notes on The Pope & The CEO: John Paul II's Leadership Lessons to a Young Swiss Guard

Some notes on The Pope & The CEO: John Paul II's Leadership Lessons to a Young Swiss Guard by Andreas Widmer

The Pope in the title is John Paul II, and the CEO is-well, John Paul II again, or the author, Andreas Widmer, or ... you!

You don't need to be Catholic or a CEO to benefit from reading this book. You don't even have to be Christian. I think anyone looking for more practical spirituality in their life will like this book.

In a nutshell, the author, Andreas Widmer, finishes school in Switzerland and, not sure what he wants to do, kind of falls into working at the Vatican as one of the Swiss Guard, the Pope's traditional bodyguards.

Next he moves to America to be with a girl and study International Business. He marries the girl, and with her encouragement, takes an unpaid internship at a small tech startup. The internship leads to a job, and by the time of the startup's IPO he is a Vice President. He moves to a second company, and when it is acquired for $600 million the shares he receives are worth enough to leave him financially independent.

Here's what's interesting: his wife feels uneasy and wants him to sell the shares, but he ignores her wisdom. Then it comes out that the new company is fraudulent, the shares tank, and his fortune disappears. Burned out from overwork and feeling betrayed by the new owners, he stops to re-examine his life. He reflects on what he learned during his two years of close contact with John Paul II and begins applying that in his marriage, in his work, and in his own life.

After twelve years of unconventional success, Andreas Widmer shares what he has learned in this book.

The overarching framework is the Three Vocations. There's the universal vocation to be a child of God. Your primary vocation is your spiritual lifestyle: married and in the world, single and in the world, or a full-time religious life. Your secondary vocation is your work.

I find this metaphor freeing:

our vocation is the way in which we give back to God what he has given to us. It's a bit like when you give your child art materials-paper, brushes, pencils, colors, glitter, glue, scissors, wiggle eye stickers and pom-poms-then ask them to "use all this material and make something great. Go ahead-be creative!" You then wait excitedly until they come back and proudly present the latest creation. You of course love it and, just as proudly, display it at your office or in your kitchen.

The author's explanation of the Examen, a way of cultivating spiritual awareness, was helpful to me: "One way to do this is at the end of the day ask yourself how you feel spiritually about what's going on in your life."

You look just like...

The older I get, the more people I've seen, and the more strangers remind me of someone else.

I wonder if really old people are constantly experiencing the present layered with all these associations from the past.

Hearing God

I believe that God talks to people more than we hear, and certainly more than we listen.

I mean that God is trying to tell us stuff more often than we're trying to hear. Also, sometimes we hear God, but we don't listen or obey.

It's also true that most of the times we try to hear, we don't hear.

If we do hear God, it really pays to listen and obey, even if it doesn't make sense or involves risk.