THE LEADER GOES FIRST

“They come in their helicopters or they fly their planes; they come very discreetly. They come to this place and it's safe,” Brian Bacon, the president of the Oxford Leadership Academy, says of his clientele—some of the top corporate leaders on the globe. They seek him out because they have given their lives to the machine and reality is throwing wrenches into its gears. The old ways aren't working anymore. The mechanistic “command-and-control” model of corporate leadership keeps them locked in the command post, blind to and blindsided by the constant changes of an unpredictable market. And they come discreetly because they know that Bacon's “Self-Management for Leadership” (SML) program is going to take them into terrain that is unfamiliar and dangerous for those who have to be on top of everything: the uncharted spaces within themselves. They come discreetly also because they know that they have to go deeper—both for the sake of their businesses and for themselves—and risk everything to find a new way of being and working that can take them into a new future. Given that their companies' stock prices are partly determined by their steady hand on the corporate controls, they can't risk public exposure of their own uncertainty.

Helen-Jane Nelson, director of the consulting consortium, Cecara Consulting Limited, says that when these top executives begin to realize the impact of their choices—on the environment and on other human beings—“the guilt is enormous, and it's very painful.” The economic logic of the machine age predicted that only good would come from the relentless pursuit of self-interest. Most of these executives didn't realize, when they were climbing their way to the control tower, that they were taking charge of a machine responsible for environmental destruction or human exploitation. “We're at a point,” she says, “where business leaders are beginning to recognize that their businesses are not sustainable, that the whole way that they have been doing business—the pursuit of continual growth—is not sustainable. The planet cannot tolerate it. And they're scared. Some are desperate—they are willing to try anything, because there is a sense that the old ways of doing business are not working.” Moreover, the old economic sleight of hand that allowed companies to simply “externalize” any potential risk is beginning to backfire as they are finding that, on our interconnected globe, what used to be external now has the power to impact them internally.

“Events can occur in one area and cascade with little or no warning to have a huge, profound impact on an organization,” explains Steve Trevino, who advises the blue chip consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. “The time in which businesses are currently operating is vastly different—in fact historically unprecedented—in terms of accelerating change as well as deepening and intensifying complexity. The proliferation of networks is changing the way all business activities have to be conducted.” For example, Trevino notes that experts in the reinsurance industry, which is the economic safety net for the planet, don't think that the system will be able to handle “the financial ripple effects resulting from insurance claims if there is a succession of events like 9/11.” He also gives the example of Nike, which had its reputation as a responsible corporate citizen damaged (and its stock price take a serious dive) after negative stories broke about its third-world factories. Trevino argues that the data regarding our networked interconnectedness is so compelling that anyone who sees it “would be driven to action, to a shift in consciousness, to a recognition that we need to design new systems, new financial models to replace the ones that are at the core of the economic underpinnings of the planet.”

To do that, we need leadership. “The word 'leadership,'” Nelson comments, “doesn't have a Latin root or a Greek root. It's an Old English word that actually means to go first.” She explains that no matter what the means by which one assesses a company, “the consciousness of the leader has a significant impact on the consciousness of the organization.” Thus, increasingly, organizational change efforts are focused on getting the leader to go first—to leap beyond the mind of the machine. “You can't transform a group structure without having the leadership go through some sort of transformation,” asserts Richard Barrett, author of Liberating the Corporate Soul and creator of one of the most widely used means of assessing the level of consciousness (or ways of thinking) of an individual or culture. Given the intense demand on CEOs to create organizations that are more responsive than the rigid, linear machine, an increasing number are becoming willing to embrace radically new ways of working.

Indeed, many of them have reached a point where they have no other option. As Bacon says, “These leaders are under enormous pressure. They're totally committed, intensely driven, and highly intelligent. And for a lot of the time they are utterly miserable. This is what often happens when you get to the top: you invest so much in your career, you end up alienating your family.” And, he says, “The closest friends of a CEO are inevitably connected with work, so for reasons of confidentiality and politics they can't confide in them. It gets very lonely at the top.” But the coup de grāce comes when they realize that their “metrics ability—the ability to get the numbers and steer by the numbers” to consistently crank out quarterly profits—is impossible to sustain in a constantly changing, hypercompetitive, and chaotic market. That's why the average length of tenure of a CEO in the United States is only 4.6 years. In Europe, twenty-two of the top one hundred CEOs were fired in 2003. When the skills and techniques of the mechanistic mind fail them, they slam into a wall.

The way out is literally unthinkable within the iron reasoning of the corporate machine. The first step is a new way of thinking—a new consciousness or worldview that enables us to recognize how everything is interdependent and how connection to a larger purpose is critical for personal and professional success. Bacon cites Epicurus who “hit it bang on the head” about the three things that human beings need to be happy: “First, a sense of belonging in a community of friends; second, freedom—the feeling that your life and choices are in your own hands. And third, a reflective life, which means having the time to ponder where you're going and what is important in life.” That kind of reflection creates a gap in the driving logic of the machine. Through meditation, or what are called reflective action practices, Bacon opens hearts and minds to a new consciousness that brings people in touch with other human beings and a deeper purpose in life.

The result is “good instincts,” as Bacon puts it. And the leaders who have tapped their instincts—“the ones who are able to be 'present' and sense the truth amidst the chaos and then make a judgment call with such breathtaking clarity and decisiveness that everybody knows, snap! this is it!”—are the ones who express a deeper happiness and “can generate a sense of meaning not only within themselves but also in the lives of those around them.” They are not buffeted by the winds that are whipping the organization from without; instead, they drive the deeper currents that keep it on course.

Roger Saillant, CEO of Plug Power, one of the first electric fuel cell companies, has good instincts. Saillant has created an organization that feels different, that has an energy that is palpable. Work at Plug Power “is not your job or my job. It's our job,” he states. “And that's how people become enlisted when we are working together. It is what happens when you think of yourself as having no boundaries, when you think of yourself as working in a field of connection and consciousness.” In creating this organization, Saillant has tapped into something that moves human beings and not just machines: “I believe that people want the truth; they want to learn and grow, to be part of a community and a shared inspirational vision,” he states. “When you try to practice these principles, somehow the universe reaches out and gives you insights that guide you at an intuitive level.” No longer isolated in the command tower, Saillant is part of a neural network of human relationship that learns and grows together.