Ka r m ic

M a n ag e m e n t
What Goes Around Comes Around
in Your Business and Your Life

A
G E S H E M I C H A E L ROA C H

L A M A C H R I S T I E M C N A L LY

MICHAEL GORDON

D O U B L E DAY
New York London Toronto Sydney Auckland

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 Copyright © 2009 by Geshe Michael Roach, Lama Christie McNally,
and Michael Gordon

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Doubleday Religion,

an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

DOUBLEDAY and the DD colophon are registered trademarks

of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Roach, Michael, 1952–
Karmic management : what goes around comes around in your
business and your life / Geshe Michael Roach, Lama Christie
McNally, Michael Gordon. —1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Management. 2. Buddhism. I. McNally, Christie. II. Gordon,
Michael, 1951– III. Title.
HD31.R55 2009
658—dc22
2009005190

ISBN 978-0-385-52874-0

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Design by Jennifer Daddio/Bookmark Design & Media Inc.

Illustrations by Jeffrey L. Ward

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

First Edition

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 To purchase a copy of 

Karmic Management 
 
visit one of these online retailers: 
 
Amazon 
 
Barnes & Noble 
 
Borders 
 
IndieBound 
 
Powell’s Books 
 
Random House 

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 CON T EN T S

Success, Certain 1

The Factory, the University, and the Hair Salon 7

KM Rule #1: Stop Doing Things That Don’t Work 17

KM Rule #2: Find the Cause of the Causes 27

KM Rule #3: Identify Your Karmic Business Partners 39

KM Rule #4: Start from Yourself 55

KM Rule #5: Stop Making Decisions 81

KM Rule #6: Load Your Stapler 97

KM Rule #7: Ride Your Problems Over the Top 107

KM Rule #8: Re-invest the Karma 123

Don’t Stop Here: Going Further with KM 139

Acknowledgments 149
Further Reading and Resources 151

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 SUCC ESS, CERTA IN

A
1

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 K
armic Management is the long-awaited sequel
to The Diamond Cutter, one of the world’s most
popular business books, translated into
more than fifteen languages and used by millions
of people around the world. The Diamond Cutter told
the story of one of the most successful companies
in the history of New York City, and now Karmic
Management tells you how you can do it yourself. The
ancient, cutting-edge tips you’ll learn here have been
used by:

Linda Kaplan Thaler, who built a billion-dollar

advertising company and wrote the best-selling
business book The Power of Nice: “I owe much of the
success of our company to the beliefs in The Diamond
Cutter: we ensure our success when we plant imprints
in our minds by ensuring the success of others.”
Jill Murphy, a U.S. Army nurse serving in Iraq:
“I truly believe that the way the principles found
in The Diamond Cutter have worked here in our unit
could be a model for ending this war, and all war in
the future: we have found that respect for others has
dramatically reduced the violence.”

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 K A R MIC M A NAGEMENT

William McMichael, an American Airlines

pilot, who says, “The cockpit used to be a tense
place for me. . . . I read and used The Diamond Cutter
to stop prejudging my co-workers. Now my work-
place has become dramatically more pleasant.”
Lindsay Crouse, Academy Award–nominee ac-
tress: “I bought this book, went to a café, and read it
cover to cover. . . . Now I teach my courses for actors
blended with this ancient wisdom of the East. I’ve
learned that promoting the careers of others makes
my own career.”
Muhammad Salam, who as a vice president at
AC Holdings Capital found that “The Diamond Cutter
helped me discover more precisely how generosity
towards the poor was producing my own success in
the financial markets.”
Russell Simmons, founder of the hip-hop
movement, personal value $320 million, master of
Diamond Cutter philosophy: “I made a lot of people
in the world rich. I made money by making other
people money. I’m rich from making others rich.”
Eva Natanya, a professional theologian and a
ballerina with the Royal Ballet of London: “I vividly
recall my first encounter with The Diamond Cutter.
Once I had read it, I knew that I would never look
at the world in the same way again; that I had found
an unparalleled understanding of how the world

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 SUCCESS, CERTAIN

actually works. I get through my own hard times by

reaching out to fellow dancers in need.”
Barney Jones, oil industry executive with Bentley
Systems: “It used to be that people at work didn’t
listen to me or my suggestions. A friend got me to
read The Diamond Cutter, and by following its sugges-
tion on avoiding gossip, I can say that the people
around me are clearly influenced by what I have
to say.”

Now see yourself how Karmic Management can

work for you!

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 T H E FAC TORY,

T H E U N I V ER SI T Y,

A ND

T H E H A I R S A L ON

A
7

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 T
he boss has put together a project team of
12 people and made you project manager.
The task: Get 100,000 units of the new
product out the door, and sold through, within six
months—starting today.
Or maybe your spouse has decided that the
kitchen needs remodeling, and you’ve got one month
to get it done.
Maybe you’ve just given yourself the job of losing
five pounds by next Monday.
The 100,000 units could be books or pizzas or
online software sales; it doesn’t really matter. The
point is that a specific project or task has to get done
by a certain date. And you’re responsible to see that
it does get done, on time.
Let’s face it, life is one long string of jobs. We
need a way to get them done right; we need a sure-
fire recipe for success. Financial success, sure—that’s
what we’re talking about. But at the same time we
want to be a success as a person: a good person, a
truly happy person, a person who’s mentally and
physically healthy. And if we’re doing things right,

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 K A R MIC M A NAGEMENT

we also help all the people around us—the world—

at the same time.
This little book gives you a completely new way
of getting tasks and projects done. It’s not something
you’ve ever heard of before, but it works—it always
works. Give it a try. All you need to invest is an hour
of your time. We believe that if an idea is right, it can
be explained in just a few words—and then the rest
is up to you.
We’ll be taking you through the Eight Rules
of Karmic Management, proving to you how what
goes around really does come around, in both your
business and your life. We always start with a quote
from one of the ancient books of wisdom that pro-
vide the source for Karmic Management. Although
these books come from many different places, they
all ended up in Tibet and for a thousand years helped
build her priceless culture of wisdom. A radical new
business approach that has survived a millennium’s
test of time.
And so first you’ll be seeing a pearl like this one,
from the sixth-century Buddhist sage named Chan-
dra Kirti:

10

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 T H E FA C T O R Y, T H E U N I V E R S I T Y, A N D T H E H A I R S A L O N

ANCIENT WISDOM

A
The odds of success
In all things
Are 100%.

Then we go on to explain how the quote is go-

ing to help you get the 100,000 pizzas out on time
and become the star of your company (or your home,
which is sometimes harder).
We think that a book about how to be a success
should be written by people who are already successful,
and so every now and then you’ll see a little box like
the one that follows, with a real-life story about how
we ourselves used a KM rule to reach our own goals:

Real Life

LAMA CHRISTIE:

I was trained in the Eight Rules of Karmic Manage-

ment from day one, at the Asian Classics Institute of
New York. My dream was to help build a new kind

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 K A R MIC M A NAGEMENT

of university, one that made a real difference in the

world. And KM has done the job.
We started with no money at all, and our Dia-
mond Mountain University is now up and running
on a beautiful one-thousand-acre campus nestled
in the foothills of southern Arizona. We have sev-
eral hundred students from all five continents of the
world, and our off-campus programs have been at-
tended by thousands of people internationally. Kar-
mic Management really did make my dream come
true, at an age when most people are still just finish-
ing up graduate school.

MICHAEL GORDON :

I’m at the complete opposite end of the spectrum

from Lama Christie. I had never even heard of Kar-
mic Management. My dream was to build a high-scale
hair salon in New York City, from scratch, without
knowing a single person there. People in the business
would call this Mission Impossible, but over the last
30 years the firm I founded—Bumble & bumble—
has grown into one of the world’s largest and most
successful hair care and products companies, with
over $50 million in annual sales.
I got into Karmic Management through the back
door: once I learned about it I looked back on my
business career and realized that it was exactly what

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 T H E FA C T O R Y, T H E U N I V E R S I T Y, A N D T H E H A I R S A L O N

I’d been doing all along, and why we’ve been so suc-
cessful. For me, KM has always been natural and in-
tuitive: it just felt like the right thing to do. So now
I’m excited about seeing the Eight Rules actually laid
out in a book that can be shared with other people, to
make them successful too.

GESHE MICHAEL :

I’m somewhere between Lama Christie and Michael

Gordon. I spent many years studying in Tibetan mon-
asteries, and of course we were taught all the different
ancient books of wisdom that Karmic Management
comes from. But nobody ever sat down with us and
told us how to actually apply this wisdom in day-to-
day tasks and projects, at home or at work. We were
supposed to figure it out on our own. It was a process
of trial and error for me, but in the end it was clear
what to do, and as one of the founders of Andin In-
ternational Diamond, I used KM to help bring this
manufacturing company from zero to $100 million
in annual sales.

F inally you’ll see another section that gives you a

specific job that you’ve got to get done on your
own if you want Karmic Management to work for

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 K A R MIC M A NAGEMENT

you. We can help tell you what you need to do to be

successful, but it’s your job to take these little “to-
do” lists seriously. Here’s an example.

YOUR TO-DO LIST

• Don’t pick up this book and read it through once

quickly with some vague notion that you’d like to
be a success. Right now, before we go any further,
decide on one specific task or project that you’re
going to use as a test case for your Karmic Man-
agement. If it works, then you have a friend for
life in KM, and you can go ahead and use it for
every job you ever want to get done, big or small.
• So here we start on what’s called Quiet Sitting—
sort of a warm-up to the formal meditation that
we’ll be talking about later. Get out of the house
and go somewhere you personally consider relax-
ing, a place where you can just sit down and think
on your own. It could be a bench in a nearby
park, a table at your local coffee shop, or just a
certain block that you enjoy walking down.
• Carry along a little pocket notebook and a pen.
Stay calm and silent in yourself, and ask your
mind this question: What is the one job or
project that I would really like to get done in my
life right now? When would I like to finish it by?

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 T H E FA C T O R Y, T H E U N I V E R S I T Y, A N D T H E H A I R S A L O N

What exactly will it look like if I’m really success-

ful at this task?

A ll this has to be absolutely clear in your mind

before you take the dive into Karmic Manage-
ment. We’re going to show you how to make your
dreams come true, the same way that ours did, but
the dreaming part is up to you.

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 To purchase a copy of 

Karmic Management 
 
visit one of these online retailers: 
 
Amazon 
 
Barnes & Noble 
 
Borders 
 
IndieBound 
 
Powell’s Books 
 
Random House 

www.DoubledayReligion.com