“Spirituality is sweeping through the corridors of corporate America, unleashing human potential and showing a profitable return. Selling the concept to South Africa – a country that’s already a test case for true transformation – should be a breeze”
By CATHERINE EDEN
Three years ago, the New York Times reported that religion was creeping into the workplace. God was on the agenda at prayer breakfasts and seminars, and one or two CEOs were going public about their spiritual practices. More recently, heavyweight American publications from the Wall Street Journal to the Financial Post and Business Week have confirmed the trend, reporting on the wave of spirituality that is transforming the work ethic of some of the world’s top companies.
There have been Torah lectures at Microsoft, Islamic study groups at Intel, Koran classes at Boeing. The formation of a Spiritual Unfoldment Society at The World Bank drew comment from The Washington Post that even this institutional pillar in the Washington power structure was gaining a reputation for enlightenment. The society mushroomed out of a small, weekly discussion group on spirituality, started by Richard Barrett, a specialist in organisational transformation, who was working as a consultant to the bank. Barrett was subsequently asked to design a programme to align the bank’s activities with spiritual values, which he did before leaving to establish a consultancy that now takes on corporate clients around the world.
‘ I want to change the philosophy of business at the global level, in my lifetime,’ he says. ‘Amazing things are going to happen in the next ten years. They are happening already.’
From coast to coast on the American continent, management is realising that profit is no longer the only bottom line to watch. Business is still about making money, but now it’s also about making a difference to individuals and to the whole of humanity.
It’s not just philanthropy that’s behind this drive, but sound economic sense. Employees are not machines; they bring feelings, values and belief systems to work. Factor these into company policy and the result is a more content, loyal and stable workforce. Creativity soars, productivity improves, and profits increase.
It’s especially important to define a company credo in a multi-cultural country like South Africa. Engen’s Shared Values Programme recognises that people from diverse backgrounds won’t necessarily interpret values in the same way. Also that the country’s political history has left a legacy of mistrust and prejudice that continues to impact on the way we interact with each other.
‘ Lack of agreement undermines productivity,’ says Engen’s Hamede Ali, co-ordinator of the programme. ‘So we have agreed on a common value set that defines how we treat each other. Past conditioning determines the way we respond under pressure: do we fight, flee or freeze? In a complex workplace we have to create a history that makes us rethink those old responses. Change must come from the top, from leaders who show their good intent, their trustworthiness and their competence. We go through a very detailed process, working with eight core values, each of which has its own set of guidelines. Basically, the values relate to truth, trust, mentoring, being receptive to new ideas, taking personal risks, giving credit where it is due, avoiding dishonest money, and putting others’ interests before your own. The programme has been enormously successful, not only in South Africa but in all the African countries where Engen operates.’
Ian Mitroff, co-author of A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America (Jossey-Bass), claims that a spiritual focus could be the ultimate competitive advantage. It certainly worked for Xerox when their employees plugged into a little mysticism and made the company millions. Ignoring the scathing remarks of skeptics, they took to the hills on a mind-expanding vision quest and came back with the inspiration to build a 97% recyclable machine that’s proved to be a winner. Spirituality, it seems, is a very sound base on which to build a better business plan.
Not everyone would agree, of course. There’s a valid objection to the workplace being used to promote religious dogma. Fundamentalists are quick to spot the devil in any philosophy that doesn’t adhere to their particular party line. And there are always the chancers who abuse a lenient system, such as the self-proclaimed witch who forced his well-meaning employers to give him the day off on Halloween.
But dogma and fringe practices are not what this movement is about. Rather, it’s about basing a business on the basic rules of life that are at the core of all religions and that are common to all holy texts. Official sanction for the trend came from an unexpected source: a giant organisation that deals with the world’s most powerful companies. At the 1999 International Conference on Business and Consciousness in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, Michael Rennie and Gita Bellin from the Australian branch of consulting powerhouse McKinsey & Co reported that they were successfully using spiritually based training programmes to boost clients’ productivity and increase their profits. We are not just humans dabbling with the sensitive side of our nature, they stressed, but are essentially spiritual beings having a human experience. As such, we have the ability to contribute towards a major shift in human evolution, steering a process that will result in new levels of understanding.
With spirituality on the rise among individuals who are searching for the meaning of existence, it’s hardly surprising that it should at last be penetrating the corporate arena. As more business leaders declare and practise their code of ethics, so the climate of the workplace changes. This doesn’t mean that the company will lose its edge. ‘You can use honesty, integrity, faith, compassion and wisdom and still be successful,’ says Bob Marx, associate professor of management at the university of Massachusetts. ‘There should be something more in the vocabulary of the business world than profit, incentive and performance.’
Vicky Coates, a business trainer from Cape Town, is poised to teach that new vocabulary. She was a delegate to the Mexican conference in 1998 and returned in 1999 as a speaker to present a workshop on The Art and Science of Foundational Spiritual Leadership in Business. It’s her mission to introduce spiritual principles into the South African workplace.
With a background in sales and management and experience in running her own business, Zimbabwean-born Vicky spearheaded a customer care division for Renaissance Business Associates with whom she was in partnership before launching her consultancy, Capstone Consulting.
Her unique customer service programme, called I Care I Can, inspires participants to identify their own strength and to bring a fresh sense of purpose to their work. Vicky has a deep respect for truth, and has been searching it out in the teachings of various spiritual disciplines and training programmes since she was 19 years old. She lived in spiritually based communities for some years, and became a trainer for R.A.L.I (Responsible Action and Leadership Initiative), a multi-cultural youth leadership programme.
Now, after 20 years of putting her principles into practice, Vicky is convinced that, in order for training to be truly effective, it must include a spiritual dimension. This she defines as anything that raises awareness or challenges mental models of the world and the way it works.
‘ We spend billions on training that often effects very little sustainable change,’ she says. ‘Why continue to tread well-worn paths that have not worked? It’s my view that the world is an outside reflection of an inside condition. Apathy and a lack of respect in the hearts and minds of individuals will be reflected in the world they inhabit, as will enthusiasm, joy and love of work. If the world is to change, people have to change. There are no short cuts. We cannot solve problems with the same level of understanding that created them. To change an organisation, a new impetus must be present, to create the context for change. People learn not only by receiving information but also by witnessing role models in action. But there are so few authentic role models. How many of us truly have personal transformation at heart and fulfilled employees as our new bottom line?’
Vicky is developing the I Care I Can programme into a six-part video series to give it wider application, and is designing a programme on the spiritual components of leadership. Her special interest is in working with managers and trainers to explore the less visible dynamics of human interaction and to coach companies who want to redefine their fundamental principles.
It’s not a task to be taken on lightly. As Richard Barrett says, organisations don’t transform, people do, and transformation takes a lot of soul searching. ‘Embracing spirituality is not work for the timid of heart,’ he says. ‘The benefits of it are immeasurable. Yet it requires personal struggle. Only when you change internally will you see those benefits reflected in the outside world. You have to go through a process and it’s painful. You have to show up fearlessly.’
Traditionally, power and aggression are associated with success, whereas a business style based on the principle of love seems weak and ineffectual. But it need not be. For all its flaws, South Africa’s truth and reconciliation process frequently displayed love’s transcendent power.
‘ Our attitudes can either create or destroy our health, our relationships and our environments,’ says Vicky. ‘Every moment we choose to add value, we are shaping our life story. South Africa has a unique spirit that has already been demonstrated. The integrity here is solid. But now we need to create Ubuntu within companies, so that people can say, “I love to go to work because I feel I’m making a difference.”’
Getting this process under way is Vicky’s goal. She has the experience to facilitate dialogue, the knowledge to be an invaluable resource, and the passion to see her projects through. There’s a demand for her skills in an environment where the definition of work is changing as old forms of security fall away. It’s no longer the norm to stick in one job and be parented by your employer for life. Downsizing and re-structuring have fanned anxiety but also inspired people to look for more creative and satisfying ways to earn a living.
‘ The security we thought we got from the corporation is a myth,’ says Canadian-born Martin Rutte, who runs a successful management consulting company, Livelihood Inc. in Santa Fe, New Mexico. ‘Real security comes from a connection to that which is truly secure – the spirit.’
Rutte has addressed the corporate leadership and ethics forum of the Harvard Business School for four consecutive years. He’s the co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work, and lists the World Bank, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Apple Computer and Virgin Records among the companies whose outlook he has helped to expand. He visited South Africa as a delegate to the World Parliament of Religions, and also presented at the Beyond 2000 Business Symposium, the first symposium on spirituality in business in our country.
Because ‘humanity needs a new story’, he devised Project Heaven on Earth, which invites everyone to participate in raising spiritual awareness by bringing a new sense of purpose to their everyday tasks. If you can carry positive energy wherever you go, you have the ability to uplift your world.
Rutte got started on this path when he concluded that what was missing from his life was a connection with the Divine. Undaunted by his colleagues’ warnings that it would be professionally suicidal to introduce the S-word into his practice, he stuck to his conviction that ‘if the human spirit can be unleashed with very good management to support it, we’ll have wondrous companies.’
Part of the process of self-empowerment is to stop being manipulated by the system or locked into patterns that hinder personal growth. Have a vision, says Rutte, and forget about old limitations of what can and can’t be done.
The president of KIIT (Khalsa International Industries and Trades, a group of companies structured on spiritual lines) started off as a food chopper. She was promoted to waitress, accountant, and then to executive status. How? By simply doing an excellent job wherever she was, and by realising that it is we who give meaning to a role, and not a role that defines us.
Spirituality is not an answer, says Rutte, but a question that allows you to look more deeply at life. It encourages open, honest communication, develops an atmosphere of trust and demands ethical behaviour.
‘ We’re in a paradigm shift,’ he says. ‘There will emerge new businesses and new ways of work. Environmental degradation and lack of fulfillment are coming to an end. Respect, a calling forth of people’s individual gifts and spirituality – that’s what’s coming in.’
The day has already dawned when a declaration of spirituality is a requirement of a job. When Vicky Coates expressed interest in becoming involved in McKinsey’s leading edge training projects, she was asked for a spiritual biography, outlining her personal journey of transformation. ‘We are keen to understand the journey as one not only of intellectual intelligence (IQ) emotional intelligence (EQ) but also soul intelligence (SQ),’ they wrote. ‘In other words, we are looking for the trinity of experience in all living things.’
In the light of this remarkable request, the writing is on the wall: companies that are concerned with nothing but their own profits occupy the bottom rung of the spiritual ladder. Barrett describes various levels of corporate consciousness that must be navigated to reach the top. It’s quite a climb through communication, transformation, development of a corporate culture based on shared values and vision, trust, strategic alliances, environmental awareness and employee fulfillment to the long-term perspective of improving societal conditions, but the effort brings rich rewards.
Ken Macher, an organisational development consultant says, ‘Leaders need to become philosophers, but what importance do we place on maturation and wisdom? There are two bottom lines: fulfilled people and profits. Don’t work with companies if they are not interested in both.’
Spiritual wisdom could elevate all fields of human endeavour to unprecedented heights. And then we’ll really get down to business.
