Company pillars must rest on trust and integrity
JOHN Mackay, the co-founder of the $14 billion (R182.3bn) Whole Foods empire, shattered the trust of his stakeholders when the company admitted overcharging its customers. Imagine my deep disappointment when I read that. I had admired him afar for several years as an exemplary conscious capitalist that I was for a time inconsolable. Trust can be destroyed so easily and quickly that restoring it requires an investment of time, energy and contrition.
We may never understand why things should be the way they are, or why the trusted renege the way that they do, but it’s enough to know that implicit trust and the well-defined actions of its people shape the moral muscle of a conscious organisation.
However, the relentless pressure of corporate life and the conflict between trust and our quest for more have made previously principled people trample and stand on the shoulders of others.
Impacted by the environment, the more fallible among us will sell out our erstwhile colleagues, often slip in judgment, bend the rules and lose our values for the need and greed of more money, more power and more status, leaving little room for conscious action. There are those, though, who are a breed apart that will somehow manage to maintain their values and display courage and resilience despite the grinding effort and struggle for a livelihood even under murky circumstances.
An extreme example of this is the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who was incarcerated in various concentration camps during World War II. By the end of the war his pregnant wife, both his parents and most of his family had been murdered.
Frankl observed and documented human behaviour within the concentration camps. He noticed that even though everyone was exposed to the same conditions in the same environment, some people would make it and some would not. When Frankl said that “some people would make it”, he was not talking about physical survival, he was talking about “making it” in terms of behaviour and maintaining humanity.
Nobility
Those who “made it” displayed tremendous spirit and nobility in the most ghastly of circumstances and made it as human beings, because some would give away their only slice of bread to someone else and suffer hunger themselves, while others would literally sell out their own brothers for a bit of food. This is the ultimate form of consciousness or unconsciousness in action.
The spectacle of human behaviour whether we are incarcerated, or in the 21st century corporate environment, is dependent on one’s level of consciousness. Those whose actions manifest greater good for all are not born remarkable or extraordinary. All they have done is learnt the skills to manage their own existence.
A shift in consciousness to activate an inner call of tolerance, sensitivity, care, compassion and being authentic is what is required for the transformation of one’s corporate space and personal life.
It’s the understanding of universal truths that exist within the core of these employees that frame the consciousness of a company. That coupled with visible leadership, highly productive teams, happy engaged employees and a deep satisfaction of purpose creates a harmony and balance even in the face of adversity.
It does not begin externally – in culture revitalisation, policies, procedures, leadership forums and corporate transformation strategies. Rather it starts as a whisper in one’s very own psyche, in one’s relationship with oneself, in the way one thinks, acts, feels, behaves and reacts in the workplace and then cascades into an inner call of tolerance, sensitivity, the ability to challenge circumstances and cultural norms and to have the patience and stamina to work with grace, despite the obstacles one encounters.
This is change and personal transformation. Without it, corporate transformation and consciousness are not possible.