The Seven Virtues of a Noble Organization
If you want to disrupt a society that is choking on its own corruption, derision and confusion, reasserting notions of virtue and nobility would do it. As governments, cultures and organizations struggle to compete in an uncertain world, one has to ask is this paradigm of struggle real or do we do it simply because that is all we have ever known? Human beings evolved from hunter gatherers because they figured out how to organize themselves into societies that could sustain agriculture. This required social specialization, establishing market systems and defending territories to protect crops. Most of all, it required cooperation and collaboration. This evolution eventually blossomed into yet another burst of organization in the Industrial Age as we figured out even more elaborate strategies of intellectual specialization, information sharing, market logistics and highly cooperative social systems capable of considerable collaborative technology.
As we have organized, we have solved problems, but we have also created new ones. Agriculture begot feudalism and human slavery. Industry begot class struggle and corporate domination over individual workers. The Information age offers to create a society of unparalleled organizational complexity and all the miracles that come with it or one of the most nightmarish eras of personal oppression in human history. As we address the social inequities that have arisen in the early stages of the Information Age we should consider the possibility using organization as a pathway to human fulfillment actually makes the full power of human consciousness available to a collaboration thereby taking us to the next level of evolution as a species.
Efficient collaboration cannot be compelled. By now we should have figured out that brute force creates friction and achieves nothing close to efficiency. When people love what they do, loves who they work with and loves what they are up to the world, they become unstoppable. Happiness is, in fact, the most powerful motivational force in the human experience. Individuals will align in a collaboration when they can find real value for themselves in their experience of that collaboration. This is a function of their their own personal identities and the sufficiency of the value exchange on the level of identity that arises in the collaboration. Not all value exchange has to be material wealth. A considerable source of value in a collaboration is the personal and collective identity that can arise from a mission that is perceived as highly virtuous. In other words, who we come to know ourselves to be based on how much our activity is valued by the world or to our own moral-ethical conscience can be the kind of value worth giving our all to get.
After we have taken care of our basic needs of life like food, shelter, transportation and such, most of us reach a point of material stability wherein we have the luxury to consider more altruistic goals. We become concerned about not just living, but right living. We become concerned about the condition of others. Our moral-ethic values become an increasingly large part of our thinking the further away we are from the personal struggle to survive. Studies have shown that money ceases to be a motivator for most people as they approach an income level that provides for personal sustainability.
For this reason, creating a highly motivated and conscientious culture cannot be done with money as the only incentive to effectively collaborate. The Information Age and the highly innovative companies of the Silicon Valley have shown us that monetary compensation is not enough to draw out maximum creativity and effort. Work conditions, social nurture and altruistic goals are just a few of the things that can attract people to rise to the next level of performance. Highly levels of cooperation require specific psychological preconditions to create an organizational context that can produce not just operational excellence, but deep personal fulfillment. It is the player who finds deep personal satisfaction in what she does that can tap into every aspect of her mental power to find not just a satisfying role, but the essential elements of true happiness.
Competition capitalism has provided the human race with material wealth and incredibly deadly problems. The notion of competition, seen in the traditional capitalistic model as a strong motivating force for achievement that, in turn, drives Darwinian-like evolution, creates enormous waste. For one winner in a game there are dozens of losers. It is a highly inefficient organizational model. Furthermore, competition capitalism while creating some basic measure of social stability when it is working well, creates wars, struggle and mass unhappiness when it is not working well. This is because it is based on the basic premise of selfishness and greed and while those motivations can win a war, they cannot provide happiness and fulfillment which reside on a higher plane of consciousness above the mere desire to stay alive. With the organizational and material resources available to the human race, there is an to rise above being a species of predators fighting over a carcass and begin to use our ability to create intricate and thoughtful collaborations to create the conditions of happiness. Eating was enough in the old days, but now we should consider doing better.
It is important to note that our economic models are ultimately based on perceptions of what some consider the essential human psyche. Competition capitalism, for example, is based on the notions like Game Theory wherein it is believed that all human beings will always kill their neighbor to ensure their own survival. While in a primal setting this may have some truth to it, we know from history that as people find themselves having enough, they can naturally become quite altruistic. In other words, the harsher Darwinian motivations may only apply when human beings are in a state of scarcity. The dog-eat-dog mentality may not be our natural state when human beings reach basic sustainability and are under no real psychological pressure to assert their own needs over and above the needs of others. At some point we can organize ourselves above our paranoia, fight or flight mentality. We can transcend our omnipresent sense of threat to enter a stage of personal and social experience that is dominated by creativity, collaboration and higher motivations such as compassion.
We are setting out here a rather simple organizational model developed in a small manufacturing company in the Midwest during the Great Recession. This model caused the company to grow despite the recession while protecting its workers and customers from the devastating effect of economic disaster caused by competition capitalism. You could say that this virtue-driven model is an example of "cooperation capitalism". Competition and aggression have never historically prevailed in the long-term over cooperation and collaboration ever in human history. Competition is ultimately inefficient and wasteful. Think about the high costs to both sides in a war. If this is so, then what can we learn from this important insight?
(Select a tab to read about each of the Seven Virtues)
As we have organized, we have solved problems, but we have also created new ones. Agriculture begot feudalism and human slavery. Industry begot class struggle and corporate domination over individual workers. The Information age offers to create a society of unparalleled organizational complexity and all the miracles that come with it or one of the most nightmarish eras of personal oppression in human history. As we address the social inequities that have arisen in the early stages of the Information Age we should consider the possibility using organization as a pathway to human fulfillment actually makes the full power of human consciousness available to a collaboration thereby taking us to the next level of evolution as a species.
Efficient collaboration cannot be compelled. By now we should have figured out that brute force creates friction and achieves nothing close to efficiency. When people love what they do, loves who they work with and loves what they are up to the world, they become unstoppable. Happiness is, in fact, the most powerful motivational force in the human experience. Individuals will align in a collaboration when they can find real value for themselves in their experience of that collaboration. This is a function of their their own personal identities and the sufficiency of the value exchange on the level of identity that arises in the collaboration. Not all value exchange has to be material wealth. A considerable source of value in a collaboration is the personal and collective identity that can arise from a mission that is perceived as highly virtuous. In other words, who we come to know ourselves to be based on how much our activity is valued by the world or to our own moral-ethical conscience can be the kind of value worth giving our all to get.
After we have taken care of our basic needs of life like food, shelter, transportation and such, most of us reach a point of material stability wherein we have the luxury to consider more altruistic goals. We become concerned about not just living, but right living. We become concerned about the condition of others. Our moral-ethic values become an increasingly large part of our thinking the further away we are from the personal struggle to survive. Studies have shown that money ceases to be a motivator for most people as they approach an income level that provides for personal sustainability.
For this reason, creating a highly motivated and conscientious culture cannot be done with money as the only incentive to effectively collaborate. The Information Age and the highly innovative companies of the Silicon Valley have shown us that monetary compensation is not enough to draw out maximum creativity and effort. Work conditions, social nurture and altruistic goals are just a few of the things that can attract people to rise to the next level of performance. Highly levels of cooperation require specific psychological preconditions to create an organizational context that can produce not just operational excellence, but deep personal fulfillment. It is the player who finds deep personal satisfaction in what she does that can tap into every aspect of her mental power to find not just a satisfying role, but the essential elements of true happiness.
Competition capitalism has provided the human race with material wealth and incredibly deadly problems. The notion of competition, seen in the traditional capitalistic model as a strong motivating force for achievement that, in turn, drives Darwinian-like evolution, creates enormous waste. For one winner in a game there are dozens of losers. It is a highly inefficient organizational model. Furthermore, competition capitalism while creating some basic measure of social stability when it is working well, creates wars, struggle and mass unhappiness when it is not working well. This is because it is based on the basic premise of selfishness and greed and while those motivations can win a war, they cannot provide happiness and fulfillment which reside on a higher plane of consciousness above the mere desire to stay alive. With the organizational and material resources available to the human race, there is an to rise above being a species of predators fighting over a carcass and begin to use our ability to create intricate and thoughtful collaborations to create the conditions of happiness. Eating was enough in the old days, but now we should consider doing better.
It is important to note that our economic models are ultimately based on perceptions of what some consider the essential human psyche. Competition capitalism, for example, is based on the notions like Game Theory wherein it is believed that all human beings will always kill their neighbor to ensure their own survival. While in a primal setting this may have some truth to it, we know from history that as people find themselves having enough, they can naturally become quite altruistic. In other words, the harsher Darwinian motivations may only apply when human beings are in a state of scarcity. The dog-eat-dog mentality may not be our natural state when human beings reach basic sustainability and are under no real psychological pressure to assert their own needs over and above the needs of others. At some point we can organize ourselves above our paranoia, fight or flight mentality. We can transcend our omnipresent sense of threat to enter a stage of personal and social experience that is dominated by creativity, collaboration and higher motivations such as compassion.
We are setting out here a rather simple organizational model developed in a small manufacturing company in the Midwest during the Great Recession. This model caused the company to grow despite the recession while protecting its workers and customers from the devastating effect of economic disaster caused by competition capitalism. You could say that this virtue-driven model is an example of "cooperation capitalism". Competition and aggression have never historically prevailed in the long-term over cooperation and collaboration ever in human history. Competition is ultimately inefficient and wasteful. Think about the high costs to both sides in a war. If this is so, then what can we learn from this important insight?
(Select a tab to read about each of the Seven Virtues)
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Introduction
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Usefulness
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Mindfulness
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Compassion
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Skillfulness
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Grace
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Fairness
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Resoluteness
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What is nobility and why does I matter?
No·bil·ity (nəʊˈbɪlɪtɪ): the state or quality of being morally or spiritually good; dignity. Having or showing fine qualities or high moral principles.
“Nobility” is a word that we rarely use anymore and the chaos and distress of our society is the measure of the absence of this concept from our collective thinking. Nobility arises from the conscientious choice to organize oneself and organizations around carefully selected principles that are believed to cause well-being as a general proposition. Causing prosperity, for example, can be said to be a noble pursuit, whereas being greedy cannot. There are specific elements to nobility that make this concept useful to people and to organizations:
Complex organization requires broad agreement. It cannot be efficiently coerced, though many cultures have tried. Human beings rise to their greatest heights when they are inspired and fulfilled. This is not a moral epithet
Many companies have mission statements and codes of conduct. Some try to generate enthusiasm around these statements of mission and regulations of behavior. Most employees embrace these edicts with great cynicism; as well they should, because they are often shallow attempts to con employees into giving more than they bargained for. Generally speaking, a company should never ask you to take on anything that is not good for your life as well as good for the company.
Mission statements set out targets and tell us what we are pursuing. Virtues, by contrast, are standards of conduct, even standards of being, that guide our personal motivation and behavior. A mission can be a morally ambiguous goal. By recommending virtues as standards of conduct, we are limiting the means by which these goals are achieved. In short, we are saying that the ends do not necessarily justify the means. The way we pursue our goals is as important as the goals themselves.
To say that you have two lives, one at work and one at home, is absurd. There is only life. Life is life, regardless of where it happens. You cannot live one way at work and another way at home. It is nearly impossible to be honest at home and a liar at work or compassionate at home but cold-hearted at work. Aside from the fact that it would be unbelievably unhealthy to live such a bifurcated life, even if it could be done, maintaining two ethical standards leads to a remarkable lack of personal integrity. It is much easier to take on a set of virtues that can be supported in all communities whether at work, at home or in the community at large. In this way, you can have the great luxury of simply being yourself and having the environments in which you spend your time support you in your stated purpose. This makes work light, home tranquil and community empowering.
In this way, a person might create harmony and consistency in living. Your work should enrich you monetarily and mentally. It should empower you to be not only valuable to the company but to your family and the various other communities to which you belong. It should provoke thoughtful working but only because it promotes thoughtful living. In short, though uncommon and often misunderstood, it is and always has been good business practice to act in harmony with the lives of the people who operate the enterprise. To do otherwise demonstrates a complete lack of vision for how a business fits into the world as a whole. Business that is harmful to people is moronic given that business exists to serve people. To say that you can serve one group of people at the unjust expense to another group of people is equally small-minded and the communities that participate in, support or live among such businesses should not tolerate such behavior.
This is not to say that every stakeholder in an enterprise should reap the same type or amount of benefit from it. Stakeholders relate to companies in different ways based on their full array of possible contributions to the enterprise. At the end of the day, business relationships of any type require what they have always required: fair exchange.
Perhaps one could say that the guideline here is “to do no harm”. This is similar to the Hippocratic Oath given to doctors. While this is perhaps overly simplistic, to do any less merely demonstrates a lack of ingenuity, effort and vision. There are, in fact, two sides of this principle that might be better stated as “create useful things without harm”. Too often we think of the house we want to build, but not the trees we have to cut down to build it. We need to take into account the creation and the vapor trail of creativity into one integrated point of view. It is a minimal standard for establishing harmonious relationships in the business environment and the world at large.
Below are a set of seven (7) virtues that the noble company, as a culture, should aspire to engineer into its business practices both internally and externally. By pursuing these virtues in all things, the noble company will have a certain impact on business, the business community as a whole, but also on the quality of human life. Every company is a company in the world of people. For many years we have seen companies as private armies designed to support only a few shareholders or partners at the expense of whole communities in many cases. Companies have direct impact on people. People impact companies. It is this interrelationship of impact that needs to we are seeking to improve by intentionally shaping them with some very basic behavior fundamentals.
While the owners of a company have a financial interest in the company that may ultimately entitle them to profit or operational control in the broader sense, there are other stakeholders in every company depend on how these companies are run. In a dog-eat-dog environment of what amounts to brute-force economic barbarism, these stakeholders frequently ignored. As a consequence, companies can do more harm than the good they produce. By expanding, slightly the scope of complexity of a company’s operational vision, it can actually produce benefit for most, if not all, stakeholders while creating prosperity at nearly every level of play. This usually takes a more thoughtful approach, but it does not necessarily take money. The stakeholders that are impacted by the business behavior of a company include the employees, the community in which the company does business, the company's customers and vendors, our various governmental entities and the environment. To ignore any of these is not merely unethical, but is ultimately suicidal business practice because we are interrelated to all of these people and things and our place in this matrix of overlapping interests demands that we consider the integrity of our whole world and not just our own private portion of it. This holistic approach is the only way to bring society and people to a point of peace and prosperity. It ends wars, poverty, and pollution and still provides for a sustainable and prosperous existence.
A noble company does not seek to cultivate these virtues out of some lofty sense of high-mindedness, or so that the principals can feel good about making money. It seeks to cultivate these virtues because when they are being expressed, they create a platform of integrity and efficiency that ultimately makes the company's prosperity more certain. Prosperity is a far greater concept than mere profit and, yet, profit is very much a part of prosperity. Prosperity includes other points of value such as good will, team harmony and wellbeing, favorable credit ratings, access to industry and community leadership to name a few.
The activity of business can be thoughtfully executed to create these things in the world and there is nothing but mental dullness and our own laziness to prevent us from simultaneously earning money and making the world a better place.
Business is nothing more than an organized system of relationships. Relationships are based on cooperation, collaboration and the exchange of value. The most powerful relationships are those for which individuals have great enthusiasm. But what is the cause of enthusiasm? Money and profit are very poor motivators. Nearly everyone alive makes less money than they could because they have other things that they pursue with greater enthusiasm. For some, it is spending time with family or the pursuit of adventure or creativity. For others, it is the passionate participation in an activity or community. In fact, of all the things that one gets out of bed in the morning for, money is a rather a rather mediocre inspiration. This is because money, by itself, has no value. It is the potential of money that is important. But at the end of the day, what really moves a person across the face of the earth is the pursuit of happiness. In short, it is not owning the yacht that creates pleasure, it is sailing the yacht over the seas and the adventure found in exotic ports of call that inspires us so. It is hard to get enthusiastic about the title documents of a boat. Ownership merely creates the possibility of experience, not the experience itself.
Consider this: would you rather own the meal or taste it? This is important because all too often we see money as the sole access to the experiences we want for ourselves when, in fact, this limitation exists only because of our lack of ingenuity. A great chef always gets to taste great food and has the added joy of being able to create great tastes at will.
A company that chases wealth for the sake of accumulation is just as foolish as a person that does so. Rather, companies like individual people, do not really prosper when they are focused exclusively on profit. Profit motive is always a proxy for the access to possibility. A company that seeks to create benefit for customers and employees by generating useful products and services has something far more inspiring to work for. An employee who comes to work aspiring to learn and teach, give and receive and contribute to the creative evolution of humanity in all things, can be said to live a truly rewarding life. It is to this task to which the noble company is committed.
Again, this is not to say that companies should not manage themselves to be profitable. Clearly they should be engaged in providing prosperity for everyone connected to them. There is nothing about virtue-driven operation that is contrary to prosperity. But prosperity needs to arise from not just internal economic efficiency, but ethical and social efficiency as well otherwise the company is merely creating problems for some other segment of society and expecting to profit from passing these problems on to others to solve. Consider the matter of pollution, for example. If company cannot make its products without harming others, they have not truly created an efficient business model. Part of the ordinary costs and expenses of any business are those that the company is required undertake in order to clean up after itself. The responsibility to be a harmless member of society falls upon everyone equally and businesses have no right to make money in a business model that merely passes their responsibility on to others. We would not allow this among our neighbors, why, then, would we consider allowing the harm caused by irresponsible or half-baked business models in our economy?
A virtue-driven business will find that when virtue becomes part of the product offering, it can create some measure of increased market efficiency. If we seek to prosper from making and selling truly useful things and never pursue profit by repackaging and concealing harm in our products, we can not only make money, but we can create admirable and powerful brands. In the past two decades, we have seen new businesses manage social benefit with efficient product development much better than ever before in human history. We have seen the dawn of the “harmless” business model. Businesses, especially banks of late, have taken up the practice of charging fees for services that used to be free simply to generate revenue without offering the customer any new value in the exchange. These fees have been assessed without the consent of their customers. This one-way reworking of the basic customer-service provider agreement is a contractual processes that lawyers call "contracts of adhesion", meaning that one side to the agreement has no choice in the contract terms. The dis-empowered party to the agreement as no ability to shape the deal to help cause efficiency on its side. It is a "take-it-or-leave-it" agreement wherein the dis-empowered party simply “adheres” to the deal like a fly caught on flypaper. These deals, of course, are not agreements at all, but rather constitute a form of contractual leveraging that big companies can impose on individuals. The Mafia uses similar tactics when extracting "protection money" from small shop owners. Treating the human race as a herd of goats to be milked and bilked is not only immoral, it is outrageous bad business practice. It prevents large numbers of people from being able to shape their business transactions to their specific needs. When these agreements go too far, they give rise to consumer strikes and government regulation that makes the business environment unnecessarily complex.
Throughout history, moneyed interests have allowed themselves to become so overcome by greed that they have sought to squeeze the last farthing out of peasants, citizens and consumers alike without giving fair exchange. They have maneuvered into positions that have forced money out of those of us standing in a weaker places in the web of commerce. What is the difference between this and piracy or blackmail?
Historically, the practice of social leveraging, when it has gotten out of control, has created dire consequences for those who have over-asserted themselves. In 1917, the greedy aristocracy of Russia was dragged out of their homes and shot during the Bolshevik Revolution by a once powerless working class. In 1793, starving peasants, dragged Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette out of their palace and beheaded them. In 1776, the rising merchant class of the American Colonies started a war against the British aristocracy that had rigged international trade to British advantage. In each case, thousands of lives were lost as the human race forced equilibrium on a lopsided condition.
More similar to our present time was the 1910's wherein corporate aristocrats had completely stacked the deck of commerce and sought to direct the population according to their will. It was the oldest sin in the newest way. What arose during the ascendance of unchecked corporate power were monopolies that rigged prices and thwarted open competition in most industries. Corporations shamelessly sold infected meat and fake drugs to an unknowing and helpless population. Children trapped in poverty were forced to work in coal mines for pennies a day and the lords of industry used their immense political influence to maintain social conditions that maintained a poor social underclass so that it could be harnessed as a well spring of cheap labor. Like all things out of balance, this condition could not last. First came the worker's movement and then social unrest like the Haymarket Square riots. The United States came dangerously close to a second civil war in the form of violent labor strikes and public protests. Thousands died. Eventually, the government started breaking up monopolies and created labor laws that leveled the playing field between corporation and individual.
The point is that business does not operate outside of the cycle of cause and effect. What goes around comes around. Rip off a customer and you will lose ten customers after your victim tells his friends. Damage the environment with your products and your children die of cancer. Force your advantage on the public when you are strong and it will shun you when you are weak.
By contrast, the noble company seeks to be a river unto its people and its community. Prosperity begets efficiency. Well paid workers make less mistakes, are more productive and act as brand ambassadors. These factors, in the age of social media, are no small matter. Hundreds of employees complaining about a company on social media can have very serious toxic marketing effects. When we practice these virtues by day and by night, our community and our market spaces will hold us in esteem. People will come to our aid, align on our intention to create prosperity and grease the wheels for our business in numerous ways. Highly respected brands always have an easier time making money than those with well-known social negatives. When we are helpful to all who know us we will not only create good will for ourselves and for our companies, but our example will be available to all who know us. Virtue-driven companies are not only agents for prosperity, but they are also agents of social and economic change. The can be highly disruptive in the best possible way.
In short, there is simply no difference between good business practice and right living. Personal life, social life and business life are all life. They are parts of one system and that system needs to create organization, efficiency and prosperity for every stake holder. To leave any segment of our world holding the bag for the profit of a few is simply illogical from a system management point of view, and immoral from the point of view of human justice.
The Seven VirtuesBelow find seven (7) virtues that, if allowed to influence the decisions and the action of a company will create a sense of nobility in the company culture. Perhaps more importantly, employees finding themselves engaged in the activity of nobility will create the conditions of their own personal fulfillment. A virtue-driven company can apply all of its mental effort toward its goals without doubt or reservation. A company culture so empowered can move mountains and feel good about doing it.
No·bil·ity (nəʊˈbɪlɪtɪ): the state or quality of being morally or spiritually good; dignity. Having or showing fine qualities or high moral principles.
“Nobility” is a word that we rarely use anymore and the chaos and distress of our society is the measure of the absence of this concept from our collective thinking. Nobility arises from the conscientious choice to organize oneself and organizations around carefully selected principles that are believed to cause well-being as a general proposition. Causing prosperity, for example, can be said to be a noble pursuit, whereas being greedy cannot. There are specific elements to nobility that make this concept useful to people and to organizations:
- It is based on principles biased toward causing universal well-being, including the self, instead of selfish or competitive interests that can be realized only at the expense of others;
- It holds the value of the whole over the value of a part;
- It is a state that arises only after personal and group refinement that integrates principles into thinking and benefit to all into behavior;
- It is a state of being defined by principles that transcend self;
- It is a state of being that creates the conditions for deep personal, moral and spiritual fulfillment.
Complex organization requires broad agreement. It cannot be efficiently coerced, though many cultures have tried. Human beings rise to their greatest heights when they are inspired and fulfilled. This is not a moral epithet
Many companies have mission statements and codes of conduct. Some try to generate enthusiasm around these statements of mission and regulations of behavior. Most employees embrace these edicts with great cynicism; as well they should, because they are often shallow attempts to con employees into giving more than they bargained for. Generally speaking, a company should never ask you to take on anything that is not good for your life as well as good for the company.
Mission statements set out targets and tell us what we are pursuing. Virtues, by contrast, are standards of conduct, even standards of being, that guide our personal motivation and behavior. A mission can be a morally ambiguous goal. By recommending virtues as standards of conduct, we are limiting the means by which these goals are achieved. In short, we are saying that the ends do not necessarily justify the means. The way we pursue our goals is as important as the goals themselves.
To say that you have two lives, one at work and one at home, is absurd. There is only life. Life is life, regardless of where it happens. You cannot live one way at work and another way at home. It is nearly impossible to be honest at home and a liar at work or compassionate at home but cold-hearted at work. Aside from the fact that it would be unbelievably unhealthy to live such a bifurcated life, even if it could be done, maintaining two ethical standards leads to a remarkable lack of personal integrity. It is much easier to take on a set of virtues that can be supported in all communities whether at work, at home or in the community at large. In this way, you can have the great luxury of simply being yourself and having the environments in which you spend your time support you in your stated purpose. This makes work light, home tranquil and community empowering.
In this way, a person might create harmony and consistency in living. Your work should enrich you monetarily and mentally. It should empower you to be not only valuable to the company but to your family and the various other communities to which you belong. It should provoke thoughtful working but only because it promotes thoughtful living. In short, though uncommon and often misunderstood, it is and always has been good business practice to act in harmony with the lives of the people who operate the enterprise. To do otherwise demonstrates a complete lack of vision for how a business fits into the world as a whole. Business that is harmful to people is moronic given that business exists to serve people. To say that you can serve one group of people at the unjust expense to another group of people is equally small-minded and the communities that participate in, support or live among such businesses should not tolerate such behavior.
This is not to say that every stakeholder in an enterprise should reap the same type or amount of benefit from it. Stakeholders relate to companies in different ways based on their full array of possible contributions to the enterprise. At the end of the day, business relationships of any type require what they have always required: fair exchange.
Perhaps one could say that the guideline here is “to do no harm”. This is similar to the Hippocratic Oath given to doctors. While this is perhaps overly simplistic, to do any less merely demonstrates a lack of ingenuity, effort and vision. There are, in fact, two sides of this principle that might be better stated as “create useful things without harm”. Too often we think of the house we want to build, but not the trees we have to cut down to build it. We need to take into account the creation and the vapor trail of creativity into one integrated point of view. It is a minimal standard for establishing harmonious relationships in the business environment and the world at large.
Below are a set of seven (7) virtues that the noble company, as a culture, should aspire to engineer into its business practices both internally and externally. By pursuing these virtues in all things, the noble company will have a certain impact on business, the business community as a whole, but also on the quality of human life. Every company is a company in the world of people. For many years we have seen companies as private armies designed to support only a few shareholders or partners at the expense of whole communities in many cases. Companies have direct impact on people. People impact companies. It is this interrelationship of impact that needs to we are seeking to improve by intentionally shaping them with some very basic behavior fundamentals.
While the owners of a company have a financial interest in the company that may ultimately entitle them to profit or operational control in the broader sense, there are other stakeholders in every company depend on how these companies are run. In a dog-eat-dog environment of what amounts to brute-force economic barbarism, these stakeholders frequently ignored. As a consequence, companies can do more harm than the good they produce. By expanding, slightly the scope of complexity of a company’s operational vision, it can actually produce benefit for most, if not all, stakeholders while creating prosperity at nearly every level of play. This usually takes a more thoughtful approach, but it does not necessarily take money. The stakeholders that are impacted by the business behavior of a company include the employees, the community in which the company does business, the company's customers and vendors, our various governmental entities and the environment. To ignore any of these is not merely unethical, but is ultimately suicidal business practice because we are interrelated to all of these people and things and our place in this matrix of overlapping interests demands that we consider the integrity of our whole world and not just our own private portion of it. This holistic approach is the only way to bring society and people to a point of peace and prosperity. It ends wars, poverty, and pollution and still provides for a sustainable and prosperous existence.
A noble company does not seek to cultivate these virtues out of some lofty sense of high-mindedness, or so that the principals can feel good about making money. It seeks to cultivate these virtues because when they are being expressed, they create a platform of integrity and efficiency that ultimately makes the company's prosperity more certain. Prosperity is a far greater concept than mere profit and, yet, profit is very much a part of prosperity. Prosperity includes other points of value such as good will, team harmony and wellbeing, favorable credit ratings, access to industry and community leadership to name a few.
The activity of business can be thoughtfully executed to create these things in the world and there is nothing but mental dullness and our own laziness to prevent us from simultaneously earning money and making the world a better place.
Business is nothing more than an organized system of relationships. Relationships are based on cooperation, collaboration and the exchange of value. The most powerful relationships are those for which individuals have great enthusiasm. But what is the cause of enthusiasm? Money and profit are very poor motivators. Nearly everyone alive makes less money than they could because they have other things that they pursue with greater enthusiasm. For some, it is spending time with family or the pursuit of adventure or creativity. For others, it is the passionate participation in an activity or community. In fact, of all the things that one gets out of bed in the morning for, money is a rather a rather mediocre inspiration. This is because money, by itself, has no value. It is the potential of money that is important. But at the end of the day, what really moves a person across the face of the earth is the pursuit of happiness. In short, it is not owning the yacht that creates pleasure, it is sailing the yacht over the seas and the adventure found in exotic ports of call that inspires us so. It is hard to get enthusiastic about the title documents of a boat. Ownership merely creates the possibility of experience, not the experience itself.
Consider this: would you rather own the meal or taste it? This is important because all too often we see money as the sole access to the experiences we want for ourselves when, in fact, this limitation exists only because of our lack of ingenuity. A great chef always gets to taste great food and has the added joy of being able to create great tastes at will.
A company that chases wealth for the sake of accumulation is just as foolish as a person that does so. Rather, companies like individual people, do not really prosper when they are focused exclusively on profit. Profit motive is always a proxy for the access to possibility. A company that seeks to create benefit for customers and employees by generating useful products and services has something far more inspiring to work for. An employee who comes to work aspiring to learn and teach, give and receive and contribute to the creative evolution of humanity in all things, can be said to live a truly rewarding life. It is to this task to which the noble company is committed.
Again, this is not to say that companies should not manage themselves to be profitable. Clearly they should be engaged in providing prosperity for everyone connected to them. There is nothing about virtue-driven operation that is contrary to prosperity. But prosperity needs to arise from not just internal economic efficiency, but ethical and social efficiency as well otherwise the company is merely creating problems for some other segment of society and expecting to profit from passing these problems on to others to solve. Consider the matter of pollution, for example. If company cannot make its products without harming others, they have not truly created an efficient business model. Part of the ordinary costs and expenses of any business are those that the company is required undertake in order to clean up after itself. The responsibility to be a harmless member of society falls upon everyone equally and businesses have no right to make money in a business model that merely passes their responsibility on to others. We would not allow this among our neighbors, why, then, would we consider allowing the harm caused by irresponsible or half-baked business models in our economy?
A virtue-driven business will find that when virtue becomes part of the product offering, it can create some measure of increased market efficiency. If we seek to prosper from making and selling truly useful things and never pursue profit by repackaging and concealing harm in our products, we can not only make money, but we can create admirable and powerful brands. In the past two decades, we have seen new businesses manage social benefit with efficient product development much better than ever before in human history. We have seen the dawn of the “harmless” business model. Businesses, especially banks of late, have taken up the practice of charging fees for services that used to be free simply to generate revenue without offering the customer any new value in the exchange. These fees have been assessed without the consent of their customers. This one-way reworking of the basic customer-service provider agreement is a contractual processes that lawyers call "contracts of adhesion", meaning that one side to the agreement has no choice in the contract terms. The dis-empowered party to the agreement as no ability to shape the deal to help cause efficiency on its side. It is a "take-it-or-leave-it" agreement wherein the dis-empowered party simply “adheres” to the deal like a fly caught on flypaper. These deals, of course, are not agreements at all, but rather constitute a form of contractual leveraging that big companies can impose on individuals. The Mafia uses similar tactics when extracting "protection money" from small shop owners. Treating the human race as a herd of goats to be milked and bilked is not only immoral, it is outrageous bad business practice. It prevents large numbers of people from being able to shape their business transactions to their specific needs. When these agreements go too far, they give rise to consumer strikes and government regulation that makes the business environment unnecessarily complex.
Throughout history, moneyed interests have allowed themselves to become so overcome by greed that they have sought to squeeze the last farthing out of peasants, citizens and consumers alike without giving fair exchange. They have maneuvered into positions that have forced money out of those of us standing in a weaker places in the web of commerce. What is the difference between this and piracy or blackmail?
Historically, the practice of social leveraging, when it has gotten out of control, has created dire consequences for those who have over-asserted themselves. In 1917, the greedy aristocracy of Russia was dragged out of their homes and shot during the Bolshevik Revolution by a once powerless working class. In 1793, starving peasants, dragged Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette out of their palace and beheaded them. In 1776, the rising merchant class of the American Colonies started a war against the British aristocracy that had rigged international trade to British advantage. In each case, thousands of lives were lost as the human race forced equilibrium on a lopsided condition.
More similar to our present time was the 1910's wherein corporate aristocrats had completely stacked the deck of commerce and sought to direct the population according to their will. It was the oldest sin in the newest way. What arose during the ascendance of unchecked corporate power were monopolies that rigged prices and thwarted open competition in most industries. Corporations shamelessly sold infected meat and fake drugs to an unknowing and helpless population. Children trapped in poverty were forced to work in coal mines for pennies a day and the lords of industry used their immense political influence to maintain social conditions that maintained a poor social underclass so that it could be harnessed as a well spring of cheap labor. Like all things out of balance, this condition could not last. First came the worker's movement and then social unrest like the Haymarket Square riots. The United States came dangerously close to a second civil war in the form of violent labor strikes and public protests. Thousands died. Eventually, the government started breaking up monopolies and created labor laws that leveled the playing field between corporation and individual.
The point is that business does not operate outside of the cycle of cause and effect. What goes around comes around. Rip off a customer and you will lose ten customers after your victim tells his friends. Damage the environment with your products and your children die of cancer. Force your advantage on the public when you are strong and it will shun you when you are weak.
By contrast, the noble company seeks to be a river unto its people and its community. Prosperity begets efficiency. Well paid workers make less mistakes, are more productive and act as brand ambassadors. These factors, in the age of social media, are no small matter. Hundreds of employees complaining about a company on social media can have very serious toxic marketing effects. When we practice these virtues by day and by night, our community and our market spaces will hold us in esteem. People will come to our aid, align on our intention to create prosperity and grease the wheels for our business in numerous ways. Highly respected brands always have an easier time making money than those with well-known social negatives. When we are helpful to all who know us we will not only create good will for ourselves and for our companies, but our example will be available to all who know us. Virtue-driven companies are not only agents for prosperity, but they are also agents of social and economic change. The can be highly disruptive in the best possible way.
In short, there is simply no difference between good business practice and right living. Personal life, social life and business life are all life. They are parts of one system and that system needs to create organization, efficiency and prosperity for every stake holder. To leave any segment of our world holding the bag for the profit of a few is simply illogical from a system management point of view, and immoral from the point of view of human justice.
The Seven VirtuesBelow find seven (7) virtues that, if allowed to influence the decisions and the action of a company will create a sense of nobility in the company culture. Perhaps more importantly, employees finding themselves engaged in the activity of nobility will create the conditions of their own personal fulfillment. A virtue-driven company can apply all of its mental effort toward its goals without doubt or reservation. A company culture so empowered can move mountains and feel good about doing it.
Usefulness. One might say that the first virtue of all businesses is hard work or work ethic, but what does hard work do? And does it really need to be hard? What companies really want is for every minute of the day to be useful and to facilitate and further its intentions. Even breaks and lunch time are useful. Rest can be very useful. The friendly association with teammates can be beneficial to the enterprise every bit as much as it is to the individual. The point is to make every minute count.Time spent confused or frustrated is not useful. So do not do it. Time spent steeped in your anger about some uncommunicated frustration is equally unuseful. Anger can be very useful in that it can become the power that causes much needed change. So one who takes on the practice of always being useful, speaks out, discusses and resolves problems and uses even a negative emotion usefully.
Usefulness goes far beyond working hard to make every minute count. In its fullest expression it means to make every action and communication helpful to the enterprise, to the team and to yourself. If you are disrupting others, you are not being useful. If you are not carrying your own weight, you are not being useful. If you are gossiping or ridiculing your teammates, you are not being useful.Wasting time, resources or even your own paycheck is not useful. Waste, by definition is the opposite of useful. While contemplating one's own usefulness, one should look around for waste. Did you use equipment and materials in the most efficient manner possible? Did you use your time effectively? Is what you are doing creating benefit or simply killing time? These questions are just as pertinent at home as at work.
Usefulness accumulates merit. This means that as useful action accumulates, positive outcomes begin to arise. Not only do employers value truly useful employees more, but so do co-workers, customers, friends and family. You might even say that being truly useful to the communities to which you belong, i.e. your company and your family, etc., is a source of personal power. First, your activity truly changes the world for the better and second you become known in the world as a force for positive impact. The more you are respected, the more influence you can have on situations and people. Usefulness can be a source of the accumulation of personal power and influence and if you have targeted your efforts for the benefit of all, it creates increasingly positive results. Furthermore, when we are appreciated for our usefulness it gives us a sense of self-esteem and well-being. In fact, most people find that they are the happiest when in service to others rather than mired in a bog of self-concern. Knowing yourself as being a contribution to others creates one of the essential preconditions of sense of personal fulfillment.
Fulfillment is a rather subjective state of consciousness. It is conceptual. There are various social agreements that we have with the people around us as to what should be considered as fulfilling to most people. Being honored and respected, for example, creates a sense of unity among our peers and a sense or reassurance when we consider who we are in the minds of others. Be focusing on useful interactions and activities, we are creating the conditions by which we can honestly assume the identity of useful. Our sense of personal fulfillment always arises out of the identity that we create for ourselves.
There is a fundamental relationship between our moral-ethical intentions for the world, our ability to manifest that intention into our experience and being known for having caused or participated in the moral-ethical outcome. There are a lot of ways in which one can relate to the concept or morality, but the relationship being described here is that one is acting inside of an intention to do good for one’s self and others without any doubt about it. In other words, though we may not have a precise moral code defined for ourselves (or defined for us), we still tend to weigh ourselves by some standard or another in order to answer the essential question: “am I a good person”. This question cannot be answered if we do not have a standard by which to measure thoughts and conduct. What is a good person in the first place? The Seven Virtues actually answers this question and functions in a company culture in a multi-dimensional way.
The Seven Virtues set a standard of conduct that most people would agree leads to a sense of knowing one’s self as appropriate, effective or even admirable. They are values that nearly everyone respects. Furthermore, the Seven Virtues are designed to set effective standards for internal organization of a company. They promote operational effectiveness in the short-term and promote a reputation for social value in the long-term. Social value, the social benefits that companies make in addition to their product offerings is fast becoming an essential part of a successful brand. Consumers of goods and services are becoming increasingly aware of the impact companies have on the environment, labor practices and culture generally. Younger consumers, in particular, are increasingly using their purchasing power and their voice on social media to force companies to assume more socially beneficial practices. A company that pays for health insurance, for example, can now use this fact as not only a way to enhance its brand in the public eye, but can also charge higher practices because the socially beneficial practice paying for health insurance enhances its product value proposition. Environmentally friendly companies, for example, can charge higher prices without losing business to their competition because activist consumers care enough about environmental issues that they are willing to pay for cleaner business operations. The rise of social media driven consumer activism makes a virtue-driven company even more timely then ever as a part of establishing a company’s brand. In other words, as consumers transcend purchase decisions based on mere price, virtues create social value and, hence, more valuable products in the eyes of the social-savvy modern consumer.
Hence, the virtue of usefulness helps us know what action to take to make our best intentions part of the fabric of our reality. It requires us to be aware of our action and our intention without the distraction of lesser motives.
Usefulness goes far beyond working hard to make every minute count. In its fullest expression it means to make every action and communication helpful to the enterprise, to the team and to yourself. If you are disrupting others, you are not being useful. If you are not carrying your own weight, you are not being useful. If you are gossiping or ridiculing your teammates, you are not being useful.Wasting time, resources or even your own paycheck is not useful. Waste, by definition is the opposite of useful. While contemplating one's own usefulness, one should look around for waste. Did you use equipment and materials in the most efficient manner possible? Did you use your time effectively? Is what you are doing creating benefit or simply killing time? These questions are just as pertinent at home as at work.
Usefulness accumulates merit. This means that as useful action accumulates, positive outcomes begin to arise. Not only do employers value truly useful employees more, but so do co-workers, customers, friends and family. You might even say that being truly useful to the communities to which you belong, i.e. your company and your family, etc., is a source of personal power. First, your activity truly changes the world for the better and second you become known in the world as a force for positive impact. The more you are respected, the more influence you can have on situations and people. Usefulness can be a source of the accumulation of personal power and influence and if you have targeted your efforts for the benefit of all, it creates increasingly positive results. Furthermore, when we are appreciated for our usefulness it gives us a sense of self-esteem and well-being. In fact, most people find that they are the happiest when in service to others rather than mired in a bog of self-concern. Knowing yourself as being a contribution to others creates one of the essential preconditions of sense of personal fulfillment.
Fulfillment is a rather subjective state of consciousness. It is conceptual. There are various social agreements that we have with the people around us as to what should be considered as fulfilling to most people. Being honored and respected, for example, creates a sense of unity among our peers and a sense or reassurance when we consider who we are in the minds of others. Be focusing on useful interactions and activities, we are creating the conditions by which we can honestly assume the identity of useful. Our sense of personal fulfillment always arises out of the identity that we create for ourselves.
There is a fundamental relationship between our moral-ethical intentions for the world, our ability to manifest that intention into our experience and being known for having caused or participated in the moral-ethical outcome. There are a lot of ways in which one can relate to the concept or morality, but the relationship being described here is that one is acting inside of an intention to do good for one’s self and others without any doubt about it. In other words, though we may not have a precise moral code defined for ourselves (or defined for us), we still tend to weigh ourselves by some standard or another in order to answer the essential question: “am I a good person”. This question cannot be answered if we do not have a standard by which to measure thoughts and conduct. What is a good person in the first place? The Seven Virtues actually answers this question and functions in a company culture in a multi-dimensional way.
The Seven Virtues set a standard of conduct that most people would agree leads to a sense of knowing one’s self as appropriate, effective or even admirable. They are values that nearly everyone respects. Furthermore, the Seven Virtues are designed to set effective standards for internal organization of a company. They promote operational effectiveness in the short-term and promote a reputation for social value in the long-term. Social value, the social benefits that companies make in addition to their product offerings is fast becoming an essential part of a successful brand. Consumers of goods and services are becoming increasingly aware of the impact companies have on the environment, labor practices and culture generally. Younger consumers, in particular, are increasingly using their purchasing power and their voice on social media to force companies to assume more socially beneficial practices. A company that pays for health insurance, for example, can now use this fact as not only a way to enhance its brand in the public eye, but can also charge higher practices because the socially beneficial practice paying for health insurance enhances its product value proposition. Environmentally friendly companies, for example, can charge higher prices without losing business to their competition because activist consumers care enough about environmental issues that they are willing to pay for cleaner business operations. The rise of social media driven consumer activism makes a virtue-driven company even more timely then ever as a part of establishing a company’s brand. In other words, as consumers transcend purchase decisions based on mere price, virtues create social value and, hence, more valuable products in the eyes of the social-savvy modern consumer.
Hence, the virtue of usefulness helps us know what action to take to make our best intentions part of the fabric of our reality. It requires us to be aware of our action and our intention without the distraction of lesser motives.
Mindfulness. In order to be aware of your usefulness, you need to develop the ability become present and aware at all times. If we allow our minds to drift off, such as taking a nap at work, we naturally transform our selves from useful to useless. A lot of what we must do in order to be useful is to establish a sense of integrity into our activity. Integrity requires that our action match our intention and this, in turn requires that we be aware what we are doing and what is going on around us. Without mindfulness, our activity has no way to fulfill our intentions.
Most of us live in a complete cloud of self-concern, day-dreaming or distraction. The average person is only truly conscious of his or her surroundings for just a few minutes a day, if that. For example, when you breathe do you smell the air? When you drink, do you really taste what you are drinking? When you look, do you really see? Most people don't, most of the time.
Mindfulness is not a personality trait, it is a skill. While it is the natural state of our mind, it is buried in a fog of distraction, confusion and ignorance. Every accident you have ever had could have been avoided by paying attention. Most of the harm you have ever done, could have been avoided by paying attention to the moment you were in, the effect that you were having on others or the consequences of what you were doing. It sounds remarkably simple, and it is, but why then does life seem like such a boiling pot of calamity?
The fact of the matter is that when we pay attention, as a general premise, things go much better than when we do not pay attention. We do not stub our toes when we pay attention. We do not have car accidents, we do not have to make a second trip to the grocery store because we forgot something the first time. When we are mindful we are thoughtful to others and rarely rude – because we are aware of what we are doing and the impact that it is having on ourselves and others. We see the conditions that are growing into problems before they create disaster for us. But this is not our normal state of mind. Usually, we are listening to music in our heads or rehearsing what we wish we would have said to the rude clerk at the grocery store. In short, we spend most of our day processing our world instead of actually experiencing it. This makes us incredibly absent-minded.
So how many times have you actually noticed that you inhaled today? Most people go through most of their life largely oblivious to the fact that they breathe at all. But what if that were not the case? People who are intensely aware of where they are and what is happening around them make less mistakes, notice details, are aware of nuances in relationships and events and are generally higher performing human beings than their near-zombie counterparts.
On the personal level, mindfulness creates personal effectiveness, thoughtfulness and relatedness. One becomes aware of the condition of the other people around them and can give comfort and assistance when it is needs. Mindfulness changes how other people see you over time. Mindful people are more likely to be admired because they are occur to others to care and to be helpful.
Like all of the Seven Virtues, mindfulness has considerable external benefits as well. Consider the value of enterprise awareness. If every decision you made advanced the cause of the enterprise in which you were engaged, what would it produce? Effectiveness is power -- the power to actually make your intentions take form in reality. What that means is that one becomes capable of taming the seemingly chaotic circumstances of life. Effectiveness requires considerable situational awareness and mindfulness can provide that. To truly put legs under your intentions, requires three things: 1) actually having an intention; 2) being aware of circumstances in which your intention is expected to unfold; and 3) thoughtfully and skillfully interacting with each circumstance and moment in a way that creates the best opportunity to facilitate your intentions. A successful life requires skill. Skill always stands on a foundation of mindfulness. Simply put, it takes mindfulness and skill to make life work. Take away either one of these preconditions and the outcome becomes nearly random.
Businesses are the product of design (a business plan) that is basically an elaborate mathematical equation in theory and a carefully synchronized matrix of human behavior in practice. A good business plan makes few assumptions and is largely based on expertise and carefully mined data. Most businesses with well thought out plans are still in peril. Why? Because they must rely on people to execute the plan. These people have emotions, varying degrees of awareness, intentionality and skill. Most are intoxicated with distracting thoughts, superstitious beliefs about themselves and others and emotional needs that have them jumping like circus monkeys through hoops of fire.
Most executive level managers worth their salt will tell you that they spend the majority of their time helping people past their mind clouds so that they can do their job with some level of competence. Executive managers cause clarity, not just in the expression of the business plan, but in the personal coaching it takes to get employees to focus and execute effectively. This makes the modern executive part business architect and part psychotherapist.
But what if a company chose to develop a culture of mindfulness as a standard operating procedure? What would be the benefits of such training? The truth is that it would increase effectiveness and productivity to unseen heights, but there would be additional benefits as well. What would be the benefit of being tuned into your family members and friends and the things that occur in your community? What would your relationship to your spouse be like if you were to really pay attention? What would it be like for your children if you could really see what was going on with them and could take your own neuroses out of the relationship to attend to only their needs? And if your family life was like that, what would it be like to come to work every day knowing that you were living in full awareness of your family, friends and co-workers?
You only have one life, a whole life. Some of it is lived at work and some at home, but is all part of a single life. It is the same "you" at work and the same "you" at home. The notion that you can have one standard of personal fulfillment at home from the one you have at work is absurd.
Consider the value of being completely aware of your teammates and collaborative projects. How would you experience a team project differently if you were fully aware of the condition of your teammates? What is it like to work among a group of people who are aware of your condition? It occurs like no one cares. It creates a sense of cold isolation. But why? Everyone is just doing their job. This is, after all, work and not “real life”. Think of all the reasons we concoct insulate ourselves inside a cocoon of emotional observational oblivion. We think that this somehow makes us safer or more comfortable, but it actually does just the opposite. Being part of a team of players that care about each other and contribute to one another, by itself, is one of life’s most potentially rewarding experiences. It shatters any notion of isolation. It fills the work day with love, affinity and respect. It satisfies our need to be part of a tribe, to belong to be welcomed and supported. This experience is an essential foundation for personal fulfillment.
Likewise, awareness of family and friends is the same as team awareness with the same benefits. Like all of the Seven Virtues, mindfulness works best when it is integrated into personal, social and business life. There really is very little difference between these three emotional and ontological domains. But what does it really take to be aware of family and friends? Does it help to "know" the person thereby having made up our minds as to who they are and pinning them down by the righteous judgment that follows the formulation of our opinion? Or is it better to cause our minds to remain in a state of neutrality, continuously becoming aware of what they say and do in real time without tainting them with bias from past encounters, judgments or superstitions? We think we know our children. When we describe them, we say that they are a certain way, so we think. Yet, the truth is that they are never a "certain way" moment from moment. We may believe that we see patterns in their behavior, but often we relate to our belief in this pattern of behavior rather than what is actually happening in the moment. This prejudicial thinking displaces mindfulness. The patterns that we think that we see in their behavior, only exists in our perception of them. This does not mean that seeing patterns is not useful. Sometime it is. We should never, however, confuse our perception of patterns for absolute fact or truth. This creates the opportunity to misjudge. But often we are too quick to see the pattern and not so quick to see what is actually happening. The patterns become a habit of our thinking that distorts our vision of a moment that has never happened before. Mindfulness avoids this sort of distorted thinking.
The worse thing that comes from habitual perception or superstitious thinking is that we react in a pre-processed way instead of in a manner appropriate to the moment. We react to something that we have experienced in the past instead of what is happening now. We essentially become robots executing a series of automated, knee-jerk reactions. This blinds us to the possibility of thinking through a situation. "You know how my boss is ...." "He does this; it means that; I hide under my desk; he goes away ...." Rats can do this. There is no need to be human at all.
So why do we tune out so much? Not everything that happens in the course of our day is pleasant. We confront breakdowns, surprises and the negative emotions of people around us. We are never quite sure what is going to pop up and scare us, anger us or disappoint us next. As a consequence, we create mental distance from our environment and from the people in that environment as an emotional buffer. In fact, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is by definition a detachment from reality caused by mind seeking to isolate itself from emotionally stressful or painful events. Children who are frequently criticized, for example, learn to put a barrier of fog between them and the person who is making them sad by criticizing them. Many of us frequently choose to be oblivious rather than sad or angry. So we tune out.
But the cost of this disconnection is high. If we do not relate to what is actually happening, we lose control of our ability to respond effectively. We either miss the import of what is happening and give a disconnected response, or we react out of habit and help create the same old outcome that seems to have us trapped in an endless cycle of disappointing results. In short, processing an experience rather than relating to it in real-time seriously limits our power in the moment in favor of a pre-processed or uncontrolled outcome. This makes life feel like an accident much of the time.
The advantage of encouraging mindfulness as an organizational virtue is that if the entire culture adopts the practice, each individual creates fewer and fewer startling responses to events as they unfold. Team members do not lose their temper when breakdowns occur. Everyone is attentive and supportive of team members who are in difficulty. The tension that can exist in a lesser organized community is reduced making it easier and easier for individuals to step out of their protective fog and be present to each other and what is happening. Mindfulness makes communities emotionally safer for everyone.
Consider what it would be like to be fully aware of the world around you? Would you really drink out of a plastic water bottle knowing that it will still be on the planet ten thousand years ago or would using a recyclable glass bottle become worth the effort to use? Do you really want to be rude to a grocery clerk knowing that your anger will infect her and the next ten people in line? To be aware of the world exactly as it is and exactly as it is not gives you the power to interact with it on purpose, making your intention precisely felt on the earth for thousands of years. But what intention will you inject into this world?
Hence, mindfulness gives us the awareness of when, where and how to bring your intentions to life.
Most of us live in a complete cloud of self-concern, day-dreaming or distraction. The average person is only truly conscious of his or her surroundings for just a few minutes a day, if that. For example, when you breathe do you smell the air? When you drink, do you really taste what you are drinking? When you look, do you really see? Most people don't, most of the time.
Mindfulness is not a personality trait, it is a skill. While it is the natural state of our mind, it is buried in a fog of distraction, confusion and ignorance. Every accident you have ever had could have been avoided by paying attention. Most of the harm you have ever done, could have been avoided by paying attention to the moment you were in, the effect that you were having on others or the consequences of what you were doing. It sounds remarkably simple, and it is, but why then does life seem like such a boiling pot of calamity?
The fact of the matter is that when we pay attention, as a general premise, things go much better than when we do not pay attention. We do not stub our toes when we pay attention. We do not have car accidents, we do not have to make a second trip to the grocery store because we forgot something the first time. When we are mindful we are thoughtful to others and rarely rude – because we are aware of what we are doing and the impact that it is having on ourselves and others. We see the conditions that are growing into problems before they create disaster for us. But this is not our normal state of mind. Usually, we are listening to music in our heads or rehearsing what we wish we would have said to the rude clerk at the grocery store. In short, we spend most of our day processing our world instead of actually experiencing it. This makes us incredibly absent-minded.
So how many times have you actually noticed that you inhaled today? Most people go through most of their life largely oblivious to the fact that they breathe at all. But what if that were not the case? People who are intensely aware of where they are and what is happening around them make less mistakes, notice details, are aware of nuances in relationships and events and are generally higher performing human beings than their near-zombie counterparts.
On the personal level, mindfulness creates personal effectiveness, thoughtfulness and relatedness. One becomes aware of the condition of the other people around them and can give comfort and assistance when it is needs. Mindfulness changes how other people see you over time. Mindful people are more likely to be admired because they are occur to others to care and to be helpful.
Like all of the Seven Virtues, mindfulness has considerable external benefits as well. Consider the value of enterprise awareness. If every decision you made advanced the cause of the enterprise in which you were engaged, what would it produce? Effectiveness is power -- the power to actually make your intentions take form in reality. What that means is that one becomes capable of taming the seemingly chaotic circumstances of life. Effectiveness requires considerable situational awareness and mindfulness can provide that. To truly put legs under your intentions, requires three things: 1) actually having an intention; 2) being aware of circumstances in which your intention is expected to unfold; and 3) thoughtfully and skillfully interacting with each circumstance and moment in a way that creates the best opportunity to facilitate your intentions. A successful life requires skill. Skill always stands on a foundation of mindfulness. Simply put, it takes mindfulness and skill to make life work. Take away either one of these preconditions and the outcome becomes nearly random.
Businesses are the product of design (a business plan) that is basically an elaborate mathematical equation in theory and a carefully synchronized matrix of human behavior in practice. A good business plan makes few assumptions and is largely based on expertise and carefully mined data. Most businesses with well thought out plans are still in peril. Why? Because they must rely on people to execute the plan. These people have emotions, varying degrees of awareness, intentionality and skill. Most are intoxicated with distracting thoughts, superstitious beliefs about themselves and others and emotional needs that have them jumping like circus monkeys through hoops of fire.
Most executive level managers worth their salt will tell you that they spend the majority of their time helping people past their mind clouds so that they can do their job with some level of competence. Executive managers cause clarity, not just in the expression of the business plan, but in the personal coaching it takes to get employees to focus and execute effectively. This makes the modern executive part business architect and part psychotherapist.
But what if a company chose to develop a culture of mindfulness as a standard operating procedure? What would be the benefits of such training? The truth is that it would increase effectiveness and productivity to unseen heights, but there would be additional benefits as well. What would be the benefit of being tuned into your family members and friends and the things that occur in your community? What would your relationship to your spouse be like if you were to really pay attention? What would it be like for your children if you could really see what was going on with them and could take your own neuroses out of the relationship to attend to only their needs? And if your family life was like that, what would it be like to come to work every day knowing that you were living in full awareness of your family, friends and co-workers?
You only have one life, a whole life. Some of it is lived at work and some at home, but is all part of a single life. It is the same "you" at work and the same "you" at home. The notion that you can have one standard of personal fulfillment at home from the one you have at work is absurd.
Consider the value of being completely aware of your teammates and collaborative projects. How would you experience a team project differently if you were fully aware of the condition of your teammates? What is it like to work among a group of people who are aware of your condition? It occurs like no one cares. It creates a sense of cold isolation. But why? Everyone is just doing their job. This is, after all, work and not “real life”. Think of all the reasons we concoct insulate ourselves inside a cocoon of emotional observational oblivion. We think that this somehow makes us safer or more comfortable, but it actually does just the opposite. Being part of a team of players that care about each other and contribute to one another, by itself, is one of life’s most potentially rewarding experiences. It shatters any notion of isolation. It fills the work day with love, affinity and respect. It satisfies our need to be part of a tribe, to belong to be welcomed and supported. This experience is an essential foundation for personal fulfillment.
Likewise, awareness of family and friends is the same as team awareness with the same benefits. Like all of the Seven Virtues, mindfulness works best when it is integrated into personal, social and business life. There really is very little difference between these three emotional and ontological domains. But what does it really take to be aware of family and friends? Does it help to "know" the person thereby having made up our minds as to who they are and pinning them down by the righteous judgment that follows the formulation of our opinion? Or is it better to cause our minds to remain in a state of neutrality, continuously becoming aware of what they say and do in real time without tainting them with bias from past encounters, judgments or superstitions? We think we know our children. When we describe them, we say that they are a certain way, so we think. Yet, the truth is that they are never a "certain way" moment from moment. We may believe that we see patterns in their behavior, but often we relate to our belief in this pattern of behavior rather than what is actually happening in the moment. This prejudicial thinking displaces mindfulness. The patterns that we think that we see in their behavior, only exists in our perception of them. This does not mean that seeing patterns is not useful. Sometime it is. We should never, however, confuse our perception of patterns for absolute fact or truth. This creates the opportunity to misjudge. But often we are too quick to see the pattern and not so quick to see what is actually happening. The patterns become a habit of our thinking that distorts our vision of a moment that has never happened before. Mindfulness avoids this sort of distorted thinking.
The worse thing that comes from habitual perception or superstitious thinking is that we react in a pre-processed way instead of in a manner appropriate to the moment. We react to something that we have experienced in the past instead of what is happening now. We essentially become robots executing a series of automated, knee-jerk reactions. This blinds us to the possibility of thinking through a situation. "You know how my boss is ...." "He does this; it means that; I hide under my desk; he goes away ...." Rats can do this. There is no need to be human at all.
So why do we tune out so much? Not everything that happens in the course of our day is pleasant. We confront breakdowns, surprises and the negative emotions of people around us. We are never quite sure what is going to pop up and scare us, anger us or disappoint us next. As a consequence, we create mental distance from our environment and from the people in that environment as an emotional buffer. In fact, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is by definition a detachment from reality caused by mind seeking to isolate itself from emotionally stressful or painful events. Children who are frequently criticized, for example, learn to put a barrier of fog between them and the person who is making them sad by criticizing them. Many of us frequently choose to be oblivious rather than sad or angry. So we tune out.
But the cost of this disconnection is high. If we do not relate to what is actually happening, we lose control of our ability to respond effectively. We either miss the import of what is happening and give a disconnected response, or we react out of habit and help create the same old outcome that seems to have us trapped in an endless cycle of disappointing results. In short, processing an experience rather than relating to it in real-time seriously limits our power in the moment in favor of a pre-processed or uncontrolled outcome. This makes life feel like an accident much of the time.
The advantage of encouraging mindfulness as an organizational virtue is that if the entire culture adopts the practice, each individual creates fewer and fewer startling responses to events as they unfold. Team members do not lose their temper when breakdowns occur. Everyone is attentive and supportive of team members who are in difficulty. The tension that can exist in a lesser organized community is reduced making it easier and easier for individuals to step out of their protective fog and be present to each other and what is happening. Mindfulness makes communities emotionally safer for everyone.
Consider what it would be like to be fully aware of the world around you? Would you really drink out of a plastic water bottle knowing that it will still be on the planet ten thousand years ago or would using a recyclable glass bottle become worth the effort to use? Do you really want to be rude to a grocery clerk knowing that your anger will infect her and the next ten people in line? To be aware of the world exactly as it is and exactly as it is not gives you the power to interact with it on purpose, making your intention precisely felt on the earth for thousands of years. But what intention will you inject into this world?
Hence, mindfulness gives us the awareness of when, where and how to bring your intentions to life.
Compassion. Most people are not aware of what compassion really is. "Compassion" comes from the Latin word compati meaning "to suffer with". This same Latin root makes up the word "compatible" meaning "to exist without conflict". The idea here is not to have pity, to feel bad, to feel elated or to feel warm and fuzzy. To have compassion means fully aware of the condition of another. You might notice that in order to be continually aware of the condition of others, you have to have mindfulness. This is why compassion is the third virtue and not first or second. Until you actually pay attention to the people around you, you cannot be aware of what their condition is -- in their experience of it (to suffer with as opposed to because of or instead of). Compassion is awareness, not a feeling, though having a clear awareness of a person's condition can cause one to have feelings through the human capacity for empathy.
Empathy means to have the ability to vicariously experience the feelings, thoughts, perspectives or attitudes of another person. Sometimes when we become intensely aware of the condition of another, we experience our own emotional response to their condition and that often mimics their own emotional response. We have a sense of becoming them. This creates a potentially powerful state of collective consciousness and has driven human kind through much of its social evolution. Empathy allows us access a much broader experience than just what happens to us on our own. Compassion and empathy give us consider insight into what people need to be well, but also to be capable of unleashing their greatest potential contribution to the tribe.
The word “compassion” comes with considerable moral and even spiritual baggage. The word is used (and misused) often and has no small measure of emotional implication. For these reasons, we often do not see compassion for what it really is and what it really does in our consciousness.
Compassion opens the door for us to help others and act as a group. The power of this awareness cannot be underestimated. It is through compassion that we help one another, unify and create the one out of many thereby increasing human capability exponentially. It is how we take harm out of families, communities, companies and the world. It is the fundamental building block of complex communities and the simplest human relationship. It is compassion that causes a mother to feed her child, a neighborhood to confront crime and a company to concern itself with the welfare of its people.
Because compassion allows us to expand our awareness beyond our own experience, it gives us access to a “collective consciousness” that can penetrate a much broader spectrum of situational awareness. We can begin to manage individual and organizational well-being from the conscious space of compassion so that our decisions are always tending toward creating benefit. Through compassion we have become an “us” or a “we” instead of me and this is a far more powerful state awareness. By being able to expand our consciousness to “us” we have the ability to coordinate thinking and action to orchestrate a tribe instead of just ourselves. Compassion is a truly powerful state of mind.
The beauty of compassion is that it allows us to perceive the world through a variety of points of view and because it is biased in favor of the well-being of all, it allows us to make decisions that facilitate the whole. It is the essential building block of leadership consciousness. In the age of conventional capitalism wherein the only interest that really matters is the owners or investors of an organization, we have lost track that human collective activity is based in mutual benefit. No one joins a tribe to sacrifice everything for a privileged few. We join tribes and organizations to personally reap the benefits of economy of scale, efficiency, and orchestrated specialization. No one joins a group to be a slave or a peasant. As our laws have increasingly protected investors in companies from fraud and abuse so as to encourage investment, we have created the consequence, of devaluing other stakeholders. The incentive of the individual to join a business organization is often diminished because the real value exchange between the company and the employee has become increasingly one-sided. This has created considerable wealth for a very small minority and no small measure of hostility among the majority of people who have found themselves powerless in business relationships. Hostility creates enormous inefficiency in organizations.
Compassion also causes certain side effects. A word of caution should be spoken here: compassion without authenticity is manipulation and no good comes from it in the long-haul. The side of effects of compassion only arise from the real thing and, as such, there is no way to fake your way to the side effects without the real cause. Some of these include, appreciation, fealty, loyalty, love and devotion. These are very strong human emotions that bind people into invincible tribes. To know that your teammates have your back and that you have theirs because you are acutely aware of their condition and are acting in concert with their interests creates perhaps the strongest bond among people that exists. You cannot buy this. You can only create it by becoming aware and giving a damn.
This is why we say that the first duty of every employee is to be aware and to care. This applies to teammates, customers, vendors, members of the community at large and to the world as a whole. A person who does not see the whole picture, does not see the picture at all. It is therefore far easier to make compassion a fundamental operating practice at home, at work and in the world because without it, you are just taking up space.
Many people take the attitudes imparted to them by their business culture home with them. This can have varied results. If the culture is nurturing, then an employee will take that home. Too often, the culture is competitive and demanding and that is what is served to spouses and children at the dinner table. Companies need to be aware of what attitudes they develop in their employees and the impact that those attitudes have in the outside world. Some companies have caused high divorce rates among their employees and paid the price for it by having employees so distracted by personal tragedy that they cannot do their jobs well. It is in a company's interest to have its employees live happy lives and it can do many things beyond mere compensation to help them create happiness for themselves. This does not distract from the intentions, duties or actions of the enterprise, but are easily woven into the fabric of any company culture and ultimately creates prosperity for all.
If an organization, however, understands and holds compassion as an operating virtue, it becomes aware of the needs of its people. It becomes aware of the needs of its strategic partners, customers and other stakeholders as well and can create an operating environment that builds and harnesses for use considerable enthusiastic participation in every endeavor by hits entire human community.
Hence, in order to be truly useful, one must learn how to be aware and then become aware of others.
Empathy means to have the ability to vicariously experience the feelings, thoughts, perspectives or attitudes of another person. Sometimes when we become intensely aware of the condition of another, we experience our own emotional response to their condition and that often mimics their own emotional response. We have a sense of becoming them. This creates a potentially powerful state of collective consciousness and has driven human kind through much of its social evolution. Empathy allows us access a much broader experience than just what happens to us on our own. Compassion and empathy give us consider insight into what people need to be well, but also to be capable of unleashing their greatest potential contribution to the tribe.
The word “compassion” comes with considerable moral and even spiritual baggage. The word is used (and misused) often and has no small measure of emotional implication. For these reasons, we often do not see compassion for what it really is and what it really does in our consciousness.
Compassion opens the door for us to help others and act as a group. The power of this awareness cannot be underestimated. It is through compassion that we help one another, unify and create the one out of many thereby increasing human capability exponentially. It is how we take harm out of families, communities, companies and the world. It is the fundamental building block of complex communities and the simplest human relationship. It is compassion that causes a mother to feed her child, a neighborhood to confront crime and a company to concern itself with the welfare of its people.
Because compassion allows us to expand our awareness beyond our own experience, it gives us access to a “collective consciousness” that can penetrate a much broader spectrum of situational awareness. We can begin to manage individual and organizational well-being from the conscious space of compassion so that our decisions are always tending toward creating benefit. Through compassion we have become an “us” or a “we” instead of me and this is a far more powerful state awareness. By being able to expand our consciousness to “us” we have the ability to coordinate thinking and action to orchestrate a tribe instead of just ourselves. Compassion is a truly powerful state of mind.
The beauty of compassion is that it allows us to perceive the world through a variety of points of view and because it is biased in favor of the well-being of all, it allows us to make decisions that facilitate the whole. It is the essential building block of leadership consciousness. In the age of conventional capitalism wherein the only interest that really matters is the owners or investors of an organization, we have lost track that human collective activity is based in mutual benefit. No one joins a tribe to sacrifice everything for a privileged few. We join tribes and organizations to personally reap the benefits of economy of scale, efficiency, and orchestrated specialization. No one joins a group to be a slave or a peasant. As our laws have increasingly protected investors in companies from fraud and abuse so as to encourage investment, we have created the consequence, of devaluing other stakeholders. The incentive of the individual to join a business organization is often diminished because the real value exchange between the company and the employee has become increasingly one-sided. This has created considerable wealth for a very small minority and no small measure of hostility among the majority of people who have found themselves powerless in business relationships. Hostility creates enormous inefficiency in organizations.
Compassion also causes certain side effects. A word of caution should be spoken here: compassion without authenticity is manipulation and no good comes from it in the long-haul. The side of effects of compassion only arise from the real thing and, as such, there is no way to fake your way to the side effects without the real cause. Some of these include, appreciation, fealty, loyalty, love and devotion. These are very strong human emotions that bind people into invincible tribes. To know that your teammates have your back and that you have theirs because you are acutely aware of their condition and are acting in concert with their interests creates perhaps the strongest bond among people that exists. You cannot buy this. You can only create it by becoming aware and giving a damn.
This is why we say that the first duty of every employee is to be aware and to care. This applies to teammates, customers, vendors, members of the community at large and to the world as a whole. A person who does not see the whole picture, does not see the picture at all. It is therefore far easier to make compassion a fundamental operating practice at home, at work and in the world because without it, you are just taking up space.
Many people take the attitudes imparted to them by their business culture home with them. This can have varied results. If the culture is nurturing, then an employee will take that home. Too often, the culture is competitive and demanding and that is what is served to spouses and children at the dinner table. Companies need to be aware of what attitudes they develop in their employees and the impact that those attitudes have in the outside world. Some companies have caused high divorce rates among their employees and paid the price for it by having employees so distracted by personal tragedy that they cannot do their jobs well. It is in a company's interest to have its employees live happy lives and it can do many things beyond mere compensation to help them create happiness for themselves. This does not distract from the intentions, duties or actions of the enterprise, but are easily woven into the fabric of any company culture and ultimately creates prosperity for all.
If an organization, however, understands and holds compassion as an operating virtue, it becomes aware of the needs of its people. It becomes aware of the needs of its strategic partners, customers and other stakeholders as well and can create an operating environment that builds and harnesses for use considerable enthusiastic participation in every endeavor by hits entire human community.
Hence, in order to be truly useful, one must learn how to be aware and then become aware of others.
Skillfulness. Usefulness, mindfulness and compassion are not abstract qualities of an even more abstract human character -- they are skills. In other words, each virtue can be deliberately cultivated in the company culture and the individual so that they become readily accessible and part of the expression of daily living for both entity and person. The great thing about the human mind is that it can be changed. We do it every day. So why not change it by design and create a manner of thinking that actually nurtures the potential of both entity and person?
Most companies train their employees in a variety of ways. An employee might be taught how to operate a machine or calculate a financial process. Many companies consider work-related tasks to be the limit to which they can train their people, but in doing so ignore some incredibly important skills. Sometimes this is because laws and traditions regarding "spiritual" matters are considered taboo in the workplace. This is probably appropriate. The function of the human mind, however, is not a spiritual matter. It is the same as teaching any other skill. To develop these skill, like any other, simply requires demonstration of a technique and practice.
Traditional business skills are very important too and a company should always seek to develop everyone in the company by growing their skill sets whether they are practical business skills or mental refinements like mindfulness.
For years, businesses have claimed that they need growth in order to prosper. But what kind of growth? At some point, there are only so many windows and shades to make and sell. There is only so much sand with which to make glass and only so much industrial damage that the earth can take. But that does not mean that the company cannot grow the minds of its people without limit. Profit, for example, can be created by selling and making more. It can also be created by selling and making less albeit in a more cost-effective way. A company that encourages skills that lead to innovation will be able to create prosperity at will and even re-invent what prosperity is, if need be.
A company, therefore, should make training and development its most important cultural priority -- if for no better reason than it keeps employees from becoming bored. Training and development costs little and the returns are potentially limitless.
The skill sets that a company takes on should be thoughtfully considered. It should go beyond widget design and production and should include the redesign and enrichment of the individual employee of the company. A company that does not consistently grow the minds of its people will eventually come to a point that it either stops growing or has to get new, more skillful people. While everyone benefits from the addition of smart, skillful and motivated people to the tribe, it is wasteful to ignore the growth potential of existing members.
It does not occur to the average person that the quality of life is not so much a function of what you have, but rather, it is mostly a function of the skills you possess. A pianist always gets to hear beautiful music and carpenter can always live in a fine house. Provided that they have the basic tools of their respective trades, wealth does not have much to do with it. Likewise, a person who is skillful at mindfulness and compassion always has the ability to have a happy marriage, mentally healthy children and great friendships. There is no luck involved. It is purely a question of skill. Although, it must be said, that where relationships are concerned, skillfulness in a single person may not be enough. Therefore, a noble company holds the intention that its entire team should develop skill in building effective relationships.
Hence, what puts mindfulness and compassion in the real world is skillfulness.
Most companies train their employees in a variety of ways. An employee might be taught how to operate a machine or calculate a financial process. Many companies consider work-related tasks to be the limit to which they can train their people, but in doing so ignore some incredibly important skills. Sometimes this is because laws and traditions regarding "spiritual" matters are considered taboo in the workplace. This is probably appropriate. The function of the human mind, however, is not a spiritual matter. It is the same as teaching any other skill. To develop these skill, like any other, simply requires demonstration of a technique and practice.
Traditional business skills are very important too and a company should always seek to develop everyone in the company by growing their skill sets whether they are practical business skills or mental refinements like mindfulness.
For years, businesses have claimed that they need growth in order to prosper. But what kind of growth? At some point, there are only so many windows and shades to make and sell. There is only so much sand with which to make glass and only so much industrial damage that the earth can take. But that does not mean that the company cannot grow the minds of its people without limit. Profit, for example, can be created by selling and making more. It can also be created by selling and making less albeit in a more cost-effective way. A company that encourages skills that lead to innovation will be able to create prosperity at will and even re-invent what prosperity is, if need be.
A company, therefore, should make training and development its most important cultural priority -- if for no better reason than it keeps employees from becoming bored. Training and development costs little and the returns are potentially limitless.
The skill sets that a company takes on should be thoughtfully considered. It should go beyond widget design and production and should include the redesign and enrichment of the individual employee of the company. A company that does not consistently grow the minds of its people will eventually come to a point that it either stops growing or has to get new, more skillful people. While everyone benefits from the addition of smart, skillful and motivated people to the tribe, it is wasteful to ignore the growth potential of existing members.
It does not occur to the average person that the quality of life is not so much a function of what you have, but rather, it is mostly a function of the skills you possess. A pianist always gets to hear beautiful music and carpenter can always live in a fine house. Provided that they have the basic tools of their respective trades, wealth does not have much to do with it. Likewise, a person who is skillful at mindfulness and compassion always has the ability to have a happy marriage, mentally healthy children and great friendships. There is no luck involved. It is purely a question of skill. Although, it must be said, that where relationships are concerned, skillfulness in a single person may not be enough. Therefore, a noble company holds the intention that its entire team should develop skill in building effective relationships.
Hence, what puts mindfulness and compassion in the real world is skillfulness.
Grace. Grace is a highly superstitionalized word largely due to its association over the past two millennia with certain religions. The word actually comes from the Latin "gratia" meaning "to favor, hold in esteem or to find pleasing". It is this Latin root that finds its way into the Spanish "gracias" and the Italian word "grazie", in English, "thank you", or more directly translated," it's pleasing".
What the word "grace" means is not as important as what it does. When we say that a person has done an "act of grace" what we mean is that they have chosen to relate to a thing or event and be pleased by it whether that was their natural inclination or not. An act of grace, therefore, is the human power to make right that which could otherwise be found offensive or ugly. This is purely transformational. It is a nearly magical mental power. The power to cause beauty, calmness, relationedness, love, kindness or any other human condition in virtually any set of circumstances. This is perhaps why so many of the world's religions revere grace. Grace is an incredibly powerful human act.
In a more specific sense, graciousness is the state of being kind or at peace in the face of whatever chaos can throw at you. It should not be confused with denial or delusion. One sees the thing or event exactly as it is, but chooses to relate to it with acceptance, tolerance and even joy. To be gracious requires one's mind to be free from clinging to strong negative emotions like envy, hate or anger. It requires one to have a state of mind that does not cling to egotistical concerns such as offensiveness or embarrassment. It requires the clarity of mind to see thing and circumstances for what they are, without allowing our emotions or imagination make too muc of them. It requires the ability to empty your mind of petty self-concern to give to the moment what is needed rather than what is wanted. Grace is often an act of great compassion sourced in deep understanding.
Most importantly, grace grants being. In other words, grace is an act of generosity that declares a thing or event to be seen as pleasing despite the circumstances. It often requires the ability to mentally penetrate deep behind the appearance of something to appreciate its real essence.
Grace is not something you are born with or without. It is a choice. The ability to make this choice requires skill. It requires the ability to see clearly into situations, to know one's self without delusion and to choose to create beauty no matter what. Grace often emerges only after one has cleared her mind of self-concern or distraction. But because it is a skill, it can be taught and because it can be taught it should be part of the training regimen for every company.
Grace is most useful under fire. It diffuses negative emotions like anger and can completely transform outcomes of even the most tense and contentious situations. It is an operating practice that empowers teams and business relationships and does wonders for relationships at home.
In its most basic form, grace starts with the art of being with what is so without concocting a judgment about it. This frees one up to choose to interpret the thing or event as something useful instead of something detrimental. An angry co-worker can be transformed from "enemy" to "frustrated" by single act of grace. This allows one the freedom of mind to engage with the person mindfully and possibly with compassion. By changing interpretations, one grants a different being to the co-worker and then relates to them from a much more useful place.
Hence, grace is a purely creative power made possible by mindfulness, compassion and skillfulness to enable the gracious to cause the world to be worthy of kindness and assistance even in the most difficult of circumstances.
What the word "grace" means is not as important as what it does. When we say that a person has done an "act of grace" what we mean is that they have chosen to relate to a thing or event and be pleased by it whether that was their natural inclination or not. An act of grace, therefore, is the human power to make right that which could otherwise be found offensive or ugly. This is purely transformational. It is a nearly magical mental power. The power to cause beauty, calmness, relationedness, love, kindness or any other human condition in virtually any set of circumstances. This is perhaps why so many of the world's religions revere grace. Grace is an incredibly powerful human act.
In a more specific sense, graciousness is the state of being kind or at peace in the face of whatever chaos can throw at you. It should not be confused with denial or delusion. One sees the thing or event exactly as it is, but chooses to relate to it with acceptance, tolerance and even joy. To be gracious requires one's mind to be free from clinging to strong negative emotions like envy, hate or anger. It requires one to have a state of mind that does not cling to egotistical concerns such as offensiveness or embarrassment. It requires the clarity of mind to see thing and circumstances for what they are, without allowing our emotions or imagination make too muc of them. It requires the ability to empty your mind of petty self-concern to give to the moment what is needed rather than what is wanted. Grace is often an act of great compassion sourced in deep understanding.
Most importantly, grace grants being. In other words, grace is an act of generosity that declares a thing or event to be seen as pleasing despite the circumstances. It often requires the ability to mentally penetrate deep behind the appearance of something to appreciate its real essence.
Grace is not something you are born with or without. It is a choice. The ability to make this choice requires skill. It requires the ability to see clearly into situations, to know one's self without delusion and to choose to create beauty no matter what. Grace often emerges only after one has cleared her mind of self-concern or distraction. But because it is a skill, it can be taught and because it can be taught it should be part of the training regimen for every company.
Grace is most useful under fire. It diffuses negative emotions like anger and can completely transform outcomes of even the most tense and contentious situations. It is an operating practice that empowers teams and business relationships and does wonders for relationships at home.
In its most basic form, grace starts with the art of being with what is so without concocting a judgment about it. This frees one up to choose to interpret the thing or event as something useful instead of something detrimental. An angry co-worker can be transformed from "enemy" to "frustrated" by single act of grace. This allows one the freedom of mind to engage with the person mindfully and possibly with compassion. By changing interpretations, one grants a different being to the co-worker and then relates to them from a much more useful place.
Hence, grace is a purely creative power made possible by mindfulness, compassion and skillfulness to enable the gracious to cause the world to be worthy of kindness and assistance even in the most difficult of circumstances.
Fairness. There are a variety of definitions for the word "fairness" and it has several legitimate meanings. One meaning is impartiality. We believe that fairness often depends on the impartial consideration of matters in contention. Another meaning is "equanimity" or balanced thinking sometimes referred to as "even mindedness". Yet another meaning is "conformity to truth, fact or reason". The truth is that "fairness" can be a very subjective and arbitrary term.For our purposes, "fairness" is the maintenance of integrity in our relationships, in our customs, habits and business practices. On the level of relationship, fairness looks like treating people in a fashion consistent with a specific set of predetermined principles. These principles have the effect of setting the expectations of relationships, but setting expectations are lone are not enough. We could train people to expect and tolerate abuse and it might help them reduce the level of emotional upset caused by this type of relationship, but it would not ultimately create the conditions of personal fulfillment that unleash human potential. For our purposes here, we say that the declared principles of relationship are:
Fairness is not something that a company takes on because it is politically correct or makes people feel warm and fuzzy as a covert motivation to entice them to work harder. It is the fundamental tool used to maintain integrity in any community and creates stability and predictability in tribes.
It is important to remember that every action creates a consequence. Every word creates a perception. If we do not administer our actions and words with fairness, we will deviate from our intention and, in short order, find ourselves in complete chaos. Failing to maintain integrity through fairness, slowly destroys a community by first reducing its principles to a smoking pile of cynical lies. A company that does not maintain its promises is doomed. A person in the company who does not keep his word becomes an outcast.
Hence, fairness establishes the rhythm of our tribe to ensure that what it can do, and does do, stays true to its intentions and keeps its word un-degraded.
- integrity - that we will adhere to our intentional design, promises and principles to make them take form in real life even it has become inconvenient for us to have it be so.
- compassion - that we will look at others as if they were ourselves and view their situation as if it were important to us.
- helpfulness - that it is not good enough to merely tolerate with politeness harmful or disruptive conditions, but rather, every member of the company has an affirmative duty to "come when called" to the aid of a teammate or positively impact any given moment. Letting it slide doesn't happen in the noble company.
- honesty - that we will reveal what is so, as-is, without manipulating the facts to distort what is so in order to create advantage for ourselves.
- authenticity - that will reveal how we have interpreted what is so in order that others may fully appreciate our point of view even if such a point of view is unpopular or jaded.
Fairness is not something that a company takes on because it is politically correct or makes people feel warm and fuzzy as a covert motivation to entice them to work harder. It is the fundamental tool used to maintain integrity in any community and creates stability and predictability in tribes.
It is important to remember that every action creates a consequence. Every word creates a perception. If we do not administer our actions and words with fairness, we will deviate from our intention and, in short order, find ourselves in complete chaos. Failing to maintain integrity through fairness, slowly destroys a community by first reducing its principles to a smoking pile of cynical lies. A company that does not maintain its promises is doomed. A person in the company who does not keep his word becomes an outcast.
Hence, fairness establishes the rhythm of our tribe to ensure that what it can do, and does do, stays true to its intentions and keeps its word un-degraded.
Resoluteness. It used to be said among the samurai that in order to be an enlightened warrior one had to have a "resolute acceptance of death". What was meant by this is that one cannot be effective in battle if he seeks to protect his own life. Hence, by accepting that death is imminent and welcomed, one could stay focused on the second-by-second action of the fight without being distracted by fear or the thought of pending doom.
It is often difficult to "stay in the moment", especially under stress. Emotions leap into our consciousness like partridges under foot. Thoughts of failure so completely fill our mind with foreboding that we cannot be present to what is actually happening. This is a very poor way to undertake any kind of challenge.
Nobility-fueled companies are high-performance environments. That means that we expect our teams to accomplish exceptional results under difficult circumstances, when necessary. It also means that we expect outstanding failures from time to time.
A person acting resolutely gives her all. There is no trying. There is only doing. A person who gives their all is absolutely blameless. They either succeed or fail. Both success and failure are equally acceptable results provided that there was total effort. There is nothing to be said about one's effort because it was maximum -- regardless of the outcome. It is our custom to examine the outcome to see what we can learn from it. Sometimes we notice skillfulness and acknowledge it and pass it on to other teammates. Sometimes we notice failure and we then seek to create a way around it to create success. Either way it is just what is so and what there is to manage.
Because we practice mindfulness, there is no hope of looking good or concealing those things that we did not accomplish because we quit or did not keep our word. Everyone will see through the circumstances to the truth of the matter. Because we practice compassion and fairness no one will be humiliated, even if they quit or ignored their promise, but because we are resolute, we will not let it slide either. In short, we are devoted to what is so, whether it benefits us or not. We are devoted to giving our best effort even if that leads to absolute failure. We are devoted to graciously coming to the aid of our teammates to cause what we said shall be and we will stand together whether we are successful or get wiped off the face of the earth.
These are not merely the tenets of a company culture, but an entire way of life that we bring not only to the domain of the business but into our communities, families and circle of friends. It is what the world can count on from us and what we can count on from each other. It is only hokey and cynical if we say it is and utterly magnificent if we allow ourselves to transcend our doubt and commit ourselves to it.
We are self-made, self-determined and the first, last and only ones accountable for creating this enterprise, our families and ourselves -- because we say so.
Hence, all things rest, in the end, on our resoluteness, our ability to remove doubt and cynicism from our minds, to do what we said we would do in face of a universe that is most indifferent to our cause.
It is often difficult to "stay in the moment", especially under stress. Emotions leap into our consciousness like partridges under foot. Thoughts of failure so completely fill our mind with foreboding that we cannot be present to what is actually happening. This is a very poor way to undertake any kind of challenge.
Nobility-fueled companies are high-performance environments. That means that we expect our teams to accomplish exceptional results under difficult circumstances, when necessary. It also means that we expect outstanding failures from time to time.
A person acting resolutely gives her all. There is no trying. There is only doing. A person who gives their all is absolutely blameless. They either succeed or fail. Both success and failure are equally acceptable results provided that there was total effort. There is nothing to be said about one's effort because it was maximum -- regardless of the outcome. It is our custom to examine the outcome to see what we can learn from it. Sometimes we notice skillfulness and acknowledge it and pass it on to other teammates. Sometimes we notice failure and we then seek to create a way around it to create success. Either way it is just what is so and what there is to manage.
Because we practice mindfulness, there is no hope of looking good or concealing those things that we did not accomplish because we quit or did not keep our word. Everyone will see through the circumstances to the truth of the matter. Because we practice compassion and fairness no one will be humiliated, even if they quit or ignored their promise, but because we are resolute, we will not let it slide either. In short, we are devoted to what is so, whether it benefits us or not. We are devoted to giving our best effort even if that leads to absolute failure. We are devoted to graciously coming to the aid of our teammates to cause what we said shall be and we will stand together whether we are successful or get wiped off the face of the earth.
These are not merely the tenets of a company culture, but an entire way of life that we bring not only to the domain of the business but into our communities, families and circle of friends. It is what the world can count on from us and what we can count on from each other. It is only hokey and cynical if we say it is and utterly magnificent if we allow ourselves to transcend our doubt and commit ourselves to it.
We are self-made, self-determined and the first, last and only ones accountable for creating this enterprise, our families and ourselves -- because we say so.
Hence, all things rest, in the end, on our resoluteness, our ability to remove doubt and cynicism from our minds, to do what we said we would do in face of a universe that is most indifferent to our cause.