2005 CEO Roundtable Spring Retreat

CEO Roundtable Members Take a Reflective “Walk Around the Lake”
with Dr. Barrie Greiff

Boston – As March transitioned into April, approximately 50 greater-Boston CEOS gathered at Babson College’s Executive Learning Center in Wellesley, Massachusetts to “take a walk around the lake” with CEO Roundtable, LLC, Chairman Loren G. Carlson and Dr. Barrie Sanford Greiff, psychiatrist and author.

Since organizing his very first CEO roundtable peer group in 1996, Carlson has been committed to helping his members address not only business challenges, but also quality-of-life issues – the delicate balance of mind-body-soul, family, community and work.

To offer special attention to those more personal issues, once a year Carlson invites the CEO Roundtable members to a day and a half retreat. This year, he invited them to “take a walk around the lake” to focus on professional and personal transitions: how to recognize them and handle them. The interactive program was inspired by the words “perhaps the truth depends upon a walk around a lake,” a line from a poem written by Wallace Stevens, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and businessman.

Dr. Greiff is an expert on CEO quality-of-life. He created the first course on life and work balance at Harvard’s business school, where he taught for 16 years and still serves as a consultant to the university and to numerous business organizations including IBM, General Foods and PepsiCo. He is also the author of Legacy: The Giving of Life’s Greatest Treasures.

Greiff opened the retreat by saying, “Things happen when you do your own walk around the lake – and come to your own philosophy and opportunities in your own mind.”

“Incorporating poetry, paintings and film, our retreat journey started with studying the apparent simplicity of a Norman Rockwell illustration of transition, “Breaking Home Ties,’” to analyzing the obvious complexity, paradox and ambiguity of Robert McNamara's "Fog of War" where transition in the face of failure apparently fails to occur and the lessons learned are really questions asked,” Carlson said.

One of the group’s assignments was based on William Bridges’ The Way of Transition. They were asked to create a table of contents as if they were writing their autobiographies with chapter titles referencing the transitions in their lives. “We shared the chapter titles -- those times when we failed, when we succeeded, when we chose the right path, when we changed direction and when we ended up in paradise without planning to,” Carlson explained.

The group drew upon the writings of poet David Whyte, an earlier retreat facilitator, for assurance that in mid-life crises, "Everything Is Waiting For You" in the humility and stability of everyday things.

At the end of “the walk around the lake,” the group proved T.S. Elliot right as they returned to where they had begun and "recognized it for the first time.”

“A CEO is multi-dimensional. Each CEO is biological, psychological, social, and spiritual. CEOs are not static. They move on. And in that movement, there is transition,” Dr. Greiff explained.

He warned about confusing transition with change, explaining that “change is an event, but transition involves a transformation...it means you have established a different identity. And, a good transition requires a renewal.”

For that renewal, Dr. Greiff advises, “Take the walk around the lake. It’s an opportunity to gain perspective on your transitions, and to come up with ideas you never had before.”

Dr. Greiff concluded the retreat with a selection from what he calls the best business book ever written, the Book of Ecclesiastes:

For everything there is a season,
and a time for every matter under heaven....

CEO Roundtable brings CEOs, presidents and company owners together each month in professionally facilitated peer groups of 8 to 12 members from non-competing companies for invigorating exchanges of information, ideas and insights. CEO-Roundtable conducts six groups in Massachusetts and in New Hampshire, including general business, biotech/pharma, and high tech. For more information, contact Loren Carlson at 978-685-8743 or visit www.CEO-Roundtables.com.