it strives toward its vision. However, you also need to provide sufficient guidance to the people running daily operations to ensure the company’s success.
The pursuit of capital also inevitably tests the emotional readiness of the leader. It is perhaps the best example of the emotional roller-coaster ride that is starting a new organization. You may meet a prospect who leaves you feeling excited that you will close the funding gap much faster than you had thought; in your next meeting, potential investors may tear apart what you thought was a great plan, leaving you feeling your vision is hopeless and you were crazy to think you could ever raise any money for your organization. During the pursuit of capital, your emotional stability will be tested again and again. Success will determine your readiness and the readiness of the organization to move forward.
The third major area that must be assessed is operational readiness: the ability to actually do all the necessary activities to run your organization on a daily basis and reach your vision. For instance, if you are selling a product, can you manufacture it at consistent quality in the volume you need at a cost you can afford, and can you get it to where it will be sold profitably and on a timely basis? If you are selling a service, can you deliver it when, how, and where your customer wants it, at a price the customer is willing to pay? If you are a nonprofit, can you deliver your programs at a cost low enough that you are being a good financial steward and meeting your donors’ and the community’s expectations? And if you are a government agency, are you delivering your services within your required budgets?
Regardless of the type of organization you are leading, a key element in assessing your operational readiness is to evaluate your team. If you don’t have the right people armed with the required resources and support, operational readiness will be severely affected, and this will impair the organization’s potential to succeed.
Mother Teresa clearly demonstrated operational readiness. She spent nearly twenty years working as a teacher and principal, which gave her leadership experience. She had time to observe her surroundings in Calcutta, meet with the impoverished, and recognize her dream to serve them. She put in place the team she needed. After the Missionaries of Charity began its work in Calcutta, she continually assessed her own and the organization’s readiness to grow. It was ten years before she opened its first mission outside of Calcutta, in Drachi, India. It was seventeen years before she opened the first mission outside of India, in Venezuela.
Are you prepared to handle the emotional ups and downs of starting a new organization? Do you have the financial and human resources to start down this path? If you have a slow period, will you have the capital to get through it until your business improves? Finally, are you and your organization able to deliver the goods and services you tell your customers you can? Can you provide the quality and service they expect, at a price where you make the return you need to grow your business? Are you ready?
Wait, pick your moment, and go!