?THEO FER­GU­SON

Part 4

A few years ago while prepar­ing to con­duct a work­shop on the "Emo­tion­al com­po­nent of lead­er­ship" for the ex­ec­u­tive team of one of my pri­vate sec­tor clients in Bar­ba­dos, I spent a day brows­ing the shelves of one of the larg­er book­shops in At­lanta, Geor­gia. I was in search of in­for­ma­tion that could help me to get a deep­er un­der­stand­ing of how to heal the tox­ic cul­ture that per­vades in many of our or­gan­i­sa­tions. As I was work­ing with busi­ness­men, I com­menced my search in the busi­ness sec­tion of the book­shop. There I found a pletho­ra of ma­te­r­i­al that pro­vid­ed elab­o­rate and jar­gon-loaded ac­counts of the emo­tion­al chal­lenges that can be en­coun­tered in the work­place, such as ego­tism, self­ish­ness, greed, anger, ag­gres­sion and stress, among oth­ers. How­ev­er, as I sought a deep­er un­der­stand­ing that could tru­ly ad­dress the chal­lenges, I found the busi­ness sec­tion to be some­what want­i­ng. It was on­ly when I ar­rived in the spir­i­tu­al­i­ty sec­tion that I found ti­tles that pro­vid­ed ef­fec­tive so­lu­tions.

At the end of the day, I made my way to the cashier with a se­lec­tion of ti­tles that I thought would be use­ful to me. As she scanned my choic­es, she sur­prised me with the ques­tion: "In­ter­est­ing se­lec­tions–are you a pas­tor?" The ques­tion jolt­ed me to recog­nise what now seems ob­vi­ous–that the ul­ti­mate so­lu­tion to the prob­lems of the busi­ness world can on­ly be found in the spir­i­tu­al realm. And by the way, I am not a pas­tor, nor do I have any as­pi­ra­tions to be­come one. I re­late this sto­ry as a way of help­ing us to see the cen­tral role of moral­i­ty in the de­vel­op­ment of a more sus­tain­able busi­ness cul­ture–one that tru­ly ad­vances the de­vel­op­ment of our hu­man­i­ty. As hu­man be­ings, we on­ly be­gin to ex­press the essence of our true hu­man­i­ty when we move away from self­ish­ness and greed to work in the in­ter­est of our com­mon hu­man­i­ty. Sad­ly, our busi­ness cul­ture con­tin­ues to be an­chored in the self­ish phi­los­o­phy that greed is good. The self­ish mind is a prim­i­tive mind, which traps us in a state of spir­i­tu­al in­fan­til­ism. Hu­man de­vel­op­ment is about grow­ing our hu­man­i­ty such that we pro­gres­sive­ly ex­press more of our hu­man­i­ty.

Our busi­ness cul­ture is im­pris­oned in a world of phys­i­cal nice­ness and spir­i­tu­al/ moral empti­ness. But it doesn't have to con­tin­ue to be that way. In bring­ing moral­i­ty in­to the busi­ness world, the ex­ist­ing con­cept of prof­it-for-prof­it sake needs to be re­placed by a con­cept that is an­chored in a moral foun­da­tion. The world needs a new busi­ness for­mu­la. Prof­it must now have a soul for busi­ness and so­ci­etal sus­tain­abil­i­ty. It means that prof­it must now be di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to the com­mon good.

Busi­ness­es can on­ly ex­ist when there are so­ci­etal needs to be ser­viced. We can see busi­ness as the cor­po­rate form of be­ing of ser­vice to hu­man­i­ty. Be­ing in busi­ness is a moral op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve peo­ple, the same peo­ple who, in times of chal­lenge, have had to come to the res­cue of the col­laps­ing eco­nom­ic sys­tem. Peo­ple ex­pect from busi­ness a qual­i­ty ser­vice that con­tributes to their own de­vel­op­ment. Thus, prof­its should be seen as the fee or re­ward that busi­ness­es earn from be­ing of ser­vice. Busi­ness­es which pro­vide a fair ser­vice have a moral right to earn a fair fee, un­like the cur­rent sys­tem in which busi­ness­es most­ly pay them­selves mer­ce­nary fees. Prof­it takes prece­dence to ser­vice and of­ten bears lit­tle or no re­la­tion­ship to the qual­i­ty of ser­vice pro­vid­ed. How­ev­er, so­ci­ety ex­pects that busi­ness­es will pro­vide their ser­vices with hon­esty, fair­ness and in­tegri­ty.

It is my view that prof­its earned should al­ways have a pos­i­tive re­la­tion­ship with the qual­i­ty and quan­ti­ty of the ser­vice pro­vid­ed. Thus mak­ing it pos­si­ble to run a prof­it-dri­ven busi­ness, while sat­is­fy­ing the com­mon in­ter­est. The max­im then be­comes a sim­ple one–pro­vide the peo­ple with a qual­i­ty ser­vice and you are en­ti­tled to earn a fair prof­it. Lead­ing From Above The Line is a phi­los­o­phy that seeks to help the busi­ness world and the wider so­ci­ety to es­tab­lish a moral foun­da­tion. In con­clud­ing this four-part ar­ti­cle, there are four points that I will like to re­call in keep­ing with the phi­los­o­phy of Lead­ing From Above The Line. First­ly, there is now grow­ing aware­ness of the moral fail­ings of our cur­rent eco­nom­ic sys­tem, de­spite its wide­spread ac­cep­tance and claims to the con­trary. Re­cent­ly, even Alan Greenspan, for­mer chair­man of the US Fed­er­al Re­serve Board, ob­served: "An in­fec­tious greed seemed to grip much of our busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty."

The cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem, al­though in ex­is­tence for over 200 years, is now wilt­ing un­der an avalanche of mer­ce­nary greed. As the sys­tem re­mains on edge, the search is on for a moral foun­da­tion that could pro­vide for a more sus­tain­able fu­ture–hope­ful­ly for more than an­oth­er 200 years. It is time for the busi­ness world to grow up. Sec­ond­ly, we need to be­come much more aware of the high­ly in­fec­tious na­ture of the ex­ist­ing busi­ness cul­ture and its grow­ing ne­ga- tive im­pact on our pol­i­tics, pub­lic ser­vice and ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. We need to bet­ter un­der­stand that we have giv­en the prim­i­tive "greed is good" cul­ture of­fi­cial, so­cial and le­gal recog­ni­tion to run ram­page through­out our so­ci­ety. Our schools have be­come in­doc­tri­na­tion cen­tres.

I am con­vinced that the "me first-get rich quick­ly" mind­set is the prime dri­ver of much of the an­ti-so­cial and crim­i­nal be­hav­iours that are now per­vad­ing our so­ci­eties. Polic­ing alone is not the so­lu­tion. We must be­gin the task of build­ing more hu­man­i­ty-con­scious minds if we are to build the great so­ci­ety that we know is pos­si­ble. Third­ly, we must recog­nise that we have blind­ly bought in­to the pop­ulist trend of de­grad­ing our fel­low hu­man be­ings when we la­bel them as "hu­man re­sources" for pri­vate eco­nom­ic gain. In­stead, we need to see hu­mans as the ul­ti­mate ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the de­vel­op­ment process. We must quick­ly move to re­place our hu­man re­source de­part­ments with hu­man de­vel­op­ment de­part­ments and our hu­man re­source pro­fes­sion­als must now be re­tooled to be­come hu­man de­vel­op­ment pro­fes­sion­als. Fourth­ly, we need to move be­yond just say­ing that we need more hon­est peo­ple to im­ple­ment an ac­tion pro­gramme that will re­sult in more hon­est peo­ple in our homes, or­gan­i­sa­tions and com­mu­ni­ties. We must take time to bet­ter un­der­stand the na­ture of moral­i­ty and how to help peo­ple to ex­press more of their in­her­ent hu­man good­ness. This is the cen­tral in­tent of our pro­gramme, Lead­ing from Above The Line. I be­lieve that the world has had enough of the cap­i­tal­ist phi­los­o­phy that "greed is good." Are our uni­ver­si­ties and busi­ness schools will­ing to lead in the un­rav­el­ling of the present and in the re­defin­ing of the fu­ture? There­in lies an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come glob­al lead­ers.