From the Founding EditorI

hope that by now our readers have learned that Re ections tries to be a coatof many colors. Most of our issues have evolved around themes, and these
themes have usually arisen out of a critical mass of contributions that clearlyhung together. We have also evolved themes because ‘‘they are in the air.’’ Formonths now, we have noticed more and more articles, newspaper reports,
books, and essays that deal with ‘‘spirituality,’’ the role of religion in business,with values-driven management and other topics that imply that there must be
more to life than work and there must be more to organizations than just ful lling their primary task. Especially in business and industry, more and more
people are experiencing a con ict between their day-to-day duties and the needsof their inner selves. Many people experience a genuine conict between their
deeper inner values and what the world of work requires of them. So our teamswallowed hard and, with the enthusiastic leadership of Judy Rodgers,
launched into an exploration of these issues.
We found immediately that there are semantic problems. What does spirituality really mean? How is it connected to an issue that goes far back in history,
the issue of spirit and its role as a motivator? In our many hours of discussion
and reviewing candidates for papers, we could not resolve the semantic issue,
so we have decided to forge ahead with a variety of viewpoints. The best way
for readers to approach this topic is with a ‘‘spirit of inquiry.’’

Ed Schein

In This Issue
Karen AyasT

his issue of Re ections could not be timelier. The atrocities of September 11
made us question our deepest held assumptions. They were a wake-up call,stronger than ever, for a clearer sense of what’s important.
At the opening of the Society for Organizational Learning Research Greenhouse, 10 days later on September 21, I shared ‘‘a prayer for life’’ with participants. Almost immediately, I began feeling a strong presence in the room. It
felt as though everyone was calling for help along with me as I read: ‘‘Sourceof all life, we pray for life. . . . Help us to keep our minds alive. . . . Help us tokeep our hearts alive. . . .’’ The prayer had a healing effect, and we felt supported by one another. We had a wonderful, productive meeting.
At dif cult times, it becomes evident that we cannot separate spirit fromour lives or work. There is no way around the pain; we have to go through it.
While we each respond in our own way and time, we can nd the inner strength

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

1

AYAS

In This Issue

2

to go through difcult times when we feel sustained and part of somethinglarger than ourselves.
There is an ever greater need for spirituality in the world, and there is more
readiness for it right now.
There are many faces to spirituality. The variety of articles, essays, poems,
and practices in this issue show the plurality and diversity of perspectives. One
overarching theme that is carried across the issue, however, is ‘‘interconnectedness.’’ The collection here helps us see how spirit, or any way we choose todescribe our essential being, is at the center of our relationships in life andwork, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.
We open with Judy Rodgers’s account of Nizar’s dilemma. That organizations cannot continue their demand for ‘‘split screen’’ existence from individuals is carefully illustrated in this story. You will nd this dilemma expressedin other stories in the issue, and you most probably have witnessed it in yourown life. Read the story by Stephen Buckley if you are still not convinced.
We discover next that there are leaders who do succeed in creating conditions for people to get involved in the workplace with their hearts and souls.
From Roger Saillant, we learn that living authentic lives in the workplace is
not just a possibility but a necessity, if one aims for high performance in organizations. In this interview, he explains why ‘‘connectedness among all’’ isa change of state whose time has come. Peter Senge’s introduction includes anaccount of Saillant’s inspiring talk six months later at the SoL Greenhouse. In
his comments, André Delbecq, a professor at Santa Clara University, describes
Saillant as a leader who truly embodies ‘‘servant leadership.’’
Next, two consultants, Stella Eugene Humphries and Kathleen Otterman,
illustrate how one can facilitate the emergence of a pathway into interconnectedness that leads to breakthrough results in a client system. Francis Crome’scomments underscore the importance of bringing the whole self into the process, rather than expert knowledge, whether one is a researcher or a consultant.
Ben Bruce, a manager at Harley-Davidson, next shares his mid-life reections and describes his response to the call for servant leadership. Bill Torbertoffers his developmental map of managerial action-logics as a frame for thetransforming path Bruce chose to take. Sherry Immediato, SoL’s acting managing director, in her comments shows how Bruce, by sharing his story, hasserved the SoL community. She explores the implications of his story for us asindividuals and for our organizations. Stephen Buckley next tells a story fromhis early days at work and presents yet another version of Nizar’s dilemma.
We continue with Bill O’Brien’s brilliant description of his search for meaning in his life’s work and what sustains him from inside. In a letter he wrote toa friend and colleague 13 years ago, O’Brien, the president of Hanover Insurance
at the time, predicts an epoch change where there no longer is a split between
science and spirit, where we reach higher levels of understanding the paradigms
that dictate our actions. As we see in his comments 13 years later, most of hisforesights are still timely and relevant today. Alfredo Sfeir-Younis, a special
representative to the World Trade Organization, in a short essay based on aninterview with Judy Rodgers, argues that businesses can play a very differentrole in the world today if we can possibly think of them as having a body anda soul, and leaders can become spiritual entrepreneurs. Andrew Ferguson,chairman of Spirit in Business, Inc., comments on the essay.
‘‘Why spirituality, why now?’’ is further explored in a thoughtful essay by
Philip Mirvis, an organizational scholar and consultant. Mirvis draws on his
experience in Foundation for Community Encouragement (FCE), an organization that teaches principles of community building, and his work with its
founder, the seminal writer M. Scott Peck. Next, Wendy Y.N. Luhabe, introduced by Peter Senge, invites us into the possibility of a world aspired to by
FCE, where there is deep respect for humanity. We witness the leadership of a

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSAYASIn This Issue

South African woman to heal the fragmentation and dysfunction that arises
from lack of inner understanding and her commitment to create a communitythat lives from within.
David Cooperrider and Frank Barrett next show us how appreciative inquiry, a methodology that they have developed and used in the past decade,might serve as a vehicle in transforming communities. They invite us to explore
our own inquiry process and how that might in uence our openness to themiracle and mystery of life.
The powerful and positive aspects of human creativity are further discussed
by Peter Senge and Margaret Wheatley in an interview by Melvin McLeod.
We get a glimpse into the understanding of life from a Buddhist perspectivethat includes a commitment to meditation practice, study, and service. How
everything one learns in meditation—being aware, listening, letting go—canbe brought into the collective experience is particularly interesting.
If you want to learn about the meditation practice itself, read the short essay
on how to cultivate mindfulness, based on an interview by Otto Scharmer witha true master, Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder and former director of the Stress
Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. Mark Kriger, in his poem and re ections that follow, shows yet another kind of meditative practice. Cultivating mindfulness through a walk in the woods andexperiencing our interconnectedness with nature is a theme that is covered inanother short re ective essay by Erik Larson.
We close the issue with an article by Diana Whitney that provides four
different frames to think about spirit: as energy, as meaning, as sacred, and as
epistemology. This is a useful structure for both understanding how spirituality
relates to organizational development and deriving a set of principles for spirit
as a global organizing potential. Ian Mitroff, in his comment, offers anotheressential framework that helps us understand different dimensions of spirit.
Finally, Peter Senge, in his column based on sociologist Pitirim Sorokin’s thesis,
provides an illuminating and hopeful perspective of an integral culture thatbrings the inner and outer into greater harmony.
We welcome your reactions and comments. Please e-mail us at pubs@
SoLonline.org.

3

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

Contributors

6

Karen Ayas is associate editor, Re ections; research fellow, Erasmus University, Rotterdam; and partner, The Ripples Group.
Frank J. Barrett is associate professor, Graduate School of Business and Public Policy,
Naval Postgraduate School.
Bennett Bruce is Manufacturing Systems Lead, York Operations, Harley-Davidson Motor
Company. He has been a liaison ofcer for the Society for Organizational Learningsince 1995.
Stephen C. Buckley is an entrepreneur, writer, and independent consultant in Somerville,MA.
Linda Cooper is a photographer based in Evanston, IL. , svcguru@mcs.net.
David Cooperrrider is an associate professor, Weatherhead School of Management, Case
Western Reserve University.
Francis H.J. Crome is a specialist environmental consultant with a long and varied international research and consulting career.
André L. Delbecq is the McCarthy University Professor, Santa Clara University. His research focuses on executive decision-making processes, organization design, andmanaging innovation.
Andrew Ferguson is a founding director of Meadowbrook Lane Capital and chairman
and president of Spirit in Business, Inc.
Stella Eugene Humphries is a research associate for the Society for Organizational Learning.
C. Sherry Immediato is acting managing director, Society for Organizational Learning.
Jon Kabat-Zinn is a meditation teacher, writer, and scientist, and Professor of Medicine
emeritus, University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Mark P. Kriger is Professor of Strategic Management, Norwegian School of Management.
Erik G. Larson is a technical consultant and teacher of Raja Yoga Meditation with interestsin photography, poetry, and applied spirituality.
Jonathan Liffgens is a freelance photographer and architect in Chicago. , jliffgens@ixpres.com.
Wendy Y.N. Luhabe founded a human resources management consultancy, Bridging theGap, launched Women Investment Portfolio Holdings, and serves on numerous corporate and foundation boards.
Melvin McLeod is editor, The Shambala Sun.
Philip H. Mirvis is an organizational psychologist whose work concerns large-scalechange and the character of the workforce and workplace.
Ian I. Mitroff is the Harold Quinton Distinguished Professor of Business Policy, Marshall
School of Business, University of Southern California.
Bill O’Brien is retired CEO, Hanover Insurance Companies, and partner emeritus, GeneronConsulting.
Kathleen Forrest Otterman is an independent consultant. Her current practice evolved
from a multifaceted career path and is informed by both the scientic principles ofliving systems and the realms of human consciousness.
Judy Rodgers is a communication and media strategist who has specialized in translating
the work of organizational theorists and business authors for a wider audience.
Roger Saillant is president and CEO, Plug Power, Inc.
Peter M. Senge is a senior lecturer at MIT and founding chair of the Council of Trusteesof the Society for Organizational Learning.
Alfredo Sfeir-Younis is a special representative to the United Nations World Trade Organization in Geneva.

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSContributors© Emily Sper

Emily Sper is a photographer, graphic designer, and author-illustrator in Boston, MA. Her
photographs have been exhibited in the US and abroad. ^ www.sperphoto.com&
Bill Torbert is a professor of management, Boston College, Carroll School of Management,
and coauthor of Personal and Organizational Transformations.
Margaret Wheatley is president of the Berkana Institute and principal, Kellner-Rogers &Wheatley.
Diana Whitney is president of the Corporation for Positive Change.

7

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

Nizar’s Dilemma
Judy Rodgers

N

Judy Rodgers
President
Communication ArchitectureGroup
Judy@jrodgers.net

8Ó

2002 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.

ot long ago, I was attending a dialogue at Oxford on the subject of ‘‘The Call of theTime,’’ part of a series sponsored by the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual Organization for those who are in the eld of world service and who also have some spiritual
practice in their lives. Dialogue participants come together for four days of dialogue andreection on the question, ‘‘What is the time calling us to do?’’At the end of this particular dialogue, I was having breakfast with a few people before
we headed back to our respective homes. The conversation had turned to the subject ofintegration—that is, how could we take the sense of inner calm and clarity that we wereexperiencing in that moment back into our lives. A Kenyan businessman named Nizar
Juma began to elaborate on a particular ‘‘schizophrenia’’ that was aficting him.
Nizar has run his own business quite successfully for years, and in his ‘‘semiretirement’’ had agreed to run a number of business interests for H.H. Aga Khan, thespiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims. Nizar had a strong spiritual practice that involved
early morning meditation and a vegetarian diet, among other things, and he observed
how he often felt that he was moving back and forth between two worlds—the rich innerworld of silence where he seemed most in touch with his essential self and the dynamic,
fast-paced outer world where he oversaw a considerable business empire as a trustee for
the Aga Khan. These two worlds seemed to evolve on parallel paths with a different castof characters, languages, values, and standard practices.
These parallel tracks collided one day when he made a decision on behalf of the Aga
Khan to purchase a protable meat-packing business. It was ‘‘business as usual’’ during
the negotiations. However, when the deal was completed, it became clear that, as a partof the due diligence on the business, Nizar was going to have to make a site visit to themeat-processing plant, which included the slaughterhouse. Nizar paused in telling thestory and made a face, demonstrating his disgust. He went on, pointing out that the Aga
Khan was a Muslim and also a vegetarian, and as far as he was concerned, this was strictly
business. However, for Nizar, this visit to the meat-packing plant brought into high relief
the disjunction between his two worlds.
The story doesn’t have a big surprise ending: Nizar did visit the plant and managed
to get through the experience, while still serving the interests of the Aga Khan, but theexperience left him mulling the disconnection between his inner world and his outerworld. It is a condition that aficts many of us.
There is our working life, what we do to support ourselves and our families. In thislife is our worldly identity. Here we participate in a community of practice with otherswith whom we share the values of our workplace. We do our part to run a pro tableenterprise, to compete in an ever-changing global business climate. Armed with cellphones, Palm Pilots, and laptops, we work as efciently as we can to get the most productivity out of the best hours of our day. We race in and out of meetings, on and off
airplanes, dialing in for messages and joining others on conference calls.
And then there is our contemplative life, what we do spiritually to support ourselves
and, in turn, our families. Here is our inner identity. Having put aside the trappings of
our working life, we go into the world of silence ‘‘unarmed’’ in an attempt to still the
racing thoughts we have stirred up during the day. Here we come to terms with our
deepest values, and with whatever higher power we understand there to be. Here we may
also participate with some community of spiritual practice. But our objectives are differ-

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSREFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

RODGERS
Nizar’s Dilemma

ent. Why do these worlds feel so irreconcilable? It is as if
a certain ‘‘split screen’’ effect has been created, with two
separate story lines.
In the framework of social construction, we seem tohave socially constructed one story of the world that operates at work and another story that operates at home:‘‘world as business opportunity’’ versus ‘‘world as community of families or citizens.’’ In the one story, we makedecisions on the basis of sectarian interest for  nancial
gain. In the other, we make decisions based on how theyaffect the well-being of our community. They seem to remain separate. Sometimes we may even imagine a kind of
unseen balance sheet in which our good acts in the worldof community may counterbalance whatever we have to
do in the world of business. We may think we are balancing these two separate worlds until some event tears thefragile membrane that was keeping them separate, and we nd ourselves, like Nizar Juma, caught in the dissonanceof these two parts of ourselves.
We were preparing this issue for you during summer
and fall of 2001 when, on September 11, the attacks on theWorld Trade Center and the Pentagon shattered the statusquo. This instant—as if unfolding in slow motion on a giant world screen —eclipsed business as usual, and ourmost basic human selves ooded to the surface. Trial lawyers announced they would not sue; journalists set aside
images of despair in favor of images of compassion andgenerosity; CEOs went on television, tearfully explaining
how they were going to support the families who had lost
loved ones in the meltdown of the World Trade Center.
In preparing this issue, what became clear is that thelogic of separate worlds for our inner and outer selves is an idea that is no longer working
for many people. Many are experiencing ‘‘Nizar’s dilemma’’ and the related urge forwholeness.
Living in the collected insights in this issue is the proposition that the experience ofreligion or spirituality belongs not in the margins of our lives, but in the heart of our daily
thinking and our nine-to-ve work. William James, author of The Varieties of Religious
Experience, expressed this in a letter to a friend: ‘‘The problem I have set myself is a hard
one:  rst, to defend . . . ‘experience’ against ‘philosophy’ as being the real backbone of
the world’s religious life . . . and second, to make the hearer or reader believe, what I
myself invincibly do believe, that, although all the special manifestations of religion may
have been absurd (I mean its creeds and theories), yet the life of it as a whole is mankind’s
most important function.’’© Emily Sper

9

Creating High-Performing
Organizations:
A Conversation with
Roger Saillant
Karen Ayas

Roger Saillant
President and CEO
Plug Power, Inc.
Roger_Saillant@plugpower.com

10Ó

Karen Ayas
Associate EditorReections
Kayas@mediaone.net
2002 by the Society for Organizational Learningand the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Roger Saillant is the sort of gifted practitioner who, in my view, has always been
the heart and soul of the SoL community. First of all, he has been very successful
from the standpoint of business results. Over the years, he developed within Forda reputation as the type of person who could be tossed into the most dif cult of
assignments—like a faltering manufacturing facility in Northern Ireland established by the English or a startup facility in Chihuahua, Mexico, tasked to produce a new product with a new process with which virtually none of the 3,000
workers had any prior experience. In these and many other assignments, Roger
has helped people build high-performing organizations that have lasted beyond
his limited tenure.
Arie de Geus once said that researchers write about what they think, while
practitioners think about what they have lived. As you will see, Roger does agood deal of both. A PhD in chemistry, he has been thinking for most of his life
about the chemical imbalances building in the earth’s oceans and terrestrial
ecosystems. Finding himself today as the CEO of Plug Power, a fuel cell manufacturer, seems only  tting for someone who has been thinking so long abouthydrogen as a transition fuel toward building a truly solar economy. But his
passion for chemistry is matched by passion for the wonder of how people cantruly work together.
Six months after this interview, speaking at the SoL Research Greenhouse in
the fall of 2001, Roger summarized his managerial career with the simple insightthat there are two worlds at play in any organization: a technical world of aims,
tasks, and problems, and an emotional world of relationships, aspirations, andfears. He drew a triangle to symbolize the  rst, saying, ‘‘This is where management happens.’’ He drew a circle to represent the second and said, ‘‘This is whereleadership happens.’’ The essence of his craft, he explained, lies in weaving thetwo. (A recording of Roger’s talk, in video and audio, is available on the SoL
website, www.SoLonline.org, under the ‘‘Research Greenhouse’’ section.)
Roger opened this talk by confessing that he might have dif culty ‘‘getting
through’’ some parts of the evening. I had asked him to share some stories fromhis career, and he knew that recounting some of what he had experienced working with people around the world would be emotional. Several times during theevening he stopped to collect himself, and many of us listening were deeply
moved.
One of those moments came when he talked about Elfego Torres, a man
whose father had been a silver miner. The night before they were scheduled tohold their  rst public tour of the new plant for investors, government dignitaries,

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSAYASCreating High-Performing Organizations

and Ford executives, it was pouring rain. Roger woke up in the middle of thenight and realized that they were in trouble. Because he knew that the new roof
was not  nished and it leaked. Rushing down to the plant at three in the morning, he found someone had beaten him inside. There was Elfego, with buckets
in all the right places, catching every leak. ‘‘I knew then that transfer of full
responsibility had happened in the plant, and that it would produce beyond whatanyone expected,’’ said Roger.
At the outset of Roger’s presentation, he said that the essence of what hedoes, in Mexico, Thailand, Ireland, Hungary, the US, or China, lies in creating
the conditions where ‘‘people can be who they really are.’’ As many of us talked
about his presentation afterward, these simple words seemed to summarize
pretty much all that we have learned, and must continually keep relearning, at
the heart of this work.—Peter Senge
Karen Ayas (KA): Can you share some of your background with me?
Roger Saillant (RS): I was educated as a scientist, a chemist. But I was raised
as a farmer. And I was a foster child. So I’ve lived in a number of places, but
I’ve spent a good chunk of my life on one particular farm in Pennsylvania,
which I think was highly instrumental in my development. In fact, I was raised
as a farmer in a situation where we had no truck, no car, and we used horses.
So I had a chance to get to know nineteenth-century American farming, everything from outdoor plumbing to rural electri cation.
KA: What made you want to be a chemist?
RS: If you’re raised as a farmer, you’re interested in natural systems. There isa lot of chemistry going on in agriculture. And I liked science; it seemed easy
to  gure out. A lot of things about chemistry were intuitive to me, and I liked
math too. I guess we like those things we can know without knowing why weknow them.
I went to undergraduate school at Bowdoin College in Maine, where I wasan English major for two years. In my sophomore year, I took an organic chemistry course, and there was a new faculty member, Dana Mayo, who had been
a postdoc at MIT and was really red up about his subject. He woke me up
with his enthusiasm. That was probably my rst real experience with someone
completely excited about learning. So I became a chemistry major and went to
Indiana University. I did my postdoctoral work at UCLA and then went on to
Ford Motor Company.

11

KA: How long were you with Ford and Visteon?
RS: Thirty years. I spent about 20 of my 30 years at Ford and Visteon doing
things that led to creating high-performing organizations. That’s really what I’minterested in.
KA: In hindsight, what would you say was instrumental to your success?
RS: I was anchored in ideals and values, and I tried to bring them into practiceby engaging people, both socially and technically. Socially, by trying to get attheir emotional truth, their values, and their beliefs. Technically, by trying to
get at the learning organization principles and disciplines.
It was clear to me that you can’t create high-performing organizations mechanically. It is a holistic process, and, for the process to be generative, people
have to get involved with their hearts and souls. It has to be a soulful kind ofthing that emerges and is driven by deeper beliefs. I don’t want to make it soundtoo mystical, but I think that there has to be a predisposition to want to workwith principles that are more fundamental than we are—those principles that

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3AYAS
Creating High-Performing Organizations

are interconnected among us all. Each of us carries a part of them so that, when
we come together, something valuable can form. When we’re apart, everythingis disconnected and jumbled. If you establish a rhythm across a certain groupof people, a connectedness begins to emerge.
That’s very, very powerful. People understand it; they feel it. And they get
an emotional glow from it. When that happens, the group isn’t afraid of creative
tension. They’re drawn to it; they understand it. And they’re part of it.
KA: I have also witnessed this and nd it fascinating. Would you consider thisa miracle of sorts, or is this something you have experienced over and overagain? Simply put, do you think it’s replicable?

André L. Delbecq
McCarthy University Professor
Santa Clara University
adelbecq@scu.edu

Commentaryby André L. Delbecq
When lecturing on transformational leadership, I usually set forth the following propositions dealing with the two twin pillars ofleadership: vision and engaging followers (Itook these directly from my PowerPoint
slides; I am sure others have similar slides).

12

 A directional vision ows from life integration:
Building on a high investment in earlier
competence building
Enduring hardship
Expanding experience through a varietyof career moves
Confronting the status quo
Assuming risk across a variety of increasingly complex efforts
 Assimilating prior formative experiences
through careful reection, resulting in
the integration of self and organizational
mission (purpose):
Beyond mere career ambition or searchfor power
A leader engages and sustains actionsof followers
Making assumptions visible
Evolving intellectual strategy jointlywith stakeholders
Enabling conversations of both heartand head
Empowering diffuse leadership
Dealing with problems without undue
anxiety
There is a problem with such an exposition,of course. In the abstract, it sounds likemodern ‘‘angelism.’’ It’s true that such propositions capture a rich body of researchfrom the past quarter century. But whether
your audience is composed of 28-year-old
MBAs or 50-year-old executives, their eyes
glaze.

RS: First, I think lots of things that are almost like miracles are replicable. And,second, I have been happily involved in this experience a number of times in
my career. Third, I expect to reach that kind of state with my current leadershipteam at Plug Power. I don’t know when it will happen, but my intention is towork until it does.
KA: How do you intend to do that? How do you succeed in bringing people
into an emotional space where they’re connected and driven by a goal larger
than themselves?
RS: An awful lot is tried and true—just questioning and listening to each other,engaging in conversation, trying to get into a real dialogue, and maybe getting
people just to talk at  rst. Then you eventually begin to talk about things thatmatter.
I don’t think you could ever do this without talking about things that reallymatter. The only way I know to do that is by asking good questions. For example, Göran Carstedt [of the Global SoL Network] has a good question and
one that’s not often asked: ‘‘How do you create an organization worthy ofpeople’s full commitment?’’
Most of the time, you have to start by asking yourself good questions:‘‘What is it that I really want to do with my life? What do I value? What do I
really believe in? What causes me to resonate, or get in harmony, with sometruth that’s bigger than I?’’
Think in the extreme: What causes people to stand up for a cause and say,‘‘I’m willing to die to make this happen’’? What causes people to say they arewilling to sacrice a great deal in order to move something forward?
One thing Peter [Senge] does really well is to hear a good question. So
when he reframes that question, it causes a group to reect collectively onsomething worthy of their reection. I don’t know how to ask questions as goodas the ones Peter asks. He is a good learner and teacher and has an open curiosity. I always admire his ability to frame a good question.
KA: What do you think drives good questions?
RS: Being able to see patterns or suspecting patterns or inner connections. It’s
like looking at a complicated math problem and just getting a feel for the answer, only in this case, it is seeing the problem or question clearly.
I once took a very advanced math class in graduate school. I don’t think I
really knew what was going on in the course, but I got the highest score on the nal exam. To this day, I don’t know how I did it. To me, that’s bad. It was, insome ways, insightful, creative, wild, and out of control. It is not repeatable,
and it is not teachable. Although it’s entertaining to say that I got the best grade,it’s very unsatisfying to me because I could never do it again. It’s like having a
dream of being able to play perfect Rachmaninoff, and knowing that, sitting
down at the piano, I can’t do it. Then it becomes a nightmare.

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSRS: The  rst thing I do is get the leadership team together for two or three days
and introduce a different language. We begin to talk, and I begin to talk. I wantto establish a common vocabulary, which, in many cases, is a new vocabulary
for most. For example, the use of terms like personal mastery, systems thinking,and creative tension, and the use of symbols like the learning circle, the ‘‘cush,’’and the check-in are all ways of thinking and doing that inuence the outcome.
You have to be careful because people don’t necessarily start out with ahigh regard for each other, nor do they end up with a deep understanding andrespect for dissimilarities. For example, you can start with Myers Briggs Type
IndicatorÒ [a test for psychological or personality type]. That’s just one mechanism that allows people to see that they are not better or worse, but just different. It provides the basis for some communication. Who you are and what
you do are somehow related. You are accountable for both—for being who you
are and for doing what you do.
At Plug Power, I want to create a shared vision. So I have already taken
the leadership team offsite for three days, and we have started to work on the
Plug Power story with questions like: ‘‘Where are we? Where are we going?
Why are we going there? How are we going to get there?’’ In that process, byunderstanding where we really are and where we really want to go, we canreach a state of creative tension. Then we get more serious: ‘‘What are we goingto do to resolve this tension?’’
Then we examine the vision again: ‘‘Where do we really want to go?’’ Let’s
say that we would like Plug Power to become one of the 100 most admiredcompanies. To me, this means that people will have to tell the truth, belong to
a community, have a shared inspirational vision, and be provided with an environment where they can learn and grow.
KA: What happens next? How do you keep the vision alive?
RS: We meet off-site for one day once a month. We’ll do that twice, and then
we’ll meet off-site for three days. So every quarter, we’ll be off-site for threedays, but every month we’ll meet off-site for a day. That builds a cadence, arhythm, like we’re going to church. I don’t want to equate the two, but I lookat church as a place where people re ect on their values, where they reect
and learn. There’s a story and a sense of community. By doing the process over
and over again, you begin to build a community. So that’s what I am doing
explicitly to have Plug Power emerge as a high-performing organization overtime.
KA: And the way to the high-performing organization is this high-performing
leadership team that is extremely well connected and feels unied?
RS: Right. My expectation is that the team members will begin to teach theirstaffs through good communication and practice and good questions. The organization then begins to have a culture where people expect, deserve, andbene t from a very nourishing environment.
KA: I can understand how eventually the quality of the conversation begins toimprove, and you build trust in the leadership team. But does this always cascade into the organization?
RS: It depends a lot on the leadership team. For example, Plug Power is anorganization of about 365 people. They’re relatively young and predominantly
technical, which makes it a little bit harder.
One thing that I do is to start teaching the learning organization principles,from The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook. 1 This underscores the importance of the

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

AYASWhat eshes out such propositions arestories.
The power of Howard Gardner’s Leading
Minds is its juxtaposition of minibiographies with good theory (1995). But his
stories are not about business leaders, somost of us struggle to provide verbally asummary of our own personal encounterswith transformational business leaders.
Terse, lucid biographies of business leaders
are badly needed.
Voila! The conversation with Roger Saillant
richly contributes. Here the formative rootsof a leader are described: the melding of
natural science in farming and the introduction to physical science through a mentor.
Thirty years of prior preparatory experienceat Ford and Visteon are shown as the prologue to the current leadership challenge:
students lured by the idolatry of ‘‘now’’ will
be forced to understand that leadership moments build on a long, preparatory history.
The balance of a leader providing ‘‘directional vision,’’ yet being patient in facilitating stakeholder participation through diagnostic, ontological questioning is brightly
illumined. The sense of vocation (calling) toa mission with a noble purpose (environmental protection) clearly comes through.
The fragility of outcome is admitted withneither romanticized predeterminism nor
absence of courage.
What best aids students of leadership toreect on their own life journey and unfolding career? A good story or a good theory?
Both, of course, and Roger Saillant has contributed a wonderful personal exposition tocomplement our theories.

Creating High-Performing Organizations

KA: So what are some of the typical processes you would initiate for a realdialogue to happen?

Reference

Gardner, H. Leading Minds: An Anatomy of
Leadership (New York: Basic Books, 1995).

13

AYAS
Creating High-Performing Organizations

tools and symbols and creates a new language. We needto do that because right now, there are many different languages at Plug Power, and there needs to be one languagethat everyone understands.
KA: How many people are on your leadership team at Plug
Power?
RS: About 14.
KA: Has your method worked with even larger groups?
RS: Yes, I’ve worked with much bigger groups. It just takestime.
© Emily Sper

KA: So, over the years, you have worked with many different leadership groups
and the process you have just described always works?
RS: It has always worked. I’ve been doing it explicitly with leadership groups
since about 1985. It’s tough to talk about what the groups have accomplishedbecause, in a lot of ways, it’s also self-serving. But I consider myself lucky tohave been part of so many successful teams and communities.
KA: Has any external measurement or assessment ever been your concern? For
instance, the fact that as a public company, you are under the Wall Street analysts’ scrutiny every quarter.

14

RS: Prots, quality, reliability, value, satisfaction—to me, these are all outcomes of getting all the other stuff right. Although we are still unprotable anddepend on investors, this is not what we want. Our shared vision is to deliver
reliable, safe products as quickly as we can to the customer—a reliable product,with a performance that satises the customer, at an affordable price, and ontime. Our vision is to create value for which the customer is willing to pay. That
implies that your price is right, your quality and reliability are right, and yourperformance is right. That’s what happens when you have a high-performing
business.
I don’t like the idea of a situation in which someone has given me something for nothing. So it’s biblical, like farming; you reap what you sow. I’ll beable to satisfy the Wall Street analysts quickly by sticking to a system that allows
people to do their best in fullling the shared vision.
One thing about Ford and Visteon was that, after a while, the senior leadership got used to me. One boss in particular, Bob Womac, stood out as a strong
supporter later in my career. But when new bosses arrived, they would be very
controlling and rigorous toward me. They couldn’t understand that I wasn’t
traditionally rigorous back, although my results were always better than anybody ever expected. None of my bosses ever asked, ‘‘How did you do this?’’They liked the results and trusted me and that was all I needed, just to be
empowered to ‘‘farm’’ the system.
KA: What are some lessons learned that you would bring from an old, giant
institution like Ford to a small, young start-up like Plug Power, which in many
ways represents the opposite extreme?
RS: I don’t know if I can differentiate between a large company and a small
company. For me, it is not so much about size; it’s just simply being able toengage people, regardless of the circumstances. Within a large corporation,
there are always small communities. And within even a small company, there
are small communities. In both cases, you have to be willing to be patient, andyou have to really listen. In both cases, you need to show enough seriousness

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSAYASCreating High-Performing Organizations

so that it isn’t just entertainment. This is part of our life’s work, and we needto show respect for what we’re doing. We need to honor the effort, which is
not something that should be treated casually. It is serious work.
I’m in a position of being tribal leader, and I have a natural drive. I’m
willing to do whatever I can to make whatever tribe I’m leading successful. If
the tribe happened to be really big, I’d still be doing that. And if it’s really small,
I’d still be doing that. That’s what I do.
The intermingling of business goals and personal goals, such that highperformance emerges, does not happen by accident. If you want to accomplishthat high performance over and over again and not simply stumble on it byaccident, it involves serious work.
There are many people who manage to create very successful, highperforming organizations. Some may not know explicitly what they’re doing,but they’re able to do it. Sometimes people do it without really having the real
deep insight of what’s happening to them. They’re happy, but they may not be
fully aware. I would much rather have people who are happy because they are
fully aware and awake.
KA: What would you say is the key to creating that kind of awareness?
RS: Providing a mirror so that people can understand how to develop themselves. I try to be vulnerable so that people can see me as a human being and,at the same time, as a professional. So they understand what personal masteryis and that being a master is better than being a novice. Although, in many
ways, against real standards, we’re all just novices.
I try to make myself vulnerable. I am in exible about certain things, but I
always try to be graceful in learning about other things. That allows other people to do the same. I just want to live completely and show the joy and satisfaction that comes with living completely. I don’t have much time to honor
being a victim. There are ample opportunities for us all to be victims. I ght it
and try to instill that philosophy in those around me.
People need to understand what fundamentally resonates with them, whatmakes them happy, and what takes tension away from theirthinking, their bodies, their minds, or their souls. What takes
it away? I feel like I’m helping people perform self-exorcism
to get rid of the things that tangle them up and pull them
down. I want them to be able to  nd their natural place.
KA: How about developing leaders in the organization? Is
that something you pay particular attention to?

People need to understand what
fundamentally resonates with them,
what makes them happy, and whattakes tension away from theirthinking, their bodies, their minds,or their souls.

RS: I’m always trying to identify people who can lead—those who have the drive, the intelligence, the ethics, andthe interpersonal skills to lead. I look for people who can tell
the truth, who are open to learning, who have a subjective
quality. An organization has to be such that if the leader leaves, it continues togrow and new leaders emerge. It’s like a forest. There is the canopy, and thetrees that provide the canopy. If a tree falls, then another tree emerges.
When I leave an organization, the emotional part of me wants people tomiss me, of course. What I really want people to say is, ‘‘His time has passed,
and now we’re ready to keep the work going. This is not his work, it’s ourwork.’’ That may not be very respectful of me, but it probably is the highest
achievement. The organization feels like it can accomplish something on its
own, without the need for outside interference. That’s very de ning. The organization can sustain itself and then can go beyond merely sustaining itself toa generative state. It gives itself condence and creates a certain boldness sothat nothing can stop it.
KA: So looking back at your career, can you see places where this has happened? Can you point to certain groups or communities?

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

15

AYAS
Creating High-Performing Organizations



RS: What we did in Mexico and in Hungary was similar.
In both those countries, we built new organizations bybringing people, mostly unknown to each other, together,and built a common corporate culture that resulted in very
high performance. High performance usually happened inplaces where we’ve been able to focus during several years.
One of my biggest problems was that I’d never been able
to stay with organizations as long as I’d like. Ford and Visteon have moved me around the world to different organizations. But I plan to stay with Plug Power until it reaches
that generative state.
KA: So what has typically happened when you leave anorganization?

© Emily Sper

RS: Other forces take over. It’s difcult to build an organization that continues to renew itself as an institution in nding and selecting leaders, in carrying on or exceeding
the old performance expectations.
For a while, everything comes together, and it’s very
alive and fully functioning, like Athens in the golden era.
And then it disappears. All of Greece and all of humanitybene ted from the Athens experience. My belief is that,even when organizations become re-assimilated and theindividuals in the organization have changed substantially,
the ambient behavior may be far less than the highperforming group’s but still well above the previous performance of the organization. Performance most likely
improves.
There is a reason for this. It’s why the NY Yankees or
the Chicago Bulls aren’t always the world champions. Or
as Arnold Toynbee would say, there is the rise and the fall of different civilizations. That’s just the way it is. Performance is too dynamic to be  xed; there
are the ebbs and ows. However, holistically, all mankind improves. I thinkthat our small advances cause business in general to move forward.
KA: And that’s what helps lead you into a next cycle of growth?
RS: Absolutely.

16

KA: How long have you typically stayed with a major assignment?
RS: I was in my last assignment for two years. Before that, a year in one, a year
in another, and a year and a half in another. My longest assignment was almost
three years in Mexico.
KA: So in each of these assignments, you’ve started from scratch, initiatedchange, helped people develop themselves, and then moved on. Is a year
enough time to do the work you do?
RS: No, but that’s what I had as my opportunity. One of my hobbies is raisingbees. Sometimes a hive will die. That’s just the way it is. When bees start tobuild their hive, they don’t know if something is going to take them over, butthey just go about building. That’s the way I am when I move into an organization. I don’t know how long I’m going to be there. I’ll start at the beginning,wherever that is. And I go until my work is interrupted.
KA: I am wondering what made you move to Plug Power?

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSKA: Was that because it was an organization that would help you in your quest
for environmental sustainability and to serve humanity?
RS: Yes, that was why I did it. I’ve had many chances to leave Ford andVisteon before. Coming to Plug Power was meant to be; it’s
my mission. It’s like everything else that I have ever done
has led me to this moment. I can now work on a subject andin an enterprise where the outcome could actually affect theway the world works with energy. I know that I am working
on something bigger than I. I’m explicitly doing work thatwill make the human condition better in the long run for ourenvironment and socially. That is important to me.

I’m explicitly doing work that will
make the human condition better inthe long run for our environmentand socially.

AYASCreating High-Performing Organizations

RS: A coincidence of many factors made it necessary for me to move to Plug
Power. They called me, and I thought, ‘‘This is an unbelievable opportunity.
I’ll do it.’’

KA: What do you think will be the impact of Plug Power?
RS: Changing the way the world thinks about energy. It may not be the mostimportant issue, but it’s one of the important issues.
KA: What Plug Power produces would be something that would change all
people’s lives?
RS: Correct. My idea is that Plug Power will produce fuel cells. At the outset,
they’ll be based on methane/propane/carbon-based fuels and maybe convert
those more ef ciently to electricity, so people will be able to shift toward very
clean energy. They’ll become accustomed to that practice.
KA: What would be the next leap?
RS: For me, it is to make sure that we’re building fuel cells that enable a hydrogen economy to emerge, because the only sustainable energy source is sunlight. We will have solar cells that produce hydrogen and electricity during theday, and at night, the hydrogen will be stored so that fuel cells can use thatenergy. Or we will store excess wind as hydrogen and release it in calm periods
through fuel cells to generate electricity. Even wind is the result of solar heating.
KA: Do you believe we can get there?
RS: Oh yes, my belief is that the faster we get there, the better off we’ll be, butthere is no doubt in my mind that we’ll get there. The Proteus project is one of
the Society for Organizational Learning projects on sustainability. The project’s
objective is to examine how to initiate the transformation of communities based
on today’s economic and social norms to one based on triple bottom-line (economic, social, and environmental) considerations. One aspect of this would beenergy conservation and the use of hydrogen as a fuel.
It doesn’t really matter whether sustainability happens in 5 years or in 50
years, we must be on that path and move as quickly as possible. This project
is so big that it won’t be done in my lifetime. Yet it has to be worked on. Someof the cathedrals in Europe took centuries to build. How many generations knewthat they were doing the right thing in building those churches, until they weredone?
I think more and more people will be on the path, because the time requires
it. The time is now.
KA: Why do you say that?

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

17

AYAS

Creating High-Performing Organizations

RS: The globe is shrinking. If you imagine the world as a great big lake, it’s likethe temperature has been dropping, and ice crystals are forming on the lake’s
surface. All of a sudden, when the moment is right, the lake freezes. In a lot ofways, I think that is what’s happening to humanity.
The Internet, television, communication, and transportation are all making
us more and more connected. We can now come together to crystallize. The
temperature parallel is that resources are becoming more limited on a per capita
basis. In other words, if everyone lives in the same ways as Westerners do, we
won’t be able to go on. Something different has to happen, and crystallization
to me is just this change of state. It suddenly goes from being a  uid to a solid.
The change of state is coming. We can’t continue the same practices.
They’re insufcient to provide for everyone what was once provided for a few.
So the temperature is changing, and a change of state is required. The people
who feel this pressure are acting.

We can’t continue the samepractices. They’re insufcient toprovide for everyone what was once
provided for a few.

KA: I have one last question. What do you see as some of
the major challenges as you’re looking into the future?
What keeps you up at night?

RS: Well, I wonder how long I am going to live. How do I
keep the job going so that Plug Power does, in fact, havean impact. Failure now could mean that this company
doesn’t exist. The problem is that there can be forces soenormous that I can’t see what they are. I don’t know what
I don’t know. What I don’t know may hurt me. That’s mybiggest fear.
I think what fuels me is good questions. And will I be able to learn fastenough? Will I be able to continue to ask good enough questions to keep moving
along? Or will I run out of ammunition? In all, I just feel like an awful amateur.
It’s pretty scary.

Note
1. Senge, P., et al. The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (New York: Doubleday/Currency,
1994).

18

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSThe Natural Emergence ofDeep Learning
Stella Eugene Humphries andKathleen Forrest Otterman

A constant breeze can mold rocks;
A sudden storm breaks branches.
— Chinese proverbA

midwest US power-generation company was in the midst of an intensive, stressfulorganizational transition invoked by deregulation, budget cuts, new unionmanagement partnerships, and a recent history of class-action lawsuits. Corporate headquarters had implemented many well-intentioned strategic, tactical, and behavioral
change programs. A newly appointed executive manager invited us as consultants to workwith a small group of 12 to 15 power plant managers and engineers.
In the power-generation unit, plant managers were being asked to streamline andconsolidate operations in order to become more  exible and efcient in a deregulated
environment. The operation of power plants as independent units was to be phased out,
replaced by management of the whole plant system as a portfolio; that is, outage planning,
maintenance, deployment of resources, and so on were to be coordinated and optimized.
For the plant managers, this organization implied a major personal adjustment. Behaviors learned in a long-standing command-and-control management environment were
now inappropriate. (One individual gave some perspective on the prevailing norms andbehaviors; see the sidebar.) By contrast, new management objectives implied increased
self-responsibility and adeptness at participative management, cooperative interaction,and peer decision making.
To support and enable this shift, the executive manager invited us to assist him andthe plant managers in developing a ‘‘learning team.’’ As a former engineer in the plants,
he was highly regarded; he had a good sense of the potential of his senior staff to take on
more responsibility for operational decisions, but did not want to mandate this change.
His expectations for the process of becoming a learning team were uid, and how ourservices might best be used was not yet clear. We offered him a number of more or lessconventional approaches to organizational learning, that is, creating shared vision, introducing basic skills for productive conversations, introducing systems thinking concepts,
and so on. However, we could not get a commitment of time for such approaches. We
also shared a feeling that just another headquarters’ training program would be ill received
in the current climate.
During this period of intense change, people had developed a tacit resistance to many
previous corporate programs for change. A program driven from the top down had become
automatically suspect, and people in the plants had little patience or energy for anythingthat did not practically serve the work at hand. Unless something made genuine sense
and added value, it was business as usual, with a veneer of compliance, such as adopting
the language of change or submitting appropriately checked boxes on evaluation sheets.
Under these high stress, somewhat ambiguous circumstances, we decided to begin
by observing the regular monthly information meetings to get a sense of the individuals,
the group dynamics, and the issues of concern. Our intention was to tailor subsequently

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

Stella Eugene Humphries
Research Associate
SoL
seh@whidbey.com

19ÓKathleen Forrest Otterman
Independent consultant
KSFOALLY@aol.com

2002 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.

HUMPHRIES AND OTTERMANThe Natural Emergence of Deep Learning

Adapting to command and control‘‘In controlling systems, you are never allowed to think a thought. You are told that ‘you’re stupid,’‘that’s crazy,’ or ‘where did you get an idea like that?’ So you learn to adapt to that system. Years
into a career, you learn to stop thinking for yourself. You are never allowed to feel any feelings,
except fear. You shouldn’t get angry; you shouldn’t have compassion, kindness, or empathy. You arenever allowed to comfort or show remorse or failure. What you learn is apathy.
‘‘You always have to obey someone outside of yourself. You are never allowed to have inner judgment.
‘‘You are never allowed to disagree; you aren’t allowed to be different. Consequently, if you do nothave anyone telling you what to do, you will become lost and confused because your whole life has
been lived from the outside.
‘‘You are not allowed to imagine. Without the power to imagine, you cannot look at new possibilities, and without it, you are a rigid conformist. Human imagination is the power that has forged newfrontiers and given the world innovation, advancement, and progress. Without this power, you gradually become hopeless, since hope involves seeing new possibilities.” —Power plant employee

a more targeted approach for developing a learning program. Despite our attempts to getagreement on a plan, we arrived at our rst meeting without a clear agenda. The executive
manager asked us that same morning to focus our observations only on him, not the plant
management group as anticipated. In particular, he wanted our perceptions of his styleand effectiveness. At the afternoon break, he decided we should give our feedback live
and unedited in front of the group.
Despite the need to be fast on our feet to coordinate our feedback, this turned out tobe a brilliant entry into the group. The executive manager’s willingness to be vulnerable
and to be critiqued in front of his staff without knowing what we would say was the  rst,
critical turning point (see the gure). The room was pin-drop silent with attention. Clearly,
this was a countercultural, courageous decision that opened a door. The group met theexecutive manager’s departure from expected behavior to create an authentic moment of
exchange with admiration, which they then voiced. Some issues we raised in our feedback(for example, lack of closure on pending decisions) had been undiscussibles in the oldcommand-and-control culture. Following our feedback, we asked the plant managers to
add their comments. We were surprised at their willingness to risk raising some difcultissues so quickly. This was a strong signal that communication channels were now freer.
Several people immediately asked us to coach them in subsequent meetings. Our entry
into the system was strong and established our credibility. It also opened the way forworking with the whole group.

20

Figure 1 Observed phases of deepening and expansion of learning with relationship and time.

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSInstead of acting as agents for theorganization to institute its change
agenda, we became collaboratorswith people who were responsible
for making those changes.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

HUMPHRIES AND OTTERMANThe Natural Emergence of Deep Learning

For about two to three months, we attended the monthly meeting, continuously strategizing a way to bring to the table some methods and tools of organizational learning.
We instituted a ‘‘check-in’’ at the beginning of each meeting and a reection or feedback
period at the end. The group adopted the check-ins, and these were well received. We
noticed they helped to set a more open, less formal tone and gave space for people to air
concerns. Except for the initial meeting, the re ective period at the end always ran overthe scheduled time. Although it was clear the group was eager to learn from our comments, the reective period never materialized during the allocated time, despite being
on the agenda. However, people were willing to stay afterward, and many eagerly listened
and engaged with us, but re ection on the margins was not a satisfactory arrangement
for us. We continued to give our feedback to the executive manager, but now in private.
We gave comments to individuals on an ad hoc basis at the end of each meeting.
We decided that attending the monthly meetings was inadequate for giving us a senseof the whole system. We needed to understand better the daily pressures, the central
issues, the core concerns, the decision-making processes, and the distribution of power,that is, the deeper structure of how things worked. We arranged to visit one or two plants
each month. Soon we were invited to participate in informal meetings among smallergroups of managers and began to work more intensively with a few individuals who wereparticularly receptive. This marked a step up in the level of trust we had established in
the group. In hindsight, the invitation to attend the smaller meetings was a second major
turning point. We were developing a relationship with the plant managers independentof the executive, a relationship that arose from trust and, by implication, from value.
We continued to try to understand the whole system. We were puzzled when we
found out that major decisions were not made during the formal meetings. Decision making turned out to be a diffuse process spread over many meetings, formal and informal,
in ways we never fully grasped. Moreover, there seemed to be an inherently contradictory
structural relationship between portfolio management and an operational group in thehead ofce that determined each plant’s power output based on demand, overall supply,and market price.
If plant managers were to become a learning team, responsible for optimallymanaging the portfolio, we wanted to know what forces were at play to support
self-responsibility and which forces, perhaps unintentionally, maintained the authoritarian structure. In other words,
was the goal unattainable as stated? Were the messages
mixed? Was anyone aware of the contradictions? We could
not and did not want to be aligned with an agenda the plants
did not ‘‘own.’’ We were, however, prepared and committed
to help people carry out their responsibilities in meaningfulways.
We began to focus more on helping individuals andsmall groups as they did their work. We continued to ask
them questions about what it would take to manage a portfolio, but we ceased trying to make it happen. We made a subtle but pivotal internal shift.
Instead of acting as agents for the organization to institute its change agenda, we became
collaborators with people who were responsible for making those changes. We decided
we were there to serve the people and not the agenda directly. This subtle difference ismost critical, as it governs how we related, what observations we made, and how weintervened. We were no longer imposing change but offering our particular knowledge
and experience, as well as our de facto ‘‘outsider’’ perspective, to serve the people who
were mandated and responsible for meeting the corporate agenda. Our realization is consistent with Schein’s advice: the main attribute of a consultant is to try to be helpful andto ensure that the client, not the consultant, ‘‘owns the problem’’ (Schein, 1999).
We thus rediscovered that the authority we internalize and on which we act makes
the critical difference in our work and its outcome. In this case, imposing change as agentsfor an external authority was signi cantly different from co-creating a safe relational spacefor reciprocal learning, a space free of the ultimately counterproductive effort of trying tochange others.
Thus, the complex, stressful environment that allowed almost no formal input on

21

HUMPHRIES AND OTTERMANThe Natural Emergence of Deep Learning

22

Deep changes from connection to the human spirit‘‘We are surrounded by acronyms, corporate programs, policies, budgets, mission statements, yearly
reviews, and lots of numbers. We measure everything and set targets after targets. Our leaders speakof earnings, growth targets, Wall Street analysts, strategies, stock value, and so on. There is talk ofpeople and diversity, and there are programs and value statements. But the overt, underlying purposeof all actions is improving the numbers. Each year is a new struggle to achieve the numbers. Andeach year, the numbers aren’t good enough, so we try harder to achieve better numbers. Of course,
there is no life in numbers or income or cash ow statements or most anything measurable.
‘‘I used to notice when ‘life’ existed, when a team I was on was successful or just ‘in the groove.’
Now I notice when ‘life’ doesn’t exist, when a meeting gets bogged down in minutia or if I get frustrated with myself or those around me. I’m more aware when I am losing myself in what matters
least (results, expectations, numbers), and I can more easily work through it in a way I could not
before. I can reconnect with my soul and with a higher purpose the work serves. I now see the work
as service to the community.
‘‘My intuition or inner beliefs have always been there, and they peek out once in a while. Deep in
my soul, I have known better. I have known that each of us is priceless and that our interactions
have a higher purpose than creating things and dollars and returns on investment. But now, thisresonates every minute of my day. What has awoken my awareness is another human being or, better put, a connection with another human being—soul to soul. In particular, I was connected bywhat seems like destiny, by someone who sees, afrms, and validates my deep self, someone who
reminds me of that inner voice and inner knowledge beneath the surface.
‘‘As I have found deeper connections with others and am more willing to listen to my own sense ofhigher purpose, the numbers and results in my work get better. Project results are better than expected. The teams I work on get results. We, in turn, energize those around us. Thus, the value of theconnection with someone who calls on me to be true not only resonates within me but spreads to all
the human beings I connect with. We energize each other, and our energy spreads. And as it does,
the numbers and results follow.’’—Power plant employee

learning called on us to go more and more deeply into considering the ways in which we
could leverage our capacity to help. The two of us began to ask ourselves what exactly
we were trying to do. In making real-time interventions as a duo, we had questions ofwhen, how, and by what criteria. We became very aware, sometimes painfully, of just
how important our personal inner states were in what we saw, how we reacted, and what
we consequently did. Our visits became a crucible for our own inner work: to strive towork from the authentic part of ourselves and be true to our value of service, rather thanto strive to ‘‘look good.’’ Each time we visited a plant, we would reect on our intentions
for the visit. Were we falling into the trap of trying to ‘‘look’’ like skilled professionals by
doing what was expected and visible, for example, organizing a training session? Consistently and relentlessly, we winnowed out our personal needs for permission, approval,
and protection from those in formal authority. Each time, we arrived with intentions thatwere as untainted as possible for us.
Our modus operandi evolved into being open to the moment. We were thus forced
to work intuitively, without knowing the answers. As we soul-searched, we continued toshow up, give feedback, and inquire into work practices so as to deepen our own understanding. These inquiries gave the group a different perspective and allowed them to
explore alternatives to their usual ways of working. Our relationship with the plant managers continued to grow. They began to bring their dilemmas and challenges to the smaller
meetings. For example, one asked how to bring a particular agenda item to the monthly
meeting and be heard by the group. Another asked our view on some unintended consequences of incentives. Still another wanted personal coaching to prepare for a key nancial and strategic presentation to senior management.
As we came to know them, we would notice when someone was unusually quiet on
an issue about which he felt strongly. In private, we would ask him how we could help
him to speak up. We noticed when people took a risk, and we commented on their courage. We noticed when people were tense or argumentative. When we learned of a particularly painful management decision, we asked the executive manager why there wasn’t
more transparency in how and why the decision was made. We connected a person in
one plant with someone in another and discovered that this led to highly productivesynergy for the organization. Or we noticed when someone supported another in an incognito way. We tried to make such moments of humanness more visible, and thus

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSHUMPHRIES AND OTTERMANThe Natural Emergence of Deep Learning

we nurtured what we have come to recognize as the human soul.
We never felt we were teaching people anything they
did not know; we were simply a mirror for what they already knew deeply was right. By acknowledging this andby validating them, we gave them courage to act on theirown convictions. We just kept reinforcing their best efforts,
in different ways, again and again, one moment at a time,and one person at a time. (See the sidebar for a testimonialfrom one of the engineers.)
This marked a third turning point and phase in ourwork. We had become a learning system of peers. As consultants, we had a different role to play in the system, but
our learning and their learning was intertwined. We became genuine helpers and thinking partners.
We began to notice subtle, intangible shifts in behavior, attitude, and capacity. A suggestion of ours would betaken up here, another there. The conversations at themonthly meetings became more open, and people weremore willing to listen and had more energy. We could not
be sure what to attribute to our inuence, to the natural
 ow of events, or to the in uence of other factors. But weknew we had established a generative system of reciprocal
learning, which in its tenor, pace, and quality of relationship was vastly different from expert-client, agenda-led
learning. The authenticity of what was said and the range
of issues that surfaced were incomparably more diverse,
meaningful, and immediately relevant to their work. By
working in this way, people reached a point at which thefoundation of trust and momentum enabled them to act
qualitatively differently in situations in which we were not directly engaged. In otherwords, the changes shifted from being incremental and local to being vastly different inquality and systemic.
As a tangible indicator of our added value, the plant managers continued to invite us
to meetings where some of the real work, which they did not easily talk about in theformal meetings, took place. One time, they explicitly asked us to participate in a meetingthat had been closed to everyone except the narrow plant management team. These demands began to outstrip our allocated time of two days per month.
After two years, observers in the company began to ask us what we did to get plant
managers to spend time with us. In response, we explored this and found that a pattern
was beginning to emerge (see the gure). As the relationships deepened, a new phase of
the journey became visible. Our technical knowledge at thestart established credibility, but we sense that it was secondary to our efforts to ensure that we served with integrity,that is, our personal foundation was critical. Our experience
here and elsewhere leads us to believe that the nature andfabric of the relationships we established, speci cally thepsychosocial container of safety and trust, allowed learning
to occur. People became empowered through consistentafrmation of what was working well and inquiry into what was unclear or incongruent.
A learning system of reciprocal learning gradually emerged. At this stage, reciprocity, we
experienced the beginnings of  ow and ease.
For a few individuals, the vastly different stage of generativity was just emerging when
we ended our work. From our work here and elsewhere, we recognized that this stage isinvoked when every part of the person is engaged, not just the professional part. At thisstage, the frame for decision making and personal motivation widens to include service
to humanity and a deep engagement with what is right.
We had been exploring such universal questions from the start and, after establishing© Emily Sper

As we learn to connect moreauthentically as human beings . . .
we begin to tap into a powerfuldomain of human consciousness.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

23

HUMPHRIES AND OTTERMANThe Natural Emergence of Deep Learning© Emily Spertrust, learned that several others were also exploring deeper questions, albeit independently. However, the questions of meaning, integrity, and right action now had a placein the collective, and we saw some individuals begin to have a renewed sense of ingenuity
and courage. Although this phase had just begun, it became clear that as we learn toconnect more authentically as human beings, and as the technical roles of consultant,manager, or engineer are subsumed into a larger, deeper frame for interaction, we begin
to tap into a powerful domain of human consciousness.

Conclusion

24

We discovered the power of learning shaped by moment-to-moment co-creation of possibility as human beings engaged to nd meaning and direction while working in dif cult,uncharted, and intense territory. We made no spectacular interventions that resulted indemonstrable cause-effect relationships, nor can we directly link our work to shareholder
value. But we do know that a combination of circumstances, training, and our innate,personal response patterns led us to evolve an unobtrusive, natural enhancement of thehuman element, which included tangible, visible workplace results. We did this not byfocusing on results, but rather on helping people in an appreciative, afrming way to
become more aware of how they do their work in an everyday environment and to trust
their own judgment and capacity.
The main driving forces that determined our behavior were the various challenges
that relentlessly arose from the eld of interaction. In other words, we were so positioned
and the system was under such duress that there was neither the psychological space nor
time to lead with the learning agenda. Rather, we had to learn to track the dynamics
consistently and respond holistically to whatever challenge and opportunity a situation
naturally offered.
Our work in the company ended at our request, so we did not continue, beyond thisrst pass, at what was likely to become a self-reinforcing, cyclic system of learning andbuilding capacity. What we uncovered was a distinct pattern of incremental increase incapacity with systematic and identiable phases that, at one point, became nonlinear andgenerative. What is most compelling is that the process was relatively easy to implement
and unobtrusive in the workplace  ow. It did not require large amounts of time, just our
regular, consistent showing up and being present. Most of our effort went into paying
attention to the quality of our intentions, that is, reducing the inuence of our own needs
in what we had to offer and remaining congruent with the higher purpose of service. It

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSHUMPHRIES AND OTTERMAN

is well known in spiritual tradition and it is our experience that paying close attention to
the purity of intentions is paramount, because intentions inexorably determine the underlying quality of actions and thus determine ultimate results.

Acknowledgments

The Natural Emergence of Deep Learning

We thank the entire plant management team for being open to such a research project.
Special thanks also to Gary Carl, Jim Evans, Ben Kiehl, Melanie McCoy, and Mark Vander
Heuvel for their persistence and courage. Our approach is deeply inuenced by the teachings and practices of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University and the work of
Angeles Arrien, David Cooperrider, Edgar Schein, Peter Senge.

Reference
Schein, E.H. Process Consultation Revisited (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1999).

Commentary
by Francis H.J. Crome
The authors have tapped into a fundamentally different way of operating as consultants. Or perhaps more accurately, they have had the courage to do what good consultants deep down want todo, that is, to act from who they are and not what they know.
Their words have rekindled for me the excitement of my own journey. I am a strategic ecological consultant and was asked to join a real estate project in Australia. This was not an old projectwith entrenched old problems but a new project with entrenched old political problems. The company wanted to develop a very large block of land, but government and community forces had nointention of letting that happen. The executive manager therefore made a decision to institute an
entirely open process and involve the community fully in making decisions about the land. Whatemerged was a remarkable process.
As a consultant, I was expected to have full command of my technical subject, but my assigned task was to step into the unknown and bring together hundreds of people in a process tond a solution that transcended anything an individual or manager could have devised. During a
two-year period, the company and the community formed a relationship, and change occurred. The
project was wallpapered with GANTT charts, and we suffered occasional lapses back to, ‘‘We musttake charge and drive this thing or we are doomed.’’ However, the project team was united in the
belief that our priority was people. The company now has an asset of increased value in its portfolio, and the process continues.
The change was not a result of any management or change techniques pulled from a consultant’s toolbox, but from the application of some simple principles —to act with complete honesty;
to not worry about the fact you don’t know ‘‘how’’ to do it; to have faith that if you treat people
like human beings and share and discover data with them, they can make wise decisions; to holdsteadfastly to the faith that ‘‘all is good’’ and that success is guaranteed; and to act from yourdeepest spiritual place.
The authors tell of a change process where they were unable to use learned textbook techniques. They were in a messy situation in which their only resources were their own internal reserves of courage, faith, love, and perseverance. In situations like this, the most effective guide is
our humanity and spirit. By operating from ‘‘who I am’’ rather than ‘‘this is what I do,’’ they stimulated change; they didn’t drive it or force it, but they provided sustenance. They ‘‘were forced towork intuitively without knowing the answers’’ and ‘‘were simply a mirror for what they [plant
personnel] already knew deeply was right.’’ This considerable achievement was at the heart ofwhere I tried to be in my own project. What the authors do not stress is the courage required to
do this—to simply be there as oneself and admit to not knowing what to do next. You have toabandon reliance on what you know and trust who you are. When we identify ourselves as being‘‘experts who know,’’ we become hopelessly attached to our knowledge and are unable to allow ourreal skills to emerge. We do not allow our powers of intuition, even prescience, to develop, and we
choke off our powers to nurture. It is not a matter of abandoning our knowledge. It’s a matter of

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

Francis H.J. Crome
Specialist environmental consultant
fcrome@ozemail.com.au

25

HUMPHRIES AND OTTERMANThe Natural Emergence of Deep Learningtransforming expert knowledge from a shield into a known, trusted companion and servant who
no longer denes us.
The events Humphries and Otterman describe form a sequence of gradual, deepening involvement of consultants in an organization or project during a sufciently long time. The authors’ inability to distinguish between their inuence and the natural ow of events is quite profound. My
experience was similar; at times, I had a sense of a natural ow to events, but my efforts tochange the timing of that ow were futile. Allowing time for the process they describe is critical.
The inability to dene and quantify exactly what a consultant has done is, however, a visceralchallenge. How do the authors and I say what we did or achieved in our activities, when we ourselves don’t really know? Can a consultant who describes his or her skills as ‘‘I just help’’ survive? In
the end, it doesn’t matter that we cannot dene the precise things we do. The important thing isthat we attempt to operate from a real and spiritual place.
One aspect of the journey is particularly enlightening. The authors did not present themselves
as experts with answers, but fellow travelers learning along with plant personnel. This was an empowering process for the plant personnel as well as the consultants. Questioning folks and listening
with total interest acknowledges people’s own specialties, expertise, and existence. It is importantto nd out from the hundreds of stakeholders what they know and think. My own process of involvement and exploration was a wonderfully humbling experience.
However, there is a major part of the corporate system that is always unavailable to managers
and consultants—the shareholders. The authors were forced to ponder whether their work had improved shareholder value. We do not treat shareholders as vital parts of the system. Beliefs aboutshareholders, contempt for them, anger with them, and fear of them are profound inuences onorganizations. To take a whole systems approach, shareholders have to be included. Perhaps theauthors have opened a way to approaching this seemingly intractable problem. The regard, love,and compassion that they showed should be extended to faceless shareholders, so the whole system can change.
What Humphries and Otterman did requires the primacy of spirit in their lives. The power ofspirit is profound; I draw your attention to the impact of the words in the title of the sidebar:‘‘Deep changes from connection to the human spirit.’’26

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSA Mid-Life Reection
Bennett BruceDuring the past decade, many books and articles have been published on organizational
learning and leadership styles, many of which describe leadership in terms of service
or stewardship in lieu of traditional control models. In my personal struggle with theconcepts of service, stewardship, and servant leadership, I have recognized that leadersneed to be more empathic, but I have had a dif cult time aligning these theories with myown experiences. I don’t have the complete answer, but, during the past decade, I haveseen a correlation between leadership styles and the stages of life, especially the adultstages described by C.G. Jung.
I began working for a manufacturing rm while still in high school, more than 27
years ago. I am still working in manufacturing. I started with no college education andvery few of life’s experiences, but quickly found a niche in the machining department. I
still remember my excitement when I was promoted to setup man for the automatic turning equipment. I always sought the most technically difcult jobs because I thought technical expertise would get me noticed. I am still amazed at just how much I wanted to berecognized for doing a good job. I continued to take the more difcult jobs and advanced
to the position of lead man and, eventually, supervisor, all when I was in my early twenties. During this period, I decided to go to college for some type of technical degree. I had
watched young men come into the company with their college education and immediately
ascend to management ranks. In a few months, they were admitted into the same circle
of in uence that I had tried to impress for several years with hard work and street smarts.
I am not going to elaborate on every detail of my 27-year journey, but I need to relate
a few more biographical details to set the stage properly. I attended college at night foralmost 11 years. During that time, I nally made it to the salary ranks and started hobnobbing with the executives. I thought I had nally been admitted into the magical inner
circle. I soon realized that it still was not enough; I yearned for more. Unfortunately, I did
not have a clear understanding of what I needed. So not only did I become procienttechnically, I became fairly adept at company politics. Once the company recognized mypolitical savvy, I quickly advanced through various middle management positions, until
I thought it was nally time to put myself on the open market.
I learned to play the headhunter’s game and got a management position at a muchlarger company. The company recognized me as an expert in managing shop- oor activities and gave me my own business unit to manage. By then, in my early thirties, I had
become quite cynical about business in general, believed it was a ‘‘dog eat dog’’ world,
and was fairly ruthless in my daily decision making. Although I was rewarded for thisleadership style, and upper management thought I was aggressive, I never enjoyed being
ruthless. Whenever I tried to be more understanding and empathetic, I was chastised forgetting soft or too laid back. One boss told me, ‘‘It isn’t personal; it’s business.’’ Thisparticular company wanted to see me kicking butt and taking names. So I tried to rationalize my actions, kind of like ‘‘all is fair in love and war.’’ I left the company after two
years and took a job as a senior manufacturing engineer at Harley-Davidson. Although
this was a step down in power and authority, it felt good.
During my  rst few years at Harley, I was recognized for my technical expertise andspent most of my time at my drawing board, at my computer, or on the oor working
with the operators. My work life was good for a while, but life in general was becoming
increasingly dif cult. I had a nagging sensation that something was missing. I compen-

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

Bennett Bruce
Manufacturing Systems LeadYork Operations
Harley-Davidson Motor Company
Liaison Ofcer, SoL
ben.bruce@harley-davidson.com

Ó27

2002 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.

BRUCEA Mid-Life Reection

28

sated by trying new things, such as scuba diving, snow skiing, and weight lifting. I evendabbled in Eastern philosophy. Throughout my adult life, I had been an obsessive reader,but, during this period, my reading preferences changed drastically. I started rereading
Skinner’s Walden II, Nietzche’s The Birth of Tragedy, Scott’s Ivanhoe, Malory’s Le Morte
D’Arthur, and Thoreau’s On Walden Pond and Civil Disobedience, all books I had readwhen I was younger. Each one touched me in a familiar but strange way. I was also
reading many books on New Age spiritualism, but they would pique my interest only toleave me feeling ridiculous halfway through.
In 1993, I was promoted to engineering manager with responsibility for the machining, fabrication, and plating operations, and had a staff of eight engineers. Many of the
doubts and concerns that nagged me during my two years as a production manager started
to resurface. During this period, I attended the core course offered by MIT’s Organizational
Learning Center or OLC (now the Society for Organizational Learning or SoL) and soonafter became the liaison of cer for Harley-Davidson. The core course introduced me toorganizational learning and its associated disciplines such as systems thinking, mental
models, dialogue, and so on. At the time, organizational learning seemed to solve myproblems —problems that I still had not articulated. I immersed myself in organizational
learning, reading everything on the subject. I experimented with the theories and hadsome success, even though I was gaining a reputation for being a little strange and maybe
too unconventional.
At this time, I started to reect on my personal style of leadership. I had not kept ajournal in years, but during the OLC core course, I realized that using a journal to re ect
released an inner voice that I had not heard clearly in many years.
Like many of my peers in manufacturing, I assumed that being a good manager was
about accomplishing tasks through others in a fair, just manner. I had always tried to be
an ethical leader, but I would also get caught up in the aggressive, competitive tactics that
seemed to permeate most business environments. I blamed this aggressive environment
on society and, more speci cally, organizations. I arrogantly dismissed the whole concept
as ‘‘their’’ problem. They did not recognize the art of mentoring. They preferred winners
to collaborators. They did not have enough patience for creating shared vision. They
wanted results now! I frequently referred to the illusive ‘‘they’’ when discussing the organization or society. I now realize that, during the rst 20 years of my adult life, I was
always referring to their problems. I believed that my dilemma was to gure out how tohelp them see their problems, and of course, I also wanted to be recognized for thisvaluable service.
As I approached 40, my convenient little universe started to collapse or, more accurately, implode. I did not understand why I was having trouble dealing with life in myusual manner, so I blamed ‘‘them’’ even more. They mustbe getting worse instead of better. What can I do to makethem see their true problem? In retrospect, it was almost
comical the way I referred to ‘‘they’’ and ‘‘them’’ as separate from myself. Since then, the most powerful change in
my life has been the word ‘‘I.’’
Many of you may be saying, ‘‘Hey, you are just going
through a mid-life crisis.’’ I agree, but what the heck is a
mid-life crisis anyway? And why did all this confusion start so early? I was barely in mythirties when this mysterious malady started disrupting my dreams. Isn’t this supposed
to happen when I am closer to 40?
These questions led me on an interesting journey back to college where I completely
restructured my undergraduate work and obtained a bachelor’s degree in transpersonal
psychology with an emphasis in C.G. Jung’s analytic psychology. I had already started
reading Jung several years before returning to school. I had studied cognitive behavioral
models, but they did not lead me to the depths of the psyche that I believed I needed. The
pure transpersonal work like Ken Wilber’s and Stanislov Groff’s felt too ‘‘New Age.’’ I do
not want to dismiss their work, but it was not what I wanted at the time. I had always
been fascinated with Occidental mythology and nineteenth-century philosophy and, as
Jung’s work drew heavily from both, I thought, ‘‘This must be the place.’’ I cannot totally
explain why I choose Jung other than it felt right.

I had always tried to be an ethicalleader, but I would also get caught
up in the aggressive, competitive
tactics.

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSREFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

BRUCE
A Mid-Life Reection

At the same time, I was promoted to area manager. I
was now responsible for 20 staff people, 350 hourly employees, and a $19 million operating budget. The circumstances surrounding my promotion were dif cult. The
strategic planning team had just installed and implemented
a new process, which was going badly. In fact, the department had reached the point where it had completely shut
down its customer, the  nal assembly area. The experts
brought in seemed to make matters worse. People wereoperating from fear and started to micromanage the department. They had lost their condence in their ability tomake decisions. Some were so stressed that I worried about
their health.
For the  rst time in my career, I agreed to take a position in order to help someone else. My rst task as the
new area manager was to protect the people in the department and restore their con dence. So I became a shield between them and the rest of the organization. This did notcome from any theories that I had studied; it was instinctual and came from my heart. I
had been with these people for more than seven years. Once they recognized that I wastrying to protect them, they seemed to be more energized. My basic instruction was,‘‘Forget the experts; you know your job. Go do it.’’ My job was to nurture, protect, andlisten. Within two weeks, the process had stabilized, and within six months, the department had achieved a 97% rst run and was considered a good solid supplier.
Many people have said to me, ‘‘Yeah, the servant leadership stuff is good, but what
did you guys do to x the process?’’ Most have not liked my answer. We did make changes
to the process, but most were just following procedures and having the patience to see if
the process would stabilize before initiating more interventions. What really improved
the process was chasing off the experts before they could suggest any more changes. The
employees, who had a tremendous amount of process experience, started making subtle
improvements every day because they no longer worried about making mistakes. They
knew I would back them up.
I had never felt so good about earning a living before, not just because of the recognition that came from turning the department around. Deep down, I knew I had enabled
the staff to lift themselves above the fear of failure. I was able to achieve this because I
truly cared for the people in this department.
What does this story have to do with my interest in Jung, Occidental mythology, andnineteenth-century philosophy? Prior to my experiences as area manager, my reading wasa hobby. After seeing the results of my intervention and realizing that I still could nottechnically explain what I had done or why it made me feel so good, my reading became
part of a quest. I needed to understand why I was drawn to this work and what it had to
do with my mid-life crisis and my new leadership style. My association with Jung was
the most obvious, due to his theories on adult development and life stages. An important
aspect of Jung’s work is his theory of individuation and its relationship to adult development (1960). Jung believed that men go through at least two major transitions as adults.
The rst occurs sometime between ages 17 and 19 and lasts until the beginning of midlife. During this stage, young men endeavor to create their place in the world. It is a timeof heroic mastery and the slaying of dragons; developing a strong ego is important andessential to the development of self in later years.
The second adult stage begins at mid-life, which, during Jung’s time, was considered
to be between 35 and 38 years of age. This stage involves the development of self andcan create problems if an individual continues to place too much emphasis on ego pursuits. This whole transition revolves around individuation, simply, the process of continually surfacing unconscious material and integrating it into consciousness. This de nition
oversimpli es the theory but will sufce here. The development of self is the process of
becoming whole, which can be extremely difcult because it deals with the energy of
opposites (Jung, 1953).
I personally had difculty accepting all the aspects of my own psyche, especially mydarker tendencies. Civilization is, in part, based on the conscious repression of socially© Emily Sper

29

BRUCEA Mid-Life Reection

unacceptable behavior. As we mature, we each repress certain aspects of our psyche. We
do this in the early stages of development in order to make the transition successfully
during the rst adult stage. The very characteristics that can make us successful during
our rst transition can cause the greatest grief in the mid-life transition. A man who has
been successful at heroic mastery in the form of competition and aggressive tactics may
have a hard time relinquishing such a steady source of self-esteem. This makes the midlife transition more difcult.
Moving from ego consciousness to a more integrated self is synonymous with relinquishing heroic mastery in order to be empathetic and takes tremendous courage. Not
youthful bravado, true courage comes from the intentional act of being vulnerable. I
associate this type of vulnerability with loving someone or something. To care openly foranything is to become vulnerable. This may sound a little mushy coming from an old
operations guy, but remember, I have admitted to being in the throes of mid-life. I am
trying to describe a natural process, not a mental disorder, even though the antics of somemen at mid-life may indicate otherwise. The rst half of adulthood, the pursuit of materialistic goals, can unfortunately be our main source of self-esteem during this period. The
second transition, which occurs sometime during mid-life, is an invitation to an initiationthat symbolizes a life oriented toward spirituality, service, and the nurturing of culture.
I can attest to the dif culty of this lifestyle. At the rst sign of trouble, I  nd myself
quickly reverting to my old aggressive ways: ‘‘Let’s kick some butt, take some names,and show these folks who they are dealing with.’’ Just when I am starting to get highfrom the adrenaline rush, a nagging voice says, ‘‘No, no,Ben, this will no longer solve your problems.’’ I know thevoice is right; aggression and competition did not help my
department during its turnaround; they signi cantly added
to the problem. I did not go into that department andquestion people’s abilities, even though there was somepressure to reassess their skills. My  rst concern was thepeople. When I compared my motivations for helping thedepartment with Jung’s theory of individuation, I recognized the connection. My intervention was based on service and empathy; it was not directed by my personal career
objectives. I would like to say that this has been my normal mode of operation, but thatwould be a lie. Although I have tried to be fair and just, my career decisions were predominantly based on my personal gain, which is not such a bad thing during the rst
adult stage.
The problem occurs if we carry this lifestyle into the second stage of adulthood. Ifmature adults do not take responsibility for culture, who will? We can hardly expect the
young dragon slayers to put aside their swords, especially when they have to competewith the very men who should be their mentors. Intergenerational competition has become so prevalent in modern society that young men would not trust mentoring even if
it were offered. Why should they? What have we done to gain their trust? Countless
middle-aged men secretly complain about being pushed aside to make room for younger,
more energetic men. In traditional businesses, where competitiveness and aggression arepart of the credo, why should we help these young upstarts who are covetously eyeing
our jobs? Maybe because our jobs do not belong to us? Many of us erroneously see ourcareers as our personal identities. We should see these young upstarts as part of a naturalcontinuum that allows us to travel a little farther in our life’s journey.
If I believed that my responsibilities were to stay the same until the end of life, I could
not help but become deeply depressed. A life based on aggression, competition, and materialism can be healthfully maintained only in the rst adult stage. This message is represented in the legend of the Holy Grail, which serves as a wonderful template forunderstanding the mid-life transition. Although I have studied numerous versions of thegrail legend, including Le Troyes’s Perceval and Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, I have foundthat Von Eschenbach’s Parzival is the closest representation of the unconscious vision of
maturing as an ascension from youthful bravado to cultural service (1980).
In Eschenbach’s version, Parzival, after spending many years searching for the grail
castle, meets a dark knight, Feire z. Although Parzival had beaten the best knights of thetime, he cannot conquer Feire z because Feirez represents the shadow aspects of himself.

True courage comes from theintentional act of being vulnerable.
I associate this type of vulnerability
with loving someone or something.

30

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSBRUCEA Mid-Life Reection

As the battle ensues between our hero and the dark
knight, Parzival’s sword breaks when striking Feire z’s armor. The sword represents heroic mastery and the ego consciousness (Jung and Von Franz, 1970). That the sword
breaks at this critical point when Parzival needs it mostindicates the need to make a transition. Now, Feire z lays
down his sword, believing there would be no honor in continuing the battle. The shadow thus embraced ceases to bea threat. As the two knights talk to each other, they soon
realize that they share the same father and are long-lostbrothers.
Heroic mastery did not provide Parzival access to the
mystical grail castle; he rst had to accept his enemy as abrother; then both were invited because together they represent the whole man (Campbell, 1990). This symbolizes
authenticity as the rite of passage. (There are too many such instances in the grail legend
to discuss here, but I must mention that, along with the shadow, the feminine aspects[the anima] are also symbolically represented and must be integrated as well.)At the castle, Parzival meets the grail king, who is in enormous pain due to a woundthat will not heal. Parzival is faced with a dilemma: Should he ask the king what ails him?
His heart and compassion command him to inquire, but his social training as a knight
forbids him to ask a personal, unsolicited question. When he nally follows his heart andasks the question, the king is instantly healed, along with the ‘‘wasteland,’’ which symbolizes Parzival’s psyche. He then becomes the new grail king.
This story demonstrates how we cannot use heroic mastery to defeat our shadows;
this will only repress the shadow deeper into our unconscious. We must face them headon from a position of empathy, not aggression. We cannot judge our dark tendencies asevil or good. All we can do is recognize them as an integral part of us and embrace themas part of the whole. As young men, we must learn to recognize and assimilate social
conventions and perceptions in order to maintain some semblance of normality and success. During this process, aspects of our psyches are repressed into the subterranean vaultsof our unconscious. Some of these aspects are potentially dangerous, especially when
there are still dragons to be slain. During the mid-life transition, this material starts tosurface and threatens the mask that we have endeavored to create. Society and organizations seem to want us to maintain these masks into mid-life, which can lead us to thinkthat ‘‘they’’ are the problem. But there is no secret alliance; we are society. I now realizethat I have willingly participated and even nurtured this competitive and aggressive environment. There is no one else to blame.
There was a strange dichotomy in my behavior when I was an area manager. Although my employees saw an empathic, compassionate leader, people outside the department saw a  erce warrior who would take on anyone
who threatened the department or its work environment. So
I cannot honestly say that I was not aggressive; in some aspects, I was probably even more aggressive, but my motivation was different.
When I am counseling or mentoring people, I pay particular attention to where they are in their life’s journey. I
would never advise a young man to become passive or refrain from competitive tactics. I would be more concernedwith how well he balances empathy with aggression. He still needs to be successful within
the constraints set by society.
If each young man or woman were taught how to balance his or her life, I believe
we would see subtle improvements in our culture. The art is not in choosing good overevil, but in understanding the delicate balance and energy created by the opposing forces.
Forcing the views of our generation on the next will only confuse the process. When we
mentor young people, it is not their fear of change but our own that invalidates therelationship. I try to help them see the political traps and perceptions that could form,
depending on their actions. I do not counsel or engage them in political games. My re-© Emily Sper

The art is not in choosing good overevil, but in understanding thedelicate balance and energy createdby the opposing forces.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 331

BRUCEA Mid-Life Reectionsponsibility is to help them articulate their own values so they can determine the true
cost of their actions.
In conclusion, my point here is not to explain the process of mentoring or a newtheory on leadership. We sorely underestimate the dynamics of adult development, especially the stages of life. I have used Jung’s theories in this article, but there are manyother theorists on the adult stages of life. I am suggesting that organizations cannot continue to ignore the adult development process. Diversity training teaches us about age
discrimination, but it typically does not explain the needs or the bene ts associated witheach of life’s stages. For those approaching mid-life, there are spiritual, ethical, moral,
and psychological reasons for being more empathetic.

References
Campbell, J. Transformations of Myth Through Time, 1st ed. (New York: Harper & Row Publishers,1990).
Jung, C.G. The Collected Works of C.G. Jung: Vol. 7, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, eds. H.
Read, M. Fordham, and G. Adler, trans. R.F.C. Hull (New York: Pantheon Books, Inc., 1953).
Jung, C.G. ‘‘Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self’’ in The Collected Works of C.G.
Jung: Vol. 9, Part II, eds. H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, W. McGuire, trans. R.F.C. Hull
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959).
Jung, C.G. The Collected Works of C.G. Jung: Vol. 8, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, eds.
H. Read, M. Fordham, and G. Adler, trans. R.F.C. Hull (New York: Pantheon Books, Inc., 1960).
Jung, C.G. Memories, Dreams, Re ections, ed. Aniela Jaffe, trans. R. and C. Winston (New York:
Vintage Books, 1989; original work published 1961).
Jung, C.G. Aspects of the Masculine, trans. R.F.C. Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1989).
Jung, C.G. ‘‘The Development of Personality’’ in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung: Vol. 17, eds. H.
Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, W. McGuire, trans. R.F.C. Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991; original work published in 1954).
Jung, E. Animus and Anima, trans. C. Baynes and H. Nagel (Woodstock, CT: Spring Publications,Inc., 1985; original work published 1957).
Jung, E. and M.L. Von Franz. The Grail Legends, trans. A. Dykes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1970; original work published 1960).
Von Eschenbach, W. Parzival, trans. A.T. Hatto (London, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1980; original work published 1196–1225).

Commentaryby Bill Torbert
32

Bill Torbert
Professor
Boston College
PartnerHarthillUSA
torbert@bc.edu

I am happy that Ben Bruce has written this story. I’ve wanted to know more about the inside ofBen, more about what was propelling and coordinating this man with whom I’ve been convening
at SoL meetings for several years. It was during our conference calls that Ben truly charmed me. I
could tell from his comments that he had a decade-long, critical, and totally participative commitment to swirling inquiry into every conversational encounter. But the miracle was that he combined this with a sense of rst-time delight. What path had Ben taken, I wondered, to live in the
middle of corporate America and in this atmosphere of ongoing inquiry at the same time?
In this essay, he tells us about his transforming path, taking a Jungian perspective. From theperspective of developmental action-logics (how people make meaning of themselves and theworld; see Rooke and Torbert, 1999; Fisher, Rooke, and Torbert, 2001), Ben rst mastered a technician/expert action-logic of manufacturing (that is, he became a craft master). Next, he mastered
the achiever/manager art of political coordination, alternating between unilateral and mutualityenhancing power, to get results within existing strategic parameters. But then he felt an evendeeper dissatisfaction, a thirst for integrating spiritual and intellectual inquiry with passionate, embodied action. This dissatisfaction led him, over the years, toward a strategist/leader action-logic.
The strategist action-logic is explicitly reective (his OLC courses and journal keeping) and unconventional (his reputation ‘‘for being a little strange and maybe too unconventional’’). It not only
implements existing strategies, but collaboratively creates new strategies and frames (his subtle
trust and process-improving turnaround to servant leadership as area manager). Indeed, Ben began
to appreciate the paradox of ‘‘vulnerable power’’ and to conjoin other opposites such as compas-

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSBRUCEA Mid-Life Reectionsionate lover and erce warrior, as is characteristic of persons exploring the moment-to-moment
alchemy of a magician/witch/clown action-logic. As Parzival, the king, the nation, and nature itself
all learned simultaneously, a timely inquiry can itself be the very action through which the emergent future enters the eternal now in a way that can transform even the determined past.
Ben’s story wonderfully illuminates his inner world and offers an equivalent to the stages of
the cross or to the developmental action-logics for envisioning the lifetime trajectory that our own
rst-person research practice can take, if we seek a kind of inquiry that interweaves rst-, second-,
and third-person research and practice in real-time situations. Does Ben’s essay resonate withquestions and experiences of your own? Can you imagine (or do you already experience) suchquestions at the very center of your life or as the very source and fountain of your own work?
Neither corporate managers nor university researchers today typically make conscious, disciplined attempts at interweaving their research and their practice in any particular arena, much lessan attempt at interweaving the subjective, intersubjective, and objective arenas of their lives altogether. This is a challenge for all of us individually, for politics, and for scientic inquiry in the
coming age. I thank Ben for playing a leadership role in objectifying his intersubjective and subjective research and practice.

References
Fisher, D., D. Rooke, and W. Torbert. Personal and Organizational Transformations (Boston MA: Edge\WorkPress, 2001).
Rooke, D. and W. Torbert. ‘‘The CEO’s Role in Organizational Transformation.’’ The Systems Thinker 10 (1999):
1–5.

Commentary
by C. Sherry Immediato
Some months ago, when a group of us requested ideas about how to increase the voice of thepractitioner in Reections, Ben told me that he would help —not by talking about the problem —but by offering his own raspy drawl. Over the years, Ben has brought heart and soul, along with agood dose of true grit, to help realize the potential of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL).
In sharing his reections, he does the same for us now. It is with gratitude and respect that I offer
these thoughts.
While we all have our own way of describing SoL’s purpose, our constitution states it in these
intriguing terms:
The purpose of SoL is to discover, integrate, and implement theories and practices for the interdependent
development of people and their institutions.

As I see it, Ben’s reection is one example of pursing this mission: he helps us build our community by sharing his story, he shares models of individual development that speak to his experience, and he challenges us to move beyond organizational obliviousness to the implications of theevolving self.

The Power of Story
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to speak with a handful of SoL members specializing in
information infrastructure and asked them about how we build our capacity for networking as organizations and as a community. One chief information ofcer surprised me by speaking almost
exclusively of story as the basic infrastructure of our human network. Stories clearly help us know
one another and therefore build relationships. However, particularly in the wonderful article Ben
has chosen to share, we all have the opportunity to see ourselves in a new light. Ben’s clarity
prompts self-reection: What motivated me when I was younger? What motivates me now? Whatis my personal style of leadership and how has it changed? And what’s the difference between
what I believe about these things and what the data actually support?
People often report that one of the most compelling reasons they remain in SoL is because of
the network of people whose stories are now entwined. While there is a natural way this happens,
perhaps we can create more opportunities to welcome new stories by listening deeply to thosevoices conspicuous by their absence.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

C. Sherry Immediato
Acting Managing Director
Society for Organizational Learning
immediato@solonline.org

33

BRUCEA Mid-Life Reection

Models of Individual Development
How do we understand our story and learn to become its author? While there are many ways toanswer this question, it is clear that some theory can be enormously helpful in guiding the inquiry.
What I nd as important in Ben’s reection is the clear need for practice that promotes selfawareness, making conscious development more possible. Some of these include explicit growth
opportunities, like SoL’s Core Competencies Course, keeping a journal, rereading the books of ouryouth, and intentionally venturing into unfamiliar territory, whether it is intellectual, physical, emotional, or spiritual. Ben points out that he could have some condence in his choices because even
if somewhat uncomfortable, the right ones were life afrming, energizing, and deeply satisfying.
The path of individual development is clearly an interior journey, and yet it is also one we
don’t do alone. As Ben describes, much of his own development shows up in qualitative changes in
his relationships. Is part of the practice of individual development more explicit interaction withothers also interested in conscious learning? As mentioned above, one simple practice is sharing
our stories with each other. As a generation and nation with a tendency to go ‘‘bowling alone’’(Putnam, 2000), I see a great need to develop our own understanding of appropriate communities
of practice—what in Buddhism is known as the sangha. As more of us nd our place in thesecommunities, and make some commitment to them in addition to our own development, I believethat we will have a new understanding of the possibilities for collective development. It is certainly
a learning edge for me.

Organizational Implications
I think Ben’s reections make one obvious point: our organizations are an important part of theenvironment in which our personal development happens. Some of these environments support
growth and exploration, while others stie it. I found Ben’s insights on the relationships between
the older and younger employees to be particularly interesting. I have been paying much more
attention to how we involve the next generation in SoL, while also inviting our elders to share
their vast knowledge and experience with us. Ben’s comments have caused me to think more about
the dynamics among the generations due to their own development needs.
The larger issue of the need for organizational attention to adult development also suggeststhat we may need to think about organizational development differently as well. In his early work,
Chris Argyris suggested that many policies, practices, and structures served to discourage individuals from developing needed and natural maturity. While work such as Argyris’s helped launch theeld of organizational development, I nd it sobering to return to propositions he stated years ago(Argyris, 1957):

34

1. There is a lack of congruence between the needs of the healthy individual and demands of the formalorganization.
2. The results of this disturbance are frustration, failure, short-time perspective, and conict.
3. The nature of the formal principles of organization cause the subordinate at any given level to experience competition, rivalry, intersubordinate hostility, and to develop a focus toward the parts rather
than the whole.

There is still ample evidence to support these propositions. Some of the work that I have tracked
over much of this time has to do with recognizing that organizations also have their own development cycle, while simultaneously needing to accommodate and support individuals across the
spectrum of adult development. It is my belief that we will be much more successful in our efforts
to bring about change in organizations when we learn to work with the natural cycles of change
already in process. It is my hope that SoL can support organizations in their own conscious development.
Finally, while I share an interest in many of the references Ben has cited, I’ll add a few of myown.
For developing community by witnessing each other’s stories, and as a practice of spiritualdiscipline, I have greatly enjoyed the work of M. Scott Peck as both a reader and participant. I
would particularly recommend A World Waiting to Be Born (Peck, 1993), and the work of theFoundation for Community Encouragement ^ www.fce.org& .
For developing a greater appreciation of our own process of development, The Seasons of aMan’s Life by Daniel Levinson was my initiation into the universality of our experience (Levinson,

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSBRUCEA Mid-Life Reection1978). Now, I am intrigued by Robert Kegan’s work on adult development and learning, particularly
In Over Our Heads (Kegan, 1995).
Finally, after years of resistance, I have become a fan of Ken Wilber’s efforts to address explicitly issues of the relationship between individual and collective development and between our subjective experience and objective reality (or very loosely, science and religion). These ideas are laidout quickly in A Theory of Everything (Wilber, 2000). As someone who has long advocated for intelligence tempered by wisdom, I am delighted to have something of a roadmap to guide capacity
development in these areas.
Just as good relationships often become more mysterious and enchanting over time, I ndthat I am more enamored than ever with the interdependent development of people and their
institutions, and I am grateful to Ben for sharing his personal experience with this inquiry. It is ourstory, and I hope it will become part of our shared practice.

References
Argyris, C. ‘‘The Individual and Organization: Some Problems of Mutual Adjustment.’’ Administrative Science
Quarterly 2 (June 1957): 1–24.
Kegan, R. In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1995).
Levinson, D. The Seasons of a Man’s Life (New York: Ballantine, 1978).
Peck, M.S. A World Waiting to Be Born (New York: Bantam, 1993).
Putnam, R.D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster,2000).
Wilber, K. A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality (Boston:
Shambala Publications, 2000).

35

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

My First Job
Stephen C. Buckley

A

Stephen C. Buckley
Entrepreneur, writer, consultant
Sbuckley@mit.edu

36

fter I graduated from college in 1986, I moved to Boston and went looking for a job
where I could put my useless degree in English literature to work. I eventually foundone, working downtown for a large bank as an ‘‘Investor Communications Specialist.’’My job was to write letters and reports to investors on the status of various real estate
limited partnerships that the bank managed. I also answered phone calls from people whowanted to know just how their investments were doing.
In the late 1980s, the real estate market had crashed. Most of the partnerships’ properties were in the southeast and southwest United States, where the effects of the crash
had been by far the worst. The values of buildings and homes had declined so steeplythat many were now worth much less than the mortgages on them. Any equity was gone,
which meant that all our investors’ money was gone too. But, of course, you couldn’t tellthem that.
I soon realized that my main job at the bank was to lie. I would write glowing commentaries to accompany quarterly and annual reports to investors, testifying to the bank’s
continuing optimism about its holdings. I would make up stories about properties—about
their excellent facilities, location, and management. So thick was the smoke I blew that,unless you were a very savvy investor, you would never realize how hopeless the situation
actually was.
I worked at the bank for about a year. I was pleased with the money they paid me.
They were pleased with the way I could use language to conceal the truth.
One day, I received a phone call from an investor whom I had spoken with several
times before. He was an elderly gentleman who called every few months, ostensibly tocheck on the status of his partnership, but I knew he just wanted someone to talk to. He
was lonesome. He had an old-time New England accent that reminded me of my grandfather. He talked mostly about the past, the way things used to be when he was a youngman, and how expensive everything had become. He also had a sharp sense of humor,
and I came to enjoy genuinely our periodic talks. He wanted to know ‘‘what’’ I was, inthe way it seems only older people feel it is important to know what ethnicity you are
before they know how to deal with you. The fact that we were both of Irish descent madehim both more trusting and nostalgic. That was ne with me.
We talked that day for almost an hour—too long as far as the bank was concerned.
We were instructed to keep our calls short, offer no information other than what was
speci cally asked for, and certainly not to tell them anything personal. I broke all those rules. This was dangerous
because the bank recorded all our phone conversations.There was an audible ‘‘beep’’ on the line every 30
seconds to remind you of this.
At the end of our conversation, he again brought up the subject of his investment.
He asked me, point blank, if his investment was safe. I answered with a convincing
chuckle that, of course, it was. He believed me, and he said so. I lied.
That night I had trouble sleeping. I kept thinking about the old man I had talked tothat day. Con icted, I alternately felt guilty for having lied to him and angry with myself
for having allowed that old fart to get inside my head.
The following day, I asked to talk with my boss. We went into his of ce and closed
the door. I asked why, if none of these properties made any money, we didn’t just sellÓI soon realized that my main job atthe bank was to lie.

2002 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSBUCKLEYMy First Job© Emily Sperthem and give the investors back the cash. He laughed at me in the way someone laughs
at a little child who has said something outrageously funny. Then he carefully explained
how the partnerships made plenty of money, rst in the 10% commission investors paid
when they bought their shares, then in the placement and acquisition fees when theproperties were purchased, and lastly in the annual asset management fees that paid for,among other things, my precious salary. He told me how, if we sold the properties, theinvestors would get nothing, and the bank would probably be sued. He admitted the best
possible scenario would be if the properties came back in value enough to cover theirmortgages. But, even if that happened, it was pretty unlikely that any of the investors
would ever see a dime of their money, ever again. Therefore, the best thing to do wasjust to hold on as long as we could, string the investors along with peppy optimistic
reports, and hope that things got better. This was just business, he told me. Business.
There’s something about facing yourself in the mirror every morning with a razor inyour hand that makes it especially important to like what you see. The next morning I
put the razor down. I didn’t shave. I didn’t shower. I didn’t put on the tie. I didn’t evencall in. And I didn’t go back there, ever again.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

37

An Epoch Change in Our
Paradigms
Bill O’Brien

Bill O’Brien
Retired CEO
Hanover Insurance Companies
Partner Emeritus
Generon Consulting
WJOBInc@AOL.com

38

Hanover Insurance
June 15, 1989
To Mr. Roy Anderson:
You exaggerate my achievement and capacities. Nevertheless, I enjoy it. I deeply
appreciate your letter of June 2. Your thoughts provide me with a helpful context in mysearch for the meaning of this event in my life and where I should head from here.
I fully concur with your statement, ‘‘Nothing happens by accident—and everything
happens for a purpose.’’ God gives each of us life. He gives us a mission (to serve) on
this earth. For many (certainly for me), that mission centers on family, serving society,and following ‘‘the way’’ He prescribed. When we complete our mission, we are calledback and judged. A good effort is rewarded with an afterlife with God. It is really not thatcomplex.
What cancer (or facing mortality) does is cause us to nourish our interior life andexamine our external mission. At least, that is what it has done for me. It was you who
once told me that differences in people’s interior lives are far greater than their external
differences. I’ve mulled over that insight many times.
Let me take a side trip. I was leaving my ofce to go home on the second day after I
returned from my surgery. Halfway down the center staircase, Kathy Kane stopped me.
Kathy has been with Hanover for somewhat under 15 years and has been put in chargeof a number of critical assignments. She always does an outstanding job. She said to me,‘‘Bill, I want you to think of the positive part of having cancer. I had cancer 10 years ago(which I knew). There have been a lot of positive bene ts to it. I am a much more aware
person because of the experience. I see more. I appreciate more. I am a different person.’’
It was a very inspiring talk that Kathy gave me. It reinforced feelings in me that I was
searching for ideas and words to express.
I, of course, have devoted considerable thought to my mission in life. I know I received a strong message. I sense it is more renewal to a higher level than dramatic change.
My professional contributions have been limited to: Understanding and articulating the destructive consequences of hierarchicalcorporate
governance.

 Developing and practicing governing ideas that engage the commitment of our people
and produce better service for customers and stronger nancial results for owners.

 Establishing a learning environment that distinguishes the mechanical, linear, andconvergent from the natural, philosophical, and divergent. Through this process,learning has become a living force in the company.
The next steps in my mission focus on:Ó Articulating leadership practices that better  t our governing ideas, that is, leading in
2002 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.

a mature, vision-driven, value-guided organization versus a power- or politics-drivenone.
 Better shaping our structure to t our philosophy, that is, keeping only the minimallyneeded hierarchy.

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSREFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

O’BRIENAn Epoch Change in Our Paradigms

As you know, at the essence of what we are doing at
Hanover is wedding individual fulllment with societal service and economic success. Put differently, we want to design a company with the enabling conditions so people canuse their jobs to reach the fourth and fth steps on Maslow’s ladder (his hierarchy of needs).
I believe the governing ideas and practices of HanoverInsurance Companies have wider application than to one
company or industry. Many friends such as yourself haveencouraged me in this view and suggested activities to introduce the philosophy to a larger audience.
My innate appetite for philosophy and business has
been leveraged by two fortunate conditions. First has
been access to some unusual people, such as Jack Adam
(my predecessor at Hanover), John Beckett, Peter Senge,
Charles Hampden-Turner, Chris Argyris, yourself, and others who are original thinkers. Many have been authors:
E.F. Schumacher, M. Scott Peck, John Gardner, Teilhard
de Chardin, Douglas McGregor, and Willis Harmon, toname a few.
The second condition is the fortunate circumstance tohead a company to which I apply my learning. I appreciate
the value of this unique arrangement more as I meet withmy colleagues from academia or even those who are one
rung from the top of some of the world’s most renowned
companies. It would be frustrating for me to think throughissues and not have a vehicle through which I apply what
I learn. I believe you and my friends from the academic
community will identify with that observation.
In rebuttal, you might be inclined to say, ‘‘If you
spread your wings, so to speak, you would get the satisfaction of seeing your ideas and experience helping more people and having a larger
handprint on the world.’’ But if I were to follow that path, I would no longer be a practicing
thinker who sells his ideas. And there is nothing wrong with the latter. It is just not meright now. My uniqueness is that I am one of the few spokespersons for vision-driven,value-guided institutional governance who actually does what he talks about. While admittedly my audiences outside Hanover are limited, they see and appreciate the connection between thinking and doing. It is the source of my authenticity.
Hanover and its people are special. It is one of the best kept secrets in the businessworld. I believe I can lead the organization to new levels of capabilities. Further, I believe
the people of Hanover can take me to new levels of understanding and learning more
effectively than any other situation I can envision. Looked at from another vantage point,
I nd it unattractive working in surroundings where politics and linear thinking dominate
and where it would be necessary to treat conditions we in Hanover overcame many years
ago.
Again, let me digress. You and I frequently discussed our shared belief that epochchange is taking place throughout the world. Ordinary change, as we have known it inrecent history, has been born out of technological advances or liberating social customs.
Epoch transitions are born out of fundamental changes in how people see things.
Today’s dominant reality is largely based on the scientic paradigm: theories from
Descartes, Newton, Einstein, and succeeding generations of renowned scientists. The scientic paradigm began in the sixteenth century. It followed a paradigm that was basedon religion, spirits, and the arts.
Paradigm shifts in dominant emphasis are accompanied by a degree of change thatis traumatic to individuals who perceive their world coming apart at the seams. History
teaches us that shifts from one technology to another, such as farming to industrial tocomputer, strain the stress tolerance of many people.
We have not had a major shift in our paradigms for more than four centuries. Are© Emily Sper39

O’BRIEN
An Epoch Change in Our Paradigms

we in the beginning phase of such a shift? Would not a serious shift in our fundamental
paradigms be accompanied by severe turbulence in society? What might that upcomingchange in society’s way of seeing the world center on? What are the implications?
We will look back on the decade of the eighties as the initial phase of an epoch change
in our paradigms. The dominance of scientic materialism has already begun to wane.
For those who hang tenaciously to a single, compartmentalized paradigm, the society shift
will be turbulent. But for those who explore harmonizing the spiritual with the scienti c,a healthy national interest with global concerns, and the rational with the intuitive, anddistinguish the divergent from convergent issues, the next decade will be an exciting
chapter in the ascent of mankind.
Holistic thinking and systemic understanding is complementing reductionism and theatomistic view in many quarters: the universities, public-policy think tanks, authors, andHanover. The genie is out of the bottle.
Science and religion will remove the wall that exists between them. At a deeper level,
we will begin to understand the connection between matter and spirit. The scienticmethod will be extended beyond its current limitation, that is, to validate only that which
can be observed, counted, or measured. Both science and religion will point to a higher
order to whom man and mankind is responsible.
Unwittingly, the scientic revolution has fostered polarization. A ‘‘we versus them’’
mentality, a government driven by the clash of special interests at the expense of thecommon good, and large business organizations in which
departments put their self-interests ahead of the whole enterprise are so commonplace today that we hardly consider
it a disruption of right order. We accept it as normal.
These aberrations in our society are an unintended
consequence from three centuries of emphasizing the scientic without the appropriatebalance or integration with spiritual consideration and knowledge of the humanities.
Again, epoch change is caused by changes in people’s paradigms. Such a change isunder way. It has two dimensions. The  rst is unity, that is, unifying the scienti c andspiritual (religious) with the spiritual at the center. Second, I believe the species is reachinga stage in its evolution where the common man will understand paradigms and possess
the capacity to examine and change his own and others with some degree of sophistication. The ordinary person will master paradigms instead of becoming prisoners of them.
The era of interest in paradigms will result in new theories of new governance andleadership in corporations, universities, charitable institutions, and government. It will, I
believe, be for the betterment of men and mankind, just as democracy abetted freedom
and capitalism has raised standards of living.
Further, I don’t believe the remedies to our ailing systems will emerge from the top,from reformers, from master planers, from generalists or special-interest advocates. Our
American system of little people, guided by the changing paradigms, will make a breakthrough here and there that eventually will comprise an epoch change.
Today, there is an imbalance of theoreticians in relation to practitioners of theseadvanced experiments. My calling as I interpret it is to continue to combine practice andtheory. My conceptualization of issues depends on the learning (and frustration) from mypractice.
Roy, as I said at the beginning, your letter not only raised my spirits but served as acontext for me to think through issues that are quite pertinent in my life at this time.
Thanks for taking the time to let me have your support and wisdom.

Science and religion will remove thewall that exists between them.

40

William J. O’Brien

Afterword
Before sending this article to press, Re ections asked Bill O’Brien to re ect on his observations during the 13 years since he wrote his letter to Roy Anderson.
Re ections: Not long after you wrote this letter, you left Hanover Insurance. What you
came to understand from those who remained was that the subsequent leadership ignored
many of the previous values you had introduced. In fact, they took the ‘‘Blue Books,’’ inVolume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSO’Brien: Leadership is always about a tension between principle and power. It can neverbe an ‘‘either/or.’’ It is always a mixture of the two. In the decade of the nineties, we nd
two visible examples of the assertion of principles by those in power in the world politicalarena.
One was Gorbachev and his principle of perestroika, which was to free the people of
the Soviet Union from the oppression of communism. He thought he could do this andremain communistic. He could, with his personal power, have wreaked havoc on theworld. Instead, he chose to focus on perestroika.
The other example was de Klerk. Certainly, in the beginning, he could have oppressed
Mandela and the African National Congress, but instead he stuck to his principles about
ending apartheid in the face of much skepticism. In corporations, leaders are motivatedby an obsession with keeping control and power, but there is a higher order than power,
which is principle.
Governance, whether involving a nation or corporation, that is driven by leadership’s
appetite for power and control oppresses by sti ing initiative. Governance with noble
aspirations in service of the common good that seeks to help all its people —not just anelite few—in pursuit of their highest destiny is uplifting. Thus, there are some battles inlife where it is more important to be on the right side than it is to win.

O’BRIENAn Epoch Change in Our Paradigms

which the values of Hanover were articulated, out of circulation. What are your reections
on this decision by the subsequent leadership?

Re ections: How has the environment for values-based leadership changed in the 13
years since you wrote this letter?
O’Brien: When I wrote this letter, I felt that we were in the midst of an epoch change,
which I characterized as a change in the paradigms in which people believed. I comparedepoch change with normal changes, those happening because of technology and liberalizing social policies. I think we are still in a period of epoch change.
One observation I made then was the need for unity between science and religion. I
see a lot of evidence in the past ten years that this movement is underway. When you
look at the New York Times bestseller list, something like 40% of the books are in some
way religious. M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled was on the list for 13 consecutive
years.1 These kinds of things fall in the ‘‘boiled frog’’ category, so gradual that we barely
notice them.
Fortune magazine had a cover story on ‘‘God & Business.’’2 Ten years ago, that neverwould have happened. In fact, roughly 10 years ago, Fortune sent a reporter to a conference held by the Organizational Learning Center [now the Society for Organizational
Learning] at MIT. He was on the verge of writing it up as a ‘‘New Age gathering’’ until
he talked with a number of us and saw it for what it was.
In another related article, Jim Collins wrote about Level 5 Leadership. 3 He describes
a guy from Kimberly Clark, a spiritual guy, humble with a sense of stewardship about the
future, who characterizes the spiritual dimension of leadership. Fifteen years ago, someone with those qualities would have been seen as  aky, not tough, and would have been
weeded out.
Looking on down the road, I believe we have to grow leaders who are skilled at boththe technical side and the spiritual side. Collins talks about leaders who have integrated
business and technical prociency with spiritual formation. I think these dimensions haveto be integrated in a single person. You don’t hire a human resources person to bring inthe spiritual dimension.
I see the CEO as an orchestra leader who brings people in. There are a lot of people
who talk about the spiritual side, but when they actually lead the music, they just beatthe drums for prots, for the numbers, too strongly. When you’re leading an organization,
you have to bring in the human, strategy, and customer sides. When you blow any oneof these horns all day long, that’s what people presume you want.
In rereading my letter, I think that the central direction I pointed to is still accurate.
There is a lot of evidence that science and religion are coming together. The reality of theworld is that we need both faith and reason to know the truth. There are certain things

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

41

O’BRIEN
An Epoch Change in Our Paradigms

we can’t know by faith and other things we can’t know by reason. There’s no such thing
as a Christian approach to chemistry. In the same way, you can’t get at the questions of‘‘Who am I? Where am I going? Is there life after I die?’’ or at issues such as raising children
or being married by reason. Those things require a window of faith. Together, faith andreason get at the full truth of the world.

Notes
1. Peck, M.S. The Road Less Traveled (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997).
2. July 9, 2001.
3. Collins, J. ‘‘Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve.’’ Harvard Business
Review 79 (January-February 2001): 42-48.

The Society for Organizational Learning is now offering educationalcourses to the public. If you are interested in attending either:
Core Competency Course(ve days)(Based on Peter Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline)orFoundation for Leadership(three days)
Please visit our website at www.solonline.org or callAngela Lipinski at 508-771-7322 for more information.

42

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSThe Spiritual Entrepreneur
Alfredo Sfeir-Younis

Alfredo Sfeir-Younis is an environmental economist and the World Bank’s Special Representative to the United Nations and to the World Trade Organization. This article is theresult of an interview Re ections conducted with him in January 2001, in Santiago, Chile.

R

ecently, at a conference in Mexico, I was listening to someone speak about the needfor business to shift from ‘‘business entrepreneurship’’ to ‘‘social entrepreneurship,’’a move that asks businesses to raise some of the larger questions about the impact of theirenterprises on their workers and communities. As I listened to the speech, I found myself
feeling that this move was too timid for our times, that it didn’t ask enough of our businessleaders or give enough to the world. When it came my turn to address the group, I wascompelled to make a stronger appeal: that business leaders must move not merely to‘‘social entrepreneurship,’’ but to ‘‘spiritual entrepreneurship.’’ In these challenging
times, we must consider both the outer and inner conditions that are shaping people’s
lives.
In most societies, we look at business organizations as the prime means of creating
wealth, and through that wealth, enabling the development of our societies. And when
we think of wealth, we think of material wealth. So, if I am looking to hire someone torun my business, I will, of course, look for a ‘‘business entrepreneur,’’ someone who
understands the values of the material world, someone who has experience in accounting, nance, distribution, and marketing. This is the person I will hire to create wealth for me.
However, today, we nd we cannot operate in a social vacuum. The ecological urgencies of our times and the public outcry in response have made it impossible to separate
the best interest of business from the best interest of society. We have come to understandthat our workers must feel fairly treated and our communities must feel they bene t by
the presence of the business in the community, or the business cannot function. This has
given rise to the call for the ‘‘social entrepreneur.’’ The social entrepreneur extends thequestions he or she raises about the business: not merely what will create the most wealthfor the owners, but also what will support the well-being of the workers and what willbene t the community and larger living sytems in which our business is embedded? Inother words, ‘‘What is our responsibility?’’ These additional questions necessitate a shift
in the values that inform business decisions. Social entrepreneurs will nd themselves
making some decisions that do not result in the greatest wealth in the near term. However,when considered as part of a system for creating wealth—a system that includes theworkers and the community—their decisions will bring greater stability to the enterpriseand its community, which in turn will generate more long-term wealth for the business,
its workers, and the community. So, while the questions are different, they are the samegenre of questions.
The social entrepreneur is, in many ways, a small step from the business entrepreneur. Both make decisions based on the external criteria. The primary difference is thatthe social entrepreneur has extended the timeline for this wealth creation, realizing that,by considering the well-being of the worker, the environment, and the community, thebusiness is in a better position to create wealth over time. The social entrepreneur has
added the question, ‘‘What is our responsibility?’’
The move from social entrepreneur to what I call a ‘‘spiritual entrepreneur’’ is not
simply an extension of the continuum. It is a fundamental shift in the way to see the workof a business. A spiritual entrepreneur understands that business is not simply a material
category. Business represents the collective energy of those with capital, those with ideas,

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

Alfredo Sfeir-Younis
Special Representative
United Nations
World Trade Organization
Asfeiryounis@Worldbank.org

Ó43

2002 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.

SFEIR-YOUNISThe Spiritual Entrepreneur© Linda Cooper

44

those with specialized skills, a host community, and soon. When all those participating in the collective enterprise are fully aware, that is, when they are living in themost positive, generative consciousness possible, thenthe enterprise will be creating the greatest value in all
currencies.
Another way to think about this is that business has asoul. In the same way that each of us has an animatingenergy often called a soul and a physical body throughwhich this soul acts, a business has body and soul. A business has factories, physical facilities, and a collective ofpeople who are generating ideas and coordinating theirways of creating together. This ‘‘soul’’ of business carries
the imprint of all the people who are collaborating in theenterprise: the workers, the stockholders, the owners, andthe management. The quality of awareness of those who
imprint the business will affect everything the businessdoes.
A spiritual entrepreneur doesn’t approach the businesswith an overriding question about how to create the mostwealth. Rather, he or she attends to the inner well-beingof the enterprise. A spiritual entrepreneur approaches thebusiness with the highest personal quality of awarenessand asks the question, ‘‘How can I encourage everyone
connected with this enterprise to work from the highest
possible level of awareness?’’ This simple shift in focus inturn transforms every aspect of the business. Quality is not
merely a material consideration of a product without mistakes; it is an ‘‘extra-material’’ idea that asks for the mostimaginative, well-designed, enjoyable, and sustainableproduct possible. Ethics is not a book of principles to which
one retreats in the event of a lawsuit or recall; it is integral
to the standard practices of every aspect of the business, how we deal with all the living
beings on which business has an impact. The fundamental principle of the spiritual enterprise is self-realization, an understanding of the ‘‘true self.’’
Of course, by improving the inner quality of the enterprise, one expands the capacityof the business for innovation, imagination, collaboration, partnership, and wealth creation. The difference is that these are the fortunate outcomes of a renewed awareness, notthe motivation for making decisions. The business entrepreneur who is operating fromthe elevated vantage point of the true, whole, or essential self will also naturally makedecisions based on what is most bene cial for everyone involved— those working in thebusiness, living in the community supporting the business,nancing the business, and using the products created by
the business, and the larger natural environment. In otherwords, enhancing the inner quality of the enterprise is theessential step toward creating a sustainable sense of socialand environmental responsibility, because the adverse effects of business on communities and the environment
stem  rst and foremost from lack of awareness and lack of
inner development. Without a commitment to inner well-being and enhanced awareness,there is no foundation for a broader responsibility of business.
What makes this shift to spiritual entrepreneurship so critical is that it removes ourreliance on outside measures to guide our business decisions. We would no longer beasking if we should or shouldn’t stage a product recall, to what degree we need to restricta certain kind of emission, or whether the degree to which we were polluting the surrounding waters is within acceptable guidelines. There may still be nuances to our decision making because of differences in cultural mores—for example, about child labor—

The fundamental principle of thespiritual enterprise is selfrealization, an understanding of the‘‘true self.’’

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSSFEIR-YOUNISThe Spiritual Entrepreneur



however, these would be vastly reduced and the response to ethical crises would beconsistently based on the highest intentions.
In closing, let me reiterate that I am calling for not simply an extension of the kindsof questions even the most enlightened entrepreneurs are currently asking. I call for questions and for a quality of leadership of a different order of magnitude. When we makethis shift—and I think it is inevitable that we must ultimately make this shift—businesswill nd itself playing a new, invigorated role. Businesses will not simply support theworld by allowing people to create wealth; they will be direct agents of world bene t.
Businesses will be collectives of human energy and imagination working actively andintentionally for world bene t.

Commentaryby Andrew Ferguson
In October 2000, at a meeting that I chaired with David Cooperrider and Peter Senge on the creation of a World Institute of Spirit in Business, Peter raised the question: ‘‘What is a spiritualleader?’’ Religious leader? New Age spiritual teacher? CEO of a church, mosque, or synagogue? Or
perhaps it’s any of us who choose to do the daily inner work, entering the path of spiritual journey, which leads to our own growth and transformation. Upon reection, Peter’s question helps toanswer the question that Alfredo Sfeir-Younis so eloquently raises. The next generation of businessleaders need to be spiritual leaders. We can no longer afford the costs of the ‘‘outer’’ at work andthe ‘‘inner’’ on Sabbath. Imagine how quickly that reintegration of business and spiritual leader willturn the whole paradigm of how we think about being executives and running businesses magically on its head. And it could be that simple.
Sfeir-Younis articulates beautifully the imperative for business leadership to move beyond thematerial and the ‘‘outer,’’ and integrate the essential work of the ‘‘inner’’ and the spiritual. Today’s
science and psychology teach us that the creation of inner contentment and compassion is the true
path to happiness. Through the practices of building compassion, of demonstrating daily the powerof our connectedness, business leaders are transforming their lives and their businesses. The sooner
that those of us in business acknowledge the profound shift that Sfeir-Younis outlines, the more
quickly we’ll become more effective as leaders and happy as individuals. And the more quickly business will begin producing products and services that produce long-term health, wealth, and sustainability. This tangible reconnecting of our interconnectness to all of life is the secret to businessleadership for the future.

Andrew Ferguson
Chairman and President
Spirit in Business, Inc.
Founding Director
Meadowbrook Lane Capitalaferguson@spiritinbusiness.org

45

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

Community Buildingin Business
Philip H. Mirvis

A

Philip H. Mirvis
Researcher and Consultant
Pmirv@aol.com

46

group of 50 or so managers and sales staff meet in a workshop to build community
in their business. The session begins with a reading of the ‘‘Rabbi’s Gift,’’ an apocryphal story of a twelfth-century monastery restored to prominence by good deeds after
a wise old rabbi advises the monks that one of their number, unknown to them, is the‘‘messiah.’’ Then the workshop participants re ect silently. What follows are comments
about the relevance of this parable for Carlisle Motors, a multilocation auto dealership inwest Florida where, one salesman asserts, salvation can also be found in showrooms,
repair bays, the billing ofce, even the used car lot—wherever coworkers step up andheed the rabbi’s message.
Hold the Hallelujahs. There is more to this workshop than scripture and revivalism.
At this point, the participants are engaged in what M. Scott Peck, author of several books
on community and spirituality, calls ‘‘pseudo-community’’ (Peck, 1987, 1993). The participants are being proper and polite, trying their best to  gure out the rules, and taking
steps to ensure that what happens somehow relates to their jobs and company. Next
comes a period of chaos. What’s our agenda? Who’s in charge? What are we supposed to
be doing? At this point, in the prototypical encounter group, power struggles begin, conicts over ordained authority versus self-management erupt, and the group enters a‘‘storming’’ phase. Facilitators usually help people to work through these conicts by,say, ‘‘holding up a mirror’’ so that they can examine their group dynamics. At this program, by contrast, they are urged instead to ‘‘empty’’ themselves —of their current
thoughts and feelings, as well as their most profound pleasures and pains—to make room
for the ‘‘inner light.’’
Later, as the group cycles deeper into chaos, comes the injunction to wait until you
are ‘‘moved to speak’’ and, importantly, to speak when you are so moved. Slowly, andgradually, personal stories emerge. Tales are told by alcoholics, abused spouses, workaholics, spouse abusers, children who loved parents who did everything but love them—
all amidst weeping. This sort of sharing is normally found in ‘‘recovery’’ groups in which
empathy, understanding, and ultimately connection emerge from relating to another’s life
story and sharing your own. In such gatherings, however, people generally share a common addiction or afiction. Here the sources of hurt, rejection, or disappointment in one’s
self seem many and varied. What do these businesspeople have in common? Only what
Peck calls a universal ‘‘fear of disarming ourselves.’’
The rationale for talking personally and witnessing one another do so is based on thenotion that people progress toward community not by ‘‘working’’ issues or getting organized—a phase of group development called ‘‘norming’’—but rather by letting go of
everything that gets in the way of being fully present. This entails personal vulnerability
and surrender of formal roles, agendas, and all the accoutrements of keeping up appearances. In so doing, individuals begin to open up to others in their circle and comprehend
their own lives and circumstances afresh. The potential for community is born as people
start then to see themselves in another person and another in themselves.

Toward Common UnityÓ

2002 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.

Based on an amalgam of practices from Quakerism, 12-step programs, human relations
training, and psychotherapy, this workshop is premised on the notion that people comeVolume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSMIRVISCommunity Building in Business

together when they inquire into their differences, discoverwhat they have in common, and then consciously embrace
unity. The workshop is led by facilitators from the Foundation for Community Encouragement (FCE), a network
formed to teach principles of community in workshops andto consult with organizations—religious, civic, and commercial—that want to operate along these lines. The hostat Carlisle is Scott Wilkerson, then CEO, who attended apublic workshop offered by FCE, experienced a deep senseof community with strangers, and wanted to transfer itback to his home organization.
Meanwhile, back in the workshop, the Carlisle grouptakes stock of its discussion, chews over the differences
between healthy versus unhealthy pain, and ponders what
constitutes legitimate suffering in a broken world. Participants begin to exchange puns and laugh. This marks a newphase of group consciousness wherein members attend totheir collective dynamics and begin to share responsibility
for the group as a whole. They look less to the facilitators
as role models or targets for disaffection. They also reachout to the silent who might want to speak, and let the talkative know when the group can gain most from their silence.
Eventually, the conversation returns to the rabbi’s story, not explicitly, but subtly, as
managers talk about not only what they want to accomplish in their work and personal
lives, but especially who they want to be. Salespeople, in turn, conclude that there is abetter way to sell cars based, they say, on principles of love and respect for customers
and for themselves. The sense of community matures when a group inquires deeply into
its purpose. Ultimately, there is the question of higher purpose. In Peck’s model, a higher
level of group consciousness emerges as a group opens itself to the spirit and operates inharmony with the ‘‘unseen order of things.’’ Now specialists who facilitate groups orpractice organization development might call this alignment. But, aligned toward what?
Strategy, vision, values—these are their usual referent points. What does it mean to bealigned with the spirit?
Answers to this most fundamental question are offered in workplace dialogues, atretreats and conferences, in business school classrooms, and even in corporate boardrooms. As a member of FCE and facilitator of many groups, I had my  rst tasteof this spiritualizing trend in the late 1980s in workshopswith people in business, government, and nonprots. In
1997, I put together my thoughts on ‘‘soul work’’ in organizations (Mirvis, 1997) and noted the emergence of academic conferences and business books on the subject,including Leading with Soul (Bolman and Deal, 1995), Spirit
at Work (Conger et al., 1994), and Jesus, CEO (Jones,
1995). Since then, many more books like these have been published, and spirituality andbusiness have been cover stories in BusinessWeek (Conlin, 1999) and in Fortune (Gunther,2001).
On the practice end, many more companies like Carlisle Motors are taking spiritualdevelopment seriously. More than 500 employees of the car dealership went throughcommunity-building workshops, and the enterprise has been transformed by the experience. There have been measured improvements in morale, internal communication, con ict resolution, and the like—gains that result from effective human relations training.
With reference to the spiritual and communal bent of the work, the company adopted a‘‘fair and simple’’ approach to doing business that features one low price for vehicles, nohidden dealer charges, and a three-day exchange guarantee, offered by sales personnel
now working on salary rather than commission. Carlisle’s ‘‘Principles of Community’’ areposted at each facility. Below the pledge to ‘‘Relate with Love and Respect’’ is the call to‘‘Be Open to Spirit.’’© Emily Sper

Strategy, vision, values . . . are theusual referent points. What does itmean to be aligned with the spirit?

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

47

MIRVISCommunity Building in Business

Why Spirituality? Why Now?
Five Reasons We Search
Breakdown of institutions. Poverty, violence, divisiveness of every sort, greed, racism, escapism,
and a host of other maladies afict modern society. Big business and government are marked by
dog-eat-dog competition and bureaucratic dry rot. And, post –9/11 polls aside, most Americans
mistrust business and government leaders. The rise of cynicism and its fallout in the US and muchof Europe are well documented. Meanwhile, traditional community-making institutions—churches,
schools, neighborhoods, families, volunteer organizations, and local workplaces— no longer provide
the safety, support, or continuity that people say they want and need.
Loss of authority. No one believes that ‘‘father knows best’’—witness role models like cartoon
character Homer Simpson; nor are many TV moms, such as Roseanne, credible authority gures.
The golden rule, the American Dream, the value of ‘‘union made,’’ the notion that ‘‘people are ourmost important asset,’’ and almost every other slogan or credo don’t stand up to scrutiny or
postmodern deconstruction. Look closer and the seeming foundations of science, the supposedbenets of technology, and the shared ideals of progress are all cast into doubt. More of us arecredentialed as experts in something or other, and yet nobody trusts experts anymore.
Disconnection from one another. From the studies of Robert Bellah and colleagues, we knowthat rugged individualism still marks the American character (Bellah et al., 1991). Robert Putnam
nds that 40 million of us spend free time ‘‘bowling alone’’ (Putnam, 2000). Both civic
engagement and social interaction are declining and for good reason: The Cynical Americans
reports that a majority believe that they cannot count on other people and therefore have to‘‘look out for themselves’’ (Kanter and Mirvis, 1989). Faith Popcorn tells us that ‘‘egonomic’’purchases, hi-tech ‘‘cocooning,’’ and now personal ‘‘armoring’’ are upside market trends.
Crises and calamities. When the new millennium was on the horizon and Y2K fears were
rampant, angels began to appear on television and at the movies, and sales of soothing volumes
like The Celestine Prophecy (Redeld, 1994) soared. Since then, assorted natural disasters, teenshootings in schools, and now terrorist attacks in New York and Washington have added to thesense of fear and vulnerability. A turn to mysticism and prayer is tting: one in every three
Americans has had a mystical experience in his or her lifetime, and 60% say they have ‘‘absolute
trust in God.’’
Aging baby boomers. Boomers are reaching what one pundit calls ‘‘the contemplative afternoonof life’’; many want their children to have something to believe in. One-third of the boomers who
dropped out of organized religion have returned to the fold. Never prone to tradition, boomers
have also gravitated to New Age mediums—music and mandalas that purport to provide more
direct transcendental experiences. They are not alone in their search for the sacred: a Gallup pollnds that 78% of Americans feel a need today to experience personal growth —versus 20% about
a decade ago!

Five Paths We Follow
West meets East. Historian Arnold Toynbee contends that the most important intellectual
development in the West in the twentieth century has not been Marxism or Freudianism but,
48

What’s Different about Community Building?
As much as community building follows a universal progression and rhythm akin to othermediums of human development, it also favors some unique practices and emphasizes
the power of spirit in development itself. For instance, drawing from the tenets of humanistic psychology in the 1950s and 1960s, many team builders and group trainers stressthe importance of dealing directly with ‘‘here and now’’ behavior and regard interpersonal
feedback as key to the ‘‘helping’’ relationship. Indeed, to heighten self-awareness in training programs, people are encouraged to share their reactions to others’ behavior and, insome circles, to offer interpretations. By contrast, participants in community-building
workshops are urged to reect and be aware of how they lter and make judgments, allto empty themselves of what gets in the way of truly hearing another person. The idea,
as expressed by William Isaacs in reference to dialogue groups, is that by ‘‘observing theobserver’’ and ‘‘listening to your listening,’’ self-awareness of thoughts, feelings, andexperiences, past and present, seep gently into consciousness.
In turn, the notion of offering Rogerian-type counseling in a group—to help people
see themselves more clearly through questioning or clarifying—is discouraged. In
community-building lingo, this equates to ‘‘xing’’—a worthy aspiration that has to be

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSRediscovering ancient ways. The 2000 US census recorded a tenfold increase since 1980 in those
who identied themselves as ‘‘Native Americans.’’ With a newfound respect for ancient wisdom,
many people today meet and talk in circles, enact the rituals, and study the lore of indigenous
peoples around the world. Modern tastes in music—both listening to and performing —and inbody decoration, literature, dance, art, jewelry, and the like reveal a reverence for the timelesstruths and ways of past people.
The ‘‘natural’’ world. Deep ecology is another means of spiritual expression. A look at earth fromspace led Edgar Mitchell to found the Institute for Noetic Sciences. Psychologist Roger Sperry,
physicist Donald Boem, engineer Willis Harman, and countless other respected scientists have
imputed consciousness to atoms, direction to chemical reactions, and purpose to natural systems.
Thought leaders are showing wondrous connections between mind and matter, the natural andspiritual. Every day, people are eating organically grown, all natural foods, practicing holistic
health care, and joining prayer with medicine to nd ‘‘miracle’’ cures of their illnesses.

MIRVISCommunity Building in Businessrather, contact with the Buddha. Meditation, yoga, Zen gardening, the martial arts, and a generalappreciation of yin and yang as ways of understanding and forms of expression have transformed
Western ways of knowing and being. The increased emigration of Asians to the US, along with
globalization of mass media, education, and travel have sped this transformation along.

Communing with others. Women are howling with wolves, and men are reading the poetry ofRobert Bly. Twelve-step groups have formed to address nearly every addiction and ailment. And
the Internet has opened the way to global virtual communities that join people with common
interests and quests. There are costs and benets to the growing sense of tribalism found among
identity groups based on gender, race, or ethnicity, and among the religious as well. Born-again
Christians now make up 50% of Kansans. Fundamentalist Jews and Muslims predominate in otherparts of the world.
Spirituality at work. The workplace is the new spiritual frontier. Articles and books, cover stories in
Business Week and Fortune magazines, and various conferences, training programs, and MBA courses
all address and amplify the trend. Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, management gurus Peter Senge andMargaret Wheatley, and business leaders Tom Chappell and William Pollard, among many others,
have stressed the convergence between managerial and spiritual practices. And polls nd that nearly
half of America’s workers talk about their religious faith at work on any given day. How many do so
as part of an in-house dialogue group, as members of a professional or community group, or in a
training and development program is, at this point, undetermined.
References
Bellah, R., et al. The Good Society (New York: Knopf, 1991).
Kanter, D.L. and P.H. Mirvis. The Cynical Americans (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1989).
Putnam, R.D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon &Schuster, 2000).
Redeld, J. The Celestine Prophecy (New York: Warner, 1994).

emptied in order to experience oneself and others more fully. On this point, it is worth
noting that community building in no way equates with group therapy. Rather, the focus
in workshops is on collective dynamics, and interpretive comments, if offered at all, areaimed at the group as a whole. The group serves as a container to hold differences andcon icts for ongoing exploration. This keeps hot conversation cooled sufciently so thatpeople can see the whole of the group’s mind. This facilitates development of groupconsciousness by counteracting tendencies toward ‘‘splitting’’ in group dynamics,
whereby people identify with the ‘‘good part’’ of their group and reject the ‘‘bad part.’’Behind this view is a model of what some call the ‘‘quantum universe.’’ From thestudy of particle physics, it is believed that observation of a particle inuences the quantum eld around it—meaning literally that observing affects the observed. David Bohm,
the physicist whose theories stimulated development of the dialogue process, generalized
the point to human communication and gatherings. By simultaneously self-scanning andinquiring with a group, in his view, people create a connective eld between observer
and observed. By ‘‘holding’’ this eld, in turn, a group can contain both energy andmatter, and investigate more fully what it is producing. And in uncovering this tacit
infrastructure, some theorists believe, lies the possibility of creating new collective dynamics.
Here is where community-building principles apply. At the start of a workshop, aspirations are set to welcome and afrm diversity, deal with difcult issues, bridge differ-

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 349

MIRVISCommunity Building in Business© Emily Sper

50

ences with integrity, and relate with love and respect. In
this sense, community building advances by the positive
values = positive action equation that guides groups involved in appreciative inquiries. At the same time, facilitators are admonished that they cannot lead a group tocommunity. They, and anyone else present can, however,share their own thoughts, call the group into silence, or
merely slow the discussion down. Bohm likens the resulting state to ‘‘superconductivity’’ in a group, where the electrons or, in this case, the elements of the conversation,
move as a whole rather than as separate parts.
It is plausible to think of this heightened group consciousness in community-building workshops in the psychodynamic terms of bisociation: people reclaiming ‘‘split
off’’ ideas, feelings, and subgroups, and reconstituting thegroup as a whole. But what of the spiritual connection withthe ‘‘the unseen order of things’’? Testimonials aboundabout the creative breakthroughs that groups experience in
Outward Bound programs, when engaged in theatrics orthe arts, in meditation and therapy, and in other mediums
where the experience of wholeness translates into creative
insight or action or both. Some label these ‘‘ow’’ experiences and attribute them to the harmonious coevolution ofmental and material forces.
Several variants of the ‘‘new science’’ speak to thisdynamic. The order to be found in chaos, for instance, revolves around an aptly named ‘‘strange attractor’’; Margaret Wheatley, among others, suggests that its humanequivalent is meaning. Theories of transpersonal psychology are, so to speak, on the same wave length. To others, such notions of an implicate
order come from the eld of inquiry known as spiritual science where, it is presumed,
mind and matter coevolve and interpenetrate.
As novel and scientic sounding as these ideas might seem, they can be found inancient Buddhist tracts and other tenets of Eastern thought and in many indigenous people’s ways of understanding the world. They have also reached the West over the centuries
in novels, poetry, and the arts in the words of mystics and deeds of heretics. In testimony
to its timelessness, it is customary to say that this kind of knowledge is inspired or revealed, rather than invented or discovered. Perhaps the source is a muse, or a spirit, orsome other unseen force?
What community-building forums offer, in the same way as meditation and mindfulness, tribal kivas, and Quaker meetings, is a universal medium for accessing spiritual
knowledge and becoming our better selves.

Spirit in Organization
However we characterize the experience of community and its spiritual dimensions, it isplain enough that vast numbers of people, from all walks of life, are searching for new
relationships, attachments, and something more in their individual and collective lives(see the sidebar). This takes many forms in organizations.

Leading from Within
It wasn’t too long ago that situational leadership was in vogue, and executives wereadvised to make their leadership style contingent on the situation. By comparison, theemphasis today is on universal practices such as Robert Greenleaf’s notion of servant
leadership or Stephen Covey’s principle-centered approach. These speak to the need forleaders to develop inner sources of inspiration and to outwardly embody our ideals. Selfdevelopment tools such as personality-type measurements and 360-degree feedback can

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSCompany as Community
The distinction between corporation and community blurs in rms like the Body Shop,
Ben & Jerry’s, and other such companies with a conscience that strive to both do goodand do well. During the past several years, research has documented that rms can be
successful putting social responsibility and environmental sustainability alongside theprot motive.
The idea of ‘‘civics’’ is stimulating business, government, and citizens to work
together to address problems. For example, the Henry’s Fork Watershed Council innortheastern Idaho brings commercial, communal, and environmental interests together to confront conicts and allocate water among stakeholders in the region. The council
was formed in the mid-1990s when tons of silt spilled into
the Snake River, threatening  y shing and putting farmers,
businesses, townsfolk, and recreational users at odds. Meeting in a communal circle, members talked about preserving
their way of life and expressed fear of one another. They
then adopted community-building principles —pertaining tomutual respect and pointing to common goals—and worked
their differences through to the point of resolution. Now, 10 years later, council meetings
begin in a circle where members ‘‘check in’’ with personal stories and issues, and former
adversaries work together in subgroups to sort through options and arrive at consensus
decisions.

MIRVISCommunity Building in Businessplay a part in this. But leaders are also turning to simpler, more timeless techniques:
prayer, meditation, journaling, and spiritual retreats—methods traditionally classi ed under ‘‘care for the soul.’’What workers want most is afeeling of love and care in theirworkplaces and some linkage
between what they do on their jobs
and their larger purpose in life.

Meaning in Work
Research by Michael Learner suggests that making work more intellectually engaging
won’t meet people’s ‘‘meaning’’ needs. Indeed, studies  nd that what workers want mostis a feeling of love and care in their workplaces and some linkage between what they doon their jobs and their larger purpose in life. There are a growing number of rms whose
vision and purpose speak to these communal aspirations and who give employees time,
resources, and technical assistance to provide service to their local community.
Ford Motor Co., for instance, has its executives meet with counterparts in area nonprots to talk about their respective lives, work, aspirations, and disappointments. One
set of exchanges, between Ford and leaders, staff, and board members of Homes for Black
Children, an adoption agency in inner-city Detroit, led to a series of cross-sector dialogues
and several partnership projects in the company and in the community.

God in Company
The line between principle and piety is trickier when a company’s vision speaks directly
to faith in God. Compare Cummins Engine longtime chairman J. Irwin Miller, who isa proponent of ‘‘ethical culture,’’ with C. William Pollard, chairman of ServiceMaster,whose corporate objectives begin with the aspiration, ‘‘To honor God in all we do.’’ The
appeal of godliness is summed up as follows: ‘‘We have all been created in God’s image,and the results of our leadership will be measured beyond the workplace. The story will
be told in the changed lives of people.’’ Lest this seem exclusionary, Pollard stresses theimportance of pluralism in his company and has a top leadership team composed ofChristians, Muslims, and Jews (Pollard, 2000).
As to the broader point, it can be argued that those who unite on the basis of likeminds, a similar heritage or faith, or even a common enemy cannot be judged a community, because ‘‘true’’ community is born of inclusiveness and comes into being as agroup transcends differences. John Gardner terms this phenomena, ‘‘wholeness incorporating diversity’’ (Gardner, 1995).

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 351

MIRVISCommunity Building in BusinessCaveats and Cautions
There are many factors to consider when contemplating community building in business.
For instance, some employees regard personal conversations of the sort found incommunity-building workshops to be invasive of people’s privacy and feel a subtle coercion to reveal something about their own private lives. Furthermore, loose talk about
spirituality, soul, and other things sacred strikes some as inappropriate in a secular setting.
It is crucial, therefore, to secure people’s informed consent before subjecting them to thiskind of experience and to ensure that they can opt out without prejudice or harm. It isalso worth noting that all manner of corporate consultants, helpers, and healers are peddling their own variant of spiritual enrichment. The upshot? Buyer beware.
There is also potential danger when community feeling takes hold in a business. The
consciousness raising described can also be called indoctrination. For instance, pundits
went so far as to describe the heavy-handed socialization given employees at People
Express as ‘‘Kool-Aid management,’’ likening its demise to Reverend Jim Jones’s cult inGuyana, which ended in enforced mass suicide. There are documented cases of companies
that proselytize employees with speci c religious doctrine and cases of corporate programs wherein employees, exposed to New Age ideas about consciousness and the cosmos, felt their own brand of faith compromised.
At the same time, human resources specialists, whether incorporating workforce diversity or reaching out to employees, stress the importance of engaging the ‘‘whole’’
person at work. The idea of seeing a system as a whole is taking hold in corporate plants,ofces, and boardrooms. Accordingly, to the extent that we acknowledge people as spiritual
beings, it seems to me that the drive to create wholeness must take account of people’s
spiritual lives and collective potential.
Can we consider seriously the idea of businesses organizing along the lines ofan unseen order or, in words of theologian H. Richard Niebuhr, of ‘‘universal community . . . whose boundaries cannot be drawn in space, or time . . . short of a whole inwhich we live and move and have our being?’’ (1963). In his deeper re ections, Gregory
Bateson posits that social systems are gifted with wisdom. Some who go deep withinthemselves believe that we humans have tacit knowledge of universal community andcan cocreate a new order in our collective lives in line with it. Willis Harman and John
Hormann outline the utopian aspiration for business (1990). Many others in business
today are embracing it.

References

52

Bolman, L. and T. Deal. Leading with Soul (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995).
Conger, J. et al. Spirit at Work (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994).
Conlin, M. ‘‘Religion in the Workplace.’’ BusinessWeek (November 1, 1999): 151–158.
Gardner, J. Building Community (Washington, DC: Independent Sector, 1995).
Gunther, M. ‘‘God and Business.’’ Fortune (July 9, 2001): online edition.
Harman, W. and J. Hormann. Creative Work (Indianapolis: Knowledge Systems, 1990).
Jones, L.B. Jesus CEO (New York: Hyperion, 1995).
Mirvis, P.H. ‘‘‘Soul Work’ in Organizations.’’ Organization Science 8 (1997): 193–206.
Niebuhr, H.R. The Responsible Self (New York: Harper & Row, 1963).
Peck, M.S. The Different Drum (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987).
Peck, M.S. A World Waiting to Be Born (New York: Bantam, 1993).
Pollard, C.W. The Soul of the Firm (New York: Zondervan, 2000).

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSCourage to Be Authentic
Wendy Y.N. Luhabe

Wendy Y.N. Luhabe is one of South Africa’s most accomplished entrepreneurs and businesswomen. She has launched several companies, including Bridging the Gap, a humanresources consulting  rm, and Women Investment Portfolio Holdings, now listed on the
Johannesburg Stock Exchange. She serves on numerous corporate and foundation boards,
including as chairman of Alliance Capital and Vodacom Group, South Africa’s leading
communications company. In 1999, she was honored as one of the 50 Leading Women
Entrepreneurs in the World.
But beyond Wendy’s accomplishments, what stands out for me is Wendy the person.
For a black South African, returning home in 1988 in the middle of a promising businesscareer was hardly the comfortable course of action. Apartheid was still  rmly in place. Her
possibilities were uncertain, as was her safety. But, as she says, the pull of her life purpose
was stronger than the draw of security and professional advancement.
When I  rst visited South Africa in the late1980s, I was immediately confronted by the
extraordinary vitality and purposefulness embodied in many like Wendy. Gradually, I cameto see South Africa as the world in microcosm: the north and south, the ‘‘developed’’ and‘‘undeveloped’’ world, the extraordinary natural beauty and the crushing weight of poverty—a people poised between the weight of their history and traditions and the possibilityof creating something truly new. Simple ideals of living in service to the world held animmediate meaningfulness foreign to most of us. Simple declarations to live life fully, whichmight seem almost like platitudes for us, were declarations of revolutionary intent. Being‘‘a force of nature,’’ as Wendy liked to say, put one on a collision course with the statusquo. There is a big difference between inheriting democracy and being engaged in a lifeand-death struggle to give birth to one.
But what most surprised and built up in me through many trips to South Africa inthese years was extraordinary grace and joyfulness. In the middle of this struggle, again
and again I encountered quiet souls. Wendy was one of these. Eventually I came to appreciate the source of this centeredness. Ubuntu, a word that appears in all the languages
spoken in South Africa, expresses the essence of African humanism, a deep respect for one’s
humanity and that of others. As Wendy says simply, ‘‘We regard other human beings as
sacred.’’ Imagine a world grounded in this profound awareness, not as a lofty ideal but asa direct experience. If you can, you can also imagine the purposefulness and commitmentof people like Wendy, people engaged in giving birth to a world, not just a nation.
—Peter Senge

Wendy Y.N. Luhabe
Founder
Bridging the Gap
bridge@global.co.za

53I

am convinced that the reason I lived and worked on the east coast of the US from 1986
to 1988 had nothing to do with advancing my career and profession, although I did
achieve this to a large measure. But the experience did introduce me to spirituality, living
life from within and from inner knowing—simply put, living an authentic life.
When I returned to South Africa in December 1988, I knew that I wanted to becomea catalyst, helping people to live their lives from a spiritual perspective. To achieve this,I founded a company, Bridging the Gap, to provide human resources services, particularly
in recruitment and organizational development. I intended this business to have a social
agenda. Around that same time, I came across a poem by Dawna Markova (see the sidebar). It had such an impact on me that I vowed I would not die an unlived life, and I’ve
lived true to this commitment. I put the quote on beautiful postcards with autumn leaves
that I placed in black boxes with white black-eyed beans. I gave this to every person that

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

Ó2002 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fearof falling or catching re.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible;
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my signicance,
to live so that which came to me as seedgoes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

Courage to Be Authentic

LUHABEI Will Not Die an Unlived Life

Markova, D. I Will Not Die an Unlived Life (Berkeley, CA: Conari Press, 2000). Reprinted with permission of the author.

Epistle Dedicatory Letter to Arthur Bingham Walkley. . . This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one;the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish, selsh little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world
will not devote itself to making you happy.
George Bernard Shaw
Man and Superman

54

I trained or placed. They could plant the seeds and, as they witnessed the seeds’ growth,
they would be reminded of their responsibility for their own growth. George Bernard
Shaw’s dedicatory letter in Man and Superman also had a huge impact on me (see thesidebar).
Imagine if all of us lived authentic lives and the remarkable quality of life we would
experience, the quality of organizations. Life would be miraculous and truly magni cent.
We would effortlessly grow and serve humanity with deep compassion. The source ofhuman life couldn’t possibly have planned a mediocre and meaningless life for us, certainly not to the degree that I witness everywhere. The purpose of life is to live it to its
fullest, and to serve the world and make it a better place. Our living should leave behind
evidence that our potential was realized and that our lives achieved meaning.
I decided that my contribution would be to people seeking employment—I would
help them believe in themselves— and to corporations that were looking for people toemploy. I would help them commit to the success of these new recruits. One can argue
that this contribution should come earlier in life, that it should be part of our homes as
we grow up, our neighborhoods, our churches, and our schools. But society is full of
pessimists and skeptics. One rarely meets people who believe in themselves. Society andall its institutions should be designed to help us live and practice the values that we alllearned in kindergarten—to be fair, to trust, to be honest, to support us in living our lives
effectively and with integrity. The reality is that those who teach us these values do notpractice them, so we grow up accepting society’s double standards and abuse by thosewith power and authority. Maybe because we do not have enough courage and condence, we give our power away, we are seduced into submission and surrender, and welive in fear of rejection and loss. The end result is that we participate in a mutual dance
called ‘‘In Denial.’’ One group pretends that it is not exploiting others, that it is misunderstood. Those who feel exploited abdicate their personal responsibility and give up theirpower and dignity to others for many reasons—to stay married, to keep their employment,
to feel loved, and to maintain friendships and other dysfunctional relationships.

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSLUHABE
Courage to Be AuthenticWhere should we intervene to ensure that our experiences throughout life reinforce personal responsibility,
empowerment, personal growth, and commitment to being
authentic? At one level, there is what I call an institutional
leadership crisis. At another level, there is what I call global
helplessness and fear of crime, AIDS, poverty, global
warming, and so on. When should we be preparing thehuman race to feel secure, mature, and courageous enoughto be honest, to live with integrity, to be compassionate, tolive with passion, to nd meaning, and to make a difference? Who should do this? The answer is all of us. We
should disengage from autopilot living and engage moreproactively in our lives. These times demand us to live
more consciously, with greater awareness and with deep
passion, to add life to our years and not just years to ourlives. We need to: Slow the pace of our lives, create more silent moments,and manage better our signi cant life transitions.

 Question and reect more, and resist the temptation tocomply when our compliance adds no value. We needto rede ne the rules when they no longer support ourwell-being.
 Participate in our relationships with greater awareness, learn to make decisions and choices, live ourlives  rst for ourselves, not just for our parents or society.
 Discard values and traditions whose time has passed.
 Leave our jobs or relationships much richer than wefound them.
 Subscribe and commit to life instead of dying a little
each day.
 Celebrate the miracle of life, remember our life purpose, and pay more attention towhat happens in our lives.
In this tapestry lives the mystery of the universe and the essence of our magnicence.
When we remember our sole purpose, we will become one human race and heal fragmentation and dysfunction. Spirituality inspires and supports us to reclaim our power,
allowing us to ‘‘be,’’ instead of ‘‘do.’’ Perhaps in the twenty-rst century, we will be more
successful at creating a human community that lives from within, not just from without.
Both are necessary to overcome fragmentation, injustice, and inequity.
Society must live by one standard that serves and nurtures our humanity, removes
fear, and replaces it with love for oneself and therefore love for others. To achieve thisauthenticity, we must understand more deeply the responsibility and privilege of parents
who bring children into the world and prepare them for life. We must learn how to bebetter parents because that is likely to affect how we lead and manage in the workplace.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3© Emily Sper55

An Exploration of theSpiritual Heart of Human
Science Inquiry
David Cooperrider and Frank J. Barrett

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion, which
stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer
wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed out candle.
— Albert Einstein

WDavid Cooperrider
Associate Professor of Organizational
Behavior
Weatherhead School of Management
Case Western Reserve University
dlc6@weatherhead.cwru.edu

56ÓFrank J. Barrett
Associate Professor
Graduate School of Business andPublic Policy
Naval Postgraduate School
FBarrett@nps.navy.mil

2002 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.

hat is the role of spiritual experience in human science research? What is the relationship between experiencing a sense of the sacred and our capacity to inquire, to
ask questions, to wonder, to be surprised, to be open, and to learn? What do we meanby ‘‘spirit of inquiry,’’ and, in these words, do we really mean to take the word spirit
seriously? If so, in what ways? What happens, for example, in an interview when theinterviewer approaches his or her work with a sense of sacred vocation or, better yet, agenuine feeling of gratitude to be meeting with another human being as a precious soul,
not just in some faceless or bureaucratic role? Will the relationship and dialogue be affected? How about the data? And, later, what about the writing itself?
Why is the language of spiritual experience something we generally restrict to religious people or mystics, but then in so many autobiographical footnotes of scientists like
Einstein, we nd quotes that rival the articulations of the Su poet Rumi and words that
resonate, in concert, with the compassionate heart of His Holiness the Dalai Lama?
We began to wonder: If our aim as social scientists is not to map and re ect the world
objectively, then what is the purpose of our work? Is it possible that through our assumptions, our topics, and our choice of questions, we largely create the world we later
discover? Do we live— every one of us—in worlds that our inquiries create? Do humansystems grow, construct themselves, or evolve in the direction of what they most persistently and genuinely ask questions about? If so, what should be the questions?
Likewise, we began to re ect on client organizations with whom we were working.
Would the people at Roadway Express, one of the largest trucking companies in the US,
be talking about reconceptualizing their entire organization based on McGregor’s Theory
Y if he, and Abe Maslow alongside him, had not dared in scholarship and articulated in
speculative ways a new vision, an anticipatory theory, of what was possible? Why, in aworld that is so vitally shaped through mental models, assumptions, idea systems, language, cultural constructions, our discourses —in short, the very ‘‘stuff’’ of theory—isthere so little generative theory like McGregor’s and Maslow’s? More important, what can
we do in our own work to rekindle the passion, excitement, inspiration, courage, andspirit required of a scholarship of transformation capable of breaking the barriers of accepted convention?
Our assumption is this: that the most de ning and important feature of our  eld, theheart of our eld, is what Schein and Bennis many years ago  rst talked about as the‘‘spirit of inquiry’’ (1965). What this means to us today, and in what ways we can cultivate
it, is what this reection is about. We draw upon stories from our work with a special
action-research approach we have called appreciative inquiry (Cooperrider, Barrett, andVolume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSWhen have we felt truly alive ininquiry, and are there ways toactively cultivate more of ‘‘it’’ in ourwork and lives, and with whatbenets?

Revolutionary Caring for Guests: The mark of our hotel, when we have been really good andbeyond even our most common best, has been when we have responded to and exceeded
our guests’ expectations. Our assumption is that you too have been part of those times—perhaps once or many times. We want to know your story and then your vision of our future.
A. Can you share with me a story about when you were part of a successful, even revolutionary, moment of responsiveness to a guest, when you and others met and exceeded
needs on both sides? Describe the situation in detail. What made it feel radically different?
Who was involved? How did you interact differently? What were the outcomes and benets you experienced?
B. Now with that story told, let’s assume that tonight, after work, you fall asleep and do notwake up for 10 years. But, while you are asleep, a miracle happens and our entire hotel,
as an organization, becomes the kind of organization you would most like to see. Many
positive changes have happened. So now you wake up, it is 1999, and you come to thehotel. What do you see happening now that is different, new, or better?

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

COOPERRIDER AND BARRETT

Here is a story to illustrate what we have learned about cultivating a spirit of inquiry.
Park Plaza was a ea-bitten, one-star hotel that was taken over and challenged totransform itself. The mandate to the managers of this lowcost, high-turnover, poorly managed hotel was frightening:
the new parent company wanted a rapid turnaround in service from one star to four star, an externally determined
rating. They immediately invested $15 million into transforming the physical setting to marble oors, exotic furniture, new rooms, and the like. But they did nothing on thehuman side. So a year later, nothing had really changed. We
were asked to do action research that would engage everyone in a collaborative diagnosis and creation of an action
plan that would help the hotel reach four-star status. In the meantime, people feared theywould fail and be  red; there is always the possibility of wholesale housecleaning in any
takeover of this kind.
While the story is very involved (see Barrett and Cooperrider, 1990), there was one
moment of powerful learning. We proposed, in the organization-assessment phase, that
we let go of all diagnostic, problem-oriented analysis—literally put a moratorium on allde cit analysis of low morale, turf issues, gaps in communications, mistrust, and bureaucratic breakdowns. But the general manager would not accept it when, for example, we
said that the de cit-based assumptions would make the organization change come to aslow crawl, that is, if we treated and de ned the system as ‘‘a problem to be solved.’’What might happen, we suggested, if we engaged everyone in an inquiry with an alternative metaphor? The CEO almost laughed when we suggested that ‘‘organizations are
centers of innite relational capacity, alive with in nite imagination, open, indeterminate,
and, ultimately—in terms of the future—a mystery.’’ One of the ‘‘issues,’’ for example,
was the horrendous lack of responsiveness to guests and a culture of not caring. So we
proposed an experiment.
We would ask one group of employees to do an organization diagnosis. In the prep
workshop, we gave them classic analytic models, and they created problem- nding questions: What are the largest barriers to your work? What are the causes of breakdowns in
responsiveness to guests? The other group would have a workshop on appreciative inquiry.
We asked them to ‘‘try on’’ a half-full assumption: that the capacity for caring was in fact
everywhere in the system, and there were moments of revolutionary responsiveness toguests in which people went way beyond job descriptions to go the extra mile and servewith passion. The core question in interviews, which the employees created, was something like this:Love the Questions Themselves

An Exploration of the Spiritual Heart of Human Science Inquiry

Srivastva, 1995). It involves lessons from our experience and grows from the simple question: When have we felt truly alive in inquiry, and are there ways to actively cultivate
more of ‘‘it’’ in our work and lives, and with what bene ts?

57

COOPERRIDER AND BARRETTAn Exploration of the Spiritual Heart of Human Science Inquiry

58© Emily Sper

When the two workshops were completed, we asked
the groups to do separate interviews with different people
in the hotel. We did not mention, however, how the twogroups differed. They did not share the different questions.
Each group was to do 30 interviews each and prepare athematic report of the ndings. They would come together,
for the rst time, to share their organizational assessment
in two weeks.
So far, so good, until the day of the reports. The appreciative group was the  rst group that volunteered toshare. Each person was visibly excited and had a role inthe session. Their energy was infectious. They had discovered that every employee they talked to wanted to participate in building a four-star vision and that there was one
story after another of exceptional responsiveness to guests.
In addition, the images of the future were compelling and inspired. The group sharedwonderful quotes from the people they interviewed. The problem-nders sat motionlessand then made a tough charge: ‘‘Where did you  nd all this? Certainly not here at thishotel, with all its breakdowns? We did not hear anything like what you are saying. Why
are you fabricating?’’
Now the tables turned. We said, ‘‘Hold on, let’s give the other group a chance toreport.’’ So the second group presented (or one person presented, while the others satback) a listing of about 50 serious problems, such as negative supervision, interdepartmental friction, and statistics on rock-bottom customer satisfaction. The scenario they had
heard and painted of the future was dismal, loaded with a vocabulary of threat. Somepeople felt that housecleaning should indeed take place. There were anonymous quotes
saying the hotel should close. The  rst group questioned the authenticity of the data:‘‘These are not the things we heard in the interviews.’’ Both groups were now confused.
We then asked everyone to exchange interview guides and to read the questions. Thisset the stage for one of the best conversations about social construction of reality we haveever had: language and reality, the impact of analysis on our feelings of motivation andfear, the impact of human inquiry on the development of relationships, the idea of culture
and narrative, notions of reexivity and the ‘‘enlightenment’’ effect of inquiry, and therelationship between inquiry and change.
Our pragmatic question was this: In relation to helping propel good change, whichdata set do you think would honestly bring us together to create the future we want? The
story ends dramatically. The hotel embarked on a four-year process of appreciative inquiry, and a doctoral dissertation traced the whole system transformation and showed
how discourse precedes changes in structures, systems, policies, and even awareness. A
short time later, the hotel received the coveted four-star status, without layoffs, and theAcademy of Management gave our theory piece written about it an award for the best
paper of the year (Barrett and Cooperrider, 1990).
Two major learnings deserve more research. The rst is the proposition that we live
in worlds that our questions create. The questions we ask structure what we  nd; what
we  nd becomes the basis for our conversation and dialogue; and this all becomes theground from which we imagine, make sense, narrate, theorize, speculate, and construct
our future together. Questions do more than gather information. Inquiry intervenes: it
focuses attention and directs energy; it provides a container delimiting or expanding whatis there to see; it affects rapport and relationships; it sets agendas, lifting up what isdeemed important; and it ignites conversational universes based on the symbiotic relationship that exists in the two key elements of language, namely, the intrinsic relationshipbetween questions and statements (Goldberg, 1997). Consider the difference. One supervisor begins the weekly meeting by saying: Why do we still have these problems? Why do
you blow it so often? What resistances do you think we will face? Another says: Okay,
group. Let’s start. What possibilities exist that we haven’t yet thought about? What’s thesmallest change that could have the biggest benet? Is there any other way to think about
this?

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSThe way we conceive of the social world is of consequence to the kind of world we‘‘discover’’ and, through our reconstructions, even helps to create it. Managers or action
researchers, like scientists in other areas, tend to approach their work from a framework of taken-for-granted assumptions and vocabularies: what we are doing, what weare looking for, why we are doing the inquiry, ways of talking, specialized vocabularies,and so on.
There is one metaphor that dominates the arena of applied inquiry—whether talking
about medicine, action research, community assessment, organizational analysis, or management as inquiry. Indeed, in many ways, it is not even thought about as a metaphor atall, but reality. It is that our institutions are ‘‘problems to be solved.’’ It is not that ourorganizations have some problems, but they are a problem—therefore inquiry equals
problem solving; to do good inquiry means to solve ‘‘real problems.’’
Organizing was not a problem to be solved, we hypothesized. No organization was
created as a problem to be solved. Organizations were created as solutions, not problems.
Would a solution metaphor change our inquiry? After short experimentation, we realizedthat we were embedded in the same vocabulary of problem solving, locked in a universeof understanding in which the world is de ned a priori in de cit-based ways. ‘‘Solution,’’we realized, still implies a problematic something.
What would happen to our inquiry, we asked, if we shifted the story we tell ourselves
about ourselves: organizations are not problems to be solved but rather are centers ofhuman relatedness alive with in nite capacity and  lled with ‘‘more than what is knowable’’ in terms of creative, relational possibility. The miracle and mystery of inter-being
could perhaps be a metaphor that would, almost by de nition, be an inexhaustible starting
point for raising an endless array of questions of human and global signi cance.
New understanding emerges when we begin our inquiry from a different starting
point, one in which we welcome the unknown. It means throwing away old certainties
and entering mystery. Such are the pragmatics of inquiry.
Since our earliest work with appreciative inquiry, we
have come increasingly to understand that we are in the
midst of inquiry when, in fact, we experience a sense of awe,when we are capable of appreciating, even in the smallest
way, the miracle of life on this planet. Inquiry is the experience of mystery that changes our life.
Appreciative inquiry involves, in a central way, the art
and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential—linking people,
as it were, to the ‘‘positive core’’ of their past, present, and future capacities, including
those available in their nested set of relations from the local to the universal. One thingis evident and clear as we reect on the most important things we have learned: humansystems grow in the direction of what they persistently ask questions about, and thispropensity is strongest and most sustainable when the means and ends of inquiry are
positively correlated.
We conclude with another story to illustrate this.
Early in the 1990s, on his  rst trip to Jerusalem, His Holiness the Dalai Lama proposed: ‘‘If the leadership of the world’s religions could simply get to know one another. . . the world could be a different, a better place.’’ So several meetings were scheduledin various places, from Washington, DC, to Jerusalem; the most recent was at the Carter
Center in Atlanta (see Cooperrider, 1990). The purpose of the meetings was to create asecure, private, small, and relatively unstructured forum where leaders could have con-

Organizations are not problems tobe solved but rather are centers ofhuman relatedness alive withinnite capacity.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

An Exploration of the Spiritual Heart of Human Science Inquiry

Appreciating the Miracle and Mystery of Life

COOPERRIDER AND BARRETT

The omnipresence of questions, and their inherent potential to evoke whole newworlds of possibilities, suggests a second insight that is even more central here. What wehave found, in our own lives, is that we too move—emotionally, theoretically, relationally,
spiritually—in the direction of what we ask questions about. Inquiry intervenes, and it
works both ways; it intervenes ‘‘in here’’ as well as ‘‘out there.’’ In other words, thequestions we ask have a double import.

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COOPERRIDER AND BARRETTAn Exploration of the Spiritual Heart of Human Science Inquiry

Questions from Dialogue Interviews
1. A story from your life journey.
One could say a key task in life is to discover and dene our life’s purpose and then accomplish it tothe best of our ability.

 Can you share a story of a moment or a period of time when clarity about life’s purpose emerged
for you— for example, a moment when you were called, when there was an important awakeningor teaching, when there was a special experience or event, or when you received some guiding
vision?
 Beyond this story, what do you sense you are supposed to do before your life is over?

2. Insights from important interfaith encounters, exploring the personal meeting and friendshipbetween people of different religions.

We have all been changed both in outlook and in our lives because of encounters with people fromother spiritual traditions or religions. In your work as a leader, you might have had one, two, or perhaps
many encounters with people of other traditions that stand out as particularly signicant.

 Can you share a story of one experience that stands out in your memory— for example, an
encounter outside the normal ‘‘safety zone’’ where you were surprised or humbled, or where
there was an experience of healing and hope, or where there was a genuine experience ofcompassion, joy, love, or friendship?
 Whether it was difcult or easy, what did you come to respect most, not just about that person,
but about their particular religion or practice?
3. Qualities that would make meetings like this signicant and effective.
You probably already know, based on years of experience, the kinds of things that would make a meeting
among leaders of the world’s religions worthwhile, meaningful, and successful.

 What qualities of relating would help make it work?
 What qualities or gifts do you and/or your religious tradition bring to this kind of meeting?
 What would make meetings like this worthwhile to you? (This question was also discussed when
we returned to the whole group.)

4. World events and trends during the past 100 years.

Taking steps to create an enduring dialogue among leaders of religions does not happen in a vacuum.
Think about the ve most important historical events that have occurred during the past 100 years—
global or local events and trends that give you a sense of urgency, readiness, or calling for the workhere.

 What trends or challenges do you see as most signicant? Examples?
5. The emerging story of relationships among religions.

60

The 1996 Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential lists more than 15,000 global problems
and documents, for example, that half of the armed conicts in the world in early 1993 were not
between nation-states but between groups from different religions. Against the background of many
world problems and conicts, there is also a hopeful story that offers a glimmer of what is possible
when we nd ways to promote peace rather than war, cooperation rather than prejudice, and sustainability rather than environmental degradation and human oppression.
The century since that historic gathering in Chicago in 1993— the Parliament of World Religions—
has seen a vast widening of interfaith dialogue, interreligious prayer and meditation, pilgrimages, joint
action, and study in world religions. Indeed, it appears there is a worldwide urge for an enduring, daily

versations with one another, know one another in mutually respectful ways, and reect
on the hard issues of the world without binding any institution to another. Appreciativeinquiry was selected as the action-research model for data gathering, bringing people together, and creating together. The hope was that representatives of the different religious
groups could get to know one another—in some cases, groups had not spoken in 400 years.
By any measure, the meetings were successful. A major contributor to this success
was, we believe, the questions posed in the opening appreciative inquiry interviews. After
His Holiness the Dalai Lama shared his vision, we went in pairs into the interviews—
across religious traditions and beliefs— and later engaged in dialogue with the wholegroup. (See the sidebar for the questions that structured the opening dialogue interviews.)
From the opening interviews through the whole group dialogue that followed, the
new insight for us was the ‘‘surprise of friendship’’ that emerged in and through thesincere and deep appreciative interchange—the sharing of stories and the search for understanding life’s purpose and best qualities. Of particular importance was not that theVolume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONS Think about the most signicant achievements, milestones, developments, and infrastructures

6. Your vision of a better world and the special tasks and signicance of the world’s religions in
the new century.

Dag Hammarskjöld, former UN Secretary General, said: ‘‘I see no hope for permanent world peace. We
have tried and failed miserably. Unless the world has a spiritual rebirth, civilization is doomed. It has
been said that the next century will be a spiritual century or it will not be.’’Think about the next 30 years, a generation or so, in the future. Even though the future is, in somany ways, a mystery, we want to begin to visualize the kind of world you feel we are being called torealize, a better world, the kind of world you really want. What do you see in your vision of a betterworld?

 Specically what are three changes or developments in your vision? What is happening in theworld a generation from now that is positive and different, and how do you know? How would
you feel if these three things were realized?

7. Your vision of the relationships among the world’s religions and leaders.

The assumption in the invitation to this meeting is that there needs to be, in today’s complicated andinterconnected world, an ongoing and sustained conversation among the religious leaders of the world.
The simple hypothesis: the world will be a different place, a better place. It is easy to see the value ofsomething like this, is it not?
Let’s imagine a scale from 1 to 10—where a rating of 10 represents the ideal kind of relationshipamong leaders of the world’s religions and spiritual traditions. Leaders of the religions are relating inways people would be proud to point to—as examples or stories for the world’s children.

An Exploration of the Spiritual Heart of Human Science Inquiry

that have happened locally or globally in your lifetime. What developments are you most proudof?
 Conversely, as you look at events or trends in the world, and the current responses of religious
leaders, including yourself, what are you most sorry about or, more important, what should we
be doing more of or differently?

COOPERRIDER AND BARRETT

cooperation among people of the world’s religions to make peace among religions and to serve, in thepresence of the sacred, the ourishing of all life. As leaders in these arenas, what are we most proud
about? What are we most sorry about?

 What does your ‘‘10’’ look like? The quality of relationships? Kinds of contact and communication?

 Let’s assume a signicant and growing number of leaders from the world’s religions do choose‘‘to get to know one another’’— and it begins to succeed. A safe, condential, ongoing, andnonbinding forum is created. How might the world benet? How might you and your faithcommunity or organization benet?

8. Next steps

Again, putting yourself in the future, let’s suppose that, in fact, a high-quality and enduring forum for
dialogue has been successfully created. It is a safe and level playing eld where leaders and their envoys
can come together to talk, in condence, about the hard issues of the world.

 As you imagine such a forum (and we can design it in any way we want, assuming resources
are not a constraint), what are some things that could happen, or should happen, to make it awin-win-win for everyone —for the world, for work in our respective traditions, and for interfaithrelationships?
 What would make it signicant, exciting, or high-priority and meaningful for you?
 What are some possible places for a next meeting?

leaders came up with common values, shared vision, or joint projects and the like, because, at this stage, these would likely be impossible between, for example, people fromthe Vatican’s Roman Catholic group and the Orthodox group. But something more important started, which one might call the positive chemistry of interaction. It was not only
the surprise of beginning to know one another, but also the surprise of liking one another,
the glow of new acquaintance.
When we are really in a mode of appreciative inquiry, doors into appreciable worlds
are opened everywhere. Entering into those worlds— those locked-up conversations—would not have happened without the question. The feeling of wonder is the outcome.
We know that we are doing inquiry when, at the end of the day, we feel more spirit.
The essence of what we are proposing is that our metaphors matter; that we mightactively change them much like a sailor changes sails to concentrate the power of thewind; that inquiry is the experience of mystery that changes us when we enlarge oursense of the miracle of life on this planet; and that nothing is more practical for realizing

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COOPERRIDER AND BARRETT
An Exploration of the Spiritual Heart of Human Science Inquiry

our desire to open the world to new possibilities than approaching our work in ways thatcultivate our own sense of awe, love, surprise, and curiosity. Is this easy to do? Or arethese qualities simply for great mystics or the birthright of people with exceptional genius,such as Abe Maslow, who said, ‘‘Not only does science begin in wonder, it ends in wonder’’?
We have found our own sense of inspiration, hope, and joy expanding with eachstory and precious new relationship. In other words, we can cultivate, actively, our own
spirit of inquiry simply by doing more of it.

References
Barrett, F.J. and D.L. Cooperrider. ‘‘Generative Metaphor Intervention: A New Approach for Working
with Systems Divided by Con ict and Caught in Defensive Perception.’’ Journal of Applied
Behavioral Science 26 (1990): 219–239.
Cooperrider, D.L., P.F. Sorensen, D. Whitney, and T.F. Yaeger. Appreciative Inquiry: Rethinking
Human Organization toward a Positive Theory of Change (Champaign, IL: Stipes Publishing
L.L.C., 2000).
Cooperrider, D.L. and J. Dutton (eds.) No Limits to Cooperation: The Organization Dimensions of
Global Change (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1998).
Cooperrider, D.L. ‘‘Positive Image, Positive Action: The Af rmative Basis of Organizing.’’ in Appreciative Management and Leadership: The Power of Positive Thought and Action in Organizations,eds. S. Srivastva and D.L. Cooperrider (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1990).
Cooperrider, D.L., F. Barrett, and S. Srivastva. ‘‘Social Construction and Appreciative Inquiry: A
Journey in Organizational Theory.’’ in Management and Organization: Relational Alternatives
to Individualism, eds. D. Hosking, P. Dachler, and K. Gergen (Brook eld, VT: Avebury/Ashgate
Publications, 1995):157–200.
Goldberg, M. The Art of the Question: A Guide to Short-Term Question-Centered Therapy (New York:
Wiley, 1997).
Schein, E.H. and W.B. Bennis. Personal and Organizational Change through Group Methods: The
Laboratory Approach (New York: Wiley, 1965).

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Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONS

Changing How We Work
TogetherPeter M. Senge and Margaret Wheatley

Melvin McLeod (Editor, The Shambhala Sun [MM]): Dr. Senge, you talk to managers
about the importance of “disciplines” and “personal mastery.” You describe organizations
as “communities of practice.” There seems to be a strong element of spiritual practice inyour approach.
Peter Senge (PS): Increasingly, we’re directly incorporating into our work different practices that have been around for a long time, such as various types of meditation. It started
with the work on dialogue. We found that dialogue often involved silence, and so maybe
we needed to actually cultivate the capacity to sit in silence. And guess what? That started
to look a lot like traditional forms of meditation or contemplation.
So we’ve become more and more out front about this, although it’s always been there.
Though we had been doing the work described in The Fifth Discipline for 10 or 15 years
before the book was published, we hadn’t used the word “discipline.” It was only in thewriting of the book that it nally hit me that what we were talking about was discipline,in the very same spirit in which the word has been used in the creative arts or in spiritual
traditions for thousands of years. That people might have a potential or a talent, but they
can’t cultivate it without discipline.
You know, organizations are embodiments of the human desire to afliate and be
together, and that desire brings us face to face with complex, multiple dimensions of ourexistence. I often say that leadership is deeply personal and inherently collective. That’s
a paradox that effective leaders have to embrace. It does depend on them. It does dependon their convictions, their clarity, their personal commitment to their own cultivation.
And on the other hand, it doesn’t depend on them. It’s an inherently collective phenomenon.
You might say that organizations are one way for us to practice what it means to live
as a collective being, not just as an individual being. That’s tough, but I think that’s what
the discipline of working together is ultimately about. There are issues and difculties
that only manifest when we put ourselves in a situation where we’re vulnerable to being
in a collective.

Peter M. Senge
Senior Lecturer, MIT
Founding Chair, Council of Trustees
Society for Organizational Learning
Psenge@mit.edu

Margaret Wheatley (MW): I love this paradox that Peter expresses. When I was working
at Gampo Abbey, a Buddhist monastery, on their organizational processes, the principle
we came up with was that everything we learned on the meditation cushion, we could
take into the practice of organizing together. So much of what comes out of dialogue isactually a fairly weak imitation of skills that we learn in meditation—being aware, listening, letting go, not taking things as they appear. It was very fruitful to notice that all thecharacteristics of a good meditator can be brought into the collective experience of trying
to run an organization.

63

MM: If I can summarize the view that both of you seem to present in your writings, it’sthat change is the fundamental reality, that organizations suffer because they solidify thesituation, that they can achieve harmony if they work successfully with openness anduncertainty, and that there’s a path of discipline and practice by which they can do that.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

ÓMargaret Wheatley
President
Berkana InstitutePrincipal
Kellner-Rogers & Wheatley2001 by The Shambhala Sun. Reprinted by permission.

SENGE AND WHEATLEY
Changing How We Work Together

64

It sounds like the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, just applied to organizations instead ofindividuals.
MW: Well, you’re not the only one who’s noticed this [laughter]. I think that both Peterand I have both found there’s great depth in understanding life from a Buddhist perspective.
Speaking for myself, my awareness of change and uncertainty came through mystudies in biology, and just from growing older. That awareness of the continuous change
called life led me to very ancient spiritual traditions, because our present Western mind-set has forgotten that life
is change. Instead, it promises us relief from uncertainty
and the ability to control everything. It’s like a 300-yearold case of mistaken identity: we actually thought that we
could take over life and remake it according to our own
needs.
Once I looked past the Western cultural tradition, it was a great comfort and teaching
to understand that most other cultures—not only Buddhism but all indigenous cultures—
have well understood that life is a process of continuous change. Life does not organize
according to our demands. There are great elemental forces of both creation and disruption
we need to understand so we can work with them.
When we encounter change, we have to be able to understand our own habitualpatterns and be willing to move into a different way of being. One of the dilemmas thathits us in organizations is that we might be quite willing to change, to deal with chaos
and uncertainty as part of life, but there are very few organizational beliefs to support us.
I don’t  nd a lot of organizations where people at the senior level are comfortable withuncertainty. This is where the old Western mind-set still comes in. We still want the people
who lead us to save us from uncertainty. It’s not only the leaders themselves who haveto change, but also our idea of what we want leaders for.

All the characteristics of a good
meditator can be brought into thecollective experience of trying to run
an organization.

PS: One of the questions that has become central to my thinking is this: “Is it meaningfulat this point to consider whether there is such a thing as collective cultivation?” I use theterm “cultivation” in this context to mean deep development, becoming a human being.
So, can a body of people working together—even the word organization can limit us alittle, because it’s starting to sound like a thing—be committed as a collective to thiscultivation?
My understanding of Buddhism points to three aspects of cultivation: a commitment
to meditation practice, a commitment to study, and of course, a commitment to service,
to dedicating your life to something beyond yourself. It’s a very evocative question to ask
what these three dimensions of cultivation would look like in a collective situation. It’s
not the same thing as saying, “Everybody meditate,” because meditation is just one ofthree dimensions of personal cultivation. As I say, this has become a very meaningfulquestion in the last year.
MM: Isn’t there also an effectiveness argument here? In Buddhism, it’s said that you canbe skillful only when you have wisdom, which is seeing the truth that nothing is solid or
permanent. Isn’t that also true for the organization, that its intelligence or skill comesfrom seeing change, and if it sees the world as xed and unchanging it won’t be effective
or successful?
PS: The only problem I have with your question is the word “seeing.” You don’t get to
prajna, wisdom, just because you want it. Again, cultivation is essential. Similarly, it’s
not enough for organizations to want to be able to change. It’s not enough to just readthe right books and adopt a new belief system that says, okay, everything is changing.
The real question is, when all is said and done, can you really operate that way?
So it’s not simply a matter of good intentions. As it would be in any discipline-based
religion or artistic eld, it’s a matter of hard work and knowing how to do it. Do you havethe tools? Do you have the methods? Do you have teachers or mentors? All the things that
help a person along any developmental path.

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSPS: I think this is a nontrivial point we’re making, and I’ll tell you why. It cuts against an
awful lot of our approach in the West to learning and change. We have a tendency tothink if we read it, we can do it. If we’ve got the idea, we’ve learned it. On another level,
we know that’s all nonsense: nobody learns to play the violin by picking it up and saying“By golly, I’m going to be a violinist.” But we think people learn to manage change bygoing off to the two- or three-day seminar or reading a book. We’re talking about real,
180-degree change—instead of trying to control everything, we’re learning to align our
intentions with emerging realities. This is a profound shift in our way of being. You’re
not going to be able to do that just by having the idea in your head that it’s somethingthat you ought to do.

SENGE AND WHEATLEY
Changing How We Work Together

MW: It’s a very big leap for organizations to move from the realization that they have tocope with change, to the understanding that if you’re going to be in a continuously changing environment, then all of the ways in which you have learned to manage have to be
examined. Do they give you the awareness and information and mindfulness that allow
you to stay in the dance? Because as Peter said, organizations still don’t have the tools,
the analytic methods, that actually support people in this process of continuous change.
As much as we say we want to change our organizations to make them more adaptive,
we’re still not noticing the things that would make us graceful dancers.

MW: One of the important aspects of this practice is time—time to reect, time to meditate. And time is something that has just disappeared.
MM: We’ve talked about the aspect of personal practice and the overall environment ofchange in which companies must operate. Let’s turn to the nature of the organization
itself.
PS: Organizations arise because people are working together. Organizations are living
phenomena in a very real sense and they were appreciated in that spirit for a very longtime. It was only a couple of hundred years ago that our view of organizations—andparticularly business organizations—really began to change.
This goes back to the roots of Western science, to people like Kepler, Newton, andDescartes who conceived of the cosmos as like a giant clockwork. When we started toharness the power of machines in the early years of the industrial era, gradually we started
to see more and more of life as machine-like. In fact, the “machine age” is what many
people have dubbed the industrial era, because of how powerful the image of the machine
has been in our lives. It leads us to see everything, including ourselves, as nothing but
an elaborate set of mechanisms. This way of thinking has developed insidiously over a
few hundred years, to the point where we no longer realize how captive we are to it.
Of course, this view includes seeing our organizations as machines. A company, inthis sense, is literally a machine for making money. You have inputs, whether they’rematerial resources, energy resources, or human resources, and out the other end comesmoney. If money doesn’t come out, the machine is no good and you throw it away or try
to x it. You x it by getting new leaders, who can drive change or control things better.
In the machine-age world, “to manage” literally means “to control.”On the other hand, look at the literal meaning of the word company. It does not meana machine, it means a group of people, and we still preserve that usage when we speakof “a company of men.” The word company derives from the sharing of bread, from the
French word compagner. It’s the same root as the word companion. In Swedish, the oldest
word for company means “nourishment for life,” and the oldest symbol for company inChinese means “life’s work.” So we have these much older ideas of what a company is
all about: a group of people creating something together, and consequently being a kindof living force.
MM: If we view the organization in that way, what does it mean to be a leader?
MW: The leader is one who is able to work with and evoke the very powerful and positive
aspects of human creativity. You don’t create these energies, but you do have to support

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SENGE AND WHEATLEY
Changing How We Work Together

66

them. You do have to have a sincere belief in the commitment and creativity of the people
you’re working with.
We still feel very badly about each other. In my estimation, we’re quicker and quicker
to take affront or to be affronted, to take umbrage, to feel insulted, to assume that otherpeople are mal-intended, rather than well-intended. This is where we are as a culture.
We’re very far from each other; we’re very far from believing in each other.
So I’ve been working with the idea that a leader is one who has more faith in people
than they do in each other, or in themselves. The leader is one who courageously holds
out opportunities for people to come back together, to be engaged in the meaningful workof the organization, whatever it is. The leader is one who relies on people’s creativity andtheir desire to do something meaningful.
So the rst act of a great leader, I believe, is an act offaith. It’s believing that human nature is the blessing, notthe problem. That’s one of the principles that I work withright now—that we are the blessing, not the problem. Thenif you actually make that leap of faith, you go into theseorganizational processes that we’ve spent about 10 years developing, and I feel good about
a lot of them: calling the whole system together, nding ways for people to be in dialogue,
noticing that people can be very committed to the work of the organization.
So I see the leader as the one who calls people together, who supports them withresources, who keeps the eld clear so that they can do this work. The leader is the beaconof belief that we really are suf cient, that we really are talented enough to make this work.
The leader displays that faith in people continuously.

So the rst act of a great leader . . .
is an act of faith.

PS: That’s lovely. It reminds me of Douglas McGregor’s epochal book, The Human Sideof Enterprise, in which he says that we have a fundamental choice as our starting point:
Do we believe that people are good? Do we believe people truly want to work? Do webelieve people want to contribute? If this is not our conviction, then everything we dofrom that point on must be a kind of manipulation, to get something out of people which
they otherwise would not bring forth on their own.
I think Meg has hit on something very central. These rst steps set the direction of
the journey. For instance, take this into a particular area, like hierarchy. There is hierarchy
based on a belief in original sin, that people are fundamentally  awed, or to use Meg’sphrase, that they are not sufcient. Then there are hierarchies based on the belief thatpeople are sufcient.
There’s been a tendency in recent years to make hierarchy a kind of whipping boy,to blame everything on hierarchy. But hierarchy is a set of social relations that we invoke.
We create hierarchy, and the real question is what’s going on in us in that creating. By
and large, the hierarchies we have today, whether in schools or businesses, are hierarchiesof obedience. Their fundamental modus operandi is obedience or compliance. But we doalso have hierarchies of wisdom. We acknowledge elders and have for thousands of years.
In this, we invoke a profoundly different type of hierarchy. There’s no obedience requiredwhatsoever; it’s based on choice. If a person has lived longer or worked in a certain way
to achieve something, we acknowledge that, and we say, I can learn from you. I’m morethan happy to be your student.
MW: This whole quest for obedience is another one of those things that takes us in the
opposite direction from life. One of the fundamental characteristics of anything living is
the freedom to choose. The organism chooses whether to notice something, then itchooses whether or not to be disturbed. If the organism chooses to be disturbed, it stillretains the fundamental freedom to decide how it will respond. Obedience is not a natural
life process.
PS: Living systems, by their nature, resist being obedient.
MW: And, Peter, the consequence of not honoring life’s intrinsic right to self-determination is that when we ask people to obey and they do obey, they become lifeless. They
shut down. They disappear. They become automatons.

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSMW: You lose the life.

MW: I wouldn’t say that. I would say that the greatest spiritual problems are these deep
convictions, perceptions, or beliefs in the Western mind-set about what is valuable in life.
MM: Yes, but isn’t their most powerful manifestation in the workplace, given we spend
half our waking hours there?
PS: I’ll give you a way to say both. It’s like what I said before about hierarchy. It’s easy
to blame hierarchy, it’s easy to blame the organization, but we have to remember that
we are the ones creating all of these. We don’t have workplaces the way they are becauseof the laws of physics. They are nothing but the results of the habits of human behavior.
And unless we start to realize that, we’ll keep trying to  x it “out there.” We’ll keep trying
to x the form of it. We’ll reorganize or try to nd the right leader to follow, rather thanrealizing that we have the leaders we have and the organizations we have because we’ve
asked for them and because we’re causing them.
Having said that, I do think the growth in the number of large institutions over thelast hundred years or so is a signi cant development. There have always been schools of
many forms, but there weren’t school systems. There have always been companies, there
have been various forms of commerce for thousands of years, but we didn’t have global
corporations. This is a signi cant change in the human landscape. If we were to treat it
literally as a living phenomenon, we could say that this new species of large institutions
embodies and enacts this deep sensibility that Meg is talking about, or you might say, this“insensibility.”
These institutions now embody on a large scale this way of being that is so out of
touch with who we are and the nature of living phenomena. So I do think it’s fair to saythat one of the places that we might nd a great degree of leverage in bringing aboutchange is in this institutional milieu. But we have to be careful to realize we’re talking
about schools and nonprot organizations, just as much as we’re talking about corporations. There’s no one set of culprits here. It’s all institutions.
MW: I absolutely agree. What we really need to change are our fundamental organizing
behaviors or habits. That’s why this time is different in many ways. This is a time whenvery large institutions now exert an unparalleled power over individual behavior. I do
feel there are more and more people trying to act out of compassion, but we still don’tknow we could choose a different way of organizing. So we get nongovernmental organizations all over the world starting to manifest the same kind of institutional paralysis
as the large governments that they grew up in response to. It’s the great challenge of ourtime to understand that the way we organize is increasing the problems we face.
PS: People come together in organizations for, in some sense, a noble purpose, but are nding ways to constrict or even destroy life in the process. And when we really probe
deeply into that way of organizing, we’ll  nd ourselves. It’s where we’ll nd our own
fears and anxieties and beliefs played out. We won’t nd somebody behind the curtain
who’s causing it to happen.
The change must be both personal and institutional. It can’t be one or the other. It’sa little bit like Taoism, which basically works through the body. Taoists know that theself and the body are not the same and that distinguishing the two is a critical part of yourcultivation. In a sense, we’re trying to be organizational Taoists. We’re saying we havethis larger body we’ve created, called an institutional body. It could be a vehicle forcultivation, just as a physical body can be a body for cultivation, if we could start to seeit that way.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

Changing How We Work Together

MM: In that light, perhaps one could argue that the most spiritually deadening in uencein our society today is the structure of the organization and the workplace.

SENGE AND WHEATLEY

PS: You get the obedience but you lose the spirit.

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Meditation Is about
Paying Attention

Naushon Kabat-Zinn

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Jon Kabat-Zinn
Professor of Medicine emeritus
University of Massachusetts Medical
SchoolFor a bibliography of the work of
the Center for Mindfulness, seewww.umassmed.edu/cfm.

68

Jon Kabat-Zinn recently retired from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where
he founded and was director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness
in Medicine, Health Care, and Society, as well as professor of medicine. In 1993, his clinic
was featured in the Public Broadcasting System’s series on ‘‘Healing and the Mind,’’ withBill Moyers. He is the author of Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body
and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness and Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life, and coauthor, with his wife, Myla Kabat-Zinn, ofEveryday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting.
In the mid- to late 1960s, Kabat-Zinn was a graduate student in molecular biology atMIT. At that time, as he describes it, a steady stream of swamis, gurus, and Zen masters
were passing through Cambridge. He found himself moving beyond the limits of traditional
biology to understand and integrate, in his own mind at least, the epistemologies andpractices of some of those spiritual teachers: ‘‘For me, the most adventurous quest in scienceis ultimately the quest for self-understanding: to ‘know thyself,’ to understand on a multiplicity of levels, from physics and biology to heart, mind, and spirit, what it means to be
fully human, and to perceive through our multiple intelligences and the various sensing
systems we have for interfacing with the outside world and our own interiority, the deep
interconnectedness and unity of self and environment and self and relationship with others.
For the past 20 years, this adventure has had as its primary focus, in collaboration withmany wonderful colleagues at UMass and around the globe, the clinical and social applications of mindfulness meditation in health and healing, and the potential transformationof medicine and other institutions through the integration of meditative and contemplative
practices, perspectives, and values.’’This essay is distilled and revised from an interview with Jon Kabat-Zinn by Joseph
Jaworski and C. Otto Scharmer in April 1999 in the Stress Reduction Clinic at the Universityof Massachusetts Medical Center.

ÓT2002 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.

he way I got involved with meditation in part involved studying with Buddhist teachersand sitting for periods of time in meditation centers. But it was quite clear from the
beginning that the essence of what they were talking about wasn’t particularly or exclusively Buddhist; it’s universal. It has everything to do with being human and being awake,and it has everything to do with attention. None of that is the exclusive domain of Buddhism or any other ism for that matter.
When it comes right down to it, meditation is about paying attention. It involves
purposefully rening our capacity for paying attention, ultimately to anything and everything that might be relevant to navigating in the world with your eyes and your heart
open. As you practice, it tends to move from an effort that is formal and deliberate to amuch larger eld that is more like an effortless attending to the unfolding of life itself; ashift from ‘‘doing something’’ to simply ‘‘being.’’ In a very real way, meditation is simply
the way one lives, rather than a technique one does.
Meditation training traditionally starts by intentionally simplifying the eld of one’s
awareness, narrowing in on one aspect of experience, say, the breath. We’re always

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONS

Behind surface appearances, we canperceive unsuspected dimensions ofrelationship and connectivity, asense of the interconnectedness ofthings, including oneself.

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

KABAT-ZINN
Meditation Is about Paying Attention

breathing, yet we virtually never pay attention to it unless we’re choking or we have a
bad cold. In meditation training, you intentionally observe something that you normallytake for granted and begin to take it not so much for granted. You see if you can focus
your mind on one simple thing like the breath and watch what happens, not just to thebreath, but in the watching itself.
It’s a very powerful means of self-exploration. Many people are unaware that it’s sodif cult to focus on something so simple, even with the best of intentions. So we say,‘‘Okay, just for fun, let’s see if we can feel our breath moving in and out of our bodies
and keep our minds focused on it for, say, an hour, or even for  ve minutes. Don’t breathe
deeply. Just let the breath happen. Although we could think about or focus on a million
different things, let’s just feature the direct, sense-based experiencing of the breath centerstage in the eld of our awareness moment by moment for a period of time, and let
everything else be in the wings.’’ It turns out that this is surprisingly dif cult to do, andthat there is surprising fallout from staying with such an exercise. Blaise Pascal, the great
genius mathematician and philosopher of seventeenth-century France, put it very aptly
when he wrote that all of man’s difculties are caused by his inability to sit quietly in aroom by himself. Doing what I just outlined quickly makes the relevance of his observation
patently clear.
When you drop in on the present moment as it is, and begin to focus on one particular
object in this way, whether it’s the breath or anything else, there are two elements thatseem to come quickly to the fore. One is that the mind has a very active life of its own. It
tends to go here and there, thinking about this and that, and it’s not interested for very longin just staying focused on the breath. If you are nevertheless disciplined and curious enoughto sustain your attention and to let go intentionally of whatever it is that comes up in themind that carries you off someplace else and instead gently bring it back to feeling thebreath in the body over and over again, you notice after a while that a certain calmness
and stability of mind begin to develop. You come to see the possibility of being less reactive
and less agitated through cultivating present-moment attention in this way. This approach
to meditation, which calls for maintaining your attention on one primary object and treating
everything else that comes up as a distraction, develops one-pointedness and greater stability of attention, the concentrative dimension of meditation.
The other major category of meditation practice is often called insight practice. Rather
than focusing on one object and treating everything else as a distraction, you invite the eld of your awareness to include a constantly changing eld of objects. This is the cultivation of mindfulness—moment-to-moment, nonreactive, nonjudgmental awareness.
Mindfulness can be thought of as penetrative awareness, a seeing underneath the surface
or through the outer form of things to their truest nature. Behind surface appearances,
we can perceive unsuspected dimensions of relationship and connectivity, a sense of theinterconnectedness of things, including oneself. It’s not thatyou are seeking such an experience, or turning it into one
more concept or ideal to pursue through thinking. It is much
more subtle than that. You just sit, not pursuing anything,neither insights nor any other outcome. Insights tend to arise
naturally under such conditions, but on their own timetable(or you might say, outside of time altogether, if you are reallyin the present moment), out of stillness, out of your willingness to sustain an open and spacious attention, with noagenda other than to be awake. Meditation is the one
human activity, or you could say ‘‘non-activity,’’ that’s not about trying to get anywhere
else or make anything happen. Rather, it involves stopping, being still, and resting in the
totality of your being, in a nonconceptual awareness, observing mind, body, and world
unfolding, moment by moment. Mindfulness and concentration practices nourish andsupport each other.
Mindfulness invites us to see through and underneath discursive thought, beyond theconceptual, by recognizing thoughts as thoughts, as what you might call ‘‘events’’ in the eld of awareness. When we intentionally drop underneath our thinking, we becomeaware of how quickly we put our experiences into tidy and unexamined conceptual boxes,

69

KABAT-ZINN
Meditation Is about Paying Attention© Emily Sper70

thinking, ‘‘I’m in here; the world is out there,’’ eventhinking ‘‘I’m meditating, I’m following the breath.’’ Soeven meditation practice, if one is not careful, can bemostly conceptual, until you realize how easily you are
generating such thoughts and getting caught in them.
Awareness itself provides a way to drop underneath thewhole process of thought. Then you might catch thosethoughts that create a  xed ‘‘you’’ that is observing andthose that are creating something other than you that isbeing observed. In that moment, you might nd it possible to just rest in being, in observing, in breathing, inawareness, with no ‘‘me’’ doing it.
In some way, the meditation practice is saying, ‘‘Let’ssee if it might not be possible to drop underneath that conventional and highly conditioned way of seeing that separates and reies a subject and an object. Let’s not go withany impulse to x anything or solve anything for the moment, even if what we think of as ‘problems’ arise, butinstead just dwell in observing whatever arises as it actually is.’’ When our patients do this kind of practice, theirrelationship to their pain, to take just one example, canchange dramatically because they are embracing it for achange, not as ‘‘pain’’ but as bare sensation, allowing it to
be met exactly as it is, in awareness, even if it has a strong
element of unpleasantness. They are ‘‘being with’’ the experience of pain, so to speak, rather than caught up inthinking about it and trying to make it go away, or getting
lost in all the feelings they may have about the pain andhow it has in uenced their life. Often, without trying to x anything but by observing the
moment-to-moment unfolding of bare sensation in the body, over time, the pain might
diminish, sometimes quite dramatically. Or, they might  nd new ways to expand theirrepertoire of strategies for living with it more effectively.
More generally, if you feel you’ve got a problem to solve that is ‘‘out there,’’ and you
don’t necessarily see or want to see any possible relationship between the ‘‘you’’ who
you think is trying to solve the problem—which is a huge mystery—and what the problem
actually is, you may wind up not being able to see the problem accurately, in its fullness,
if there is a problem at all. Therefore you may be contributing unwittingly to maintaining
the undesired situation rather than allowing it to evolve, and perhaps dissolve.
It’s similar to what some consultants might say about going into a new company
without a whole lot of preconceptions: ‘‘We’re willing to stand inside ‘not knowing’ fora period of time—not knowing where the relevant information or creative solutions are going to come from, but
trusting that they will emerge if we are open and present,
residing inside the company or the situation with our eyes
and ears open.’’ One Zen master I studied with called thisattitude ‘‘don’t know mind’’—just being still, holding thewhole in awareness, not having to have to know anything. Just being awake.
There are different ways of approaching formal meditation practice. When you’redeveloping concentration, you let whatever comes up be as it is and just come back toyour primary object of attention, say, your breathing. On the other hand, when you arecultivating mindfulness and something arises in the eld of your awareness, you mightallow it to become the object of your attention rather than treating it as an intrusion. It is
like watching clouds, birds, or whatever, going through the sky. Your mind would be thesky (awareness itself) and then whatever comes—day, night, sun, moon, cloud, bird—
is recognized by the mind for what it is, nonconceptually. We call this discernment. It issensitive to the texture of things, their qualities and subtleties, a knowing that is not caught
in either/or and black or white judgments. Practicing in this more spacious mode, you’re
not xated on or attached to the breath or to any other object of mind. It’s the awarenessStillness is . . . here all the time,
inside and underneath our thoughts
and feelings.

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSKABAT-ZINN
Meditation Is about Paying Attention

itself, free of particular objects, what is sometimes called choiceless awareness, which isprimary. You cultivate a re ned willingness to be present, to be still, to reect whatever
is coming in front of you, like a mirror. A mirror is itself empty. It reects only what comes
before it. It doesn’t hold on to anything, it doesn’t pursue anything to  ll it up.
But our mind most of the time is not so empty—even though its essence is very
mirrorlike. You might say that it is actually more like a lake, in that sometimes it is socalm, it reects the sky and anything in it. At other times, the mind’s surface is turbulent
as it ripples or waves, stirred by circumstances and our own thoughts and emotional
turbulence, sometimes by veritable storms in the mind. Then it doesn’t re ect so well.
But even at such times, you can learn to drop down beneath the surface of the lake ofyour own mind, where there is always at most a gentle undulation, or complete stillness.
So stillness is not something you make or you force to happen, or have to nd somewhere else. It is here all the time, inside and underneath our thoughts and feelings. In asimilar way, we might say that silence resides inside and underneath the notes in a pieceof music. It can be felt, and even heard, but only if we are listening very carefully. We’reso caught up in our thinking most of the time that we don’t actually recognize momentsof silence or value them, or know how to tap them as a source of deep balance, presence,
and wisdom.

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REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

The Intimacy of Nature
Mark P. Kriger

There is a cathedral without ceiling or walls
With the sky continually kissing the groundAnd the trees vaulting towards the heavens
With radiant light streaming through invisible windows.
Ever embraced by your being
I am bathed in a love so deepThat wherever I walk I nd you
Drawing me into a deepening intimacy.
My prayers soar towards the unseen one;
My songs quickly taken up
And handed back with gestures beckoning further closeness.
You are present, even through the thick veils of my thoughts.
Mark P. Kriger
Professor of Strategic Management
Norwegian School of Management-BI
Mark.kriger@bi.no

How could I have overlooked you?
One so faithful, despite my mindlessly turning away.
The sun of each morning washes me in newness
And the light of dusk foretells the embrace of night.
Once I thought I needed to pray to nd you
But you found me long before,
Though so many times I have forgotten you
You patiently waited —then, instantly, took me in.
You were my mother before I was born.
And will be my mother after I leave this place.
Who, ever, nds a more constant lover?
Where else can I  nd myself so totally in another?
Only naked souls enter or leave;
This place is made for bathing.
The light within the sun of suns
Knows only one direction—everywhere!

72ÓReection

2002 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.

‘‘The Intimacy of Nature’’ came to me during a walk in the woods on the northern edgeof Oslo, Norway, not far from my home. These woods, called Nordmarka, contain many
trails for hiking and stretch for about 50 kilometers from north to south, yet are reachable
within 15 minutes by tram from the center of the city. On Sunday, more people often go
to the woods than to church.
This poem reects an inner state that has visited me a number of times over the years.
The human relationship with the natural environment, spirit, and religion are obvious.
Less obvious, perhaps, but equally important is the role these kinds of re ections can playin organization theory and our understanding of managerial and organizational cognition.
The theory of the universe embedded in this poem is that causality is not linear but
circular. Human beings can be love, lover, and beloved all at the same time.
The theme of the unied attributes of subject, object, and state is voiced in the paradigms of a number of mystical traditions. The Su s of the Middle East and central Asia,

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSKRIGERThe Intimacy of Nature© Jonathan Liffgens

the Zen Buddhists of Japan, and the Taoists of ancient China have all expressed a similarview. This paradigm rejects the notion of bureaucratic institutions as valuable in theirown right. It honors tacit knowledge and direct experience over the lessons of controllingteachers and the commands of autocratic managers.
When I am walking in nature, the woods become a cathedral without walls, ceiling,or windows. There is an immediate healing, which can take place as I surrender to thesights and smells of a deep forest. Look up at the clouds drifting in the sky and nd an
instantaneous doorway into humility and intimate feelings that are almost too personal
to talk about with others. Religions and governments, as institutions, far too often becomeveils between the individual and such direct forms of knowing.

Acknowledgment‘‘The Intimacy of Nature’’ was an Art/Poetry Submission at the Year 2001 Annual Meetingof the Academy of Management, Washington, DC.

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REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

A Reection on
Transition
Erik G. Larson

Rachael Roberts

Erik G. Larson
Account Consultant
General Electric Company
Teacher of Raja Yoga Meditation
erik.larson@gegapservices.com

T

74

Ó

2002 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.

he melting snow has created a clear stream in the valley up ahead. The snow in which
we are hiking would be like walking through a waist-high white bog if we were notwearing snowshoes, so it is an unexpected surprise to see ribbons of green with water,which just moments ago was ice, nding a way out of the mountains.
It is a rare Friday off from work. Yesterday, they announced another round of layoffs.
Two acquaintances—who, for the past seven years since my transfer to New York, havebeen the ones who really knew what was going on—will be leaving. Forty-four years ofexperience depart at the end of the month, but also friends whom I trusted would con rm
if things were getting crazy or not. Without friends like that, it often seems that we are
the ones who are crazy.
The layoffs may not end with this announcement, but, almost like the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano Mission, our company seems to think that regular paring
down is the method for improvement. Improve, survive—what’s the difference? Many of
the survivors think, ‘‘Why not get it over with? It’s not so much fun anymore anyway.’’
The soul at work seems to be gone.
I sensed a transition in coming up the mountain to the retreat center. Spring is appearing in Manhattan. The tulips have broken through the ground, like pitchforks comingfrom inside the earth. The crocuses have bloomed but are unappreciated by the rushingcrowds, heads down into the weather. Only the weary tourists resting on benches seemto notice.

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSLARSON
A Reection on Transition

There was no snow during the two-hour trip until our ascent. It was dramatic, evenin the night, when the van headlights caught the huge piles of snow on the side of theroad near the top of the mountain. We were passing through a line of the seasons, fromspring back to winter.
Standing out in the sun-tinged, snow-covered valley, high in the Catskill Mountains,
I have a feeling of anticipation—of winter changing into spring— and an appreciation of
the moment. I can walk though areas where, in summer, the brambles and high weeds
keep me from exploring. In winter snow, the terrain opens its contours and invites exploration. In summer walks through these woods, these shortcuts and areas will be overgrown and inaccessible.
The warm sun feels good as we bundle up against the cold. In a few months, we will
avoid the sun, hats and cool breezes providing relief from our friend today.
We take frequent breaks to minimize exhaustion; we stand still, deep in the woods,
listening to the quiet and observing the change between the seasons. It is as if we can feelthe mechanism that moves eternity and hear the cycle of time ticking; the breeze fromthe second hand gently sweeping by caresses our face. Theline separating yin from yang is gently hovering over us as
we feel the in uence from both.
In these quiet pauses, I have a sensation of being out oftime. Not without time, but beyond time. Past, present, andfuture all become distant. Watching from above the rest of
the world, I have been taken out of time into a space of deep peace. I develop a clearer
sense of what is important. In this quiet space, there is a glimpse of the self, the soul. All
is well. Nothing penetrates the sensation of this quiet. Even the birds or distant village
sounds are from another world.
I breathe deeper to bring the feeling inside. I try to  ll myself with this quality, tomake my mind peaceful and concentrated. A sweet recharging is taking place. Anothertransition occurs. A lot is lost by listening and seeing too much what is outside in theworld. There is a need to listen and experience what is deep inside, what is known but
often not the basis of our actions.
The time in walking is a reminder, not of what I should do, but what I should be.

In this quiet space, there is a
glimpse of the self, the soul.

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REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

Spirituality as a Global
Organizing Potential
Diana WhitneyS

Diana Whitney
President
Corporation for Positive Change
diana@corporationfor
positivechange.com

76

Excerpted from D. Whitney. “Spirituality as an Organizing Principle.” Perspectives 9 (1995). Reprinted with permission from the World BusinessAcademy.

pirituality has entered organizational discourse through the back door and is now
sitting in the drawing room awaiting a proper welcome. There is much speculation as
to why spirituality is emerging as a dominant organizational concern. One possible explanation is the process of social diffusion; that is, as I in my tribal paints and feathers
rub shoulders with you in your wool tweed jacket, I get covered with bits and pieces ofwool, and you come away smeared with earthen paint and feathers. As people of theworld meet to do business, we discover that our varied ways of working are grounded inquite different worldviews. As Americans seek to understand Japanese business strategy,
they nd themselves drawn into a study of Japanese martial arts. As Western businesses
market and sell their products in other countries, they  nd themselves face to face withpeople for whom spirituality is an integral daily practice. As we attempt to sell Levis 501
jeans, McDonald’s hamburgers, and Gerber’s baby foods worldwide, we get more in the
trade than simply dollars. Doing business around the world has opened the door to spirituality as a business practice because for many of the world’s people, there is no separation of spirituality from life and work.
Each morning, Balinese shopkeepers renew their sidewalk altars with fresh owers
and food for the spirits of life and abundance. That potential customers must walk aroundthese altars is not seen as detrimental to business as it might be in New York City, where
every inch of the  oor space is at a premium and even sidewalks are lled with wares forsale. To the Balinese, it is good to remember the spirits each step along one’s journey.
One person who works in close relationship with spirit is Dora Pena from the San Ildefonsopueblo in New Mexico. She is a potter whose pots are in many museum collections aroundthe world, including the White House art collection. Dora describes the way she works
as an ongoing prayer. Before she gathers the clay and sand from the hills near her home,
she prays and makes an offering to the spirits of the clay and sand. As she mixes waterwith the clay, she prays to the spirit of water; as she coils and rolls the clay into its form
as a pot, she prays to invite the spirit of the pot to be present. And so her work continues,
with prayers for the wood and the re, and  nally thanksgiving for the nished pot.
Admirers and collectors of Dora’s pots cannot help but recognize their life and spirit—
each one not simply the output of someone’s work, or even a form of art, but rather aliving, breathing manifestation of spirit embodied in a pot.
A further explanation for spirituality as a business and organizational consideration
today rests with the move from modern to postmodern. We are living at a time when boththe bene ts and limitations of the modern worldview are readily apparent to us. We see
the miracles science has wrought, and we see what damage it has enabled us to create.
Great strides in information and communication technologies, transportation, and healthcare have come packaged with great environmental destruction and the near loss of indigenous life styles around the world (Mander, 1991). The modern focus on objectivity
and the separation of science and spirituality, taken to fullness, leaves people separate
from one another, separate from nature, and separate from the divine. As a people, we
simply can no longer ignore poetry and trust analysis, ignore nature and trust the sterilityof the laboratory, or ignore the multiple voices we hear in the night and trust only theVolume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSBy spirit or spiritual, I mean the part of you that survives when you eliminate your esh andbones—the part you can’t point to, but can feel, the part you might describe to someone else
as your essential being, your soul. Soul is what connects you to everyone and everythingelse. It is the sum of all the choices you make. It is where your beliefs and values reside. Soul
is at the center of our relationships to others, and for me, it is at the center of the businessenterprise. (Chappell, 1994)

WHITNEY
Spirituality as a Global Organizing Potential

rules, laws, or policies written by some unknown people to guide their lives, not ours.
Modern science in its  owering has given seed to the postmodern, and with it comes aquest for spiritual relationships, meaning, and integration.
My purpose in writing this article is to provide an introduction to spirituality as it
relates to organizational development and to create an opportunity for you to welcome
the spiritual into the inner rooms of your life and work as global citizens.
As an emergent concept, spirituality, as it relates to business, organizational development, and the workplace, currently engages organization scholars and practitioners ina multifaceted, postmodern discourse. Conversations range from the ordinary worlds of
personal energy and enthusiasm to the sacred worlds of mystical knowing, alternative
realities, and transcendence. Each of these conversations evokes within the organizational
community a differing and yet somewhat overlapping set of principles and practices foraddressing spirituality as a global organizing potential. For example, Tom Chappell,founder of Tom’s of Maine, describes the link between spirit and business as he sees it:

Another proponent of spirituality in the workplace is Jack Hawley, who draws a line
between spiritual and religion. In describing his book, he says: ‘‘This is a nonreligious,
squarely spiritual management book. . . . It’s about the things we’re all concerned about:purpose and meaning, peace (inner peace, especially), health, happiness, love, life, anddeath’’ (Hawley, 1993). From yet another perspective, Larry Dossey writes that prayer,de ned as ‘‘communication with the transcendent,’’ is positively correlated to healing(1993). He suggests that doctors incorporate prayer as part of the work of healing. His
de nition of prayer is closely related to the Lakota Sioux view of spirituality as one’s
relationship with the Creator.
Current considerations of spirituality as it relates to business, work, and organization
development might loosely be clustered into four primary conversations that I have calledspirit as energy, spirit as meaning, spirit as sacred, and spirit as epistemology. Whatfollows is a brief overview of each.

Spirit as Energy
When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,
and when we escape like squirrels turning in thecages of our personality
and get into the forests again,
we shall shiver with cold and frightbut things will happen to us
so that we don’t know ourselves.
Cool, unlying life will rush in,and passion will make our bodies taut with power
we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt paper.
D.H. Lawrence

For many, the notion of spirit in the workplace has to do with the energy or ‘‘feel’’ of theplace. Theirs is a conversation about ‘‘spirit as energy.’’ High-technology entrepreneurialorganizations are described as spirited, while large corporate hierarchies are consideredsluggish and bankrupt of spirit. In this sense, spirit refers to a sense of aliveness andvibrancy, people’s ability to stamp their feet with power. As the poem by D.H. Lawrence
suggests, when we stamp our feet with new power, ‘‘we shall laugh, and institutions will
curl up like burnt paper.’’ Consultants speaking from this perspective counsel managers

REFLECTIONS, Volume 3, Number 3

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WHITNEY
Spirituality as a Global Organizing Potential

to follow the path of least resistance (Fritz, 1984), to do what they love and the money
will follow (Sinetar, 1988), and to manage from their hearts as the means to personal andorganizational excellence.
Organizational high performance and the capacity for organizational change are said
to be derivative of spirit. As Owen (1987) put it, ‘‘Whatever else high performance andexcellence may be based on, they would seem to have something to do with the qualityof Spirit . . . human Spirit, our Spirit, the Spirit of our organizations.’’ Much of the early
work in organizational transformation considered spirit asenergy. Ackerman (1984) trained ow-state managers to‘‘work on the energy  ow in the system, work for harmony, alter structures to free up energy.’’ Post (1988) explained organizations in the language of Chinese medicine.
She suggested we manage energy  ows for organizational
health in much the same way a Chinese medicine doctor
works to open energy ows and to remove stagnation,
thereby promoting health within an individual. Aikido techniques became metaphoric
means and methods for dealing energetically with conict (Crum, 1987). Both the purpose
and process of organizational transformation were to free the spirit, to build organizations
with vision, purpose, and values, and to remove the energetic blocks to organizational
high performance.

Organizational high performanceand the capacity for organizationalchange are said to be derivativeof spirit.

Spirit as Meaning
To live content with small means,
to seek elegance rather than luxury,
and re nement rather than fashion,
to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich,to study hard, think quietly, act frankly,
to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart,
do all bravely,
await occasions,hurry never —in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious,
grow up through the common.
This is my symphony.
William Ellery Channing

78

Another conversation among organization scholars and practitioners considers ‘‘spirit asmeaning.’’ Shared vision and common values are said to create organization meaning andto provide the impetus for organization change. Leaders at all levels of the organization
are guided to inspire (to ll with spirit) rather than to motivate. Visionary leadership, as
demonstrated by the likes of Lee Iacocca, is said to make the difference between successful
and unsuccessful organization change. Visioning, or conversationally projecting the organization into the future, and creating alignment among organizational members about
the desired future are essential organizing endeavors.
Spirit and meaning are said to reside in the stories told about the organization. Likea society or tribe’s creation story, the organization’s stories serve to create and recreate
what is meaningful for the organization’s members. Storytelling, myth making, and thecelebration of the hero’s journey (Barnhart and Borgman, 1991) are taught to managers
as tools to deconstruct and reconstruct the organization’s sense of meaning. Organization
culture can be considered the grand story of the company, the story that holds it all
together. The conscious creation of organization culture involves the careful delineationof the way things are to be done, by whom, and with whom. It is a process of making
meaningful selected patterns of daily work life and rendering others meaningless.
Central to the spirit-as-meaning conversation is the recognition that workers in theindustrialized countries, especially the United States, want more from work than a paycheck (Yankelovich, 1981). The quest for the soul in business (Bolman and Deal, 1995),
artful work (Richards, 1995), and right livelihood is on. As William Channing’s poem

Volume 3, Number 3, REFLECTIONSWHITNEY
Spirituality as a Global Organizing Potential

suggests, to live content with small means, nancially,
does not mean to live without a sense of elegance, worth,
or wealth. To let the spiritual grow through the common
is a path to meaningful living.
Early conversations about spirit as meaning focusedon people who found their work empty and sought meaning in spiritual practice (Occhiogrosso, 1992). As more andmore people embarked upon the transformational lifestylethrough the commitment to a spiritual practice of some
type, the conversation widened. Now, not only do people
want their own life to be full of meaning and purpose, butthey also expect the same of their organizations. Awakening people want to work for organizations that care andthat are consciously contributing to the planet. People want
their organizations to make positive contributions to theircommunities and to the world, and they want work to enliven them. Empowerment (Block, 1987) has become acode word for spirit as meaning. People want to be involved creatively at work and they want their voices to bemeaningful to those with whom they work. They want opportunities to express themselves and to know they areheard and are contributing to the social good. They want
to be liberated (Peters, 1994) to learn and to grow while
making a meaningful contribution. The exchange of laborfor dollars is no longer satisfactory. Work has become alifestyle, and people want a good life. They want to bring
their whole selves— mind, body, and spirit —to work.
Meaningful work engages the whole person. It is a dialogue
unbounded by roles and infused with creativity; a willingness to collaborate with others; and a daily enactment ofbeliefs, values, and relationships within the context of our
now global community.

© Emily Sper

Spirit as Sacred
The man whose mind is rounded out to perfection
Knows full well
Truth is not cut in half
And things do not exist apart from the mind.
In the great Assembly of the Lotus all are present
Without divisions.
Grass, trees, the soil on which these growAll have the same kinds of atoms.
Some are barely in motion
While others make haste along the path,but they will all in time
Reach the Precious Island of Nirvana
Who can really maintainThat things inanimate lack buddhahood?
Chan-JanThe realm of ‘‘spirit as sacred’’ is a conversation quite different from the conversationsof spirit as energy or spirit as meaning. One might consider this the realm of Spirit witha capital S, to distinguish it from the preceding conversations about spirit with a small s(Hawley, 1993). In this arena, there is an implicit understanding that all life is imbued
with a divine spiritual presence, a spiritual potential awaiting discovery and emergence.
Taoist, Buddhist, and Native American beliefs are drawn on to exemplify the understanding that divine spirit is a quality of all beings. Humans, plants, animals, and rocks are all

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Spirituality as a Global Organizing Potential© Emily Sper80of spirit. From this perspective, spirit is not something
separate from mind, body, or action but is indeed an integral quality of being. To posit spirit as separate from bodyor mind is to miss the point, something modern sciencehas helped us do very well.
Conversations about spirit as sacred in the workplace
would have us seeking the Dora Penas of the world. I knowof few people other than my Native American relatives wholive and work in relation to spirit as an integral part of alllife. Among them, the examples are many: Thomas One
Wolf who prays to the creator before hunting that he might
be gifted with the life of a deer. Grandpa Pete Concha whoreminds me to visit before traveling to the Far East for business so he can bless me and ask the spirit to keep me safe
and to bring me home safe. The Pueblo women who dance,as the spirit of the corn, with gratitude before the elds areplanted and after the harvest is gathered. The people andbusinesses most organized around the notion of spirit assacred are the many ecologists and environmentalists
around the world. They are, for our times, the voice of
spirit in all of life’s forms. They are the voice of biodiversity
as a sacred trust. They are the voice of our human dependency on nature.
The conversations about spirit as sacred are not about
trying to get spirit; it is already here. The quest of spirit assacred is to live spiritual values as fully as possible. Thatis, to enact life, respecting all life as sacred; loving rather
than fearing (Buscaglia, 1992); recognizing original blessing rather than original sin (Fox, 1983); cooperating rather
than competing with other members of our global community; and sincerely appreciating the many gifts life haslaid on our doorstep. Many organizations have entered into the realm of spirit as sacredthrough the development of values statements and the conscious application of declaredvalues to decisions of strategic and global import. Two well-known examples are Ben andJerry’s and The Body Shop. Leaders of both organizations describe their success as basedon the enactment of spiritually and globally attuned values. Decisions about theirorganizations and products are said to be based on theirvalues. For example, Ben and Jerry’s has a cap on CEO
salary, and The Body Shop does not conduct animal testingof its products. In each case, these organizations, like theBalinese shopkeepers, risk the business implications of
their decisions to enact their values and in so doing create
the world as a better place for all life.
The value of integrity is on most companies’ values lists. As such, it is a code word
for honesty, authenticity, and truth telling within the organization. Discussions about theapplication of integrity in organizational life seldom evoke the meaning of integrated orwhole. Organizations are still suffering under the modern  ction of fragmentation, functionalism, and division of labor. Spirit as sacred acknowledges the connection of all life
and all energy such that actions of the part impact the whole. ‘‘In Chinese philosophy, it
is said that the slightest wave of the hand moves molecules all the way to the end of theuniverse’’ (Anthony, 1988). As modern communication and transportation enables us toexperience the world as one being, we see the reality of our connectedness. As we see
the impact of local actions on global existence, we wonder if perhaps we have beenconnected all along and just didn’t know it. Spiritual practices of peoples around the world
assume this connection. It enables them to live in ways and to perform rituals and ceremonies that positively collaborate with the whole of being. I have been told that theceremonial dances performed by the Tewa people help the sun rise each day. The belief
that humans and planets are related is essential to their life and ceremonies. For many

People . . . want to bring their wholeselves—mind, body, and spirit —to work.

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indigenous people, there is a sacred ecology of life based on a sense of wholeness andrelatedness.
For many Western business leaders, the notion of wholeness is one of the realities ofglobalization still to be constructed. Globalization appeared in the conversations of myclients, rst as a title in a search of a job and then as a potential strategic leverage. Clientswith titles such as vice president of global marketing, global vice president of humanresources, and director of strategic globalization are asking questions such as: What is
globalization? What are other companies doing about it? How can we take advantage ofglobalization? Is globalization just another business school fad, or is it real? All thesequestions belie an understanding of the wholeness of the world and the essential relatedness of all life, as well as the opportunity to cooperate with relatives, colleagues, andbusiness partners worldwide to infuse the notion of globalization with meaning and spiritthat will sustain life for generations to come.
With the sense of wholeness and connectedness comes a deep reverence for relationships. Spirit as sacred places relationships at the center of social organization. The Lakota
Sioux draw purpose for action as well as a sense of social location from their relatives.
A Lakota is credentialed not through schooling and degrees
earned or by years of experience, but rather through relationships. Relationships that matter, that is, those thatgive form to life and social organization, may be bloodline
relationships, Hunka or chosen relationships, as well as
relationships with spirit beings and relationships given
through vision. Each person’s identity is in relation to
the community. The community and the ongoing life of the people are enacted throughrelationships.
One outstanding example of a business that honored the relationships of the local
people and, as a result, achieved global business success is Packard Electric, a division ofGeneral Motors. When the decision was made to open a new plant organized with work
teams practicing total quality, several locations were considered. The nal decision was
to locate the plant in the region of Chihuahua, Mexico, where family-owned businesses
are the norm. Families were hired as teams, trained in total quality principles and in skills
needed to operate the plant. Six years later, the plant and the community are thriving.
Unfortunately, one challenge facing organizations today is the many scars that exist
from times when relationships were not honored and people were not treated as sacred.
Spirit as sacred calls for a radical relational perspective, one that not only honors all lifeand relationships, but also honors the multiple voices and ways of knowing of the world’s
people.

With the sense of wholeness andconnectedness comes a deep
reverence for relationships.

Spirit as Epistemology
When the animals come to us,
asking for our help,
will we know what they are saying?
When the plants speak to us
in their delicate, beautiful language,
will we be able to answer them?
When the planet herself
sings to us in our dreams,
will we be able to wake ourselves, and act?
Gary Lawless

Perhaps the greatest divide created by modern science between indigenous people andthe Western world is the epistemological divide. While Western science developed methodologies and studied the world in order to control the forces of nature, indigenous people
studied the world in order to cooperate with the forces of nature (Colorado, 1988). Thisdifference is awe inspiring to me as I have come to realize essential differences in not
only the ways of knowing but also the knowledge gained.

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For many people to whom spirit is integral to life, there are realities other than thevisible worlds of technology, living nature, and human beings. Within these realities reside spirit beings who on occasion make themselves and their views known. Examples
include the nature devas who guide the care of the gardens in Findhorn, Scotland, thespirit relatives who talk to Lakota people in sweat-lodge ceremonies, and the many spirits
who are channeled by psychics around the world. In all cases, the presence of spirits
depends on relationships among them and some person or group of people. To come forthand communicate, spirits are invited through ritual and ceremony. For example, the Navajo sand paintings may be looked upon as symbolic representations of healing, but to theDine people, ‘‘The making of the sand painting is the creation of the presence of thebeings. The beings are not at all separate from what the sand looks like. Once the sandpainting is there, they are there’’ (Kremer, 1995).
Business and organizations around the world call on holy people to bless buildings,
business endeavors, and the people whose work is to serve the community. Once theblessing is made, be it by a Shinto priest, a rabbi, or a medicine man, what business ororganizational leaders engage spirit daily for decision making, for team building, or for
maintaining balance within the local community, as it relates to global well-being? All too
often, consultants, serving as the metaphoric ministers of organizational well-being, provide assistance based upon the scienti c paradigm of control over nature. The challengeof spirit as epistemology is to open to the voices of spirit and to learn the ultimate lessons
in cooperation: how to co-construct global communities and organizations in balance andin harmony with spirit.

Reections
Spirituality as it relates to work, business, and organization development is a multifaceted
conversation. The question is not whether it is relevant in the social understanding andcreation of global organizations, but rather in what ways. People around the globe aregiving voice to spiritual beliefs and practice while their organizations are suffering theconsequences of years of spiritual estrangement. As people live more fully awakened tothe spiritual life, old ways of relating and forms of organizing cannot endure. Spiritual
ways of working and organizing that currently exist around the world hold potential fororganizational realities that blend the best of science and technology with the best of
mysticism and love. Let us have faith in the magic of conversation, relational realities,
and co-creation, and let us expand beyond the realms of human interaction to include all
our relations. Mitakuye oyas’in.

References82

Ackerman, L.S. ‘‘The Flow State: A New View of Organizations and Managing,’’ in Transforming
Work, ed. J.D. Adams (Alexandria, VA: Miles River Press, 1984).
Anthony, C.K. A Guide to the I Ching (Stow, MA: Anthony Publishing Company, 1988).
Barnhart, G. and J. Borgman. ‘‘The Hero’s Challenge,’’ workshop materials, 1991.
Block, P. The Empowered Manager: Positive Political Skills at Work (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Publishers, 1987).
Bolman, L.E. and T.E. Deal. Leading With Soul (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1995).
Buscaglia, L. Born for Love (Thorofare, NJ: SLACK, Inc., 1992).
Channing, W.E. in Earth Prayers, eds. E. Roberts and E. Amidon (San Francisco: HarperCollins
Publishers, 1991): 108.
Chan-Jan. in Earth Prayers, eds. E. Roberts and E. Amidon (San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers,1991): 24.
Chappell, T. ‘‘Bringing the Spirit to Work.’’ Business Ethics 8 (1994): 26.
Colorado, P. ‘‘Bringing Native and Western Science.’’ Convergence XXI (1988): 49–67.
Crum, T. The Magic of Con ict (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987).
Dossey, L. Healing Words (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993).
Fox, M. Original Blessing (Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Company, 1983).
Fritz, R. The Path of Least Resistance (Salem, MA: DMA, Inc., 1984).
Hawley, J. Reawakening the Spirit in Work (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 1993).
Kremer, J. ‘‘Perspectives on Indigenous Healing.’’ Noetic Sciences Review 33 (1995): 13.
Lawless, G. in Earth Prayers, eds. E. Roberts and E. Amidon. (San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991): 87.

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Lawrence, D.H. in Earth Prayers, eds. E. Roberts and E. Amidon (San Francisco: HarperCollins
Publishers, 1991): 101.
Mander, J. In the Absence of the Sacred (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1991).
Occhiogrosso, P. ‘‘Is This All There Is?’’ Business Ethics 6 (1992): 20.
Owen, H. Spirit Transformation and Development in Organizations (Potomac, MD: Abbott Publishing, 1987).
Peters, T. Liberation Management (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994).
Post, D. (presentation materials, 1988).
Richards, D. Artful Work (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1995).
Sinetar, M. Do What You Love: The Money Will Follow (New York: Dell Publishers, 1988).
Yankelovich, D. New Rule. (New York: Random House, Inc., 1981).

Commentary
Diana Whitney’s article is a ‘‘must read’’ for every manager and executive. Were its ideas to betaken seriously, the end result would be a true revolution in how we conceive of, design, and manage organizations.
A generation ago, the world of management was introduced to the then pioneering work of
Abraham Maslow (1964; 1968; 1970). Maslow is rightly famous for introducing two critical concepts into psychology and management literature—the ‘‘hierarchy of needs’’ and self-actualization,
his second and perhaps most important concept. Today, we call it spiritual.
As previous generations were introduced to Maslow, a giant of psychology, today’s generationneeds to be introduced to another, Ken Wilber. Given the importance and the prominence of Wilber’s work, I was surprised to nd no reference in the Whitney article to his framework (1995 and1996). Wilber has integrated the developmental streams of Eastern and Western thought in waysthat no one has. Indeed, he is the preeminent writer on spirituality.
Through an extensive study of a wide array of developmental theorists, psychologists, and students of world religions and spirituality, Wilber has come up with a framework to show a multitude of developmental paths of which humans are capable. These encompass not only the earliest
physical and mental stages through which all humans must pass, but also the later, most profoundspiritual stages through which human beings may pass if they so choose.
While countless writers have incorporated Maslow’s thoughts into management, in contrast,
Wilber’s are still to be appreciated and are extremely relevant to management.

Craig T. Mathew

by Ian I. Mitroff

Ian I. Mitroff
Harold Quinton Distinguished
Professor of Business Policy
The Marshall School of Business
University of Southern California
ianmitroff@earthlink.net

Fourfold Framework
A good way to comprehend some of Wilber’s contributions to our understanding of human development and spirituality is by means of a simple diagram (see the gure). The horizontal line showsthat what we experience and dene as ‘‘human’’ comes either from one’s deep, internal emotions,or from that which is outside or external. The vertical line shows either the individual as the central focus or the group, organization, or society of which every individual is a part. The vertical line
thus corresponds to the differences between those who instinctively focus on the individual or
those who focus on the ‘‘big picture’’ in understanding individual humans and their collective institutions.
Through an extensive study of developmental frameworks and spirituality in the East andWest, Wilber has discerned at least four different spiritual orientations, represented by the four
quadrants in the gure. In the West, spirituality has largely been dened as an inner-individual
phenomenon. However, there is also a sense of spirituality that relates to the outer-individual. This
regards the human body as proof or evidence of the hand of God or a deity. Western scientists andincreasingly the Western public have so devalued the role of spirituality in everyday life—the innerlife, in general— that they have come to accept the scientic denition of humans as the only valid
description. Wilber refers to this fundamental devaluing of the inner life and its complete reduction
to the outer life as Flatland, a ‘‘at’’ description of humans and their inner life.
Newberg et al.’s popular book, Why God Won’t Go Away, is a vivid testimony to this reduction(2001). Although it is openly respectful of God as a force or presence in the universe, nonetheless,it subtly reduces the experience of God to the biomechanical spiritual quadrant. In brief, the contention is that our brains are ‘‘hard-wired’’ for the experience of God.

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Individual
Inner Spiritual Perspectiv e

Biom echanical Spiritual Perspective

Inner
World
of Human
Experience

Outer Worldof Human
Experience

Cultural Spiritual Perspective

Social Spiritual Perspective

Group, Organizations, Society
Figure 1 Wilber’s fourfold framework.

The outer-group or social spiritual perspective shows nature as a manifestation or evidence ofthe presence of a supreme deity. Many regard the very structure of nature, and not just the individual human body, as a direct visible sign of the presence of a deity or master designer. Anotherinterpretation is that human spirituality is manifested through institutions that we design to help
alleviate human misery. For instance, Mother Teresa’s founding of a spiritual order led to an institution to alleviate the plight of the poor. Thus, the outer-group quadrant not only refers to nature,
but also to those human institutions or structures that we create in order to realize spirituality onearth. The inner-community or cultural spiritual perspective indicates that spirituality and especiallythe institutions that alleviate the plight of the poor also have an inner life. This is the culture or
ideology of an organization.

Progression of Spirituality

84

Just as individuals exist at various levels of development, there is also a progression of various
levels in each of Wilber’s four quadrants. All the great religious and spiritual traditions recognize aprogression from inanimate matter to animate matter, from animals to human beings, and, nally,
from mind to spirit. Where Western approaches primarily conne themselves to the progression
from inanimate matter to the upper states of mind, Eastern approaches start with the mind andproceed to the highest levels of spiritual attainment.
For example, the Harvard psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg has traced in detail the moral development of children. As an individual progresses throughout life, he or she moves from notions ofmorality founded on immediate identity, family, community, and nation to the earth and the entire
human community —the highest level or stages of moral development. In the work of Kohlberg andother developmental theorists, this progression constitutes an orderly hierarchy whose various
stages cannot be skipped. The vast majority of human beings have to progress through each of thestages before the others can be attained.
Wilber has identied four historically important models or progressions of spirituality (Wilber,
1995; 1996). Although he refers to them by different names, I label the four models commonality,
union, identity, and no-distinction.
The commonality model is the nature mysticism found in the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Through nature, spirit assumes a physical form. Through the deep contemplation of nature, humans
can recognize, feel, and experience for themselves the commonality that they share with all things,
inanimate as well as animate.
The union model goes deeper, further, and higher. In The Interior Castle, St. Teresa of Avila
describes in poignant detail the spiritual journey that she undertook, and presumably anyone canundertake, to the center of the human soul wherein Christ resides (1979). The ultimate end of thisjourney is the complete union or marriage with God.
The identity model progresses to an even more radical breakdown of the distinction between
the self and others. In the identity model, one nally comes to the realization that ‘‘God and I are

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One.’’ This does not mean that one literally is God, but rather, that God has been within the self all
the time.
Finally, the no-distinction model is characterized by the complete and total collapse of all distinctions. There were no distinctions from the very beginning. Indeed, there is no beginning to anything because there is no end. In other words, the universe is the timeless, spaceless, and formless
nature of all reality, a Buddhist idea. According to Buddhism, the real self is not to be identiedwith the ego, its material possessions, or the physical self, all of which perish over time. Instead,the real self is the self that is timeless, eternal, and totally without distinctions or separatenessfrom the rest of the universe.
The four models constitute a strict hierarchy. Each of the succeeding models contains all thatprecede it. For instance, the union model contains the commonality model, and so forth. Thus, eachof the succeeding models is at a higher and deeper level of spirituality. These four models are ideals and should not be dismissed merely because we cannot achieve any of them in today’s world.
I hope my remarks have conveyed both the importance and the necessity of understanding
what Ken Wilber has to contribute to spirituality. Spirituality is important not only in our lives, but
especially in the workplace (Mitroff and Denton, 1999). We need to understand the importance of
spirituality, but even more, we need a framework that helps us to understand its very essence.

References
Maslow, A. Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1964).
Maslow, A. Toward a Psychology of Being (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1968).
Maslow, A. Motivation and Personality (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970).
Mitroff, I. and E. Denton. A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1999).
Newberg, A., E.G. D’Aquili, and V. Rause. Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief(New York: Ballantine Books, 2001).
St. Teresa of Avila. The Interior Castle, translation by K. Cavanaugh and O. Rodriguez (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist
Press, 1979).
Wilber, K. Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution (Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1995).
Wilber, K. A Brief History of Everything (Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1996).

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From the ChairPeter M. Senge

PPeter M. Senge
Senior Lecturer, MIT
Founding Chair, Council of Trustees
Society for Organizational Learning86Ó2002 by the Society for Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.

itirim Sorokin was one of the founders of the modern  eld of sociology. He was thefounding chairman of the department of sociology at Harvard. Like Toynbee, Sorokin
was a cultural historian who was interested in the grand sweep of history.
Beginning in the 1930s, Sorokin developed a view that Western culture had passed
through two major epochs in the last millennium. The major breakpoint was the Renaissance. Prior to the Renaissance, Western culture was dominated by what he called an‘‘ideational worldview.’’ By this he meant a culture based on ‘‘the ultimate principle thatthe true reality is the supersensory and superrational God and his Kingdom as de ned in
the Christian Credo’’ (Sorokin, 1964). In an ideational culture, what is most real is theinner world. In an ideational culture, ‘‘theology is the queen of the sciences,’’ because it
deals with the inner state and encourages a value system that deemphasizes the material.
Even though there were considerable advances in practical elds like architecture, theknowledge was used to serve inner needs— witness the great Gothic cathedrals. Music,
painting, and sculpture dealt almost exclusively with religious subjects. What little European portraiture was created from the eleventh to fourteenth centuries appears ‘‘at,’’lacking perspective. Sorokin pointed out that this was not because painters did not understand the rules of perspective. The basic rules of perspective had been known since
the Greeks. They had no interest in perspective. They were more interested in rendering
the inner state of their subject rather than a ‘‘realistic’’ outer image.
The key idea here is what constitutes ‘‘real.’’ A function of culture—perhaps theprimary function—is to de ne reality, to provide principles by which people determine
what they regard as most real. Of course, this function is very deep, virtually invisible tothe members of a society. How a people de ne reality constitutes a de ning feature ofliving together. Yet it operates so subtly that we take it for granted. In this way, thefunctioning of culture constitutes the deepest strata of social existence, and shifts in culture signal truly profound changes.
Sorokin argued that the fourteenth and fteenth centuries were just such a period inWestern culture, in which the predominant worldview shifted from the ideational to thesensate. A sensate culture regards the data of the senses as the primary arbiter of what isreal. You immediately see this in Renaissance art. Perspective returns. Art becomes more‘‘realistic,’’ as we judge it from today’s sensate standards. Michelangelo, one of the great
pioneers in this movement, dissected cadavers so that he could understand the musculature of the body and render it accurately. Historic gures like da Vinci made extraordinary contributions in both art and science, showing that similar principles and methodsof inquiry and learning prevailed in both.
Sorokin claimed that the birth of modern science lay in the shift to a sensate worldview. When the data of the senses are regarded as the most fundamental reality, people
develop an immense curiosity in the world around them. Measurement becomes a primarystrategy for rigorous exploration of the data of the sensorium. Galileo showed how tomeasure the velocity and acceleration of a falling body, separate from its other properties,
and, in so doing, established the cornerstone of modern science’s methodology. In sodoing, he also started a course of learning about the natural world based on fragmenting
its inherent wholeness, because all measures are piecemeal accounts of a system in movement.
The sensate culture gradually became the dominant worldview of the modern age,steadily spreading to much of the world’s peoples —so much so that to question its prem-

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Reference
Sorokin, P. The Basic Trends of Our Times (New Haven, CT: College and University Press, 1964): 18.

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SENGEFrom the Chairises today would literally constitute heresy, not unlike its pioneers faced 500 years ago.
Without realizing it, all modern institutions are dominated by the sensate worldview.
What is most ‘‘real’’ is what is most measurable. In management, this gives rise to thefamiliar dictum, ‘‘what gets measured is what gets done,’’ and to the pernicious distinction
between ‘‘the hard stuff’’—what is measurable—and the ‘‘soft stuff’’—the human sideof enterprise that is difcult to measure. When taken to an extreme, a sensate worldview
actually denies the existence of anything not measurable, or at least relegates it to acategory of the ‘‘less real.’’ This leads to bizarre consequences, yet ones we mostly accept
without questioning. A child’s standardized test score becomes more real than the gleam
in her eye upon making a new discovery. A company pioneering a new, environmentallysound product watches its stock price fall because it allocates resources away from established products with toxins that poison animals and people. A society’s GNP rises when
everyone goes indoors on a beautiful sunny day, closes the windows, and turns on the
air conditioning.
But, at some level, we know that these extremes represent taking a good thing too
far. Five hundred years of cultural history do not wipe out millions of years of evolution.
The data of our sensorium are far richer than what can be measured, and the inner worldof our experience has not vanished simply because we have become culturally obsessedwith measurement.
Sorokin also had a prediction. He believed that the turbulence and struggles ‘‘inphilosophy, religion, ethics, politics, economics, and social life’’ of the twentieth century
arose from the breakdown in the dominate sensate culture. He believed that something
new was trying to be born, something he called an integral culture. He argued that the
beginnings could be seen early in the century. Important artistic movements like cubism
clearly broke with realism as de ned by our senses. Physicists were showing us that oursenses are fallible indicators, even of the nature of material things. What appears solid to
our touch, like this page, is in fact mostly empty space at the atomic level. Picasso was
not unable to render sensate realism, as his beautiful human gure drawings show. He
was just interested in moving into more untapped realms of experience. Nor did the earlyarchitects of relativity and quantum theory reject measurement; they just moved beyond
the small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum accessible to our senses. For Sorokin,
an integral culture was based on a worldview that honored the outer and the inner, andsought to bring them into greater harmony. And he had genuine hopes that this transition
would constitute a new breakpoint, ‘‘a reunication of truth, beauty, and goodness in theemerging integral culture.’’It has been many years since I encountered Sorokin’s thesis, but I have never beenable to put it out of my mind. It has always seemed to me to be one of the most illuminatingand hopeful perspectives on these times of extraordinary crosscurrents and confusion. As
you read the articles in this issue—re ections by consultants, researchers, and practitioners on their personal and professional journeys—what do they say of the possibility thatan integral culture is indeed emerging? In what ways do they embrace and nd harmonyin the culture of measurement and the culture of experience? Might there be a new scienceemerging that integrates empirical and inner investigation? Might some of the Leonardosof this age emerge from the world of commerce and organization? What can each of us
do to participate fully in the Renaissance of the twenty-rst century?

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