Four management secrets of Greek orthodox monks
THE bell for the first service of the day clangs at 4am at the monastery of Simonopetra on the Athos peninsula in northern Greece.
But to be at the chapel when the ceremonies begin, you have to get up earlier to dress and climb the cold rough-hewn stone steps of the vertiginous complex; step over the raised threshold of the chapel, and bow to and kiss the icons lit only by candles, crossing yourself in the pre-dawn darkness. Under the eyes of painted Christs and Virgins, you have to squint to make out the outlines of unoccupied stalls – the throne-like wooden chairs set against walls and pillars. The seats are just wide enough for half your butt, so you have to wedge yourself up and aslant as you remind yourself you’re actually awake.
Meanwhile, black-robed monks float by like angels of the apocalypse, rotating dramatically through the inner sanctum of the chapel. Everything is in Greek, which I don’t understand. But so is the chanting and singing and the kyrie eleisons. The songs are eerie and otherworldly and heart-rendingly beautiful.
The service takes on hypnotic serenity as the sun seeps into the sky over the peninsula. Athos has seen tumult as jagged as its coastline. The war in Ukraine, too, has sent shivers through the territory with the thunder of ecclesiastical schism.
This austere and anachronistic theocracy shouldn’t be sustainable. But the monastic republic is thriving. Even as the monks live on what is virtually bread, fruit, beans and water, their coffers are full; property portfolios are said to be burgeoning, not just with peninsula land values but holdings beyond; bequests have come in from the devout all over Greece and the Orthodox communion, including oligarchs in Russia. The Roman Catholic Church would swoon with jealousy at the number of acolytes flocking to the Athonite monasteries.
You may not be moved by Byzantine liturgies or the attenuated saints staring down from ornately painted murals, but this alternative reality has practical lessons for managing our own portion of the multiverse.
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As Michael Lewis wrote of one Athos monastery in his 2011 book Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World: “How on earth do monks, of all people, wind up as Greece’s best shot at a Harvard Business School case study?”
Here are some of my answers:
1. Disconnect to focus
The monks are unplugged – no cellphones, no televisions, no links to the World Wide Web. Indeed, links with the rest of the planet are sporadic at best – no matter what iteration of iPhone you have and what appear to be cellular transceivers on the eaves of the topmost roof of Simonopetra. My phone was useless for the most part, belying my provider’s boast of ubiquitous connectivity.
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Delinking can be unnerving for those of us used to having information at our fingertips. But it also unclutters your brain of the kind of restlessness and gullibility fomented by social media. The energy that might have contributed to, say, a mass Twitter takedown, is focused on accomplishing the strictly prescribed tasks of the day: prayer, study, the upkeep of the monastery buildings and pathways, cultivation of vegetables and fruit, time spent being hospitable to pilgrims. To help focus on your part in the monastery’s common purpose, stop to take in the beauty of the shared space. Breathe in the silence that is broken only by bird calls, the wind and the waves far below the cliffs. There’s a reason communing is integral to community.
2. Master specialisation
Monasteries aren’t free-for-alls where restless jacks-of-all-trades can exercise their ambitions. The monks have clearly prescribed responsibilities. The first person I met walking down the road into Simonopetra was the monk in charge of that road itself. By extension, he oversaw the few vehicles owned by the monastery and the machinery on the property. In Simonopetra, there is an engineer-monk in charge of the power supply (generated by wind and water power). Another is in charge of the monastery’s finances (it helps that he used to be an investment banker). A couple of monks have medical backgrounds resulting in the vaccination of their Simonopetra brethren as the pandemic hit. No one died of Covid. Other monasteristraies in the peninsula were sceptical of the virulence of the virus – and suffered the consequences.
Might such specialisation and single tasking become mind-numbing? Justin McDaniel, a religious-studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania, teaches a class on the virtues of living the monastic life in modern times.
He told CNBC: “You have to learn how to be bored. Or sit with feelings of anger or sadness or loneliness without crowdsourcing your emotions to your friends.”
Throwing yourself into work can be helpful – for yourself and for all. While no women are allowed in the monastic republic, Simonopetra has a satellite monastery for women in Ormylia, which is about an hour’s drive from the border of Athos peninsula: The Cenobium of the Annunciation. The stunning late Byzantine-style murals that cover practically the entire interior of its church were studiously painted by two of the sisters over a 20-year period, rigorously accurate in colour and technique to the medieval originals that inspired them. Once done, they started on the huge communal dining room.
3. Exploit core and distinctive competencies
Monasteries are well aware that they can provide lay folks the spiritual charge to pursue their goals in the secular universe. The devout go on pilgrimages to places like Athos – where they need special visas granted by the autonomous republic that you pick up at a little office by the ferry to visit or spend just a single night in a monastery hostel – because they have deep issues that they can’t navigate. Athos provides innumerable objects and spaces – both ancient and simply numinous – that can ameliorate these anxieties or at least give troubled souls the time to contemplate their dilemma.
It’s not a cynical thing: The monks truly believe that relics – as gruesome as some of them may be – can help focus the spirit, if only because they are physical proof of the continuity of faith. One monk carefully detailed the provenance of a saintly hand through various documented owners, including a pirate. The devout not only bowed to it but wafted handkerchiefs and cloth over these treasures so they could bring home molecules of sanctity. Answered prayer often results in benefits to the monasteries: jewellery, bequests in wills, property, cash to help allay the expenses of the monks. And spiritual influence often translates into an ability to affect change in rough-and-tumble IRL issues.
4. Be steadfast with your objectives
The monasteries weren’t always rich. Take Vatopedi, perhaps the wealthiest monastery in the peninsula today. In 1903, it had close to 1,000 monks living on its premises. By 1973, however, that number had fallen to about 30 who were scrounging out a penurious existence in increasingly ramshackle quarters.
That all changed in the 1980s when immigrant Greek Cypriot monks took over the property. Looking for ways to rebuild, their leader, Abbot Ephraim, went through the moldering documents in search of whatever Vatopedi might have to trade for funds in the outside world. They discovered they had been deeded a lake by a Byzantine emperor. It had little commercial value but with skill and wily negotiation, he managed to convince Greek government bureaucrats to exchange the lake for real estate the monks could sell to finance reconstruction.
They were so successful that Ephraim, the monk who advised him on the transactions, and several others were accused of malfeasance and fraud as Greece found itself in a financial crisis that threatened to upend the European Union itself. The abbot spent several months in custody before being acquitted of all charges in 2017. When asked how all this was possible and how he got through it, he simply says: “It’s a miracle.”
Athos is certainly not an infallible example of how to run a business, nor even how to live one’s life. But the centuries-old monasteries can provide parallels through which we can gauge our own actions, like the transcendence that can arise from their hoary relics.
After all, as one monk told Lewis: “What company has lasted for 1,000 years?” Or to end it with Abbot Ephraim’s probing remark to me during my audience in his office: “So you’re Anglican. Maybe you can be Orthodox.” BLOOMBERG
The writer is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion covering culture and business. He previously served as Bloomberg Opinion’s international editor and is a former news director at Time magazine.
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