Back in 1983, when Jeff
Katke founded Metagenics Inc., the visionary entrepreneur
liked to call the shots.
“I’m a founder and an entrepreneur, so I tend to have a
pretty intense style and focus,”
he says.
A lot has changed in the past
25 years, though. For one
thing, the manufacturer and
distributor of medical foods
and nutritional supplements
now has 750 employees globally and reported 2007 revenue
of $172 million. In the process,
Katke, who serves as chairman
and CEO, now aspires to have
a much more collaborative
process.
That transition hasn’t always
been easy. Katke says that his
intensity can occasionally get
in the way of effective cooperation among his leadership
team, so to quell these lapses,
Katke engages in a daily affirmation process to stretch his
comfort zone and stress positive thinking.
Smart Business spoke with
Katke about how to meditate
on improvement and how to
show restraint in the board-room.
Think positive. I do a personal
effectiveness meditation every
morning, where I’ve written
down a series of issues that
I’m working on to improve,
and I review those mentally in
a sort of affirmation format to
program my subconscious
mind to work in harmony with
my conscious mind to try to
achieve those goals.
In essence, our subconscious
mind operates or keeps our
conscious mind operating in
what’s called our comfort
zone. We tend to want to stay
in our comfort zone. So if you
don’t decide to get out of your
comfort zone, and if you don’t
program your subconscious
mind to be comfortable with a
new goal that’s outside your
comfort zone, your subconscious is always working on
keeping you where you are.
By programming through
affirmation what your goals are
for improvement, you basically
create a new comfort zone. For
example, if my problem is that
I get too intense with people
and it frightens them and then
they don’t feel comfortable
communicating with me, I
might have an affirmation that
says, ‘I listen intently to other
people, and I’m very sensitive
to their feelings,’ so they feel
that I listen to them.
I might use that as an affirmation, and then that affirmation
will literally cause my subconscious mind to establish that as
my comfort zone, and then
when I have a tendency to go to
that intense place and be very
directive, my mind will say,
‘Well, just wait a minute now.
Why don’t you let that person
talk a little more, and why don’t
you ask questions, and why
don’t you be quiet for a little
while [and] see if we can’t come
up with a better solution?’
I have a whole list of these
things. I refine them and write
new ones, and I read them at
morning and at night every
day, and I meditate on them so
that I get this feeling of what it
would be like if that was actually the way it was.
Focus on the big picture. A vision
has to be a bigger purpose
than the immediate focus of
the business.
For example, in my business, we R&D, manufacture
and sell nutritional supplements and medical foods. We
could be in the business of
selling pills and powder for
profit, but if you have a vision
that is a bigger vision — our
vision is to improve health of
people with chronic illness
and help them improve their
quality of life — then when
you’re making your product,
your whole decision-making
process is different.
If you’re making pills for
profit, the quality of the product is important, but it’s not
that important. As long as
they’re popular and the public
will buy them, they’re good
enough. Whereas, if you’re
focusing on an actual illness
issue, you have to have the
very best ingredients.
At the end of the day, in a
capitalistic society, the company is paid for the value it provides. If you provide higher
value, you should be able to be
paid more for it. So it translates into improved sales
growth and improved profitability.
