Today's Corporate Mystic

A Quirky 90s Notion

Years ago I read a book called The Corporate Mystic: A Guidebook for Visionaries with Their Feet on the Ground (Hendricks & Ludeman, 1996). Written at a time when narratives about hard-driving CEOs, like Ford's Lee Iacocca and GE's Jack Welch, were popular, this book was never destined to be a best seller. Still I was drawn to the countercultural idea of the corporate mystic.

According to renowned educator Richard Rohr (2009), a mystic is "one who has moved from mere belief systems or belonging systems to actual inner experience." By this he means one who has attained a level of freedom from the self-limiting beliefs, assumptions, and concerns that get in the way of "reading reality truthfully, humbly, and helpfully."

The Self-Authoring Mind and the Evolving Nature of Work

Harvard scholars Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey's central claim is that the increasing complexity of the world around us demands a corresponding increase in mental complexity. The problem, they write, is that most adults are stuck at a level of thinking called "the socialized mind," shaped by the taken-for-granted beliefs and expectations of their social groups.

Modern life, however, requires a "quantum shift" in how we think and make meaning of the world around us. We need to develop our "internal authority" to make choices and judgments, to reflect deeply, to think independently, to explore other perspectives, and to take responsibility for our feelings and actions.

Discord and Descartes

In my experience almost all teams have to deal with conflict, and most organizations foster some level of toxic behavior. Why, then, in the world of business, which prides itself on clear-eyed, fact-based problem solving, do we tiptoe around the reality of conflict, relegating it to the mysterious world of "soft skills"?

I blame it on Descartes.

René Descartes is the 17th-century French philosopher who famously wrote "I think, therefore I am." Over the past four centuries, this unwavering faith in reason has helped shape the Western world.

Business as a Dignity Experiment

Looking more broadly at the world around us, it's hard to deny the feeling that we're living in a time of chaotic, radical change and that no one can really predict what's going to happen.

As businesses attend to the bottom line, asking more from their workers, they must also recognize that they are participating in a vast and important experiment to collectively grow our selves up, to develop and empower communities of mature, self-authoring adults with the capacity to lead us into a more promising future.

In the end, who is this mysterious corporate mystic? It's you, of course. You're the corporate mystic. Yes, you, because you were born fully equipped, with everything you need to access this wisdom.