There is a story about a person who went to a Zen master and requested him to teach him Zen. The master started pouring tea for his guest. Soon, the teacup was full, but he continued to pour. It started overflowing.
The person told him, “Please stop pouring, don’t you see the cup is full?” The master smiled and said, “You are like the cup. You are already too full. You have to empty your cup before I can teach you Zen.”
Sometimes you have to unlearn what you have learned to see the opportunity in a new light. So it is in the world of business. Business leaders and managers call such an approach by many names — ‘Zero-based budgeting’, where you don’t let the past dictate how to plan for the future; ‘Re-engineering’, where you fundamentally rethink and radically redesign the processes.
