Occupy Context: Religion in the Office!
By Bruce Fritch | November 2011
What spiritual or theological scents and residues might we discover in organizational culture emanating from the C-Suite, the office of the executive chiefs? Are there pujas and candle fires, idols and incense everywhere? Does goodness exude from file cabinets and credenzas? Is righteousness a prerequisite for promotion? Is truthfulness a tenant of succession? What spirit abounds?
We know that business and government organizational culture in America (similar to many other nations) shuns speaking about God or religion or spirituality, in any form. The nearest we get to it is values. It is common for the senior executives of business and government organizations to fundamentally “leave God in the parking lot” and enter the office assuming divine authority. This custom would not obscure guidance -- divine or otherwise -- if core values were as evident from the C-Suite as God is absent, but core values are too often superficially implemented.
If we continue to secularize the topic, we come to see “spirituality” manifesting in energy for good or ill. Peter Drucker had a bit to say about this: “Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy, and then to help orchestrate the energy of those around you."
Ultimately, the question of spirituality from the C-Suite becomes a question of context. Context is that tricky word we learned in our senior speech class, but most of us forgot. The dictionary tells us that context means the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed. Context is “what it is about” -- it is the space being filled, the theology for the thought or act or deed, the background that gives perspective and meaning, the paradigm. Context gives reason to intention.
Contextual clarity is a prerequisite to leadership effectiveness.
Goals require context. Combine leadership with marketing, and the context for the Chief Marketing Officer’s goals are the laws of market demand. The context for the Chief Financial Officer’s goals are the rules of solvency, credit worthiness and profitability. Context for the Chief Manufacturing Officer’s goals is the mathematics of productivity.
If it sounds odd that goals require context, it is only because we live in a world where people who we regarded as leaders dropped the rigor of context because it is inconvenient. It’s become a sort of morbid moral obesity. This happened in those C-Suites where the Chief Executive Officer’s context migrated to personal wealth-building. Rewards became context; such was expedient. Greed became acceptable; after all, it could be rationalized in business-sounding “bottom line” goals for marketing and finance and manufacturing. The best rationalization was to insist with C-Suite authority that the context for everything is maximizing shareholder wealth.
Actually, the context of an organization is expressed in its mission and vision. Mission is the difference the organization intends to make in the lives of those it serves, and it serves customers and communities. Vision is the future-perfect of mission: how it will be when the mission is fully and competently operating. Leadership that primarily serves customers and communities maintains a contextual congruence among customers, employees, shareholders and communities. But, leadership that primarily serves shareholders abandons customers, quality and innovation in the hope of an expedient payday.
Human endeavor -- like leadership -- is energized by the ethic of service to people and planet. When we stop being of service to others the insidious distractions of personal greed and superficiality -- institutionalized and seemingly credentialed by C-Suite authority -- distort our context, and personal development ceases. This is why the behavior of so many so-called leaders is justifiably regarded as adolescent.
Selfishness and greed in C-Suites has a debilitating effect on civilization. Through the process of socialization, where young people emulate powerful and wealthy executives, the disproportional pay check becomes the context, and adolescent perspective persists.
Yet, regardless of its proximity to distortion, truth does exist. There is a true and valuable context to effectively performing anything. This context for the CEO prompts the prioritization of core values, attitude, skills and know how to grow the performance capacity of the organization, to fulfill its mission and vision, to serve customers and communities, in accordance with core values. This conscious understanding becomes the context for the C-Suite, and for the broader organization.
Each of us has the ability right now to discern context. We may have the ability to stop supporting the context of corruption. We can choose to support organizations and leaders that pursue appropriate mission and vision with appropriate contextual perspective. The so-called Arab Spring appears to be about this shift of support. So does the success of Apple, on the one hand, and the trials of Bank of America and the U.S. Congress, in contrast.
The truth can assemble itself in self-justifying stacks. We so desperately want our leaders to be meritorious, that we actively indulge in truth-bending political correctness to make their stack appear noble or innocent or righteous, when too often they are simply selfish and corrupt. Is it any wonder that their stack gets larger and larger, while others fail to grow proportionately.
The culture of any organization is a series of coincidental agreements, and some of these are unconscious. While the C-Suites of American businesses and national governments everywhere may be regarded as overly adolescent, the responsibility is shared.
When we are more committed as human beings to being of service to others and the Earth, our actions will emanate from a helpful spirit -- and, naturally, from a constructive and truthful context.
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