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Maximizing the Triple Bottom Line Through Spiritual Leadership

Stanford University Press

Contents

List of Tables and Figures................................................................................xiiiAcknowledgments...........................................................................................xvChapter One Maximizing the Triple Bottom Line: The Need for a New Business Model.........................1Chapter Two The Spiritual Leadership Model...............................................................33Chapter Three Inner Life: The Source of Spiritual Leadership.............................................57Chapter Four Spiritual Leadership and the Values of Altruistic Love......................................90Chapter Five Spiritual Leadership and Spiritual Well-Being...............................................129Chapter Six Developing the Qualities of Personal Spiritual Leadership....................................154Chapter Seven Implementing Organizational Spiritual Leadership...........................................193Chapter Eight Spiritual Leadership: The Driver of the Triple Bottom Line.................................238Chapter Nine Co-Creating a Conscious, Sustainable World Through Spiritual Leadership.....................283Bibliography and Selected Readings by Chapter.............................................................301Index.....................................................................................................325

Chapter One

In 1965 Robert Ouimet bought J. Rene Ouimet Holding Inc. (OHI) and became president of a leading Canadian frozen-food processing company. Today OHI is Canada's largest manufacturer of low-cost frozen dinners and entrees. From the beginning, Robert envisioned leading a company based on spiritual principles. This vision is the core management philosophy of OHI, and Robert Ouimet has demonstrated that his company can generate profits while simultaneously improving the lives of employees and the communities in which they operate—what has come to be called the Triple Bottom Line, with an integrated focus on people, planet, and profit (Mele and Corrales 2005).

However, before he could bring such unity to his company, Robert discovered that he needed to first find unity in himself. Since his childhood, he had carried with him a nagging, obsessive, and recurring sense of guilt about being a "privileged" person because of his father's business success. Based on that sense of guilt and on his early working experiences, Robert became certain that there is an inner longing in every person's heart, regardless of their spiritual or religious orientation, for the Infinite or the Absolute, and he felt compelled to make a difference in the way he did business (Ouimet 2009).

Robert's personal dilemma—how to succeed in business and honor his and his employees' spiritual longings—drove Robert to meet with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who had served some of the poorest and most afflicted people on earth. Robert had always admired Mother Teresa because he thought she was doing "so many beautiful things on earth." He felt called to seek her spiritual guidance and wrote her a letter; he told her what he was doing in trying to manage his company on spiritual principles and asked for a brief audience, which took place on April 16, 1983, in Calcutta.

He only asked her one question: "Should I give away everything I have, Mother?"

She immediately replied: "You cannot give it, it has never been yours. It has been loaned to you by God. If you want, you can try to manage it ... with Him ... which is very different than 'for Him.' And if you want to manage 'with Him,' you have to follow His hierarchy of Love.... So, for you, His hierarchy of Love is: First Him; second, your wife; third, your four children; fourth, the four hundred employees and their families; and in that order. Not first the employees, and last the wife" (Ouimet 2009). In that moment, Mother Teresa radically changed the priorities of Robert Ouimet's life. His real calling was not to give away his riches and responsibilities as a business leader but instead to love and serve his God, his family, his employees, and others through his various business interests. Mother Teresa told Robert to not try to manage with God without praying a lot; she suggested the motto Orare ad gerendum in Deo ("Pray to manage in God") for his company.

Through this window to inner unity and through his subsequent personal spiritual journey, Robert created the possibility of reconciling human development and economic success ("Our Project: Reconciliation of Human Well-Being with Productivity and Profits" n.d.). This unification was made possible by the model of organizational spiritual leadership that Robert experimented with and put into practice.

Like Robert, many leaders today want to implement business models that accentuate and promote the Triple Bottom Line that focuses on people, planet, and profit. Organizations are increasingly being held responsible for the impact their activities have on their employees, suppliers, customers, and communities. They must account not only to shareholders and investors but also to politicians, the media, employees, community groups, government agencies, environmentalists, and human rights organizations. This trend has fundamentally changed the operating environment for organizational leaders.

This shift, along with the Fortune 500 scandals of the last decade and the current world financial crisis, has only served to increase the pressure on corporate leaders to reevaluate current business models in an attempt to find answers that might solve these problems. Companies such as SAS Institute, Google, Shell Oil Company, NEC Corporation, and Procter & Gamble have committed their organizations to implementing new business models that accentuate ethical leadership, employee well-being, sustainability, and social responsibility without sacrificing profitability, revenue growth, and other areas of financial and performance excellence.

In a recent survey of 900 global corporations conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 80 percent of CEOs said they believe "sustainability" is or soon will be vital to the profitability of their company, and 71 percent said they would consider sacrificing short-term profits to move their company toward sustainability (Savitz and Weber 2006). One of the greatest challenges facing leaders of both large and small organizations today is to develop business models that can achieve this holistic balance.

One answer to this call to maximize the Triple Bottom Line lies in the implementation of spiritual leadership. Drawing on workplace spirituality, spiritual leadership, and conscious capitalism, the International Institute of Spiritual Leadership has developed and refined two models—the Spiritual Leadership Model and the Spiritual Leadership Balanced Scorecard Business Model. The two models have been developed based on years of research on diverse organizations, including government agencies, municipalities, military units, schools, manufacturers, and retailers. These research efforts form the foundation of this book.

You may have asked when you read the title of this book: What is spiritual leadership? Is it about religion? If not, how is it different? Why do I need to know about this approach to...