“Fish smells from the head” – Vietnamese proverb.

Therefore, if our society stinks, chances are today’s leaders have gaps in integrity and honesty.

Most people cannot imagine Spirituality and Leadership mentioned in the same breath. To many this is combining two entirely unrelated concepts. Yet, the level of our intelligence and our ability to think and analyze and the fact that the human mind’s base is compassion and goodness, this combination of unlikely bedfellows may create the new story we need for the future.

Father Thomas Berry, the late eminent ecologist said in his book Evening Thoughts; “The old story has ended and we are not quite sure what this new story is all about”.

Indeed the old story has ended. Who would have imagined General Motors, a pillar of the United States of America – ‘what was good for GM was good for the US’ – would go down without much of a whimper. The economic and environmental devastation we have seen in the last eighteen months alone is sufficient for us to realize that we certainly need a new story.

The old story is over five hundred years of male dominated leadership based on left brained, linear thinking. This has certainly given a certain part of the world material prosperity, but at what cost ?

The others live in poverty, without access to justice in a world teetering on a climate catastrophe which is a sad reflection on the way the world has been led over that period.

In the old story only a few dominate like the oil, arms and pharmaceutical industries. Domination requires subjugation and these industries thrive on it. All these three have been useful in the old story, but in the new story they will have to transform.

The new story is described as High Touch and High Concept.

High Touch is about finding purpose and meaning to life, eliciting joy in others and being content.

High Concept is about detecting new patterns and opportunities and creating artistic and emotional beauty. Unrelated ideas are brought together to form something new.

This is spirituality. In the new story spirituality is the foundation for Authentic Leadership.

So, how can we marry spirituality with leadership ?. The only way is to focus on self through a life of inquiry and mindfulness.

What is Spirituality?

Let us explore this further. What does spirituality mean ?. To me, spirituality is about integrity. It helps us to find meaning in life, provides a foundation of our values to guide us in the way we behave with self, others and the world around us.

Spirituality is a way of facilitating a dialogue between reason and emotion, between mind and body. This provides a base for growth and transformation from our ego centered material self to an active, unifying, meaning-giving centre.

Spirituality is about a transpersonal vision of goodness, beauty, perfection, generosity, graciousness, and sacrifice. It hinges on dignity for self and others and the foundation is true integrity. Love and compassion is its cornerstone.

In contrast, our education system has shaped us to be more left brained, analytical, rational and target oriented. Religion which is supposed to teach us about spirituality has externalized it and handed over responsibility to an outside entity. We could do anything and ask for forgiveness, but the damage has been done to humanity. There is no focus on the individual responsibility and based on moral values. Religion focuses more on ritual and not personal inquiry and meaning to life. So we misconstrue it to worshiping external deities and statues rather than focusing on self, where our spirituality resides.

If we are to make a lasting transformation in individual behavior, we have to begin with education.

To redesign our education system we have to get away from the traditional Cartesian mind – matter divide which has been the focus of our global education system for the last 500 years. This system promotes IQ based rational, target based learning. It has done well to develop science and technologies to make some of our lives comfortable. Yet, this is the system that has the entire planet on the edge now, with the social challenges of a divided world of ‘haves and have nots’, steeped in insecurity, fear and violence for the ‘have nots’ and the environmental challenges we all face – both the rich and poor. Only a few fortunate of the 6 billion people on this earth live life of dignity for now. The disparity is outrageous, when one thinks that 80% of the world’s wealth is held by a mere 5%. Something has to give and we may lose it all.

Spirituality and education

It is now universally accepted that the focus on the breath and meditation is a way to rid of the ego. Ego clouds our perceptions as it gives us deceptive messages about our sensory encounters. It inflates our self worth and is driven by fear. Meditation focuses our mind to see things clearer as they are and not clouded by the ego centered self importance.

Now there is scientific research done at the W.M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior, University of Wisconsin, USA using electroencephalogram (EEG) technology proving that meditators have an higher gamma activity (25 – 40Hz frequency in neural oscillations) and increased synchronization across the entire brain (all the neurons in the body).

Our entire body makes up the mind, but there are neuron concentrations in the brain, heart and stomach areas. When these neurons are not synchronized our thinking (brain), emotions (heart) and intuition (stomach) are not aligned and in balance. This creates stress as we are not able to see and comprehend the world and people around clearly. This skillful center will only come to us with neural synchronicity. When there is alignment integrating the mind there is confidence from clearer perception of the realities.

Neural synchronicity leads to better understanding of self and the surrounding world which takes away fear. When fear is taken away, we become more skillful and centered to deal with the suffering that life is. We do not need the ego to protect us. This will help us to become inquiring and mindful and to follow a path of moderation.

Teach them young

As such, meditation, yoga and martial arts as a practice should be introduced to children from a young age in schools. It will center them and provide balance that will empower them, see other beings and nature around as collaborators rather than adversaries. Unconditional loving-kindness and compassion, the natural way of our being will be highlighted and they will become fearless about suffering and change. They will be more creative to complement the logical left brain and emotionally better balanced through a foundation of spirituality.

There will be a less need for specialization. Inquiry and learning will be more holistic and broad based. High Touch and High Concept will become a way of life. Art, poetry, free flow writing and music along with the sciences can become mainstream in education. Educators will also find a way to simplify and teach quantum physics to show the uncertainties of the world and the results of any experiment is shaped by the experimenter’s own experiences, energy and perception.

Seeing the world clearly will enable the realization of the folly of a world dominated by the oil industry, protected by a weapons industry making puppets out of politicians and controlled by a handful of people. Emotional and spiritual intelligence will enable them to see that and IQ based world founded on reductionist science is not sustainable. Fearlessness coupled with benevolence will give them the courage to get together to act against these corrupt, power hungry, ego centered forces not with violence but with skillful compassion. Together it will be easier to convince those few Narcissists to see the folly of their ways through skillful dialogue and crucial conversations. It will set them free from fear, the high walls and the guards that are needed to protect them and their wealth.

We have failed our children

All I know is our generation and the many previous ones have failed our children. The least we could do is to equip them to clean up this mess, to help them see clearly who the real adversaries are and that they are not out there but within us first, our selfish ego centered natures have to be tamed first. This focus on self will help us to live and love in this world differently.

I have faith and confidence in humanity as benevolence and compassion pervades the mind as a way of our being. So, the onus is on us now to put a mirror on ourselves to change our own thinking and behavior from the IQ base to integrate emotional intelligence and to acknowledge our spirituality so we really find some meaning to our life. This meaning just may give the leadership capability to our children for a better chance at survival.

Fish does smell from the head, so let us illuminate this head to emanate a scent of loving kindness and compassion to all beings and nature around us.

It is necessary to realize that technology itself is not the cause of our problem of [not having enough] time.  Its influence on our lives is a result, not a cause — the result of an unseen accelerating process taking place in ourselves, in our inner being.  Whether we point to the effect of communication technology (such as e-mail) with its tyranny of instant communication; or to the computerization, and therefore the mentalization of so many human activities that previously required at least some participation of our physical presence; or to any of the other innumerable transformations of human life that are being brought about by the new technologies, the essential element to recognize is how much of what we call “progress” is accompanied by and measured by the fact that human beings need less and less conscious attention to perform their activities and lead their lives.

The real power of the faculty of attention, unknown to modern science, is one of the indispensable and most central measures of humanness — of the being of a man or a woman — and has been so understood, in many forms and symbols, at the heart of all great spiritual teaching of the world.  The effects of advancing technology, for all its material promise they offer the world (along with the dangers, of course) is but the most recent wave in a civilization that, without recognizing what it was doing, has placed the satisfaction of desire above the cultivation of being.

The deep meaning of many rules of conduct and more principles of the past — so many of which have been abandoned without our understanding their real roots in human nature — involved the cultivation and development of the uniquely human power of attention, its action in the body, heart and mind of man.  To be present, truly present, is to have conscious attention.  This capacity is the key to what it means to be human.

It is not, therefore, the rapidity of change as such that is the source of our problem of time.  It is the metaphysical fact that the being of man is diminishing.

–Jacob Needleman, in Time and the Soul

From Management Consulting News

In his first book, Free Agent Nation, Daniel Pink chronicled the rise and impact of the new world of work. His recent book, A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age, takes us a step further to describe how to thrive in an outsourced, automated, and upside down world.

Pink is a contributing editor at Wired magazine. His articles on business and technology have appeared in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and Fast Company. He is popular speaker, and has provided analysis on television and radio broadcasts, including CNBC’s Power Lunch, ABC’s World News Tonight, and NPR’s Morning Edition.

MCNews talked to Pink about why consultants should embrace a whole new mind.

MCNews: You say we are in transition from the information age to the conceptual age. What does that mean, and how is the change manifesting itself?

Pink: Well, the scales are tipping away from what it used to take for people to get ahead—logical, linear, left-brain, and spreadsheet-type abilities—in favor of abilities like artistry, empathy, and big-picture thinking, which are becoming more valuable.

Left-brain skills are still absolutely necessary in our complex world. They’re just not sufficient anymore.

Left-brain skills are still absolutely necessary in our complex world. They’re just not sufficient anymore.

MCNews: Aren’t some industries, like advertising, built around conceptual, right-brain thinking?

Pink: Sure. Besides advertising, another example is the motion picture industry, which is about narrative, or story-telling. Increasingly, consumer products companies are also tapping into right-brain skills.

Procter & Gamble, for instance, is relying more and more on design. And Target is competing successfully against Wal-Mart, not on the left-brain dimension of price, but on the right-brain dimension of design. I’m surprised that more companies haven’t followed that lead.

MCNews: Are there companies that have made the transition to the conceptual age?

Pink: The grocery chain, Whole Foods, is an interesting example. The retail grocery industry is a low-margin, cutthroat business. And yet, Whole Foods exacts premium prices by appealing to customers using the right-brain sensibility of wholeness and the back stories of products as a differentiator.

The success of Whole Foods is phenomenal. The figures are impressive on every dimension—number of stores opened, revenue, profits, and stock price. In a business where the typical strategy is to go for economies of scale, cut costs, and eke out a tiny bit more of a margin, Whole Foods has taken a different tack.

The focus of Whole Foods is on the customer’s grocery shopping for the family as a holistic experience. It’s about wellness, and doing something good for the world on a small scale. That approach may seem touchy-feely, but Whole Foods is outperforming every other grocery chain in America.

MCNews: Is this trend finding its way into traditional, left-brained businesses?

Pink: Yes. At a recent shareholders’ meeting, GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said, “What we’ve got at GM now is a general comprehension that you can’t run this business by the left, intellectual, analytical side of the brain. You have to have a lot of right side, creative input. We are in the arts and entertainment business, and we’re putting a huge emphasis on world-class design.”

That’s a 70-year-old former Marine saying we tried running the company in a left-brain way and it didn’t work. We have to start running it in a right-brain way. Lutz is a serious figure in the automotive industry. When GM is in the arts business, we’re all in the arts business.

MCNews: What’s the impact of the conceptual age on the workplace, particularly as it relates to the people you hire?

Pink: You want to hire people who have the kind of right-brain abilities that can’t be outsourced or automated, and that satisfy some of the nonmaterial needs of this abundant age.

If you peel that back, what you want is people who are intrinsically motivated. That is, they are doing what they love. And it tends to be right-brain activities that generate that kind of motivation.

For instance, people don’t become designers because they want to make a gazillion dollars, but because they love it. They’re almost compelled to do it. Same thing is true with story-telling and even empathy. These abilities are part of our nature—the things that we’re motivated to do, not for the extrinsic rewards, but for internal fulfillment, joy, and challenge.

Now it turns out happily enough that these abilities increasingly confer an economic advantage. So hire people who are intrinsically motivated. They will end up doing great work, and they display abilities that have enormous value in a world where so many other skills can be outsourced or digitized.

MCNews: But many companies fail to tap that part of their employees’ capabilities.

Pink: That’s right. Every weekend, I’m sure there are accountants in their garages painting water colors, or lawyers writing screenplays. But I doubt there is anybody with a day job as a sculptor who, for fun on the weekends, does other people’s taxes.

Many people went into the professions out of a sense of economic need, which made perfect sense. But maybe they weren’t naturally motivated in that direction. I see an increasing congruence between the talents that confer an advantage in labor markets and what people are intrinsically motivated to do.

MCNews: In the past, people “dropped out” of the corporate rat race to do what they really loved. Are you’re saying that doing what you love is the best way to reach your professional goals?

Pink: The counsel to do what you love is actually very hardheaded advice right now. It’s not just an idealistic notion. I think it’s the best way to get ahead today. And that was not necessarily true in 1950.

There’s a study—I think by Gartner—that shows fewer and fewer young people want to become computer programmers. Partly that’s a reaction to what they perceive to be labor market signals because they see so many stories about programming jobs going overseas.

But the other thing people are saying is that a lot of computer programming is fairly routine, or rote. People are, in some cases, willing to do routine work. If it generates a high income, people are willing to make that trade off.

But work that is routine has the potential for offshoring or automation. And so, people may be saying, it’s not that fun or creative to begin with, but it also doesn’t confer reliable rewards. What confers the greatest rewards and what we want to do anyway is the stuff that taps greater artistry, empathy, creativity, and big-picture thinking.

MCNews: Coming back to the workplace, if you’re operating a business in a conceptual age, what’s the best working environment to create for people so they stay with you?

Pink: You need to allow people a certain measure of autonomy to do great work but also hold them accountable. You’ve got to have deadlines and measures of accountability. You can’t just have a free-for-all where everyone sits around and paints all day and no one actually serves customers.

So, in general, promote autonomy and relinquish a measure of control. And to the extent it’s possible, create a context that allows people’s intrinsic motivation to flourish and that makes the work part of something larger than the individual.

Organizations that provide a sense of purpose, that connect individuals’ talents and aspirations to a larger goal are the ones that are going to succeed. You already see that in a remarkable way with a lot of companies. Google, for example, talks about wanting to do great things for the world even if it means sacrificing some short-term profits.

Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE, speaks about meaning and purpose. He says that the reason people want to work for GE is that they want to be about something larger than themselves.

MCNews: Has the shift to the conceptual changed how companies are organized?

Pink: Yes. I think we’re seeing the emergence of companies that you might call not-only-for-profit. They’re profit driven, but that’s not their only driving force. They want to be about something beyond making their quarterly numbers and returning wealth to shareholders.

This is different from the Ben & Jerry’s socially responsible kind of company. GE is making a monumental investment in green technologies in part because it’s a good thing, in part because it’s a lucrative thing. It’s the same with Google. Google’s mission is to democratize information and to put facts and knowledge at people’s fingertips. But that’s good business too.

Creating not-only-for-profit companies that plug people’s individual talents into a larger purpose becomes very important, particularly for baby boomers.

MCNews: The professional services business has traditionally been left-brained. What advice would you give professional services providers so their practices thrive in the conceptual age?

Pink: Well, they need to think through the same imperatives: Are you doing something that someone overseas can’t do cheaper, or that a computer can’t do faster? Does what you do satisfy some of the spiritual, emotional, or esthetic needs of our society?

I think that design has become a fundamental literacy in business, particularly for consultants.

Accountants, for example, may become this generation’s blue-collar workers. They are imperiled by cheaper workers overseas, and by the ability to put many accounting measures into a system of rules in a piece of software. Sarbanes Oxley is keeping accountants busy today. But once compliance with Sarbanes Oxley becomes automated, look out. Some consulting work, particularly research and entry-level, analytical tasks, could be outsourced. So success is not only about raw analytical abilities, having a high math SAT score, and going to a good business school.

Your ability to draw on right-brain skills has become much more important. For instance, I think that design has become a fundamental literacy in business, particularly for consultants. Whether it’s industrial design, graphic design, environmental design, or even fashion design, a good consultant must be literate in that now to go into an organization and offer useful advice.

And, again, I really do think that more companies, partly out of enlightened self-interest, are going to morph into not-only-for-profits. And they’re going to need guidance to change from left-brained companies in the pursuit of making those quarterly numbers to companies that are more right-brained—companies that can attract talented, intrinsically motivated people. That’s a tough transition for companies to make, and I think consultants could help with that.

MCNews: Have any consulting firms shifted their services to help clients succeed in the conceptual age?

Pink: Some of the big consultancies are branching into architectural consulting because the physical design of the workplace has productivity-enhancing potential. You can reengineer business processes and that can boost productivity, but the physical layout and design of office space turns out to have value as well. That requires a very different sensibility than streamlining the supply chain or decreasing the number of steps in the procurement process.

Workplace design is very hard to automate because it involves a physical presence, intuition, looking around, and getting a feel for things. That’s right-brain work.

MCNews: One last question: if you were going to give somebody just one piece of advice about how to be successful in this new age, what would it be?

Pink: The best career move is to find what you love to do, what you’re great at, and pursue that. I think you will be more valuable in the workforce. If you love accounting and you’re great at it, you’re going to be okay.

I worry about the folks who pursue careers because their parents, teachers, or spouses give them outdated advice and they’re dutifully marching into careers they don’t really care about because they think it’s the way to make money. Not only is that bad for their individual self-actualization but I think it’s a bad career move, too.

MCNews: Thanks. I really appreciate your time.

You can find out more about Daniel Pink, his books, and services at www.danpink.com.

Listen to ZenBiz Radio Wednesday Feb. 11th at 11:00 a.m. PST to explore these topics…

“Embodied Intelligence in the Face of Chaos and Uncertainty”

It sometimes seems that no matter where you look, the world appears to be falling to pieces.  Financial markets have plummeted. People are losing their jobs. The environment is wracked by immense shifts. Yet some people know, in their bones, that despite the turmoil and disarray, opportunities abound for them.  How do you find your silver lining in this mess?

Join Allan and Bruce as they interview Dr. Susan Bernstein, an expert in optimizing “embodied intelligence” in the face of chaos and uncertainty. She’ll discuss the four forces of panic and how to avoid t hem.

Bruce turns “The Stewart Report” this week over to a topic that most people would really rather not think about: how close might our society be to collapse? Bruce will explore when the tipping point of collapse could be reached – and how listeners can take a good hard look at their own communities and determine whether they’d be a safe place to be in a collapsing society!

Check it out on ZenBiz Radio Wednesday Feb. 11th at 11:00 a.m. pst. on Voice America : http://www.modavox.com/VoiceAmericaBusiness/