Soul Thing e Book - Sauls Version

The $ole Soul Thing That Matters in Business
I dedicate this book to my family, Annie, Mark, Anthony, Courtney

and Georgia, and to those who have been friends, coaches and
mentors on my journey.

Alan Patching
Published by Revray Pty Ltd

13 Warana Avenue
Bribie Island 4107
Queensland
Australia
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmit-

ted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photo-
copying, recording or by any information retrieval system, without the prior
permission, in writing, of the author and the publisher
Copyright Alan Patching.

The author has asserted his moral rights.
ISBN
Cover design and book design by Saul Jarvie of Quo Consulting

Melbourne
Australia
www.quo.com.au
Printed by Watson Ferguson Company

Toohey Road
Salisbury
Brisbane
Australia
www.wfco.com.au

Contents
Acknowledgements 4
Introduction 5
Background/Purpose of Book 6
Chapter One –
Getting Things in perspective 11
Chapter Two –
The Concepts and Context of Spiritual Leadership 19
Chapter Three –
The Basic Principle 31
Chapter Four –
The Steps on the Journey to Highest Purpose 43
Chapter Five –
Step 1 of the Journey -
Take Time to Consider and Understand 57
Chapter Six –
Engage Support at Senior Leadership Level 62
Chapter Seven –
Identifying/Establishing your Organisation’s Higher Purpose 72
Chapter Eight –
Tips to Help You Break Through Organisational Cynicism 93
Chapter Nine –
Step 4 - Spread the Word Seeking Alignment and Enrolment 123
Chapter Ten –
Step 5 – Run your organisation completely in accordance
with your established higher purpose 135
Chapter Eleven –
Step 6 - Nurture and monitor progress, and
Step 7 – Celebrate success 170
Chapter Twelve –
Conclusion 175

Alan Patching
Acknowledgements
I extend my sincere thanks to Annie, my wife, for both her dedi-
cation and hard work in preparing the manuscript for this work,
and for her invaluable and insightful comments and advice during
writing. I know of no one who lives more attuned to ‘Soul Thing’
principles.
Special thanks to Fr. Richard Rohr of the U.S.A. whose very
much ‘on-purpose’ work has been instrumental in making it easy
for my sometimes overly analytical mind to better understand the
spiritual journey and to accept that it is never easy. Thanks also to
Dr. Wayne Dyer of the USA whose many books have also been a
significant guiding light in various aspects of my life.
Finally, my thanks to my long time friend Dr. Denis Waitley of
the U.S.A., whose books and audio albums-and personal advice on
one or two occasions when we worked together-have inspired me
to ‘chase my passion, and not my pension’–to follow my purpose
for taking up space on this planet.
And finally an acknowledgement to all who might read this
book. In today’s competitive business world, wherein more and
more is known about the importance to success of issues other than
profit, yet more and more attention appears to be given to profit to
the exclusion of all else, I acknowledge that this book might appear
somewhat conceptual or even an exercise in wishful thinking. It is
conceptual in many ways, but in ways developed from snippets of
experience which give me hope that what I write is possible on the
larger scale. If it gives rise to wishful thinking, then I might just
have achieved something worthwhile, for from broad scale wish-
ful thinking can come broad scale hope for a better way of doing
things in our organisational life, and hope can be the trigger of
realization of that which is hoped for.

Introduction
Have you ever been absorbed in something–perhaps even some-
thing extremely important–and suddenly had the impulse that
something else even more important simply must be done–right
now? It never crossed your mind that anything could be more
important than what you’re doing, and WHAM, out of the blue
something suddenly is; something that cannot be delayed, post-
poned, or delegated. You are inexplicably compelled to immedi-
ately turn your full attention to this new endeavour. It’s almost like
you have no control over the compulsion and, even if you do, you
certainly have no desire to exercise it.
It happens in everyday mundane aspects of life. You’re driving
off for an important meeting with no time to spare, yet something
out of left field tells you you’ve forgotten something important.
You have no clue what it is but, thinking you’re going mad at an
early age, you succumb to the urge and return home. Here you
find you’ve left a door unlocked, the papers for your meeting are
on the kitchen bench (where a few minutes earlier, you’d ever so
carefully rearranged your briefcase) and your wallet is on the floor
adjacent to the door.
It happens in sport. A rugby winger just seems to get an urge to
trail behind his backline towards the opposite wing, and he has no
idea why. After all, if he did this throughout the game, he’d either
be out of position when a great play opportunity developed, or
would be too exhausted to exploit opportunity when it presented
itself. However, on this occasion, he follows his instinct and soon
finds he is unmarked with the ball coming his way and a clear run
to the line.
This phenomenon also happens in family and business life–I’ve
seen it and I’m sure you have too.
This book is the product of one of those experiences.

Alan Patching
I’d been sitting in the foyer of the Gulf Hotel in Bahrain, where I
was delivering a series of morning lectures and using the afternoon
to finish writing a book which looks at getting the right balance
between important issues as we follow our journey through life
and business. I’d been having some difficulty covering the gamut
of both personal and business life in the one text without produc-
ing a door stop.
At around 10pm, the ‘aha’ experience happened. I should write
two separate books, the business focused book first.
Here it is. I hope you enjoy it, while I get back to finishing the
work from which the idea for this book germinated.
Background - Purpose of Book

Sadly, there are numerous people in our society who spend much
of their time working in jobs they simply do not like. These people
are often motivated by the sole incentive of making sufficient
money in their jobs to be able to stop working in them as soon as
they possibly can. For a large number of these people, there is very
little if any meaning in what they do for a living beyond meeting
their basic living needs. Their jobs are for a $ole purpose, but they
have no Soul Purpose. Their jobs are nothing more than a means
to an understandable and necessary financial end.
Corporations aren’t often that much different. Many–from
across the range of small to large business, and from publicly listed
to private organisations–seem to exist primarily, often even exclu-
sively, for a single main purpose–to maximise profit and share-
holder returns. For these corporations the bottom line is the $ole
thing that matters.
Relatively few companies appear to focus on identifying or
establishing real meaning, outside of profit and growth, in what
they do. Few appear to demonstrate any evidence of having a
corporate soul.

Right up front I want to emphasise I am all for the traditional and

time honoured concept of making a reasonable profit from fair
business and personal dealings. Money, and particularly the cash
that remains to grow a business after all expenses are covered, is a
legitimate and essential focus for every person and business in our
society. As legendary American motivational speaker Zig Ziglar
says, ‘be careful of people who tell you that money isn’t important-
they’re likely to lie about other things as well!’.
Yes, profit is important. It just isn’t all there is. Many businesses
see profit as the sole thing that matters. In so doing they miss so
much opportunity to grow people as well as profits. And there-
in lies an interesting paradox, because when people are given an
opportunity to grow, they usually contribute more to the produc-
tivity and profitability of the organisations for which they work.
The purpose of this book is to promote a change of approach,
or at the very least a change or broader distribution of empha-
sis, within the corporate world. I want to promote an adjustment
of focus from the almighty profit buck at the expense of virtu-
ally everything else, to a focus on a higher purpose of business
and its people than profit. I’m convinced that this change of focus
won’t result in lowered profits but ironically, paradoxically and
almost certainly, in an increase in profits. I’m also convinced that
the potential profit increase should not be the prime motivation
for following the path I describe for reasons the should become
evident as you read on.
I am not promoting discarding all your cash flow forecasting,
budget preparation and other managerial tools and techniques in
favour of some soft alternative where we all sit around the board-
room sharing love and affection and chanting “ommmmmm”
across an impressive musical range, while we wait for the clients
to walk into our businesses pushing their money in large wheel-
barrows. In fact I’m not about to suggest anything naïve, and I’m
certainly not about to suggest that you throw any business baby
out with the commercial bathwater.

Alan Patching
But it does seem to me that somewhere between one extreme–the

usual one–of a complete and exclusive focus on profit maximi-
sation, and the other–the naïve one–of complete and exclusive
focus on the ‘soft’ aspects of business leadership, there is a ‘third
way’ which arises from the coincidence of these opposites. And it
seems to me this ‘third way’ is available for exploitation (I like to
use hard business words occasionally to keep the extremely domi-
nant hemisphere driven folk interested) by both individuals and
corporations.
For individuals, I see the third way as a slight adaption of the
advice of my friend and colleague from the USA, Dr Denis Waitley.
Denis advises us to ‘chase our passion, and not our pension’. What
a different scenario this is from the working for pension with little
or no passion that is so common in today’s workplace. For indi-
viduals, the third way might first be to find some spark of meaning
or purpose in what you do, regardless of how mundane that work
might be, and focus on that meaning, draw energy and motivation
from it, connect with fellow human beings and make some small
difference in their lives through it, while keeping an alert eye on
the necessary pension until in a position to move closer towards
Denis’ ideal. Whatever happens, individuals grow when they move
from the ‘money but no purpose’ (and therefore no passion) end
of the continuum towards the ‘passion (through purpose) first,
and let the money follow’ end.
By the way, spiritual leadership recognises the amazing oppor-
tunity that is available to be exploited simply because so many indi-
viduals find little meaning in their jobs–but more on that later.
The message for organisations is similar. Great opportunity
exists for corporate leaders to realise performance increases beyond
their wildest imagination, and consequential profit increases. The
paradox is that to focus exclusively on the traditional managerial
approaches to profit generation is not the only way, perhaps not
even the best way, to increase those profits. I reiterate, to move
to the opposite extreme, ignoring proper and proven business

management principles, is precisely NOT what I’m proposing. I’m

proposing a third alternative.
For both individuals and corporations, this third way first
involves identifying the main reason–the higher purpose, if you
will–for which the person or corporation exists. After that, it’s
about doing everything in their power to ensure absolutely every-
thing they do, and the way they do it, is aligned with that purpose
and leads towards its achievement.
Our society constantly teaches and reinforces the message that
money and possessions are the master keys of the doorway to
the freedom and happiness we seek in life. Fortunately, there is a
growing awareness of the inherent lie. I’m convinced that people
living in accordance with their life’s purpose quickly experience a
sense of freedom and contentment that no amount of money (in
excess of that required to cover relatively basic needs) could ever
provide. Funny thing is, many of the ‘following purpose’ people I
know, while sometimes having fewer financial resources than the
financially focused, also seem to have fewer financial worries than
people caught on the treadmill of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’.
The trouble with trying to keep up with the Joneses a few doors
up, is that they won’t stand still for us–they’re too busy keeping up
with the Joneses in the next neighbourhood who, in turn, are too
busy keeping up with ….. oh well, you get the picture.
Corporations following a clearly defined higher purpose
demonstrate spiritual leadership. This is the type of leadership
which encourages their people to ‘buy into’ or ‘enrol’ in that higher
purpose, and which might involve them having to make some
hard decisions concerning people who can’t–and without estab-
lishing threat as a workplace motivator. ‘Sackings will continue
until commitment improves’ definitely is not the catch cry of the
spiritual leader.
Higher purpose corporate leadership–true spiritual leader-
ship-will neither partake in, nor tolerate, corporate politics, nor
multiple ill-considered off-purpose or non-defined projects, nor

Alan Patching
resource wastage on unnecessary meetings and reports. This is

the leadership which embraces maximisation of profit, but only
within a framework that respects and honours the environment,
community, and social structure, inter alia, in which it operates.
Corporations aligned with and driven by a clearly defined
higher purpose provide a working environment which attracts and
nurtures, and therefore retains, on-purpose people; passionate,
energetic people; people who perform and produce more because
they have no interest in or time for non-sensical, off-purpose ego
building and personal posturing activities.
The logical result can only be less wastage of resources and
enhanced business profit. And isn’t that what all corporations
legitimately recognise as one purpose of their existence in the first
place?
Let’s begin our journey towards higher profits from higher
purpose, but without using the potential profit as our prime moti-
vation. There’s that paradox again!
10
Chapter One
Getting things in perspective
I’ll get right to the point. There are some very much misunderstood
and misapplied principles of modern business floating around the
corporate world today.
With the possible exception of ‘corporate values’ no concept is
more misunderstood than ‘corporate vision’.
A corporate vision is supposed to be a compelling inspiration
for every person working in an organisation; the indescribable
force which compels us to motivate ourselves to strive beyond our
comfort zone, convinced that in the quest for realising the stated
vision, we will not only contribute to company profits and surviv-
ability, but also will both benefit at some personal level, and in
some way make the world a better place.
Actually, corporate vision in most cases is nothing more than
some fancy words created by senior management during yet
another junket to some trendy resort, and then printed in a place
of prominence in all company brochures and other marketing
material. There often seems to be a logic that ‘the business books
say we should have a vision, and our competitors quote a vision, so
we’d better have one too’ behind many corporate vision identifica-
tion exercises.
In other words, corporate vision is seldom the leadership tool
it is meant to be and far more often than not is little more than a
marketing concept–if that’s what an exercise in keeping up with
the corporate Joneses could ever be seen to be. As an inspirational
force, most corporate visions have about the same value and power
as mashed potato.
“Why so cynical?” you might ask. Because experience tells
me I’m right. Please don’t read this as arrogance; I don’t make
the statement with any sense of superiority, and I do stand to be
11
Alan Patching
corrected by the presentation of facts and evidence which differ

from mine.
For well over a decade I’ve been presenting at corporate con-
ferences all around the globe, attended by all levels of employees,
predominantly middle to senior managers, and asking a couple of
simple questions. The first is ‘does this organisation have a corpo-
rate vision?’ I’ve seldom had a negative response to this question,
so I quickly move to the next. ‘Can anyone in this room please
stand up and tell me what it is?’ I can easily count on my fingers
the number of people who have replied in the affirmative. I have
almost never had a single person accurately quote their organisa-
tion’s corporate vision. Not one single person in the several hun-
dred applications of the test to thousands of people from hundreds
of organisations in over a dozen countries in over a decade–apart
from pretty much all the folk I’ve worked with at MTC Vodafone
in Kuwait. Their vision is simple–3 x 3 x 3. It refers to their being a
leading provider of mobile telephone services locally–within three
years of setting the vision, regionally–within a further three years,
and internationally within yet another three. It mightn’t seem too
flash, but most of the people I met knew the vision and what it
meant, and could tell me exactly where MTC was in regard to its
achievement, which was right on target in the last three years of
the vision. The MTC people would be the first to admit they don’t
have all aspects of corporate life perfect (who does?) and their vi-
sion doesn’t really grab me personally–apart from one small fact–it
seems to work for them, and that’s impressive. But I digress.
My final question is more to make my point than to elicit an
answer. ‘I ask you, ladies and gentlemen. If you, the leaders of
this corporation, cannot quote to me your corporate vision, how
reasonable or realistic is it for you to expect your human capital to
be able to know that vision and be compelled and inspired by it to
increase their performance in the market place?’
The response is always a period of reflective silence–and it truly
can be deafening. Trying to define a compelling corporate vision
12
can be very difficult (if it is to be done correctly) and most of us

are so trapped in ‘the system’, and in our logical minds, to ever
hope to be successful in vision definition or derivation. We almost
invariably end up with some economic, or competitive target like
‘being the best in our field’, ‘becoming the employee of choice in
our industry’, ‘achieving 15% net return on sales’, or ‘driving our
share price beyond the $10 mark while simultaneously increasing
dividend’.
Want to know something? I take no issue with any of these as
corporate objectives, but as the big driver, the raison d’etre, the
sole thing that matters for your corporation? Come on, give me
a break. They just don’t do it for me. They clearly don’t do it for
most other people, either, judging by the responses I get in my pre-
sentations to those three simple questions.
Most corporate visions are a consequence of the over-riding
‘profit and shareholder returns’ (primary) thinking of business
leaders. They are therefore essentially ‘economic’ in nature, and in
motivational psychology ‘speak’, economic motivators are ‘extrin-
sic’. An ‘extrinsic’ motivator will never be as powerful as one which
is ‘intrinsic’ for the simple reason that motivation is an internal
force which compels human behaviour.
There’s no doubt about it, most corporate vision suffers from
severe myopia.
Moving beyond corporate vision
So what’s the answer? How can we get our people delivering beyond
our wildest expectations–maybe even theirs–and actually enjoying
the experience? The glib response would be ‘get them first to enjoy
what they do, and the delivery will eventually follow!’ However,
that response lacks the depth that this book seeks to open up for
its readers. I think the answer lies in a change of perspective. A
movement away from where we are going to what’s going to get
us there–or anywhere. A movement away from mind-numbing
13
Alan Patching
debate over such pedestrian things as the difference between vision

and mission (answer–who cares!) and a focus inward to the most
important question any individual person can ever ask, and there-
fore, organisations being nothing more than collections of people,
the most important question any organisation can ask. That ques-
tion can be asked in several ways–Why do I exist? What am I here
for? What is my life all about? In other words, what is the purpose
of my life? Now that question might raise further questions. In
seeking answers, it’s likely you will raise more responses than you
might expect–to lead a good life, to be a good son/daughter, to
contribute to society etc. etc.. All are valid responses. But let’s be
honest, they are as obvious and predictable as they are relevant
and valid. They don’t define the big answer, the answer which will
differ from person to person, the answer we usually find far more
difficult to identify, and which many of us take more than half our
lives to find. They are, for many of us, (not all, mind you) reasons
for our existence, but not the main reason–the Higher Purpose of
our existence.
About a decade ago I presented to a group of South Australian
business people at an annual black tie event. It was attended by
what would be termed the cream of the business world, and one
of Australia’s leading business journalists shared the speaking pro-
gram with me. During question time after both our presentations,
a gentleman asked in what ways we saw the organisations of the
future differing from those of the present day. I got the nod to re-
spond first, which gave me little time to ponder the question, and
so my answer was largely intuitive. I stated that I would need to
think about technical matters like structures, technology, methods
of service delivery and the like, but that beyond these and even
more important than them, I was certain of one thing. The corpo-
rations of the future would need to share with Government the re-
sponsibility for social and community issues–to share their wealth
with those less fortunate, and in doing so create meaning for their
employees, or eventually suffer higher taxes to finance the govern-
14
ment effort which would clearly be required to address emerging

social problems. The snickers from some in the audience were
audible throughout that room. My feelings moved from humil-
ity to stupidity (a reflection I admit, of a definite lack of maturity
on my part) when my co-presenter shot my comment down in
flames. ‘Business always was and always will be’ he said, ‘about its
shareholders. Its prime responsibility is to endeavour to maximise
return to those shareholders using whatever legal and legitimate
means at its disposal’. Enthusiastic applause. No right of redress.
Good thing actually, I would have been lost for words. I knew that
from his perspective, from the perspective of the business culture
of the day, and certainly from the perspective of the majority of
the audience, he was right, I was simply one of those soft headed
do-gooders with a dream that had no place in business.
And what relevance does this story have to the point of this
chapter? Everything, actually. Less than a decade after that eve-
ning in Adelaide, the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility is
a big agenda item for many businesses. While I feel somewhat vin-
dicated, I can’t help wonder if some organizations into what has
become known as CSR are missing the point of it all. I can’t help
but wonder if Corporate Social Responsibility is really just a new
string to the modern marketing bow, where the focus is not on the
society being helped so much as on the benefits that the corpora-
tion might gain from the helping. I guess if you are a member of
the society in need, you don’t much care if the benefactor is a friend
indeed, motivated by empathy with your plight rather than an eye
for the benefit that can be gained by helping you in that plight.
And for that reason alone, I don’t want to give any sense that I am
‘knocking’ Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives. They are
definitely a move away from definitive ‘sole thing’ business think-
ing and a small step or two towards ‘Soul thing’ mentality.
I think the key to corporate performance today is identifica-
tion of the Higher Purpose for the business. If I’d said that during
my presentations a decade ago, people would quite possibly have
15
Alan Patching
wanted to know where they could get some of what I must surely
have been smoking. But how things have changed over the last
10-12 years! I firmly believe there is a growing consciousness in
society; a consciousness which is moving some societal focus away
from the almighty ‘I’ and toward the common good; a conscious-
ness which might be described as somewhat quantum or cosmic,
if you like, and which recognises that we are all responsible for a
patch of turf (and all life within it) which extends far beyond the
boundaries defined on our plot title or lease documents; a con-
sciousness which extends to, and embraces, the entire planet. I’m
not sure this consciousness is yet making really major inroads to
all areas of the corporate world. However, I cannot see how the
corporate world can ignore this expanding consciousness, particu-
larly when it stands to benefit so much from it. Clearly, areas of
the corporate world are commencing to become involved with it.
How much of that involvement is based on deep understanding
of anything but economic aspects of the ‘groundswell’ is another
question, the answer to which still remains to be seen.
If you haven’t yet experienced this consciousness in your world,
don’t take my word for its existence. Hop on the ‘net’ or take a
quick visit to your local bookstore. Ten years ago, the ‘self help
shelf ’ would have been well stocked with texts on how to get rich
quick and retire early. There’s still no shortage of these titles, but
there is a prominent presence of titles within one other category in
particular–spirituality. It makes sense really, because at a secular
level, at least, the terms ‘consciousness’ and ‘spirituality’ are virtu-
ally synonymous.
A key product of this developing consciousness has been a
growing searching among people for a sense of purpose in their
lives. They want to know there is purpose and meaning in what
they do and that what they do is in line with their Higher Purpose.
They are leaving ‘big corporate’ in droves as they seek to live ‘on
purpose’. ‘Sea change’ in some areas of Australia–and I’m sure in
many other countries, is not only a modern term–it’s fast becom-
16
ing a modern industry.

The ‘on purpose’ or ‘meaning’ phenomenon is not restricted to
those within or emerging from the mandatory mid-life crisis. Sev-
eral research works have identified the establishment of meaning
in their work as the factor most likely to significantly reduce the
tendency among today’s youth to so regularly move from job to
job, with the huge corporate training costs etc. that can entail.
Let there be no doubt, the developing consciousness which
is leading so many people to seek to live a life in line with their
Higher Purpose–in alignment with the very reason they exist–also
exists within our corporations (it must–that’s where most people
spend much of their waking hours).
For those corporations with sufficient insight to see and accept
this reality, great opportunity awaits. Those which lack this insight
will have little choice but to undertake the journey I am about to
describe in response to a mix of external competitive pressure from
those who saw the light and proceeded to reap the benefits, and
internal demand from an increasingly disgruntled human capital
base.
The corporate higher purpose journey
And what is this journey I speak of? Simple! Unless you can be
pretty sure your people, or a large majority of them, can quote your
vision word for word, not because they learnt it parrot fashion,
but because they heard it, they learned it, they enrolled in it and
they believe in it without doubt, then immediately drop the idea
of trying to drive your business from the outside with a vision of
what it can be and what it might do in future. Then immediately
replace that idea with a search to identify the purpose–the highest
purpose for which your corporation exists, then do nothing that
doesn’t take you step by (perhaps faltering) step towards achieving
that purpose.
Earlier in this chapter I described most corporate visions as eco-
17
Alan Patching
nomics focused and, therefore, as not-so-powerful ‘extrinsic’ mo-

tivators. As leaders, we are looking for more powerful ‘intrinsic’
motivators of ourselves and our people. Motivators that not only
‘get people going’, but also incite passion and excitement. Such
motivators, if embraced in corporate vision would always align
with the intrinsic ‘drivers’ of individuals–the things about which
ordinary human beings care most. Common sense, and a basic
understanding of human behaviour, not to mention the global re-
sponse to nine-eleven in 2001 and the more recent Tsunami trag-
edy, tell us that the things ordinary human beings care about at
the deepest level aren’t actually things-and they most certainly do
include other human beings–as individuals, as societies, and as na-
tions. Surely then, it makes sense for any organisation to establish
visions which embrace a higher corporate purpose than the solely
economic, that recognise and seek to align with the clearly under-
stood and demonstrated higher purpose motivations of ordinary
people. Surely it makes sense for any organisation to establish a
higher purpose focused on caring for the environment, the com-
munity and the society in which it operates–on making the world
a better place–as much as on making money for the sake of making
money. Surely it makes sense to establish a powerful and intrinsi-
cally motivating ecological purpose or vision-one which can em-
brace profit as an objective of organisational operations, but not
as the only objective.
This book discusses how you might go about that task.
It will be very difficult indeed to achieve a lot along the path of

purpose driven passion in the organisational context without spir-
itual leadership.
So let’s briefly examine the characteristics of spiritual leaders.
18
Chapter Two
The Concepts and Context of
Spiritual Leadership
The concept of ‘spiritual leadership’ is poised to become as widely

understood, accepted and applied in the successful organisation
of the future as Six Sigma Quality, 360 degree feedback, Balanced
Scorecard and Enterprise Project Management. In this chapter,
we’ll examine the reasons for this. These reasons have their roots
in both organisational and personal arenas.
In the business world, the last couple of decades have produced
massive change, much of it borne of rapid technological enhance-
ment. With the same rate that the place of technology in business
became absolutely secure, the job security of individuals disap-
peared as a characteristic of the work environment.
Increasingly vigorous demands for higher and higher levels of
profit by growing numbers of investors with increased knowledge
of the investment environment led to corporate downsizing at
every opportunity becoming commonplace. However, with the
disappearance of job security came the disappearance of job loy-
alty. Gone with the virtual guarantee of a lifetime or any long term
job, is any semblance of lifetime or long term job loyalty. Most of
my colleagues from college days have worked in only one or two
jobs during the 30 years since we earned our formal qualifications.
Most of my son’s colleagues had worked in 4-6 jobs before their
21st birthday and can be expected to treble that number before
they double that age. That represents a huge training cost for or-
ganisations, not to mention a nightmarish number of managerial
problems, particularly in any half decent economic conditions.
It only takes these job hoppers a couple of job hops to gain the
confidence to keep moving on whenever they feel the need. And
it doesn’t take much to constitute a need. These people are chil-
dren of the era of the eight second news grab and the one sec-
19
Alan Patching
ond music video ‘scene’. Boredom comes easy to them, and they
don’t respond well to any hint of aggression in authority figures.
However, many of these people do have a well developed sense of
responsibility in areas such as environment and fair play. Their
‘tribal’ youth culture gives them a great sense of connectedness
among themselves. Sure, they’re as attracted as the next person to
the dollar, but given a choice, they will always choose to earn that
dollar in a work environment wherein they find some meaning in
what they do and many are unlikely to push for a dollar (beyond
the level required to live) at the expense of other values.
The spiritual leader understands this, and will always seek to
provide that sense of meaning they seek.
Few organisations comprise only younger people. When we
look at people in their 40’s and upward, we find a generally com-
mon (and growing) characteristic–time poverty.
Work pressure, increased commuting time, and increased fam-
ily commitments arising in part from the need to keep children
occupied in a range of pursuits to decrease their exposure to the
tyranny of drugs, are key factors contributing to time poverty.
Time poverty brings with it a decreased energy and opportu-
nity for social and community connection outside of family and so
people now tend to appreciate a sense of community in their work-
place. The spiritual leader comprehends this and seeks to provide
that sense of connection and community. In our 1996 book ‘The
Futureproof Corporation’, Dr Denis Waitley of the U.S.A. and I
described certain characteristics of leadership for innovation in
organisations. Today we need to extend those characteristics by
one item. There is no question that in today’s organisations, the
trust based sense of community fostered by spiritual leaders is vital
to the optimum release of innovation.
In increasingly secular western societies, there is an increasingly
vigorous competition for power and control in many organisa-
tions, fostering unprecedented levels of silo mentality and corpo-
rate politics, the costs of which, if saved, could put a substantial
20
dent in world poverty. Indeed, a Harvard Business Review article

in late 2005 reported 41% of some 1800 senior managers admitted
to being personally involved in corporate politics.
Only a level of spiritual leadership can effectively deal with these
issues which we will address in detail later in this book.
Our profit conscious corporate environment might speak of
human ‘capital’. However, when economic cycles take their down-
ward swing, it’s not uncommon to see large numbers of rank and
file people made redundant before high level management salaries
are reduced (and if those salaries were justified by perceived ability
to produce more profit, isn’t it perfectly reasonable that the anti-
thetic logic should also apply?) and corporate expense accounts
cancelled. The spiritual leader realises that people really are an
asset, and even when the economic environment deteriorates so
far that human assets do inevitably become intolerable expenses,
the spiritual leader never loses sight of the fact they are still people,
and so treats them with fairness, dignity and respect.
Customers/clients and workers alike have seen enough of or-
ganisational ‘values statements’ which often are little more than
public relations exercises aimed at showing how the particular
organisation is keeping up with those corporate Joneses. Spiri-
tual leaders understand that, regardless of the words in the values
statement, the people who make up the organisation, for the most
part, have spiritual, family and self-related values, generally in that
descending order of priority, above any value for money (and cer-
tainly above the level of money required for basic human existence
in the particular society in which they exist). This being the case,
any corporate values that do not rate people higher than custom-
ers, or at least as high as them, simply are not in alignment with
the values of the people who deliver the corporate values, and are
therefore a sham. The organisation’s customers/clients know this
is true. Its people know this is true. And spiritual leaders know
this is true and try to do something about it.
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Alan Patching
What they do about it is create an environment within which work,

to a significant extent, is its own reward, and wherein the values we
learnt in our families, schools and sporting teams can be practiced
and honoured. Values like a sense of camaraderie and connected-
ness within which the benefit of the whole is sought above personal
gain or status seeking.
Characteristics of the spiritual journey
The spiritual leader is a person who understands the characteristics

of the personal spiritual journey and realises many of these same
characteristics can be instilled (identified or uncovered might be
better words because where there are people, at some level spiritual
values exist) in the organisational environment with substantial
benefit for customers/clients, shareholders, stakeholders, manage-
ment and staff alike. Some of the characteristics of the spiritual
journey include:
• An individual is likely to embark on his or her personal journey

after some significant setback or tragedy, or at the very least fol-
lowing some insight, usually gained during some ‘soul searching’
following tragedy or setback experienced by themselves, a mem-
ber of the family or close friend. Likewise, corporate change is
often embarked upon because of loss of competitive advantage
or profitability, or at least a fear of these things, generally due to
their imminence.
• There is one major difference between a person changing habits

or lifestyle because of fear and embarking on the journey of
transformation that is the personal spiritual path. Fear motiva-
tion is short lived. It can certainly motivate people to change
their ways, but generally only long enough to get them out of
the way of the immediate cause of the fear. The spiritual jour-
ney is quite different in that the individual is not moving from
22
something (fear) but rather towards a compelling objective.

That objective is transformation into the True Self, the Divine
(or universe connection) within. The famous Swiss Psychia-
trist Carl Gustav Jung might call it the path of Individuation
and Transcendence–of moving away from the demands of our
western (in particular) cultural pattern of establishing oneself
as an important, better-than-the-rest ego (false self) driven
individual and becoming what the person is on earth to be-True
Self, a separate individual but with a sense of psychic wholeness
and integration, through the collective unconscious, with the
Universe and everything in it.
In the corporate context, one might agree that a clear and compel-
ling corporate vision can provide the inspiration for people to
strive in unity and with enthusiasm towards achieving that vision.
Indeed, in ‘The Futureproof Corporation’ Dr. Denis Waitley and I
were strong advocates of that approach. We stand by the power of
a properly established and promoted vision. However, I am now
convinced there is a better approach–a preferred path. And that is
the higher purpose, more-than-economics path described in this
book. Having said that, I think using vision and purpose together
correctly would be the ideal form of futureproof leadership.
• The personal spiritual journey inevitably involves a transforma-

tion from a self centred, ego based life focused on status, image,
power and control, material and wealth acquisition to one in
which the person is focused on realising the higher purpose
for his or her very existence, on becoming one with the Divine
within-the Universe within if you prefer, on becoming his or her
True Self. This change of focus necessitates a certain humility,
a letting go of the need for power and control, and a realisation
that ‘the best things in life are not things’.
In the corporate context, the higher purpose journey does not lose
23
Alan Patching
focus on economic matters (anymore than an individual can lose

complete focus on the economics necessary for a reasonable life-
style, and assisting others in his or her family and community) but
places equal focus on other issues which are described in detail in
later chapters. For now we shall refer to these issues as ecological
rather than economic in nature.
• The individual spiritual journey inevitably involves integrat-

ing what Jung termed ‘The Shadow’ into one’s personality. The
Shadow can be loosely defined as those aspects of a person’s life
characterised by inferior or animal qualities which the person’s
ego wants to keep hidden from others. An expression often
used to describe this process is ‘making friends with, accepting
and forgiving the shadow’. A person simply cannot experience
an integrated psyche without ‘making friends with’ his or her
shadow.
Similarly, the higher purpose journey for any organisation must

include dealing with shadow factors which the organisation would
prefer to keep hidden from the world at large and especially from
its customers/clients. Things like rampant corporate politics, silo
mentality and other such issues which inevitably have an impact
on costs, and therefore on the prices customers/clients must pay
for the organisation’s product and/or services.
• The personal spiritual journey involves, inter alia, a certain

degree of discipline, courage, compassion, tolerance and trust.
There is no question these same qualities are a requirement of
any corporate higher purpose initiative.
• The personal spiritual journey is not about religion, although

one could say that the prime purpose of religion is to show us
the way of the spiritual journey. It is very much a personal and
experiential thing and definitely not an adherence to any reli-
24
gious dogma. In its loosest definition, it is about becoming the

very best we are capable of being, and experiencing a sense of
harmony with the universe at large in so doing. The same can
be said about the organisational higher purpose journey.
This listing of points doesn’t pretend to represent an extensive

assessment of the personal or corporate spiritual journey. In fact it
doesn’t come close. However, it’s sufficient for my current purpose
of indicating the parallels between a personal spiritual journey
and the higher purpose focused corporate initiative. In so doing I
believe it provides context for the term ‘spiritual leadership’.
Characteristics of spiritual leaders
Earlier in this chapter, I presented some examples which demon-

strated some differences between spiritual leaders and leaders in
the usually understood organisational use of the term. To close
this chapter, I’ll schedule some other characteristics of spiritual
leaders:
• They realise their primary role is to help make and manage

connections among the people with whom they work at all levels
of an organisation, and begin the process by making newcomers
feel wanted, cared for and respected.
• They exemplify the change they know must occur in the organi-
sation.
• They are aware of the shortcomings in their people and manage

these effectively. However they focus on people’s positive points
and promote pride and personal growth through frequent
acknowledgement of those positives.
• They are grounded ‘real’ people: There is no single description
25
Alan Patching
of all aspects of spiritual leaders. Spiritual leaders take form

in all human shapes, and sizes, and they are characterised by
certain qualities (including but not necessarily limited to the
ones in this list) which compel their behaviour, regardless of
their personality type.
• They always embrace diversity.
• They are committed to the principle that it is difficult tending

impossible to expect a level of transformation in their people
which exceeds the level of transformation they themselves have
experienced.
• They are not at all into ‘blame and justification’ behaviour, or

in creating or playing the victim. They ask ‘what have I done to
contribute to a particular situation?’ rather than look for some-
one to blame. They openly admit to mistakes rather than try to
justify their actions when things go wrong. They don’t blame
others for the way they feel or act but rather question what trait
within themselves is causing them to react to other people the
way they do.
• They see purpose in what they do, and it shows.
• They realise that people are motivated by moving towards

achievement of their personal purpose and potential (as per
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Jung’s theories as well as the
teaching of several spiritual traditions). They realise that people
enjoy collaboration with work colleagues of similar values within
an organisation that embraces and respects those values. They
realise that people do value their society and other societies that
share the planet with them and appreciate the opportunity to
express those values through a focus on community, environ-
ment, social justice, and service. In short, they do not see money
26
as the sole basis for meaning in their lives, and they understand
that many people they work with would, given the opportunity,
profess and respond to similar values.
• They appreciate positive competition and understand the

importance of promotion within an organisation, but they strive
to have their people understand the importance of enjoying
what they do now, and the distractive (and potentially destruc-
tive) power of maintaining focus ‘out there’ on a ‘destination’
promotion at the expense of the joy and enjoyment of the jour-
ney right here, right now. As for themselves, they remain aware
that there’s no point arduously ascending the ladder, as Richard
Rohr says, only to find it wasn’t leaning against the correct wall.
Consequently, they question what they think promotion and
power and greater wealth might give them, and then return to
the understanding that while these things might give them addi-
tional lifestyle options, they already possess within themselves
much of what they might seek in pursuing these options.
• They understand that corporate values are what an organisation

demonstrates by their actions and not what they display in writ-
ing in their reception areas (unless the action and the words are
congruent).
• They are emotionally intelligent-aware of their own feelings and

reactions (and the impact of these on others) and sensitive and
perceptive to the feelings of their people.
• They understand that conflict can be productive and remain

aware of and sensitive to the point at which it becomes personal
or ‘positional’ rather than ‘principled’, (and therefore useless to
pursue or allow to be pursued).
• They understand that, just as different people have different
27
Alan Patching
levels of experience, qualifications and intellectual develop-

ment, they also have different levels of spiritual understanding
and development, and therefore expect different responses from
different people to spiritual leadership.
• In the personal context their leadership style is one of point-

ing people to the path (often by asking the questions that help
people find the path for themselves in the same way as do several
spiritual traditions) rather than precisely define the path for
them.
• They might be firm, but they are always fair, reasonable and
compassionate and never remain attached to an opinion to the
exclusion of others ideas, regardless of from where these ideas
might come.
• They demonstrate indifference both to matters which have no

consequence in relation to corporate higher purpose or organi-
sational values, and so remain impervious to corporate politics
and silo mentality etc.
• They understand that there are no degrees of honesty and integ-

rity. A person either is honest or is not; they either have integrity
or they do not.
• They understand the difference between extroverted and intro-
verted people (in the Jungian contexts of drawing energy from
either the outer world or inner world respectively) and adopt
dialogue circle techniques which ensure equal opportunity for
input from both more reserved and more outspoken people to
ensure all their people feel free and comfortable in contributing
to organisational effort.
• They understand group dynamics and seek to ensure the opin-

ion of the majority of a group doesn’t unreasonably suppress
28
the valued opinion of a single member or minority of the group.

That is not to say they compromise in decisions. Rather they
collaborate and never leave people feeling their opinion was not
valued and respected in the decision making process.
With that overview of the characteristics of the spiritual leader,

let’s now look at the approach with which such a leader might get
the very best from his or her people.
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Alan Patching
Chapter Three
The Basic Principle
During the past decade I have observed a tangible growth in human

consciousness at the level of the individual. In that same period
I‘ve noticed a definite trend even further away from any quan-
tum, relational or cosmic/connected consciousness at the corpo-
rate level, and I say this despite the obvious increase in Corporate
Social Responsibility focus in many organisations.
There’s no denying an increase in public minded activity by the
corporate world generally. However, it seems that by and large this
activity, while undoubtedly ecological in nature, is driven as much
by economics as any corporate behaviour has ever been. It seems
old habits really do die hard. These economic drivers usually in-
clude a need to keep up with the corporate competition, including
in their ecological endeavours. And those usually include exploita-
tion of the public relations value of ecological activity.
Allow me to say there is nothing wrong with these reasons for
social contribution, and certainly the recipients of the benefits of
any corporate ecological efforts are hardly going to complain. I
simply believe ecological effort can be the right thing for the wrong
reasons–perhaps ‘not the best reasons’ would be a better expres-
sion of my thoughts. If your human capital believes ecological ef-
fort to be primarily economics driven, they might react with cyni-
cism and rejection rather than alignment and engagement. The
end result might well be paradoxical–in blatantly seeking profit
through an ecological façade, an organisation just might find its
people’s performance reducing. Cynicism might just drive profits
down a little.
This ‘lip service’ approach to ecological focus also appears to
extend to other areas of business. Let’s examine a few of these.
After years (and volumes) of focus on customer service, the sur-
30
veys I’ve been involved with still point to ‘customer service’ being
a foreign concept not far below the surface of many organisations.
Sure, there’s a broad appreciation of the value of the customer and
there’s the manual which defines how to deal with a number of
customer interface situations. However, present any situation not
specifically covered by the corporate hand book and all bets are off.
The admirable breadth of the customer service philosophy imme-
diately collapses in a heap due to lack of depth. Customer service
is flaunted by the business as if it were the sole thing that matters,
but it isn’t close to being part of the soul of many a business.
We’ve all experienced speaking with the technology generated
voice of the company which ‘really values our customers’ and we’ve
all waited for ages to get to a human voice in a call centre. 15-20
minutes is not an extraordinarily long waiting time when calling
airlines and some I.T. ‘service’ related organisations. It seems dif-
ficult to believe that corporate leadership could be so far out of
touch with human needs; yet their persistence is paying off be-
cause customers’ expectations have been so reduced through long
exposure to this lack of service that we are becoming accepting of
the long delays and the poor excuses for them.
From conducting project management and leadership courses
in several countries, I’ve observed a tendency on behalf of some
senior management to be prepared to spend substantial sums on
training their people to change the way they approach their work
and their projects, but these same senior managers are reticent to
embrace any concept that might demand transformation of their
own attitude and thinking on various issues. As an example, while
the corporate world at large has been quick to embrace the proj-
ect management approach to delivering corporate strategy proven
so effective in the construction, engineering and oil and gas in-
dustries in particular, many corporate managers cannot embrace
the important attitude of construction company leaders. That at-
titude involves management in construction companies handing
over complete control of even the most expensive projects to care-
31
Alan Patching
fully selected and well trained project teams and then taking a role
of supporting the team’s efforts, despite the fact that most team
members might sit well below those same corporate managers in
the overall organisational hierarchy. Such a concept is completely
foreign in many a corporate situation.
Issues for organisations
Despite the huge exposure of most of today’s corporations to any

number of leadership and modern management philosophies,
there are numerous situations where the tension between manage-
ment and staff–even in very successful organisations–is palpable.
Few corporate employees, regardless of hierarchical position,

would deny the continuing, if not growing incidence of:
• Extensive change, often apparently for little more reason than

the sake of change itself.
• An increasing number of projects, generally ‘requiring’

commencement without proper planning, many being ‘canned’
well prior to completion, and most of which take longer than
scheduled and cost well in excess of budget. Projects in the I.T.
sector in particular are notorious for budget blow outs and late
completions.
• A seemingly incessant chain of corporate ‘enhancement’ activi-

ties, re-branding, re-engineering, restructuring and re-merg-
ing, often accompanied by downsizing, right sizing and various
other euphanisms for people losing their jobs.
• More and more work to be done by fewer and fewer people, with
an always increasing amount of this work entailing at least some
level of seemingly senseless paperwork and constant reporting
32
which no one is sure ever really gets read. (The main reason for
much reporting in some projects environments seems to be little
more than ‘we’ve always had this level of reporting’).
• Burgeoning corporate politics, the level of which is surpassed

only by the level of denial of its very existence.
• Ever increasing communication of meaningless detail despite

near eradication of worthwhile, open, honest and transparent
‘keep us in the picture’ communication.
• Increasing perceptions among management that staff simply

cannot understand why management has to do what manage-
ment does.
• Increasing perceptions among staff that management simply

does not accept that staff problems are real and pressing corpo-
rate problems.
Have you ever stopped to ask three very salient questions:
1. Does this stuff happen in my organisation?

2. Why?
3. How much is it costing us?
I suspect many would agree with answers along the lines:
1. Statistically speaking–probably
2. Because your organisation lacks purpose, and
3. Most probably, an obscenely ridiculous amount.
It’s not difficult to see why so many of the organisations in which

we work waste so much time, money and energy on off-purpose
activities like those mentioned above. After all, isn’t it a fact that so
33
Alan Patching
many of us who make up these corporations do very similar things

in our private lives. Isn’t it a fact that, as individuals, we:
•Take on too much without thinking things through and prioritis-

ing.
•Spend too much time watching too much nonsense television at

times when important tasks remain undone.
•Work far too long hours and then feel guilty as we attend the
kids sports or culture events more to keep up appearances than
because we really want to be there. (After all, that overdue weekly
report still isn’t finished).
•Plan family life on an ad hoc basis with too little communication

among all family members prior to commitments being made.
Many will get the picture. The question is, are we honestly aware
of the extent to which we are part of the picture?
Being on purpose
The situation at both personal and business levels is nothing short

of crazy. By the way, I’m not writing purely from the perspec-
tive of an objective observer. I have been very much part of this
personal and business craziness. From time to time at some level
I still am. Awareness doesn’t equate to immunity–it’s just a step in
the right direction. Do you know at the completion of the Sydney
Olympics, prior to my leaving my position (which was involved in
development of the main stadium) I reviewed the project files and
specifically the reports and letters I’d personally written. There
were literally thousands of them. The crazy reality is, I don’t believe
the project outcome would have been one iota different had I not
written 65% of those documents. I shudder when I think of the
34
personal energy I expended on so many negative issues, and the

time that I wasted that could have better been dedicated to higher
value family or personal issues. Oh, how differently I’d do things
if I did another Olympic Stadium Project.
But then, I never would. To do so would not be to act in accor-
dance with my life’s purpose at this time, and acting on purpose is
the point of this book.
I am convinced the career aspect of my life’s purpose is to draw
upon my past business, leadership and project experience in writ-
ings, presentations, and consultancy that will assist others have
more productive and more meaningful business and personal lives
for the eventual greater benefit of society at large.
Now you can regard that as grandiose B.S. or a beautiful and
commendable life’s journey. That’s your choice, and what you
choose to think about my life’s purpose is none of my business.
What is my business (because it’s my driving purpose) is to en-
courage you to seek the highest purpose of your own life, and the
highest purpose of your business. For this book, henceforth, I’ll
restrict my comments to business purpose. Running your business
‘on purpose’ is not as easy as it might sound, but nowhere near as
difficult as you might think. It will take a lot of effort, particularly
in the early stages, but the effort should not be particularly com-
plex, and it will be rewarding.
There’s something about people who are living their lives in
alignment with what they perceive to be the highest purpose for
their existence. They have a passion, an energy level, and an en-
thusiasm about the way they go about their lives which can drive
you nuts if you’re not experiencing similar passion from purpose
in your own life. Once these people set their minds on something
they don’t let anyone or anything get in the way of their achiev-
ing it. They don’t waste their energies on corporate politics. They
remain positive and optimistic when others are so focused on the
hole they can’t even see there’s a doughnut around it. They seem to
have boundless energy for everything they do, and it’s infectious.
35
Alan Patching
A case in point is Vlada, who attended a recent workshop I facili-

tated in Dubai at the Festivale (events management) conference
run by my client IIR Middle East. Vlada took notes at a rate which
would have given me writer’s cramp. She sought opinions from
other delegates (and me) during breaks. She oozed passion for
her events management career. Perhaps her enthusiasm becomes
more understandable when you come to realise Vlada worked
with the USSR Government when it was going broke. Going to
work for months on end with no pay cheque in sight gave her a
clear understanding of helplessness. But she didn’t let it get to her.
Rather she channeled that understanding into a passion for help-
ing people who feel ‘helpless’ (to some degree) to plan and run the
business events they need to stage. Muna was another delegate at
the same workshop. She lives in Beirut and shows similarly clear
passion as Vlada. Her love of Lebanon comes through in the pride
with which she speaks of her homeland, and the passion with
which she goes about telling as many people as possible just what
a wonderful place it is. I could share hundreds of stories such as
these. Stories of passion about people who didn’t always have what
they have now, who have a humble sense of self-responsibility and
who appreciate the opportunity they have to be purposeful. The
people behind these stories are my main reason for doing much of
my work in the Middle East. Working with people like Vlada and
Muna gives me a sense of meaning and being ‘on purpose’ with my
own life.
But what about people who like the concept of this book but
are not at a senior level of their organisation and feel they are not
in a position to make a difference? The story of Pat Pearce, who
recently retired from British Airways after many years in various
cabin crew roles on 13 different types of aircraft, is an inspiring ex-
ample of just what can be achieved by ordinary people on purpose.
Pat and her partner at the time noticed the reactions on the faces
of 800 young children who attended a Disney World Road Show
in Birmingham, England. Over a few drinks with friends after the
36
event, someone asked what she would be doing the following year,
and she simply responded, ‘taking a group of kids to Disney World
itself ’. That was the commencement of Dreamflight, Pat’s charity
which has now been operating for 20 years.
Each year, Dreamflight takes a group of a couple of hundred
gravely ill and disabled children between the ages of 8 and 14 to
Disney World in Florida USA. Each year 200 volunteers from both
sides of the Atlantic are involved. The children are formed into
groups of 16 and each group has 8 volunteer helpers, including a
doctor, three nurses, and a physiotherapist. The group leaves from
a separate hangar and arrives away from the main terminal. Each
year the Orlando police department provides some 40 motor cy-
clists who circle the Boeing 747 on arrival with sirens wailing and
lights flashing. These police then provide an escort down the I4
highway, which is closed to all but the 13 bus loads of people from
Dreamflight. The only other occasion when this road is closed is
for visits by the President of the USA.
Those children enjoy ten days in the theme parks of Orlan-
do. They go home as different people, and they appreciate all at
Dreamflight for that experience. When one of the children turned
15 he decided to get christened and asked the first officer from his
Dreamflight experience to be his Godfather.
Pat Pearce was awarded the MBE by the Queen for her services
to Dreamflight but, while she is proud of her award, she told me
the real rewards come from seeing what a difference the trip makes
to the children, and realising she has created something that makes
a difference and which will survive her. She knows it will survive
her because it worked very well without her one year when she
was stricken with cancer herself. Not that a little thing like cancer
could ever deter a woman on purpose like Pat. She told me ‘I am
sure the cancer was sent to me so I can relate to the children better.
When they talk about losing their hair through chemo, I can share
my no hair stories with them, and they love it.’ Pat’s only regret is
that these days 192 children take the trip each year, and she travels
37
Alan Patching
as trip director. ‘The other leaders work with 16 kids and really get
to know them, but with 192 to work with, it is difficult for me to
have that close experience’.
And the Dreamflight experience Pat will never forget? She vis-
ited Number 10 Downing Street, the home of the British Prime
Minister with 20 of the children one year. On the way she had
mentioned to a couple of the kids that when she was young, often
she had bread and tomato sauce for lunch due to family econom-
ics, but that she still occasionally had them because she quite liked
them. During the afternoon tea, the waiter delivered a plate of to-
mato sauce sandwiches to her after the children had a word in his
ear on her behalf, and the ketchup had been sourced (pardon the
pun) from Prime Minister John Major’s kitchen.
Dreamflight has taken a lot of effort driven by the passion of a
person on purpose. Costing some 620,000 British pounds annu-
ally, it is a huge operation and is now supported by the fund raising
efforts of many, especially British Airways staff. Volunteers like
Annie and Alan Green and Ngairey Palin and hundreds like them.
Despite the hard work, Pat and her associates are of one mind in
saying they always get far more out of it than they ever put in.
There is no doubt that individuals really can make a much big-
ger difference than we might imagine. Imagine if leaders could
harness this sort of passion from purpose within the corporate
world. I think they can. If they want that passion all they need to
do is to find their higher purpose, and hire people who align with
and enroll in that purpose. It’s as simple–and as complex-as that.
It’s simple because of the obvious fact that corporations are
only collections of people and at the deepest level–dare I say it,
at the level of soul–people have common interests and purpose
or at least aspects of purpose. We are all interested, deep within
our souls, at the level of our True Selves, in the common good,
in looking after the world we live in and in striving to make it a
better place for ourselves, our families and the generations to fol-
low. We are all moved by the tragedy of loss of a loved one in our
38
families and empathise with ease when our close friends suffer loss
in theirs. We are all moved by the beauty of a spring sunrise over
the ocean, or a stirring piece of music well performed, the silence
of the desert in the early morning and the rhythmic breaking of
ocean waves in the early evening. At the level of soul, we are one.
It’s complex because just about everything to which we are
exposed in society, including in many cases our corporate envi-
ronments, does little if anything, to reinforce this sense of human
connectedness. Quite the contrary, in fact. Virtually everything
in western culture in particular emphasises the survival of the fit-
test, the glorification of the top, the allure of power, the attraction
of materialistic acquisition, the requirement to be fashionable and
pretty, to drive the trendiest car, to live in the classiest neighbour-
hoods, to wear our wealth like a certificate of life achievement, and
to regard anyone who has no (less?) wealth as an unfortunate or
an unmotivated loser (even if sometimes at the subconscious lev-
el). I never cease to be amazed at how people’s attitude to another
perhaps not so trendily presented person at a social gathering can
change instantly when they hear of the $100 million company that
person recently sold, or the best selling book she has written, or the
Olympic Gold Medals he has won or the trophy like partner that
‘fashion challenged’ individual has acquired. It happens virtually
subconsciously with little apparent awareness of the behaviour by
those exhibiting the behaviour. Amazing!
Folks, this all too common behaviour in our society is what the
monk, Thomas Merton, developing somewhat on the work of psy-
chologist Carl Jung, referred to as ‘false self ’ behaviour. It is far
and remote from the behaviour of the ‘True Self ’, the soul self, if
you like. It is the characteristics of the Tue Self that leaders must
tap into to harvest people’s energy and passion, and yes, the profit
these are capable of producing. But profit should be the conse-
quence in this exercise, not the primary objective–but more on this
controversial point later herein.
Make no mistake about it, the type of leadership required to
39
Alan Patching
tap those often dormant resources is a long way removed from the
(necessary) leadership and management indicated and endorsed by
left brain focused seminars, books and university courses. In fact,
people too weighed down by the mantle of this type of educational
exposure will have, in all likelihood, given up on this book ages ago.
Setting a purpose for an organisation–a higher purpose–hopefully
its highest purpose, one in which its people can see alignment with
at least elements of their own life’s purpose–takes a special type of
leadership. It takes spiritual leadership. Leadership that can search
deep down within the very soul of the organisation (and finding a
soul might in itself be a massive challenge in many corporations),
identify the highest purpose deep within that soul, and then use
that purpose to raise the consciousness, the spirit, and the passion
of the organisation to heights never imagined possible.
And I’m convinced beyond doubt that the passion of people
acting ‘on purpose’ must result in increased performance, produc-
tivity and profit.
‘That just sounds like effervescent froth with no management
or scientific basis,’ the cynics might well be saying. And I hasten to
offer absolutely no managerial or scientific defence of that allega-
tion. In fact, I take it as high compliment. My strongly non-domi-
nant hemisphere influenced interpretation of ‘effervescent froth’ is
‘words written about, and with passion, enthusiasm and purpose,
and therefore incomprehendable to the seriously dominant hemi-
sphere influenced/afflicted’.
When I write and speak about this subject, I do so with pas-
sion and enthusiasm because I know I am living and working in
alignment with a significant element of the higher purpose of my
own life. I am my own evidence to myself that this ‘purpose’ stuff
really works. I am also an endorsement to myself that all the study,
learning, reading and applying of the management, project man-
agement and related principles and experience of well over two
thirds of my career, revealed to me nothing of the true power of
purpose. That only became apparent to me when I took stock of
40
a strange situation. As I built impressive results for my clients I

sensed I was destroying myself at the core–I was being very suc-
cessful in soul-destroying work. More accurately, and to remove
any suggestion of fault lying anywhere other than with myself, I
should say I was achieving great success using a behaviour style
which felt appropriate to the business circumstances, but was soul-
destroying (to myself).
It’s amazing what insights one has, and with what great clarity,
when the veil is lifted. It’s amazing how this seems to happen not
when we are right on top, but ironically, when we are near rock
bottom (even if others see us still to be on top by virtue of the re-
sults we are producing with the auto pilot in full control).
In the next chapter I will use analysis of one such experience as
a basis for deriving a series of stepping stones to assist you get your
business–and perhaps your life/career back on-purpose, and to
enjoy the profitability that I am convinced will flow from the pas-
sion that being on-purpose will produce in the people that make
up your organisation.
I invite you to join me on this journey into spiritual leader-
ship–and why not bring your organisation along for the wild and
wonderful experience?
Our secular society has largely not realised that the most pow-
erful source of self value and esteem is our centre within and so
teaches us to seek fame and recognition in the external world. It
does not understand the concept of the power of humility and
spirituality–the power that comes from who we are at the deep-
est level, and not from our external titles or what we do, and so
teaches us to pursue dominative power. Such a society at times
produces situations wherein the ultimate expression of domina-
tive power and seeking fame (or notoriety in this instance) is to
take an automatic weapon and indiscriminately spray lethal bursts
around the local school, fast food outlet or tourist attraction.
Never has there been a greater need for spiritual leadership in
our world. Spiritual leadership in families, schools, universities,
41
Alan Patching
churches and workplaces can go a long way towards helping peo-

ple understand and experience the true source of meaning and self
esteem and what spiritual power is all about.
And now let’s begin that organisational spiritual journey.
42
Chapter Four

The Steps on the Journey to Highest Purpose
Some of the greatest life lessons I have learned came from my

experience with the Sydney Olympics. Like practically every-
one involved, I wore a number of hats, none of them any more
important in the big scheme of things than any other role taken
by any other person working on the project. My role–and several
other people’s roles–just seemed bigger or more important than
they really were because of the media and other profiling given
to the project for no other reason than it just happened to be the
Olympics. My main roles were as Chief Executive Officer of the
Stadium’s owning entity, as the owner’s project director, and as a
member of the Olympic Venues Co-ordination Committee. The
role of project director involved leadership and control of the
design and construction process on behalf of the owning entity
and its many thousand investors.
By any standard, the physical result produced by the stadium
team of project managers, consultants, contractors and opera-
tors was superlative. Indeed, International Olympic Committee
President (at the time) Juan Antonio Samaranch, described the
venue as ‘the most fantastic stadium I have seen in my life’. He later
described the Sydney games as the best Olympics ever.
Now, before you get to thinking I’m on some huge ego trip here,
let me give you my version of the stadium experience. The physical
result of a successful venue completed on time and on budget was
satisfying. Realistically, however, there was no one on that team
who would, for a single second, have expected the outcome to be
anything other than it was-no more than a professional surgeon
would routinely begin a theatre procedure expecting anything
other than the most successful outcome possible, or a professional
hotel staff member expect other than to give guests a great experi-
43
Alan Patching
ence of staying at their hotel.

On balance, however, the Olympics experience was not one I would
consider repeating–not for a split second. I personally found the
experience to be physically exhausting, mentally draining and spir-
itually soul destroying. The corporate politics, aggressive verbal
interaction, back biting, character assassination and every other
negative aspect of corporate and project life reached levels I had
never previously experienced. In some strange way they were the
negative equivalent of the more positive Olympian performances
recorded when the venue was put to its proper use and purpose.
I had never previously experienced that level of the worst of the
negative aspects of corporate life, haven’t since, and don’t expect
to in the future.
At a personal level, I was utterly exhausted by the experience.
Without the support of my Board at the working level and my
wife Annie on the home front, I most certainly would have acted
on one of the several occasions I sat, after hours, in the empty half
finished stands questioning why the heck I hadn’t resigned ages
ago. I had never thought like this on any previous project or in
any previous job. Why did I stay until completion? I think being
a ‘baby boomer’ had a lot to do with it. Fellow baby boomers will
understand the attitude drilled into children of the fifties and six-
ties–‘never give up till a dead horse kicks you’. I don’t know how
many times I’ve had that non-sensical instruction to proceed ‘till
you drop’, against all odds, burned into my psyche as a child and
teenager-by parents, family, teachers, sports coaches etc. I have no
idea where the expression came from. I do know its application
was a cultural ‘standard’ in post World War II Australia.
Five years after completing that project, I’ve had contact on
more than one occasion with a few at most of those directly in-
volved, and have not spoken a single word with the great majority.
This is not because I have gone out of my way to avoid people.
There’s been simply no compulsion to keep in contact. Hardly the
stuff of strongly forged relationships, despite those relationships
44
being on a daily basis over a four year period.

Yet despite a somewhat difficult project experience, it was a jour-
ney of great self discovery and that, more than anything else, made
the investment of time and effort worthwhile. As I said at the
commencement of this chapter, I learned some great lessons for
life from my personal Olympics experience.
It really was contemplation on the lesson I am about to share
with you that gave rise to the idea to write this book.
A life lesson from the Sydney Olympic

experience
Despite the unusually high levels of adversarial transactions etc.

described earlier, there were three separate and distinct occasions
where the stadium experience, for those closely involved, aligned
with the image of the experience (unity, common purpose, daily
cooperation etc) which we fed to the press to maintain the appro-
priate corporate and event images. On each of these occasions
everyone involved forgot the disputes, vested interests and person-
al attacks and cooperated in text book style to produce results
beyond even our own wildest expectations. It was nothing short
of amazing to be part of those too short-lived experiences.
Allow me to invite you into those experiences by giving you a
brief description of each of the occasions to which I refer.
The first was the positioning of the first 100 metre plus long,
150 tonne plus, 14 metre high centre section of the giant arched
trusses which support the stadium roof. There were two of these,
and each had to be placed into a gap its own length plus a few mil-
limeters–not much more than the width of a weld–at each end.
Not everyone on the project was directly involved in that difficult
technical exercise. However each morning as the time approached
for the exercise, everyone on the project arrived at site early and
eagerly awaited the construction manager’s evaluation of prevail-
ing wind conditions and the state of engineering preparedness.
45
Alan Patching
I will never forget the morning he made the ‘go’ decision. Consul-
tants in suits stood uncharacteristically shoulder to shoulder with
construction workers, some of whom had tattoos in places where
I don’t even have places, and to a person, wished that operation
success from start to finish. No! ‘Wished’ is too weak a word–we
all willed it with every cell of our very being. The prevailing feel-
ing was one of unity and pride of involvement, and that pride was
palpable and as obvious as the giant structure it pervaded.
And successful it was–in fact it was so successful it seemed
somewhat of an anti-climax, such was the feeling of anticipation
on site that morning, even among those only remotely involved.
The second occasion was immediately after completion of con-
struction. The meeting to complete the legal formalities to estab-
lish that the project had been delivered as contracted commenced
at noon. After an exhausting day for all involved, the Olympic
Coordination Authority representative handed me the Certificate
of Practical Completion at precisely thirty two minutes and twenty
seven seconds past eleven that night. I recall looking down at my
watch while both of us still gripped the document in the process
of giving and receiving, and that watch face image will be etched in
my brain forever. If it hadn’t been for the brilliant communication
skills of our chairman, Stephen Rix, and his calm assistance under
pressure dealing with lawyers representing several organisations
with differing vested interests, there was no way that certificate
would have been issued that evening. Stephen Rix was the defini-
tive person-on-purpose that evening,.
The strange thing was, everyone packed up and went home im-
mediately after completion of the formalities. Chilled drinks re-
mained unopened, and instead of the expected sense of celebration
and euphoria, there was this inexplicable (at the time) feeling of
anti-climax. I’ve since come to understand the mood that evening.
Many in that room had worked ridiculous hours for months prior
to that evening. There had been little if any family life, or time for
self, for far too many people for far too long. Life and work had
46
taken on the one meaning–the wrong meaning. For so many of us

work had for months been the sole focus of our very being, and to
the virtual exclusion of other more important issues. The soul will
simply not allow us to experience true euphoria over achievement
at the level of one of life’s values at the expense of neglect, even the
temporary neglect, of other higher order values.
This was a valuable and unforgettable lesson I learned, but it is
not the main point of this anecdote.
At the moment the construction of the stadium was formal-
ly declared complete, the place was still very much in construc-
tion configuration. There were temporary fences, builders’ sheds,
equipment, cleaning gear, unplaced furniture, mobile machin-
ery–you name it–construction related stuff was everywhere. In
less than three days, 104,853 people would enter the venue for its
first ever ‘live’ use–a ‘double header’, season opening rugby league
extravaganza. The task looked completely impossible.
Then a miracle happened. The temporary construction fences
were not the only barriers to disappear. People from several dif-
ferent organisations who had spent four years with very different
ideas about the meaning of what were really very clear contractual
provisions (but provisions that did not always suit their needs as
written) began working together with no vested interests and with
a single objective in mind. None of those people were going to
allow the huge effort they had expended on that project over such
a long time to fail to reap its reward. None of those people were
going to let down the friends and family who’d shared the hard-
ship of the journey with them. None of them was prepared to have
that venue perform at anything short of its optimum performance
capacity. Everyone realised that there would be no way to get that
venue from the status of construction site to efficiently working
stadium without the teamwork that can only be borne of single
minded strength of common purpose. That teamwork materi-
alised and the objective was achieved.
47
Alan Patching
Three days after its last appearance in pre-Olympic construction

configuration, Stadium Australia (now Telstra Stadium), Sydney’s
Olympic Stadium, received rave reviews nationally and interna-
tionally for its debut in operational configuration and for a fleet-
ing moment, the feeling of achievement made a lot of the difficulty
actually seem worthwhile.
I often wonder how different the stadium experience might have
been if the energy put into such exemplary teamwork on those
three days had not been wasted on corporate politics throughout
the project delivery period, and I can’t help thinking this sobering
observation crossed the minds of others who had been involved
as well.
The third occasion I refer to was the Olympic Games them-
selves. Some eighteen months and tens of millions more dollars
were expended after that first ever event to prepare for the Games
and their opening ceremony. Those months were often similar to
the construction period, but on a much lower key. Yet when the
Olympics arrived, once again all involved cooperated brilliantly,
and often beyond the call of duty, to stage the stadium based com-
ponents of the best Games ever. My role was minor and involved
only protecting the owner’s interests during occupation of ‘our’
property by a range of temporary tenants-those actually running
the Olympic Games. The property industry at large would kill for
such tenants. The venue was magnificently and very responsibly
looked after by the Olympic authorities, giving me little to do but
observe and appreciate the collaboration phenomenon I am now
sharing with you.
All of these absolute highlights of the Sydney Olympic Stadium
experience share a common theme, and any leader who can cap-
ture the essence of that theme and (hopefully) understand its pow-
er from the examples I’ve given, and others they will no doubt find
when they begin to seek them out, will have the secret to much
enhanced performance in any corporate situation.
All three stories I’ve related are examples of the amazing differ-
48
ence that the passion of people with a unity of purpose can and
does make.
Of course these weren’t the only examples from the stadium
adventure. I recall once breaking an unwritten rule (that only the
Contractor’s people speak with the sub-contractors about contract
related matters) and speaking with a group of older Italian work-
ers on the site about the complete lack of down time through in-
dustrial activity despite the project being the most high profile in
the country. The import of their collective response was they were
not building bricks and mortar. They were building part of his-
tory, and they were creating something that their families could be
proud of for years to come.
This is another fine example of people performing with passion
for a purpose more important in their minds than economics. I
cannot adequately convey in words my utter confidence that this
principle will be the governing and essential force driving the most
successful organisations of the future.
Every journey begins with a single step
Having established the often-underestimated value of passionate

people working for a purpose they regard as greater than econom-
ics, it will only take a few minutes contemplating how attractive
this phenomenon could very quickly have the bottom line looking
to get most corporate leaders moving towards actually identifying/
establishing their own organisation’s higher purpose. This could
prove more challenging than it might first appear. However, there
are a number of guidelines which will assist, but I’ll leave the de-
tailed explanation of those until after we identify all the steps on
the journey.
The first step is, of course to recognise the value of a higher
purpose to the organisation, and to commit to identifying or es-
tablishing a higher purpose.
49
Alan Patching
The next step involves spreading the word about the higher purpose
identified or established and gaining enrolment in it. There’s no
point writing it on your new brochure and forgetting it. The point
of purpose is to instill passion and to inspire motivation, and
motivation will always be an internal force which compels behav-
iour. That’s where corporate vision and corporate purpose differ.
Vision is an outside job–a magnificent goal we one day would
love to achieve and one with a definite and appropriate role in any
corporation, especially when properly used. Purpose is an inside
job–it’s the factor that makes corporate life worth living. It’s how
we live and what we live and why we live our corporate existence
on a day by day basis. It’s not something big ‘out there’ that we
want to get to, it’s something big, deep in the corporate soul, which
compels and directs every aspect of corporate behaviour. It’s the
organisation’s raison d’etre, and to be really effective it must be a
raison d’etre above profit for profit’s sake alone.
Spreading the word is about communicating information,
seeking input and feedback, and chronicling the ‘higher purpose’
within your organisation so people can understand it and decide
whether or not they feel ‘aligned’ with it–whether it in some way
‘resonates’ with them. It is an absolutely essential pre-requirement
to gaining people’s embracing of and enrolment in the purpose.
Whether or not they do enrol will depend on how well the iden-
tified corporate purpose resonates with those deep down issues
(which we addressed in the previous chapter) that connect and
bind all human beings at the level of their True Self, at the level of
their souls.
I am compelled at this point to comment further on certain
aspects of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as it has now be-
come such a popular concept that it’s the subject of international
conferences. However, I cannot but wonder if many if not most
CSR effort doesn’t miss a major point of spiritual leadership.
For the most part, the books on the topic address the profit en-
hancing potential of CSR activities. I take no issue with that. Only
50
a corporate nut-case or someone with limited contact with social

reality would consider all corporate profit as an intrinsically evil
concept. I’ve mentioned profit a few times in this book already,
and I’ll be talking about it much more before I finish writing. My
concern is the opportunity that leaders might miss when profit
becomes their prime focus in undertaking CSR activities.
I’ve read several articles and books which effectively address
CSR pursuits as just another area of marketing science. Again–
there’s nothing bad about that (we’ve already agreed that profit is
an acceptable and necessary corporate motive)–it’s simply not the
only way, and to my mind, certainly not the best way, to approach
CSR. Profit motivated CSR certainly benefits the recipients. In
addition, the organisation’s people, to some extent, might even feel
inspired by profit focused CSR effort. However, I get the impres-
sion from my own international corporate work, that most people
whose organisations are involved in profit motivated CSR activi-
ties–primarily profit driven CSR activities, that is-see it as just an-
other marketing exercise in pursuit of the mighty buck. They are
not at all motivated or inspired by the organisation’s CSR effort.
After all, the next organisation to spend more money telling the
world about their CSR activities than they actually spend on the
CSR activity itself won’t be the first.
I wonder what would be the outcome if an organisation simply
decided to pursue some CSR related activity for no other reason
than the inherent benefit to the recipients. No profit motive–on
the contrary, a preparedness to simply spend some profit on some
worthwhile cause for no other reason than its worthwhile-ness.
No business case; no marketing plan; no advertising or promotion
agenda other than perhaps to encourage others to follow suit in
supporting this particular cause.
I wonder what would be the reaction of the people who con-
stitute the human capital of such an organisation . I wonder if
such people might actually see such an organisational endeavour
as quite out of the ordinary. I wonder if they might find them-
51
Alan Patching
selves wanting to enroll and be engaged in an organisation with

such a social/community focus–even if they had little or no direct
involvement, simply because it seemed congruent, at some deep
level, with their own sense of connectedness with and desire to
help others perhaps less fortunate than themselves, despite a sense
of futility about being personally able to do so in what they see to
be a deeply meaningful way.
I wonder if those people might become more passionate about
a work environment that allowed them the opportunity to pursue
some of their private values–higher values perhaps, than money
and relationships, in a way they saw as more meaningful than they
might ever otherwise be able to do–because of both the generosity
of motive and the scope of the endeavour.
I wonder if the reignited passion of these people might extend–
perhaps unknowingly-into the efforts of the workplace generally–
maybe even to the extent that a sense of bonding and teamwork
with other like minded individuals simply evolves, and productiv-
ity and profit enhancement simply follows, and even more CSR
and better career opportunities are part of the consequence.
I love to wonder–even about how many great society advances
were initiated by simple souls wondering. Unfortunately, real-
ity then often strikes and I wonder how long it would take some
leader who simply didn’t ‘get it’ to blow the benefits gained for so
many people-without any primary profit motive driving the par-
ticular CSR endeavour–right out of the proverbial corporate wa-
ter. Wouldn’t it be such a shame for some great ‘CSR for its own
sake’ effort to be destroyed by some ego inflating application of a
‘new concept’ management principle from a book in the recom-
mended reading list from some internet based ‘degrees for experi-
ence’ MBA course.
I wonder if truly spiritual leadership could become central to
cutting edge business at all levels. I wonder if we ever will see some
small portion of the wealth of the world better distributed, which
surely would be one strong indicator that spiritual leadership was
52
taking hold in a meaningful, ‘connected’ sort of a way-in the way

of the Soul Thing That Matters.
The problem facing the corporate spiritual leader is getting
beyond the often strongly reinforced, bunker sturdy, and seem-
ingly impenetrable (corporate) false self. The tougher that façade
and the greater the number of ‘facades’ to deal with, the bigger the
leadership challenge. I’ll provide suggestions on facing the chal-
lenge later herein. For now, let’s continue to identify the stages of
the higher purpose journey for organizations.
The next stage, having established your organisation’s higher
purpose, spread the word about it, and sought enrolment in it, is
to run your business by it. Not just bits and pieces of your busi-
ness, not just a few days a month of your operations, not just some
of your projects and not by some of your people. Every person in
the corporation must run every aspect of every project and every
division of your corporation in line with, and compelled by, the
corporate purpose for every second they work in the business.
That has to sound like a ‘big ask’–perhaps even an impossible
dream. However, I saw it happen and I saw its power during the
Sydney Olympic experience-admittedly for relatively short time
periods–and I am convinced it can be achieved and maintained
over the long term. The idea is to move through or beyond the
stage of the corporation and its people ‘having a purpose’ to the
stage where the higher purpose ‘has’ the corporation and its people.
(For this expression, which condenses my thoughts on this sub-
ject perfectly, I must thank blind American pianist, Ken Madema,
who’s made a name for himself attending corporate conferences
and composing and playing/singing a song summarising each pre-
senter and his or her presentation immediately on completion of
their delivery on stage. Ken once commented, I forget whether it
was in reference to himself or a presenter, but I’ll never forget the
place (Minneapolis, 1996) or the words, ‘He no longer has a gift;
now the gift has him). Beautiful!
53
Alan Patching
I’m confident your organisation can achieve this status, and to

borrow words, yet again, this time from an Australian hair sham-
poo advertisement “it might not happen overnight, but it can
happen”. (I admit I’m shameless about how I get my point over,
I’m that passionate about my purpose in writing this book-having
you embrace this concept).
When your business is being driven by, and run in accordance
with, your higher purpose, it’s time to move to the next step on
the journey. This one will, at long last, give heart to any remaining
left brain dominant measurer/managers who decided ‘well, I paid
good hard cash for this book and, by golly I’m going to finish it
even if so doing finishes me’. This step comes from my own domi-
nant hemisphere driven quantity surveying and project manage-
ment background. I’m not going so far as to invoke the premise
that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Rather, if you
don’t nurture it, you can’t expect to thrive from it.
The general overriding principle of effective project manage-
ment is, ‘plan it, implement it, control it and adjust it”. The corpo-
ration on the journey to higher purpose is advised to borrow from
the intent of this philosophy and not to begin with a flurry and
expect success with no continuing effort. Passionate, purposeful
people nurture the alignment of their life’s activities with their
life’s purpose. Not to do so would be an incomprehensible propo-
sition. The same should apply to organisations on their higher
purpose journey.
Summary of Steps on the Corporate Higher

Purpose Journey
In summary, the stepping stones on the path to increased profit

through passionate people in alignment with a well considered
and established corporate purpose are:
Step 1 Take time to consider and understand not just the great
54
potential benefits of the journey, but also the effort that will be
necessary to reach even milestone destinations along the way.
Step 2 Engage support at senior leadership level by encourag-

ing contemplation of the enhanced productivity and profitability
potential before commencing your journey
Step 3 Identify/establish your organisation’s higher purpose
Step 4 Spread the word to every far reaching corner of the organi-
sation until you have as complete alignment with and enrolment
in the higher purpose as is reasonably possible
Step 5 Run your business completely in accordance with your

organisation’s higher purpose
Step 6 Nurture and monitor your progress
Step 7 I didn’t mention it before, but don’t make the mistake we

made on the completion day of the Olympic Stadium.
Do Celebrate Success!!
Before finishing this chapter, I’d like to comment just a little on

steps 2 and 4. You will note that I mentioned gaining senior lead-
ership and management support by stressing potential productiv-
ity and profitability increases. I made this comment in light of
my own business experience wherein many top level managers are
unlikely to consider spending money on what they might perceive
to be ‘yet another trendy management fad’ without some level of
compelling business case. No potential increase in productivity
and profitability equals no compelling business case equals no
funds or resources committed for the project.
However, it is crucial to understand that the higher purpose
journey is not just a re-vamped exercise in corporate vision. If it
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Alan Patching
is, it might work just as well as the corporate vision ‘exercise’ I’ve
addressed earlier herein. In other words, it might be an abysmal
failure. For your corporate higher purpose endeavours to have any
chance of success in making a long term difference inside, they will
first have to be successful at making a difference outside. By this
I mean your higher purpose really does need to be exactly that–a
‘higher’ purpose–‘higher’ in this context meaning above the eco-
nomic goals of the organisation, but contextualised by an under-
standing and appreciation that without sound financials, the busi-
ness cannot survive, and a failed business can offer no ecological
benefits to anyone. To give away what you do not have to give
benefits nobody.
The idea is to establish the ‘higher purpose’ ecological objec-
tives to give meaning to everyday business activities, but never to
lose sight of the importance of reasonable economic objectives to
business survivability.
If the ‘ecological’ objectives are really only a thinly disguised
marketing and/or public relations exercise, as some early corpo-
rate ecological endeavours clearly appear to be, both the market
place and (more importantly) your corporation’s people will see
right through them, and your journey could end at step 4, simply
because your people might not want to enroll in what they might
see to be a sham.
Well, that’s the nutshell version of the stages of the journey to
corporate higher purpose-the journey of the Soul Thing That Mat-
ters. Now let’s delve a little deeper into the soul of the corporation
following its higher purpose.
56
Chapter Five

Take Time to Consider and Understand
The higher purpose journey might not be a walk in the park. We

live in a world of cynicism, secularism, social climbing, competi-
tion and victimisation–and sometimes that’s just within average
families and ‘parents and friends’ groups at the local school. I jest,
but I fear in many instances the joke comes awfully close to the
reality. The genuine higher purpose journey requires us to embark
on the corporate version of transformation from the false into the
True mode of existence. This is the corporate equivalent of an
individual’s transformation from false self to True Self living. In
other words the corporate false self must die, and you can’t kill it,
all you can do is to convince it to suicide. Not a nice metaphor, I
realise, but it does point to the scope of the task ahead.
My point is, don’t expect this exercise to be overly easy. I expect
the job of getting the concept past first base–your fellow work-
mates at your level-to be in itself quite daunting, especially if your
organisation and its people are already extended making a nice
profit when you raise the idea. Getting the concept past the most
senior levels of management will probably be even more daunting,
and don’t expect your colleagues to go berserk with excited sup-
port for the idea even if you do happen to be in senior manage-
ment yourself.
Even with management commitment, the real task still lies
ahead, especially for larger organisations who are so sick and tired
of change they’re now at the stage they’re sick and tired of being
sick and tired. Sound familiar?
By now, some readers might be thinking ‘this writer is a com-
plete fruit cake. I mean, here’s this guy who takes the time and
effort to write a book, and then goes to great extent to demotivate
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Alan Patching
readers who might be contemplating applying the philosophy pro-

posed by that book in their businesses’.
Actually, I’m most definitely not seeking to demotivate anyone.
I am trying to avoid giving such an all-positive picture of the phi-
losophy that people get so motivated they lose traction during its
application. Such an approach could result in much demotivating
disappointment.
In case I’ve appeared a little too negative for some readers, let
me give you some positive and easily identifiable proof that it is
possible to make contact with, and reap the benefits of, the deep-
er True Self of most people. Remember September 11th, 2001 in
New York? Or the Bali bombings not all that long after? Do you
recall the disastrous floods of 1974 in Brisbane, Australia? Or,
more recently, the Tsunami disaster in South East Asia? Or per-
haps the earthquake that affected so many people in Pakistan? Or
the London and Madrid bombings? In fact, think of just about
any disaster or near disaster situation anywhere in or near your
neighbourhood, or your state, or your country–your region–your
world. Have you noticed how people just get past the barriers of
status, race, nationality and everything else and work together to
support whoever needs more support than they do in virtually all
such situations. Have you ever noticed the amazing acts of bravery
performed in these circumstances. Have you noticed how such
events seem to simply stun us into a focus outwards towards our
fellow human beings who have been so affected by the tragedies?
I believe bravery, more often than not (and possibly always) is
born of the True Self mindset. The false self is just too precious
about itself to just dive in regardless of risk for the benefit of a fel-
low human being. In fact, all the support and assistance offered
by individuals to their less fortunate brothers and sisters in times
of tragedy and disaster is borne of the sense of connectedness and
responsibility to others that is a characteristic of the deepest part
of the human being–the True Self–the Soul. There simply is no
relevance in false self, ego–centred behaviour, in circumstances of
58
tragedy and disaster. There’s one good thing with which we can
credit our false self-it surely knows where it won’t be appreciated
and nurtured, and disaster and tragic circumstances are certain
examples of the situation in which it’s just plain happy–deliriously
happy actually–to just bug out and give the True Self its time in
the limelight. Of course, the True Self couldn’t care less about the
limelight, but the false self would never believe or understand that
for a second.
And what does tragedy and disaster contain or provide to have
such a positive effect on human beings. Simply a sense of higher
purpose. For just a short time in people’s lives or their work, the
money they could make, the gardening, the laundry, the art class,
the sports training and that incredibly important meeting–these all
pale into utter insignificance compared with the sense of empathy,
connectedness with and responsibility towards their fellow souls
in trouble. That’s a real sense of higher purpose. In fact I suspect
outside of the raising of their children, purpose seldom gets higher
than that for many people over the course of their lifetimes.
And therein lies the focus of what leaders contemplating the
journey towards a corporation with a real sense of higher purpose
are advised to contemplate.
The purpose of step 1 of the journey–of taking time to con-
sider and understand–is to ensure you have a good grasp on the
scope of the task. It is to ensure you and your fellow leaders don’t
get ‘revved up’ by the potential benefits without fully appreciating
the effect that might be involved before those benefits are realised.
Most of all, it’s to give you time to come to the important under-
standing that your organisation’s higher purpose will necessarily
be ecological, and its pursuit must therefore involve a degree of
corporate altruism which, in all likelihood, will be quite foreign
to your organisation. I will even go so far to say, if you do not ar-
rive at this understanding, then you probably are not thinking of a
truly ecological higher purpose, but more likely a public relations
exercise which just happens to offer benefits to the community.
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Alan Patching
And you know, that may not be such a bad thing and, to many
organisations, it certainly would be a far more palatable option
than what I’m offering. However, it’s not corporate transforma-
tion, and you’d be kidding yourself if you expected large scale
and deeply committed enrolment in the exercise from people at
all levels of the organisation. More than likely, they’ll see it for
what it is, another bottom line focused activity which uses a good
cause to attract free publicity. Perhaps they’ll even think the activ-
ity worthy of some support because, regardless of its motivation, it
does in the end support a worthy cause. However, I cannot accept
that any such exercise could experience long term support from a
support base largely underpinned by cynicism.
The type of higher purpose–ecological vision, if you like–to
which I refer is truly ecological. By that I mean it is taken on and
pursued as part of the normal operations of the business–for its in-
herent value, and regardless of risk, within a predetermined range
of acceptable risk to the bottom line. In other words, there is a rec-
ognition at the outset that there will be a cost in effort and perhaps
even in real dollars, but the inherent value of the higher purpose
makes that (sensibly estimated and acceptable) cost worthwhile.
My theory is that it is the inherent ‘beyond normal business
objectives’ value of the higher purpose which will inspire people
to ‘enroll’, which will ignite their passion, and which will produce
a better bottom line. However, I or anybody else for that mat-
ter, cannot guarantee that. This is essentially an exercise beyond
corporate citizenship and into corporate spirituality. As such it is
more an exercise in what the organisation ‘feels’ is the right thing
to do rather than one wherein it can be logically expected to be a
profit enhancing ‘must do’. Like all spiritual activity, it will to some
extent be an exercise in corporate faith, with perhaps the only re-
turn being the satisfaction gained from doing something really
worthwhile with absolutely no guarantee of financial return.
Having said this, I cannot conceive of a circumstance wherein
a genuine ecological higher purpose would not engage people and
60
stir the passion within them. This must surely translate to im-
proved workplace environment, better teamwork, greater quality
focus and customer service–all the things in fact which the major-
ity of management books today will point to as being pre-requi-
sites of an improved profit line for any organisation.
The subtle but all important paradox which is the central focus
of this step 1 of considering and understanding therefore is:
The higher purpose journey is not an excursion into the ecolog-
ical for the express and calculated enhancement of the economics
of the corporation but rather a putting at some risk some portion
of the economics (cash reserves or annual profit) of the organi-
sation for no other reason than the corporation’s belief that an
ecological focus is the responsible one for the business to have,
yet doing so with an optimism that the organization will, in some
positive way, benefit from the purity of its giving.
Just what is your level of confidence in being able to identi-
fy and establish a higher purpose for your corporation–one that
would have the capacity to get beyond the effects of corporate en-
vironment so well known for its nurturing of some of the worst
attributes and characteristics of the false self–and appeal to the
collective True Self as does the plight of those affected by a natural
disaster–without ending up with a natural corporate disaster?
May I suggest that you read the remainder of the stages of the
journey as a basis for a full and meaningful consideration of what
you’re contemplating getting into during step 1 of your journey.
With that in mind, lets move on to step 2–engaging support
from fellow (spiritual) leaders before proceeding.
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Alan Patching
Chapter Six

Engage Support at Senior Leadership Level
In all possibility the idea to really take a look at your business and
try to inject some life into it came from relatively senior manage-
ment. Perhaps not, but I think that’s where the odds lie. Regard-
less of where the question was raised, if the answer was ‘we need to
define our higher purpose’ you can be certain you fall into a very
small group. For those statistically inclined, that type of initiation
would place you WAY out there on the bell curve, I’d say at least 3
standard deviations out from the mean: right where the curve gets
really close to the ‘X’ axis. In very plain English, there just aren’t
very many organisations like yours. Most will still be committed
to the external motivation of mission and vision.
This raises an interesting challenge for the leader keen to launch
his or her organisation on its search for higher purpose–its spiri-
tual journey. While innovation will always be a key to corporate
growth and success from an economic perspective (maybe even the
key, from a traditional management perspective) very few manag-
ers appear to be willing to take the risk of being innovative in their
leadership or management style. My guess would be a couple of
percent at best, probably around the 2.5% which statistical analys-
ers of market sectors usually rate as ‘innovators’. Why wouldn’t
that figure apply? After all, the ranks of managers and the various
general market sectors are all made up of people just like you and
I, as is a typical market sector. In fact, let’s examine the marketing
statistics model a little further.
That same market statistical analysis tells us around 13.5% of
people are regarded as ‘early adopters’, willing to get involved soon
after the ‘innovators’ have taken the risk and shown the product or
service they’ve purchased not to be a complete lemon. The great
62
majority (usually referred to as the ‘early majority’ and ‘late major-

ity’) then follow, making up 68% in total of the market, with the
remaining16%, called ‘laggards’, right at the end of the products
life cycle.
In marketing theory, the various groups which make up any
particular segment (i.e. the segment’s innovators, early adaptors,
early majority, late majority and laggards) also tend to get involved
with a product or service at particular points over a time line
called the product or service ‘life cycle’. Those keen and enthu-
siastic innovators have their credit cards ready right after initial
launch of a new product or service appropriate to their perceived
needs–even pre-launch if they get the opportunity, which smart
marketing people are quick to recognise and capitalise upon. The
early adopters and the keener members of the early majority get
involved during what is termed the ‘product growth’ phase. In the
early part of the next phase of the marketing cycle–the ‘maturity’
phase, we see the remainder of the early majority and some of the
late majority engaged. Next comes ‘saturation’ phase wherein the
remainder of the late majority hop on the band wagon. The lag-
gards generally wait until the final phase of the cycle–called the
‘decline’. Of course, today’s corporations spend fortunes extend-
ing maturity and saturation phases, and trying to postpone decline
indefinitely. However this is not a marketing book, so we won’t
pursue that point further herein.
Which raises the question, ‘why raise the marketing cycle thing
at all?’
For a couple of compelling reasons, actually. Firstly, I can think
of no better way to explain what I’m about to address. Secondly,
in the corporate environment your move to identify a higher pur-
pose for your corporation’s existence and to pursue it relentlessly,
might very well be a completely new idea. Don’t expect it to draw
a reaction that blows your socks off with the wind of enthusiasm
and eagerness to get started. Indeed, in the constant change, too
much work and not enough time corporate environment we live
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Alan Patching
in, it might be wise to expect the bulk of reaction to fall somewhere

between ‘ho-hum, here we go again, another guru genius idea on
which to waste heaps of time, effort and money’ and ‘he/she’s stark
raving mad–call security!’.
You’re going to have to sell this idea, and I’m convinced the
‘market’ for your idea–your organisation’s people-will respond in
pretty much the same group types and over a similar phasing se-
quence as a market segment does to a newly launched product or
service. That’s provided you market it effectively, of course. By
that I mean you should sell your idea to the passionate innovators
(among your leadership/management team in particular), then
engage the early adaptors. You’ll probably get these groups on
board without a fully developed idea of what your higher purpose
concept is–even with only the idea of moving from ‘outside-in’
corporate motivation-using a corporate vision (did it ever really
work for you?) -to ‘inside-out’ motivation using higher purpose.
You’ll need to be well beyond ‘launch’ and ‘growth’ phases of the
idea before you can expect to get the majority of people engaged
positively with the new philosophy. You’ll need to be well into
maturity of thought in terms of your idea development. In other
words, you’ll need to know what you are talking about when you
refer to the organisation’s ‘higher purpose’, at least in terms of the
process by which you see it being identified/established, the rea-
sons for having a higher purpose in the first place, and so on.
I am about to address the probable need for planning to engage
various parts of your organisation using separate approaches or
‘campaigns’. It’s crucial to separate the ‘market sectors’ in which
you need to sell your idea. And that will entail identifying the ‘in-
novators’ and ‘early adaptors’ in particular in each group and fo-
cusing on them in the early part of your ‘campaign’.
I reiterate you will probably not be able to succeed in what re-
ally is a corporate transformation exercise by dealing with the en-
tire human capital base at the one time. You might need at least
two ‘campaigns’, and the larger the organisation the larger will be
64
the number and/or size of all ‘campaigns’ after the first. I’ll address
the subsequent ‘campaigns’ in subsequent chapters. Right now I’d
like to focus on what will be the making or breaking of your efforts
to get your organisation aligned with a higher purpose. That criti-
cal success factor will be getting the support of the senior levels of
management, and that means every individual senior manager in
every senior management position of every senior management
level of the corporation. No exceptions–not one. And when I say
support, I don’t mean lip service. I mean whole hearted, full bod-
ied, passionate, meaningful, purposeful, 110% behind it–make it
happen support. Anything less will amount to a complete waste
of time.
I’m not trying to paint too dim a picture here, but the reality is,
for large organisations in particular, your task will be significant.
Nobody ever said spiritual leadership would be easy.
Getting to alignment
Your alignment with a higher purpose exercise cannot be just

another case of a CEO or senior divisional leader flashing in to
deliver a speech, then dashing off to attend to far more important
matters of corporate economics or politics back at the office–I’m
sure you know the sort of thing I am referring to. You see it at so
many annual conferences of so many corporations across the size
range. It never ceases to amaze me that those same leaders cannot
understand why their people scoff when told how much they’re
appreciated in every iteration of the corporate values statement.
In fact, if the Chairman, the Board and the President or CEO are
not actively, visibly and most important of all, spiritually behind
the transformation, there’s a very good chance it won’t get off the
ground. Even if it does, your higher purpose endeavours might
just end up as yet another group of carefully created and quickly
forgotten words in the small to medium print of your corporate
brochure.
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Alan Patching
I’ll never forget the speech made by Trevor Perry, boss of Austra-
lia’s Prudential Insurance (before it was taken over by Colonial,
before it, in turn, was taken over by Commonwealth) at the launch
of The Futureproof Corporation, a book I co-authored with Dr.
Denis Waitley of the USA in 1996. Trevor was a mad keen sailor
and told the audience sailing was a lesson in life–‘you can’t control
the direction of the wind, but you can get where you want to go
if you’re prepared to change the set of your own sails’. I have to
agree with him for most levels of most corporations. That’s why
we need very senior managers–all of them–involved in and spiri-
tually committed (‘my word is my bond’ commitment in its defini-
tive sense) to the higher purpose alignment task. This will not be
just another change of sail set exercise. This must be an exercise in
transformation of the corporate environment, and that can only
happen with the whole hearted support of the highest levels of
organisational leadership.
I’d like to dwell a little longer on this transformation exercise–
and it must be transformation, and not change. These terms are
not synonymous–not in this context, anyway. And I’m really not
splitting hairs or nit picking in emphasising this point. Thorough
comprehension of this point is fundamentally and crucially im-
portant to successful spiritual leadership.
Change versus Transformation
In spiritual leadership, change is adjustment of the status quo by

extrinsic force–by pressure from outside. The resultant change,
more often than not, is superficial and takes a long time and a lot of
effort to successfully achieve. It’s often achieved under a perceived
threat of ‘shape up or ship out’ (which comes in the disguise of a
‘down sizing’ or ‘right sizing’ operation conducted (usually) as the
first step of major change initiatives in particular.
Transformation is a different matter altogether. It is adjustment
of the status quo in response to intrinsic pressure. It’s an inside-
66
out experience. Another way of putting it is that change is, in most

corporate situations, an adjustment to what the corporation does
and/or how it goes about doing it, whereas transformation is more
an adjustment of what the corporation is.
No person can force anyone else to transform. All a leader can
do is inspire another person to choose to remain open to trans-
formation. That will always be a personal decision and not some-
thing a leader can force on his or her people–a true commitment
to transformation is required for any higher purpose alignment.
Lip service change to please the boss and be seen to conform will
be short lived. It simply won’t be good enough.
In fact, if the full truth be known, all a person can really commit
to is an openess to transformation. Personal spiritual transforma-
tion is much more something that is done in a person through
openness and exposure to a higher and greater reality than it is
something one undertakes using power of will and personality. A
commitment by a person to be open to transformation is really a
commitment to get out of the way, as it were, and allow that trans-
formation to occur–not to try to control it or manage it. Similarly,
in the corporate environment, undertaking a higher purpose exer-
cise is not something you can guarantee will work, simply because
you simply cannot transform people. It is a matter of working
with your people to identify/establish the higher purpose to attract
the personal enrolment and attitude transformation of your peo-
ple. Spiritual leaders understand that corporate transformation
is only ever experienced as a consequence of wide-spread people
transformation.
They also realise the importance of ensuring those in senior
management, whose support they seek, understand the risks in-
volved in the exercise they are proposing.
By now, you will be getting some insight into the enormity of
the higher purpose alignment exercise you’re contemplating. How
on earth can one person inspire transformation of their corporate
mindset in so many people more or less contemporaneously. It’s a
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Alan Patching
very tough call–and that’s why you need all the leadership enrolled.
If you can’t win their commitment to being open to, and support-
ive of, this corporate transformation endeavour, you might as well
quit while you’re ahead.
Allow me now to offer a second and most important observa-
tion about transformation. Being an ‘inside out’ thing at the in-
dividual level, it’s got nothing to do with our false selves–it’s very
much a True Self phenomenon–a Soul Thing That Matters. While
profit is a (legitimate) goal of business, people will always be the
soul of business. If you want to transform the soul of a business,
you need people to be open to personal transformation. That
means you must get beyond the sometimes near impenetrable fa-
çades of all those false selves.
Can it be done? I’m convinced it can–but there’s only a handful
of ways it can be done. These can be summarised as through great
tragedy or through great inspiration. Unfortunately we often seem
to need the first as a catalyst for the emergence of the second.
We’ve already discussed the way people come together as they
do in times of natural disaster and in major tragedy such as the
September 11th attacks on New York’s World Trade Centre and the
Tsunami in South East Asia. There’s zero relevance of false self in
such circumstances so people really connect at the True Self level.
There’s every possibility you’d get a similar response to a disaster
in your organisation–but I’m not about to suggest you bring on
near bankruptcy in an attempt to connect with your people at a
very deep level. They might see it coming and begin looking for
shallower but more secure connections in an opposition corpora-
tion that doesn’t look like it’s about to go down the gurgler!
There is another way, but it will always take truly spiritual lead-
ership. That way is for your organisation to identify and express its
higher purpose in terms so compelling to the True Self–the soul–of
every one of your people, that they simply become incapable of re-
sisting the intrinsic and, dare I say, natural pressure to enrol in that
purpose. I say natural for the simple reason that if your identified
68
and expressed purpose truly is a higher purpose–an expression of

soul, your people simply will not be able to resist enrolment in the
reality so much larger than their false self identities. If your iden-
tified purpose is a higher purpose/True Self/soul level purpose, it
can result in nothing other than eventual enrolment.
The details-oriented readers might now be thinking ‘well that
might be ok for the bulk of the people in the corporation, but
how can we get the impact with the leadership you say is so cru-
cial when we haven’t yet identified our higher purpose because we
need to involve the leadership (who are not yet committed) in that
very exercise?’ Good question. And my response must be situ-
ational. I’m not shrinking away from a direct follow-the-numbers
response for any reason other than I don’t believe one exists. I can
attempt to give you some possibilities from opposite extremes of a
range of responses. After that, I’m afraid you’re on your own in the
quest to get your organisation’s leaders enrolled. I reiterate you are
more likely to get an interested response when things aren’t going
brilliantly for the business than you are when it’s rolling in profits
the likes of which the organisation’s not previously seen.
The paradox is the good years are probably the best time to do
something so wild and crazy–and spiritually essential–as to try to
find the higher purpose of your corporation’s existence. Turn your
mind to be big banks, for example. You can be pretty sure for every
deliriously happy shareholder in years of record profits for banks,
there are also multiples of customers disappointed with branches
being closed and costs for services being increased.
I reckon there are a lot more organisations with customers not
as happy as they could be–and certainly with human capital not as
happy in their work as they should be–than you might think. I sus-
pect the extent of the phenomenon is somewhat disguised by huge
numbers of customers simply dropping their expectation levels to
avoid continuing disappointment. I’ve recently had a customer
service agent from a leading computer company effectively tell me
my wife had lied about a previous service call. People simply don’t
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Alan Patching
come any more honest than my wife. The fact that this computer
supplier is still ranked as a ‘leading’ company with this type of ser-
vice attitude endorses my opinion that long periods of poor ser-
vice has caused its customers to lower their expectation levels.
When customer service comes from a training manual only, its
‘outside-in’, and that can make it as broad as the ocean, but it’ll
only ever be as deep as a five cent piece. Depth of service outwards
to the customers only really comes from depth of feeling towards
what is happening within the service-providing organisation. No
amount of training will ever produce service results which exceed
that provided by people who love what their employer stands for
in terms of the stated and followed higher purpose of the business,
and love what they do within the business because, in doing it,
they believe they are aligned at some level with their own higher
purpose for being.
True customer service is part of who we are at the deepest level,
and not just a thin crust on the surface of what we do. Maybe that’s
why it’s such a rare commodity. And it really need not be–not in
your organisation, anyway. And now, back to the extremes of the
range of possible approaches to enroll your leadership in your cor-
porate higher purpose endeavour.
At one end of that range–the nice end, but also unfortunately
the end one is least likely to experience, you would approach your
leaders with your corporate higher purpose idea, into the identi-
fication and description of which you’d have put a lot of time and
effort, even though you realise there will need to be some refine-
ment–perhaps major change–in the finally agreed higher purpose
after your leaders are engaged. At this stage you might not even
mention the further adjustment in higher purpose definition that
will inevitably follow when you commence the process of two way
communication with all the other people who work in the organi-
sation. At this end of the range, the theory is, those leaders are
mesmerised by your insight, dumbfounded by your eloquence as
you describe your higher purpose quest, and as eager as teenagers
70
on a hot date to start the action. The attitude would very much be
‘Let’s not wait around on this, let’s get the planning underway–let’s
do it!’ Like I said–nice response if you can get it, but this scenario,
for most, would portray the more unlikely end of the range of pos-
sibilities.
For most people, the response is more likely to lie closer to the
opposite end of the range of possibilities. Don’t draw any prema-
ture conclusions from that statement. I really am being positive
here–I’m dealing only with the range of possibilities of positive
responses from leaders.
The more likely scenario is you will approach (other) leaders
in your corporation, with no particular or specific purpose, much
less a higher purpose, maybe even no purpose at all–just the strong
conviction your organisation really ought to have one. If you real-
ly believe initiating the establishment of a higher purpose for your
organisation is part of your own purpose in the business area of
your life, it’s unlikely you’ll give up until you get a positive response
from at least one person in the highest management echelons. All
you need is to nurture that person’s interest until they engage with
the same level of conviction as you have. After that it will be only
a matter of time. I’m convinced the idea of a corporation with a
higher purpose can be spread faster by people acting on-purpose
(personally) than a hot stock market tip, and produce far more
tangible results over the long term.
In bringing this chapter to a close, I cannot overstress the need
for every person at senior management level to be fully behind
the higher purpose evolution. A single dissident after you’ve got
things rolling positively along can have as much negative impact as
your singularly positive conviction had on initiating the program
in the first place.
Good luck with your senior leadership recruiting and enrol-
ment efforts. I’m so confident you’ll be successful, I’m going to
move right on with describing the next step on the journey – iden-
tifying/establishing your organisation’s higher purpose.
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Alan Patching
Chapter Seven
Step 3 of the Journey

Identifying/Establishing your
Organisation’s Higher Purpose
I know before really beginning, this will be the most difficult chap-
ter for me to write. The reason for this is my earlier comment that
for the great majority of organisations, the concept of corporate
vision ends up being fundamentally one of a marketing rather
than leadership. This statement might appear to be at odds with
the content of my earlier books and audio programs. Those earlier
works enthusiastically espouse pursuing a clear and compelling
corporate vision, rather than a sense of higher purpose per se.
I’ve never promoted the idea of simply (and passively) having
a vision, but rather also pursuing it actively, and with enthusiasm
and conviction. Furthermore, being a long time believer in the
philosophy of intrinsic motivation being a superior force to ex-
trinsic, I have for many years stressed the paramount importance
of entering into dialogue with all people in the organisation, a dif-
ficult but necessary task, to assist them to identify how they might
achieve some of their Personal Images of Achievement (a term
coined by American Psychologist, Carl Priebrum) while striving
and assisting their employer to realise its corporate vision.
People usually don’t care about what the corporation wants
nearly as much as they do about what they want to achieve in
their personal lives. This is especially so if what the organisation
wants is exclusively economic. Affording people the opportunity
to achieve some private objectives in the corporate environment is
an effective means of connecting purely extrinsic corporate moti-
vators into at least some degree of intrinsic motivation at the level
of each individual working in the organisation.
72
I guess, along with human consciousness generally, my thoughts

on corporate motivation have continued to evolve since my last
business related book (1996) as have my ideas and feelings about
spirituality. The concept was always hidden in clear view, as it were,
but it’s no longer hidden for me. The ultimate intrinsic motivation
is a declared higher purpose for the organisation with which every
member of the organisation can align, at least to some appreciable
degree, their own higher purpose in life.
It’s as simple, and as complex, as that.
The first step in identifying/establishing your organisation’s
higher purpose is finding out where it stands now, or ever has
stood, in relation to its reason for existing–its higher reason or
purpose for existing.
Later in this chapter is a derivation of a number of question-
naires I have posed to senior corporate leaders and middle man-
agement people from a range of organisations with whom I have
worked within Australia and overseas, particularly Middle Eastern
countries. The context for the application has varied from a lead-
ership workshop with Chief Executive Officers and Chief (Func-
tional) Officers from the clients of a major Middle Eastern bank,
to seminars on getting better results from project management
endeavours within several organisations from various countries. I
encourage you to set aside some dedicated contemplation time to
complete the questionnaire from two perspectives. Firstly, mark
with a tick the position on the scale which you feel best describes
your own assessment of people generally at your level of the or-
ganisation. Next, mark with a circle on the same scale, what you
believe would be the response to the question from people gener-
ally at the opposite ‘end’ of the hierarchal structure. Please take the
time to complete this exercise regardless of where in your organi-
sational hierarchy your role is positioned.
For example, if you are in a position of medium seniority but
not yet at middle management level, complete the first part of the
exercise based on your perception of how those of your position
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Alan Patching
and lower in the hierarchy would respond. Use ticks to note your
answers for this part of the exercise. Then complete the second part
of the exercise based on your perception of how people in senior
management stratas would respond. Use circles for this part of the
exercise. When you’ve completed both parts of the exercise, take
a few extra moments to contemplate your own personal response
to the question. If that differs from the positions you’ve already
marked, go ahead and mark the spot that reflects your opinion as
well. Use an ‘X’ so you will remember what mark applies to each
part of the exercise.
It’s common for people to begin the exercise with a level of pre-
supposition which can influence their answers. Try to be aware
of this happening in your own responses, but don’t get too con-
cerned about it. In your efforts to get your organisation operating
in alignment with a higher purpose for existing, it’s pretty much
certain an exercise such as this will be undertaken across various
levels of the hierarchy sooner or later, and so the pre-supposition
at various levels will go a long way to being automatically balanced
across the whole range of responses.
It’s important to realise this questionnaire is not supposed to
be the commencement of some (yet another) long term left-brain
statistics based management process. Identification of corporate
higher purpose is essentially a spiritual exercise, and so, by defini-
tion, is far more a non-dominant hemisphere centred experience.
However, I reiterate my point there is not a huge amount of value
in throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Indeed, there will be
cases where what exists needs only to be fine tuned and extended
upon rather than tossed out. The point of the exercise isn’t to
posture for a rejection of everything that is currently done as a
precedent to a completely new and extremely different way of do-
ing things. It’s simply to get people looking for a third way. In
all probability, this third way will be new and different, but to the
extent it can embrace and build on the good that already exists in
your organisation, it most certainly should.
74
I am often asked what I expect the questionnaire responses to

indicate. I don’t want to be predictive of your organisation’s
responses. I’d like to think and hope they would at least indicate
a common opinion on the questionnaire topics at various hier-
archical levels. I’d be thrilled for you if they showed a keenness
across the hierarchical positions to adjust the status quo to pursue
a higher purpose–something more than economic optimisation or
maximisation–call it what you like, all these expressions are fancy
words for chasing the almighty dollar–or whatever currency your
organisation chooses to chase.
‘Hey–wait a minute’, I can imagine some readers saying, ‘he’s
back to knocking making a profit–yet that’s the established goal
of business’. You’re right, I did knock the single focused pursuit
of maximum profit. But I didn’t, and don’t, and won’t, say profits
aren’t ok. They are–I’ve said previously they are a legitimate and
essential goal of business. I also said people are the soul of busi-
ness, and now I’m saying (and you would not have read this much
of this book if you didn’t agree with me, at least at some level or to
some degree) it’s about time we ran our businesses from and with
soul–on purpose. And that means taking a good look at the soul
of business–its people. Not just its customers, but also its human
capital, shareholders, its stakeholders in the projects the business
runs to achieve its strategic objectives, the community (at large) in
which it operates–all of its people.
An organisation might well achieve its vision of top of the tree in
its market sector on a net profit basis, but if it achieves that vision
by paying a pittance to child labour or underprivileged, unrepre-
sented and uneducated peasant people who have to do whatever
work they can in whatever sweat boxes exist and for remuneration
that’s only just sufficient to feed them and their families a meal of
less volume and/or nutritional value than the table scraps of our
average western society home, then I cannot believe that the ma-
jority of decent people would agree for a second that this organisa-
tion has acted in accordance with any higher purpose in achieving
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Alan Patching
its vision and profit objectives. I cannot believe that even the most
profit conscious shareholder would agree that such an approach
to business is fair and reasonable–certainly not in the depths of
his or her True Self–his or her soul. And that’s the entire point of
this book–to encourage organisations to move from a focus on
the $ole thing that seems to be all that matters in many instances,
to the Soul thing that really does matter in every instance, even if
that’s not widely understood within the organisation.
Yes, I do knock profit maximisation in some instances and I
make no apology for that. I would never adversely criticise achiev-
ing greater profit by running business in alignment with a clear-
ly identified higher purpose even though I would never support
maximisation of profit being the primary goal of establishing a
higher purpose for your business. Now I know that seems like a
paradox on first analysis, but in the realm of any aspect of spiritu-
ality, paradox is, and always has been, the universal language. If we
can live with the paradox and look beyond the way we’ve come to
do the things we do without changing to the extent that we begin
to do them in an admirable, (from a lay perspective) but clearly
unsustainable manner (from a business perspective), the third way
will become apparent.
At the risk of getting way off track with the prime objective of
this chapter, allow me to explain briefly. Take the fictitious (but
probably not non-existent–forgive another paradox please) or-
ganisation I’ve described a few paragraphs earlier. Imagine you’re
a hard nosed CEO or financial controller for this outfit. Profits
are looking good, thanks largely to that low cost labor utilising
corporate manufacturing sub-contract you were lucky to sign up
in some third world country. Then some turkey (me) comes out
of the blue and starts ‘gobbling on’ about changing to a higher pur-
pose operations philosophy, which to you (in your new and ficti-
tious position, for the purpose of this discussion), sounds like a
contradiction in terms from the extreme edge of some alternative
management abyss. ‘Is he nuts’, you say, ‘if we pay the sub-contrac-
76
tors’ workers anything like what he considers a fair day’s pay for a
fair day’s work, we’ll cut profits so drastically the shareholders will
all sell up, the share price will take a dive, and most important of
all, my stock options value will plummet, and that’s just not going
to happen!’
It’s at this point that I move out of the right brain spiritual
realm into left brain function with which thirty five years of quan-
tity surveying and project management has made me extremely
familiar. After all, you can take all the person out of quantity sur-
veying, but you can never take all of quantity surveying out of the
person. Do you think accountants are details focussed, analytical
people? Well let me assure you, any quantity surveyor worth his or
her salt will make the average accountant look like they actually do
have a sense of humour!
The point I’m getting to is you hired the third world sub-con-
tractor to reduce costs and maintain or increase profits. But in fol-
lowing your purpose (hardly a higher purpose, given the action
taken) did you look at every area you could reduce costs. ‘Sure
did’, I hear you responding, in keeping with the character of your
fictitious role in your non-existent corporation, ‘I put all the sales
people off salary and onto retainer with incentives arrangements,
outsourced all design, changed the company car policy to be cost
effective. Done all that, pal; what do you think I am, inefficient or
something?’
No actually, just not as thorough as you seem to think you’ve
been. I’d challenge that there are many areas in which you could
save costs that you didn’t even consider. I’d further challenge the
level of costs you could save would allow you to pay our third
world friends a fair and reasonable reward and still maintain the
profit level you’ve managed to achieve by hiring them at the (much
lower) rate you did. I realise if the higher amount was paid to the
boss in the third world country the workers might never see any
of it, but let’s just recognise that complexity but stay with the prin-
ciple for a moment.
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Alan Patching
Specifically I’d challenge that:
• Your (fictitious) organisation still tolerates corporate politics–

lots of it, and at all levels. After all, politics are a normal part of
today’s business environment, aren’t they? Yes, and an abnormal
cost, without question.
• You couldn’t tell me, accurately, how many projects are in vari-
ous stages of delivery in your (fictitious) organisation, and you
most certainly could not guarantee me that they were all carefully
considered, and those that did not align with corporate strategy
were rejected, before resources were committed to them
• You would probably agree that the project history in your (ficti-
tious) organisation is made up of a mix heavily weighted to
the high cost and time overrun, and lower than hoped revenue
producing category, than you’d like
• You’d probably have to agree that most of your projects are

committed with unrealistic budget and schedule constraints, ill
considered scope definition, and with little if any time for plan-
ning so that a reasonable scope with a realistic budget and an
achievable time frame could be established before implementa-
tion begins
• You’d probably have to agree that as a consequence of this, there

were numerous and generally poorly controlled changes/varia-
tions necessary during projects delivery, resulting in not only
further cost and time overruns, but also lowered staff morale,
increased conflict and mistrust, not to mention loss of respect
between hierarchical management and project teams
• Your rate of expansion is fuelled by your push to exploit every

profit opportunity that presents itself, much more than by the
78
availability of people with the skills, education, qualifications,

work ethics, values and interest levels to really commit to what
you do and what you expect them to do. Consequentially, you
have staff turnover levels, with the subsequent high training
costs these lead to, well above what you’d consider ideal or in
any way acceptable
• When you do get new people on board, you don’t have the infra-
structure or time (or honestly, the interest) to offer them proper
induction to your company and what it’s all about. Conse-
quently, the new folk are quickly into the ‘activity’ model so rife
in the ranks, regardless of how inadequate their ‘productivity’
might (understandably) be
• The office you occupy and its fit-out were chosen more to main-
tain a corporate or brand image, or to keep up with the corpo-
rate Joneses, or to take advantage of some legitimate corporate
tax break–I see nothing inherently wrong with any of these–and
have lavish and luxurious director’s offices and public spaces and
relatively spartan–even basically adequate space for the general
work force–I’m not so sure about the ‘soul’ aspects of that differ-
ential.
You know and I know this list is the tip of the money wasting
iceberg. We both know that everything on this list costs money–
lots of it, and certainly far more than we’d like to admit. Probably
enough, if it could be saved, to pay a fair and reasonable price to
every person who ever provided, or contributed to the provision
of, a product or service to our (fictitious) business.
And there really is only one way to get beyond all that wastage,
and that is to move away from the collective ego/false self mindset
from which it’s generated and by which it’s maintained. The only
way to do that is to move to a collective True Self basis for every-
thing the organisation and its people ever do. So please move out
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Alan Patching
of the fictitious role I’ve asked to play in that non-existent corpo-

ration, and back to just being you–because the last point I made
brings us back to the core point of this chapter–completing the
questionnaire as a basis of getting a better picture of from whence
your organisation will begin its soul journey.
The really big questions, of course, are:
1. How ‘fictitious’ is this business I’ve described? and
2. How close are the characteristics of this business to yours?
The Questionnaire
In answering questions for which the answer is based on a continu-

um, simply mark the spot along the continuum which you believe/
feel best reflects the situation that exists in relation to the topic of
the question. For the analytical types who might like to put some
score on responses after completing the questionnaire, I suggest
overlaying each continuum with an evenly distributed seven point
scale, with one on the left and seven on the right hand end of the
continuum.
1. Write down the things you would have if you could have anything
in the world provided you wrote them down in a single 30 second
span of time.
.............................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................
80
.............................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................
2. Does your organisation have a corporate vision?
Yes No
3. If you answered ‘Yes’ to the previous question, without reference

to documents, write down that corporate vision.
.............................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................
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Alan Patching
4. If your organisation does have a corporate vision, what percent-

age of people in the organisation would you estimate know that it
does?
0-10 11-25 26-50 51-75 76-100
5. What percentage would you estimate could recite it without

reference to documents?
0-10 11-25 26-50 51-75 76-100
6. Based on your responses to the previous questions, mark on the

following continuum how effective you rate your corporate vision
to be.
............................................................................................................
Low High
7. Where would you place the vision, mission, objectives, goals,

general management attitude of your organisation on the follow-
ing scale?
............................................................................................................
Economic Ecological
8. Even if you couldn’t recite your corporate vision verbatim

for question 3, please take time to read it now, and then answer
82
the following question. How would you rate it on the following

scale?
............................................................................................................
Ho hum Wow, awe
Just more management speak inspiring
9. How would you rate the everyday enthusiasm and passion of the
people who work in your area of the organisation?
............................................................................................................
Ho hum Wow, awe
It’s a job inspiring
10. To the extent you understand it, how would you rate the every-
day enthusiasm and passion of all people across the organisation
as a whole?
............................................................................................................
Ho hum Wow, awe
It’s a job inspiring
11. To what extent does your organisation’s vision, mission and

values statement focus on your customers/clients rather than its
own profitability and success?
............................................................................................................
Profit/success Customers/client
focused focused
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Alan Patching
12. To what extent does your organisation’s vision, mission, and

values statements focus on human capital rather than on profit-
ability and success?
............................................................................................................
Profit/success Human capital
focused focused
13. To what extent do you feel your customers are excited by your
corporate vision, mission and values?
............................................................................................................
Not at all Wow
Truly excited
14. To what extent do you believe the people who work for the
organisation are excited by its vision, mission and values?
............................................................................................................
Not at all Wow
Truly excited
15. To what extent does your organisation determine what proj-

ects it undertakes based on the ‘fit’ they have with your corporate
vision?
............................................................................................................
If it the project ‘fits’ vision Always-no fit=no go
it’s coincidence
84
16. To what extent is everyone in the organisation held accountable

for his or her contribution to achievement of the organisation’s
vision?
............................................................................................................
Does not happen Everyone is accountable
17. To what extent can you see signs during everyday business that
the people who work with you are passionate about the work they
are doing in pursuit of the organisation’s vision?
............................................................................................................
Not at all It is very obvious
18. To what extent do you believe your organisation’s vision

contributes to a reduction in corporate politics and silo mentality
by it’s unifying effect?
............................................................................................................
Not at all Very significant
19. To what extent do people working in your organisation choose

to work there specifically because they identify and align closely
with its declared vision?
............................................................................................................
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Alan Patching
20. To what extent do you see evidence of a sense of purpose in

everything your organisation does?
............................................................................................................
21. To what extent do the people who work with your organisation
believe that the business is contributing to the benefit of others
and generally making the world better?
............................................................................................................
22. To what extent would you say your fellow employees are
passionate and high spirited about their work?
............................................................................................................
23. To what extent do you find the leaders and/or managers you
deal with in your organisation contribute to lower morale or spirit
in the workplace?
............................................................................................................
24. To what extent do you believe your organisation has a sense of

what it wants to be, rather than simply a focus on profit?
86
............................................................................................................
25. To what extent does your organisation’s culture support the

personal growth of its people?
............................................................................................................
26. To what extent does your organisation have or support social

or community causes for other than public relations/advertising/
general publicity reasons?
............................................................................................................
27. To what extent do you feel a sense of community within your

organisation?
............................................................................................................
28. To what extent has your organisation experienced crises which

point to a need for change in the way it operates, and particularly
in relation to any ‘profit regardless of method’ aspect of culture?
............................................................................................................
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Alan Patching
29. To what extent do you believe management is blind to, or in

denial concerning problems the company has, particularly in rela-
tion to issues of communication, corporate politics etc.?
............................................................................................................
30. To what extent is there a culture of celebrating success in your

organisation?
............................................................................................................
31. To what extent does your organisation assist new employees to

integrate, and create a sense of connectedness for them?
............................................................................................................
32. To what extent does your organisation consistently convey to

its people the message that they are important to the organisation
and that their effects are appreciated?
............................................................................................................
88
33. To what extent is there a sense of trust of and respect for others
throughout your organisation?
............................................................................................................
34. To what extent does your organisation respect and actively

encourage people having a work-private time balance in their
lives?
............................................................................................................
35. To what extent is a sense of fun actively encouraged in your

workplace?
............................................................................................................
And, just for fun, I’d hazard a guess your answer to question ‘1’
did not include anything like ‘I’d like to see my corporate vision
achieved’.
There are many more questions we could pose which go to the
heart of the type of organisation your’s currently is. High marks
on the majority of the questions above would indicate a great state
of readiness in your organisation to move on with a higher pur-
pose initiative. Lower marks don’t necessarily indicate you should
be discouraged, but rather that you should be diligent in your
preparations, and thorough in your introduction of the initiative.
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Alan Patching
Regardless of any arithmetic analysis, if the questionnaire opens

minds to the need for transformation, it has achieved its purpose.
Learning from your responses
Now, let’s make an important observation about what you’ve

discovered about your organisation and its attitude to and align-
ment with a focus on the Soul Thing That Matters-its higher
purpose-before addressing some of the typical characteristics of a
corporate higher (or soul, or spiritual) purpose.
Firstly, don’t be too analytical about your questionnaire re-
sponses. The questionnaire is not presented to excite the statis-
tician or analyst within, but rather to promote discussion which
might excite the part within that might wonder at the potential
and possibilities that abound. You might even find that people
at all levels of your organisation are really quite enthused by the
thought of the organisation moving its focus to a purpose other
than–higher than–profit, even with the confidence of maintaining
or even increasing profit (there’s that paradox thing again). More
likely, you’ll find the potential to uncover this enthusiasm–if only
you could get beyond that cynicism borne of so much corporate
‘stuff ’ over the years; stuff usually imposed on people without their
engagement and certainly without their enrolment.
That cynicism must be dealt with in the early stages of your
higher purpose campaign, and following are the components of
the sledgehammer to smash it to smithereens. When seeking to
identify/establish the higher purpose of your organisation’s func-
tion:
1. Look first to its past-right back to its origins
2. Take a risk with the shareholders–make it primarily to do with

making your workplace, your community, your nation or your
world–all of them, if you like-a better place, and not primarily to
90
do with your profit level. And that doesn’t mean you need to put
making profit at risk–paradox again, to some.
3. Make it something that will first engage your people–in a way

they really do want to make your customers’/clients’/guests’/busi-
ness partners’ world a better place for them, and as a consequence,
provide fair, reasonable and ethically gained/integrity based/
purpose aligned profits for your business and its shareholders.
4. At the risk of labouring point ‘3’, ensure the higher purpose is

something such that, in striving for its realisation, every person
in your business is absolutely convinced–not just hopeful, but
convinced–they will be realising some of the purpose for their own
existence.
5. Make it bigger than Everest. Make it compelling. Make it excit-

ing. Make it awesome. Forget conservatism. Whatever you do,
don’t use your corporate vision wordsmith. The world really has
seen more than enough of corporate heraldry written at an excite-
ment level several steps below grass growth in a harsh winter.
6. Remember, this is an exercise in ‘spiritual’ rather than ‘manage-

rial’ leadership.
7. Avoid doing the far too common vision thing of creating and
writing, and then forgetting. Your higher purpose, if effectively
identified, is supposed to ‘get’ people deep down in their souls. To
do that it has to reach beyond a lot of (possibly negative) condi-
tioning, It must first come from outside in as a concept to fire
the soul of every individual, before it can come from inside out
as the compelling driver of everything you stand for and do as an
organisation.
8. Remember to celebrate success.
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Alan Patching
I’m sorry, I know that’s eight tips and trendy management philoso-
phy, ever since Stephen Covey’s insightful ‘Seven Habits of High-
ly Successful People’, has stuck with seven as a kind of magical,
mystical number. But celebrating success is very important for the
organisation’s soul, and I can’t see any way to realistically drop one
of the previous tips, so let’s call it breakthrough thinking, and go
with eight.
In the next chapter, we’ll take a closer look at what’s involved in
these components of the higher purpose ‘sledgehammer’ to break
through organisational cynicism.
92
Chapter Eight
Tips to Help You Break Through Organisational

Cynicism
In this chapter, I’ll develop the tips I summarised in the previous

chapter.
Tip 1 - Look first to your past–right back to corporate origins
I’m willing to bet, if you could research right back to the embryon-
ic days of your organisation, you would find it was borne of three
definite and distinct forces (for want of a better word) coming
together in some synergistic combination.
The starting point–the first force-would have been the most
powerful, an internal force that compelled the founder’s behav-
iour, a dream, a definite purpose or sense that he or she simply had
a destiny to make the dream happen.
The next force would have been to make an honest dollar in the
process of making the dream a reality. And yes, I agree, it might
well have been the urge to make more money that led to the kind
of thinking, soul searching even, that gave birth to the dream.
However I’d be very surprised if the intrinsic motivation of your
corporation’s founders, their dream or sense of destiny or purpose,
did not heavily outweigh the call of profit when they took that
great leap into what was probably the market/corporate/organisa-
tional unknown and got the business under way.
The point is, both the dream and the need to turn a profit were
important way back then.
Guess what–nothing’s changed, they both still are important
today. However, I’m confident your research would confirm that
it was the dream and sense of purpose that drove your business
founders to take the risk to get started, follow their (higher) pur-
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Alan Patching
pose, and let the profits follow. I’m also confident that, if you
change focus from profit to higher purpose now, the profits will
again follow, just as they did in the beginning for your business.
The third ingredient-we can almost assume this one exists
in your organisation today-is what management is about. Your
founders, like your corporation’s leaders throughout its existence,
would have been acutely aware of packaging their dream in a
manner that gave it clear appeal as a solution to a problem the
market place perceived it had. I’m not going to address that well
covered (in numerous management books and training programs)
and important aspect of business herein, other than to say it still
is important. What I’m going to say next won’t make any sense
whatever if approached with logic and analytical and dominant
hemisphere thinking. If it doesn’t make sense to you as you read
it, don’t be put off. Stay with the thought that there will be prof-
its for higher purpose pursuing corporations full of enthusiastic,
passionate on-purpose people. That thought doesn’t in any way
offend or obstruct either left or right brain thinking processes, at
least not in any business environment I’m aware of.
All I’m suggesting you do with this tip is to tap into the strength
of purpose before profit (or even purpose with some level of profit)
thinking (a mix of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation beats extrin-
sic only motivation hands down any day) that was the driving force
of the business when it started, so that you can both re-establish
that force in the business today, and have the strength of convic-
tion and courage to do so. You don’t have to adopt the same pur-
pose of your corporate founders, but do ensure whatever purpose
you identify has the same inspiring and motivating power as did
the purpose of the organisation’s founders. If you’re anything like
me as an individual, you’ll feel incredibly purposeful about what
you’re doing with your life now, and you would have felt equally
purposeful about what you did years–even decades ago, despite the
purpose driving you then and now being radically different.
The idea is to identify and tap into the concept that sense of
94
purpose probably was of primary importance to your founders.

Hopefully that will hook you and confirm your conviction to con-
tinue with your corporate quest.
In closing this component, allow me to make a couple of brief
observations. Do you recall those periods in life when you felt
so alive and ‘in tune’ that your friends and family feel like hosing
you down? I’d suggest your life was really going in accordance
with purpose on those days. Organisations have periods like those
days through their history also. If you spend some time in re-
search you’re likely to find stints of real purpose throughout your
corporation’s history. Don’t limit yourself in your review and feel
free to turn your mind to other corporations and their history as
well. We’re about following principles rather than specific pro-
cesses here. Secondly, don’t get too far into this exercise without
having a couple of good contemplation sessions about those ques-
tionnaire results. It might be that your organisation is at a place
in the collective consciousness of its people, where declaration of
a meaningful corporate higher purpose, one with which they can
align their own reasons for being with ease, is exactly what they
seek. It may be that you are meant to be the catalyst, the ‘vox po-
puli’, and everything is about to fall into place just as your most
compelling dreams of a corporate higher purpose picture things
to be. It might also be quite different too, but I know you won’t let
that deter you, so on with my higher purpose of the moment–to
develop these tips to help you with your higher purpose of leading
your organisation to identification of its higher purpose.
Tip 2 - Take a risk with your shareholders
Lets face it, the shareholders in most corporations are interested

in one thing primarily–and pretty much to the exclusion of all else
except those things which impact on that one thing they’re inter-
ested in–their shareholding and its value. I (again) reiterate there’s
absolutely nothing fundamentally wrong with making a reason-
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Alan Patching
able profit, but I do think how we make the profit and why we do
what we do to make a profit really are important issues to consider.
We can take the focus off profit as the essential end, regardless of
the means its achieved, and restructure the business equation so
the focus is on the means of attaining a profit. The result of such a
change of focus will not necessarily be reduced profit, and I believe
might very well be increased profit. When we focus on the means
through the lens of a sense of higher purpose we can make a big
world of difference for our corporation’s people, its customers, its
community and its shareholders. Such an approach can also make
a significant contribution to making our world a better place.
Let’s begin our look at what’s behind this second tip by taking a
look at our lives as separate individuals. As a simple background
research exercise, I’ve spoken with literally hundreds of people in
my own country, Australia, and others as far flung as the USA, Ma-
laysia, The United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait and England about the general state of the world and what
should be done about it. There has not been one person not upset
by the tragic plight of the people trapped in the humanitarian di-
saster of Sudan, appalled by the assault on the USA in September
2001. All expressed amazement that the way the world’s politi-
cians appear to be physically, emotionally and intellectually lim-
ited when it comes to being human and honest enough to admit
they can make mistakes and have made mistakes in their decision
making, or in misleading people in the reasons they give for their
actions, or in not stopping for a nano-second to contemplate that
perhaps they do not have sole licence to being 100% right on 100%
of the issues–that perhaps ‘the enemy’ they create to justify their
actions just might have some of ‘the truth’ and that there is a solu-
tion to many of the world’s problems, but it does not lie at the ex-
treme positions taken by politicians and governments. It probably
lies somewhere between their position and that of ‘the enemy’–the
opposing point of view. It probably lies at the position of the third
way–the right answer always does.
96
The people I spoke with expressed concern at the rapid and

continuing growth in the grasp of the world’s wealth by the rich
and very rich with the consequential rapid and continuing growth
in world poverty-and not only in third world nations. People in
my country expressed astonishment at our government being one
of only 6 to vote against a United Nations resolution endorsing a
certain World Court ruling despite 156 nations voting in favour
(and two of those voting against suspected of having vested inter-
ests, which is not to say those voting for it did not).
Believe me, the list of issues at which every person expressed
emotion and to which they gave clear responses (such as those
above) was far more extensive than I have reported here, but al-
ready I’ve presented sufficient here to make my main point. The
clearest, most troubling things on my contacts’ minds were two
fold. Firstly, there was an absolute and pervading sense that some-
thing really has to be done, and done sooner rather than later,
about the issues we discussed, including those mentioned herein.
Secondly, there was a common and equally all pervading sense of
futility, inadequacy and inability for the average person–them–to
do anything whatever to really make a difference.
The longer I live, the more I’m convinced they’re right. As indi-
viduals, there is very little we can do against the injustices and oth-
er wrongs of and in this world. In a world where the voices most
listened to come from the vocal cords of the wealthy and powerful,
very few individuals can make a huge difference at the global scale,
except by acting out of their own sense of what’s right–what has to
be done-and hoping that enough other people do likewise so that
there is a synergistic consequence to those individual actions.
And that’s the point I’ve been aiming for in this tip. We can
do far more in community than we ever can as individuals. Our
efforts as individuals against problems of the relative enormity
of those in our local community, let alone our world, will usually
seem ineffective and futile. But acting in community, in passionate
groups of like-minded people compelled by a common purpose–a
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purpose above our own sense of importance–a higher purpose,

we can and do get the sense that we can, we will, we are doing the
right thing and so we will achieve something worthwhile. This
feeling energises us and compels us to even greater effort, and so
it becomes infectious, making the group larger and more effec-
tive. All we need to do is keep the higher purpose as both our
sole–and soul-source of direction and keep the ego based power
plays and politics out of our growing community (yes, that can be
easier said than done.). With such an approach, I have no doubt
we can change our communities. Get sufficient people following
this path–truly a spiritual path–and we can change our world very
much for the better.
I challenge you to have a discussion similar to those I’ve been
having–don’t get involved in a debate, that’s not the point of the
exercise-with people from work and with friends and family. Learn
for yourself how people feel inadequate to make significant change
in areas where they generally don’t hesitate to agree change is nec-
essary. Learn how they’ll be willing to contribute to a community
effort to make the world, or some little patch of it, a better place, if
only there was an opportunity to do this with some chance of suc-
cess–and that usually means to do it in community.
When you’ve reached the conclusion that people want to make
a difference but feel it’s difficult to do so as an individual, please
take time to contemplate the following observations:
• The people in your organisation are just like the people you had
your discussion with from across your broader contact base.
• Your organisation represents precisely the type of ‘community’

in which people would appreciate the opportunity to contribute
to some higher purpose directed effort. This is for two reasons.
Firstly, it’s hard wired into we humans to pursue our own higher
purpose, and part of the purpose of each of us is to contribute to
the betterment of everyone we are closely connected with (and
98
collective human consciousness has evolved to recognise that’s

everyone else on the planet). Secondly, since we spend so much
of our waking hours ‘at work’ we can kill two birds with one
stone by committing to some higher purpose which benefits the
community and, in various ways, also benefits our organistions.
We humans are, above all, practical when it gets down to our
own time–not to mention we’ve been recently brainwashed with
the managerial benefits of multi tasking!
• If this doesn’t stand out as a classic opportunity for mutual ben-

efit exploitation, nothing ever will. The elements of society to
which the higher purpose of the corporation are directed ben-
efit. Our corporate people benefit from having that sense of
purpose and the opportunity to believe they can make a differ-
ence–and to see the results. And the organisation benefits from
a unified, passionate and purposeful human capital base, not to
mention a grateful community sector (or several sectors).
• And as an aside, what form of logic can come to any conclusion

other than a high probability that healthy profits will result from
that scenario.

For emphasis and completeness my discussion of my second tip
for establishing your corporate higher purpose must close where it
commenced–with the recognition that:
• It’s the possibility that we can make a greater difference acting in

community that gets we human beings interested and
• Most of us want to have a better planet than we arrived in, and

leave having contributed to it being better. Accordingly, while
acting in community might have short term appeal of and for
itself, it’s the idea of contributing personally to a group or com-
munity endeavour to make the world a better place that really
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Alan Patching
gets our juices flowing.
In summary, tip 2 is to take a risk with your shareholders and make

your higher purpose something that will change for the better
some little corner of the world, even if your more conservative
shareholders are committed to the concept of all work day effort
being directed solely to the profit maximisation objective.
Tip 3 - Engage your people to make your customer’s world a better

place
I begin this point with an acute awareness of its potential to nullify

my previous point by making it appear that it’s only the corporate
world, and not the world at large, that the higher purpose of our
organisations should seek to improve. Please allow me to dismiss
that line of thinking immediately. I emphasise the journey towards
the Soul Thing That Matters–the spiritual journey of a business-
does not depend for its worth on removing profit from the busi-
ness agenda. I’m simply suggesting that a focus on profit to the
exclusion of all else can be as futile as any philosophy which takes
focus completely off profit.
The third way, following a higher purpose that will engage the
purpose and release the passion of our people, then blending the
spiritual leadership that delivers this scenario with traditional and
sane business and managerial practices to keep our efforts in line
with a strategy that keeps us on-purpose is, in my opinion, the
ideal approach to modern business leadership in a world of ever
increasing social justice consciousness.
In this approach the customer and shareholders of the organi-
sation are not forgotten in any way, but become points of focus in
a bigger and more meaningful corporate picture, and all points of
this picture always receive our attention and consideration.
Before proceeding to explain the meaning of this third tip, per-
mit me to emphasise there are eight considerations in the estab-
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lishment of a compelling and enduring higher purpose for your

business. I encourage you to avoid the common trap of looking at
any one of them other than in context of all of them.
The starting point in physical pursuit of this point is alignment
of your people’s attitude regarding the meaning of corporate pur-
pose. There is no room in higher purpose thinking for outright
greed mentality which justifies maximisation of profits at custom-
er expense because of some monopoly advantage your organisa-
tion might hold in the market. There is no room for the attitude
that ‘if we tick the current customers off, not to worry, there’ll be
plenty more to follow’, or ‘we have ‘pipeline’ products and services-
they’ll be crawling back for in due course’. Neither is there room
for thinking that all customers are always right regardless of how
unreasonable their demands might be, even to the extent of in-
flicting pain on your business to avenge some perceived grievance
from a previous dealing.
While I completely agree with the principle of customer service,
and that most companies do well in establishing a breadth of cus-
tomer service (despite many lacking real depth), I think there are
strong arguments against the proposition that an organisation can
never go broke servicing a customer in the manner that customer
wants to be serviced. The Sydney Olympic Stadium was a case in
point. For its Olympic purpose–its significant short term purpose,
there is no question our customer was ‘the Olympics’ represented
by the government department charged with overseeing Games
facilities delivery. If in representing the Stadium owners (a pub-
lic trust with several thousand unit holders) I’d agreed to even a
fraction of the changes and extras the government representatives
demanded, especially during the design development stage where
costs become concrete on major projects, our budgets would have
been blown out of the window and we’d have been in significant
financial trouble. Even towards project completion, demands well
in excess of documented requirements kept coming.
The fact is, on this project, an apparent common purpose be-
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Alan Patching
tween the Stadium owner and the government was not a totally
aligned common purpose. We both wanted to deliver an outstand-
ing stage for major Olympic events–an arena where athletes could
deliver their best possible performance at the culmination of years
of disciplined training. We both wanted to deliver a memorable
experience for both those attending the events at the venue and
those reviewing them on the television broadcasts from the venue.
However, the emphasis of focus for the government people was
predominantly directed towards the Olympic Games. Our em-
phasis was unquestionably directed to the optimum operational
and financial performance of the venue over its specified 50 year
lifetime.
At a meeting at International Olympic Committee headquar-
ters in Lausanne, Switzerland after the games, an IOC executive
addressed several hundred consultants and bidding hopefuls for
future Olympics and strongly recommended they assume a client
role which focused on long term use of Olympic venues with tem-
porary facilities enhancements for Olympic Games application.
It was good advice, as legacy will always have far more enduring
value than largesse.
There is a strong message for business at large in the Sydney
Olympic experience. Nobody in that story was acting other than
in the manner in which they believed they were expected by their
leaders to act. All involved acted with the best of intentions. It was
a common understanding of purpose that was missing. Higher
profile purpose and higher purpose aren’t synonymous terms.
In establishing its higher purpose-one which will in some way
make the world a better place-an organisation might find itself
in the limelight, even if that isn’t the objective, and there’s noth-
ing wrong with that. Corporate branding is, and will remain an
important aspect of business success. It’s higher profile exercises
posing as higher purpose exercises in which I find questionable
integrity. Of course profile without some level of purpose focused
on some level of customer concept would be pointless, for no cor-
102
poration can expect to survive without a thorough understanding

of the needs of its customers, and an open dialogue to resolve areas
where there is confusion regarding those needs.
Let’s take a look at a specific example of not making the cus-
tomer’s world a better place.
In some areas of the world of projects contracting, there still
prevails a practice whereby contractors tender on defined client
requirements, and then propose project enhancements at inflated
cost. Surely a far better approach–a higher purpose aligned ap-
proach-would be to either spend time working with the client to
clarify needs and improve the project at the earliest time possible
and at reasonable cost. Unfortunately, tendering systems designed
to prevent certain unacceptable practices have, to a large extent, re-
duced the capacity for such dialogue. Notwithstanding this, there
is no reason to believe a higher purpose action by a contractor
seeking to improve his or her client’s position cannot align with
that contractor making a reasonable profit in so doing. Presum-
ably the client is a business person (or organisation) who accepts
that one valid purpose of business is to stay in business using profit
as a key means of doing so.
What message can we draw from these examples to distil into
a customer benefit emphasis in your established corporate higher
purpose?
Firstly, the customer probably cares about their needs, not yours,
not in the first instance anyway. The customer’s hardly likely to be
enthused and compelled to deal with your business if your stated
higher purpose is to achieve some record profit which they con-
sider is unrealistic for an organisation of your size, especially when
they realise your profit is coming from their pocket. And now the
paradox. I did not say it is wrong for you to make a profit that’s
unrealistic for an organisation of the size of yours. ‘Realistic’ is a
relative and comparative term and in this context the comparison
would be with other companies, most of which probably don’t run
in alignment with a higher purpose and therefore can be expected
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to be rife with politics and the other corporate wastage factors ad-
dressed earlier herein. If you run your business by your higher
purpose there’s absolutely no reason you wouldn’t make ‘unreal-
istic’ profits (in the context of a comparison with competition or-
ganisations not working to a higher purpose) charging the same
prices as your non-aligned competitors, simply by reason of huge
operational cost savings in any number of commonly prevailing
wastage areas, many of which we have already identified. But don’t
expect your customer to get excited by a profit target purpose or
vision–or your people either, despite this logic.
Understandably, both these groups–customers and your people
(especially your people), probably have a higher purpose along the
lines of making the world a better place in some way, even if your
customers want (like you) to make a profit in so doing, and your
people wouldn’t mind the occasional bonus for their efforts, even
in addition to the personal satisfaction they derive from a job with
a higher purpose which somehow connects with their personal
reason for being.
By now you’ve probably ‘got’ my key purpose in making this
point. Any mention of profit in a vision or any similar manage-
ment concoction will firstly be seen as extrinsic motivation by your
people. That simply will not achieve as much as a strong intrinsic
motivation will. In addition, it will be of minimum appeal to your
customers. Any mention of profit in a statement of higher pur-
pose will simply make it look laughably similar to a profit oriented
vision or mission and could really render your purpose endeav-
ours powerless.
So what should a higher purpose look and sound and feel like?
What words should it contain? How should it look on paper, and
what feelings should it evoke? I will dedicate an entire chapter to
this topic towards the end of this book. For now, I will respond in
overview, stressing two essential points.
The first point is your statement of higher purpose must inspire
your people because they see in it some level of connection with
104
their own higher purpose. Perhaps it will trigger in them recog-

nition of their personal life’s purpose. The second point is your
customers must see in your statement of higher purpose a genuine
concern for their welfare and benefit, and they must perceive in
your people’s dealing with them, a formal effort to perform pre-
cisely in alignment with the delivery implications of your stated
organisational higher purpose.
Clearly, to the extent you do not realise the goal of the first point,
you reduce the impact on your customer described in the second.
Put another way, your corporate partnering with any customers
for long term mutual benefit in both relational and economic ar-
eas can only ever be as deep and effective as your partnering with
the people across your organisational hierarchy. After all, it’s those
people upon whom you must rely to deliver your corporate rela-
tionships with your customers. There is no question, common
objectives and vision can be a powerful force in this type of corpo-
rate partnering with customers. However, no parternship is more
powerful than one forged only from objectives which evolve from
a close and conscious alignment with a common higher purpose
between the partners.
This reality is as true for corporations, committees, and even
countries, as it is for sporting teams and marital and other life
partnerships. The essence of success is to realise that a partner-
ship, or contract, can always be executed or otherwise triggered by
extrinsic motives–such as common objectives and future vision.
However, it is not the contract or formal partnership that will en-
sure successful delivery of any objective or vision. It is the partner-
ing behind the contract or formal partnership that ensures that.
Partnership is about who is in relationship and what they seek
to achieve. It’s about the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the relationship. Part-
nering is about the ‘why’ of the relationship. And the ‘why’ is al-
ways about purpose. Success or failure of any relationship, be it
a personal or corporate endeavour, will always depend more on
commonality and grandeur or height of purpose than it ever will
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Alan Patching
on the structure and content of any number of legal documents.

Projecting a sense of partnership with customers/clients, or
staff or shareholders, or a combination of any of them–or all of
them-in your statement of higher purpose is a good starting point
in an organisational higher purpose identification and establish-
ment exercise. The full identification exercise is very likely to be
more the result of contemplation than of logic. Notwithstanding
that, the suggestion at the start of this paragraph is surely a ‘no
brainer’!
Put on your ‘customer/client’ hat for a moment. Do you think
you’re more likely to have a positive emotional response to a stat-
ed corporate purpose such as ‘we will increase our profits by 55%
within 12 months and become one of the top five service provid-
ers in our field’, or one along the lines of ‘We take the time and
effort to understand customers’ needs and to tailor solutions to
meet these needs and at a price that represents excellent value for
our customers and provides us with a reasonable profit whenever
we deliver on our undertaking’.
I’m not suggesting this latter higher purpose is ideal. I am sim-
ply suggesting that people are more likely to warm to it than to
the former. This is because it is more likely to align with what
most clients believe to be at least somewhat ecological rather than
purely economic.
Now change hats, if you will, for a moment and become a hos-
pital patient seeking major surgery. Would you be more likely to
respond with positive emotion to a statement of purpose such as
‘we constantly provide the best medical care possible, employing
appropriately qualified professionals, within the budgets estab-
lished by the elected government’, or to one along the lines of ‘we
understand the trauma of illness and injury for our patients and
their families. Our purpose is to provide support and comfort
in the process of delivering outstanding health care and medical
services with the singular objective of the optimum possible re-
covery’.
106
And imagine yourself selecting a high school for the apple of your
eye. All other things being equal, would you go for school ‘A’ whose
stated ‘higher’ purpose is to ‘provide benchmark education at a
price which represents reasonable value and an environment that
consistently passes independent quality standard audits’, or choose
school B’, with a stated purpose of ‘taking time to understand the
needs of our students from education, emotional and other devel-
opmental perspectives, recognising that most students demon-
strate varying strengths and weaknesses across any selected range
of subjects, grouping them in classes to ensure the best possible
learning response, and partnering with parents and guardians to
monitor progress and make any necessary adjustments with the
singular purpose of ensuring each student has the greatest possible
potential for success in their chosen post high school education
and/or career choice, for the long term benefit of themselves, their
families, and the community at large’.
Finally, see yourself as an employee of a financial services cor-
poration with a focus on insurance and superannuation (pension
funds) work. Do you think you are more likely to experience a
greater emotional response to a higher purpose like ‘we strive to
remain in the top 10 service providers in our field based on to-
tal turnover, to provide our clients with industry recognised pen-
sion fund administration at competitive fees while affording each
of our employees the opportunity to earn ‘Million Dollar Round
Table’ membership. Or are you more likely to be turned on by
something along the lines of ‘our purpose is to help people un-
derstand the impacts of unexpected circumstances and the joy of
a comfortable retirement, and to educate them in the means of
preparing well for both; and then to work with them to give them
peace of mind now by planning for and achieving what they want
in the various potential circumstances of life’. I’m not about to put
words into your mouth, but I’d hazard a guess that most readers
would think as I do, and choose the second option in every case.
Let’s take a little time to unpackage the reasons for that.
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Alan Patching
I think it has a lot to do with the fact that the first option in every
instance clearly hints (at the very least) at the overriding of money/
budget/profit/bottom line in every case. There’s no prime focus
on economics to the exclusion of more important issues in any of
the second options.
So here is my recommendation to you. Do not decide on any
purpose statement which contains any reference to matters eco-
nomic. Does this mean you don’t plan for economic success?
Does it mean your customer/clients don’t realise you’re in business
to make a profit? Does it mean your people get upset with your
organisation having economic discipline?
A resounding ‘No” on all counts, actually. Your business cannot
make a difference for your customers/clients, its shareholders or
your people if it goes broke. Economic sustainability is a primary
requisite for organisations pursuing a higher purpose of some eco-
logical sustainability as much as for any other corporation. Your
customers/clients know this and expect your organisation to have
valid and reasonable economic objectives. They’re simply not like-
ly to be emotionally ‘turned on’ by them in anyway near as deeply
as they are likely to be by higher-purpose ecological objectives.
The same applies to your organisation’s people. They don’t want
their employer to go broke. They happen to like whatever level of
job security they might currently enjoy, and they like having the
money to pay for their mortgage, and food and entertainment, and
their kid’s education and other expenses of everyday living.
Your customers/clients, and your people, are happy for your or-
ganisation to keep right on being a solidly managed outfit from
any economic perspective. It’s something they’ve come to expect.
It has the same impact as does an extrinsic motivational force–it
just doesn’t grab them and stir the passion within them, and give
them a sense of being connected or aligned with the organisation
through what its all about. It doesn’t even come close to the power
of an intrinsic motivational force, a force which generates passion
and unity of purpose, from which the likelihood of increased prof-
108
its can be almost assured, despite that fact ever entering the pri-
mary mindset of the higher purpose aligned and passion stirred
individuals involved. It takes a higher purpose solidly rooted in
ecological focus to stir people’s passion and make them come alive
in the corporate environment.
I see economic purpose in somewhat the same sense as false
self. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with either false self or
economic purpose. It’s just that they’re not all there is, or the best
there is. They are both necessary and unavoidable aspects of exis-
tence, false self in the individual person context and economics in
the organisational context. They just are not, and do not have the
power of True Self and ecological or higher purpose.
In summary of this tip then, it’s ok–and even essential–to have
economic objectives and/or purposes for existence. Just keep them
separate from and secondary to your ecological/higher-purpose,
and out of your written and declared statement of what that is.
Does this mean that any purpose statement which contains no
reference to matters economic is, by definition, likely to be a state-
ment of higher purpose full of intrinsic value. Hardly. Imagine
a cosmetic surgeon with a ‘purpose’ statement along the lines of
‘weight reduction, try liposuction–they won’t even know where
your fat once sat!’ No mention of economics?–that’s obvious.
Short and catchy–maybe. Ecological–hardly. Which brings me to
my next observation concerning those options we reviewed earlier
in this chapter.
Did you notice the second option in each case? They were gen-
erally longer–‘wordier’ if you will, than the first. You will probably
also be aware that the so called ‘guru’ management consultancies
tend to emphasise a necessity for short and succinct statements
of vision–I am not aware of any proposing statements of higher
purpose. I do see reason for, and logic behind, this advice. The
trouble is, I don’t see any evidence that the advice is working in any
way effectively. It certainly seems logical that a short and ‘catchy’
vision statement is more likely to be remembered. However, I reit-
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Alan Patching
erate my experience that very few people–a miserably low percent-

age of people in fact, and that’s including management executives,
have any idea of what their corporation’s vision is, even if they do
realise it does have one. And that’s generally the case regardless of
the number of words in the vision statement.
I again must pay recognition to my client MTC Vodafone from
Kuwait, with whose people I’ve had the privilege and pleasure of
working over a period of several months.
You might recall their vision simply is ‘3 by 3 by 3’. Every per-
son I worked with knew exactly what it meant. 3 years to establish
in Kuwait, 3 years to establish regionally and 3 years to establish
internationally. As I write these words, MTC is in the third 3 year
period of its vision, and having solidly established In Kuwait and in
the Middle East region, recently acquired a number of businesses
in South Africa as the launch of the last ‘3’ of their current vision.
My friends at MTC in Kuwait–I congratulate you.
However, one swallow (or even a small flock) does not make a
summer, and so I will need a lot more evidence of vision working
in organisations, and short statements of vision being the impera-
tive, to encourage me to revisit my comments in earlier sections of
this book, or to dissuade me from now making a recommendation
concerning your statement of higher purpose.
That recommendation is simply this. Use as many words as
you need to use to define your higher purpose in a manner which
will stir interest and ignite the passion so necessary for that essen-
tial alignment and enrolment of your people, your customers/cli-
ents, and all the shareholders you seek to have enrolled–and why
wouldn’t that be all of them. And, at the risk of repeating myself–
don’t use a management consultant come values and vision writer.
Go find a poet, or some other magician with language who can
make the words of your higher purpose statement leap right off
the page into the heart and soul of the reader and hold them with
the sense of bonding of a mother holding her newborn child.
Before closing this point, there is one more observation I must
110
make concerning those purpose options we reviewed. However,

this time, the observation does not come with any recommenda-
tion.
You will notice that none of the second or preferred choices in
each set of options contained anything other than references to
client’s wellbeing. They contained no indication of commitment
to any purpose outside of a normal customer/supplier business
relationship. And therein lies a key point. While the $ole things
that matters is clearly economics focused, often to the effective
exclusion of any factor other than those which can contribute to
a better economic result (again–there is nothing wrong with this
from a business perspective–it simply is not the best approach or
the only approach available), the Soul Thing That Matters is very
much concerned with relationships and relationship experience.
It is concerned with customer/client–supplier relationships, em-
ployer-employee relationships and of course relationships with
shareholders and any other stakeholders, including alliance or
joint venture partners and the like.
It really is essential that any organisation beginning the higher
purpose journey focuses its early ecological efforts, to the extent
it might not already have done so as a more enlightened aspect
of previous management/leadership endeavours, on getting its
various relationships ‘right’. Really that is all there needs to be in
a true and valid ecology based higher purpose approach. After all,
at each end of each relationship (If I may use such an image) is a
person, a member of a community in society. A higher purpose of
working for the benefit of these people, in relationships with them,
therefore meets our higher purpose objective.
In the next point, we’ll address various aspects of ‘living’ every-
day business life in accordance with our established higher pur-
pose. We’ll see the potential that exists–even the probability for
increased profit, not only from people having more passion, but as
a consequence of certain leadership imperatives of the corporate
higher purpose journey.
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Alan Patching
There would be nothing wrong with distributing any increased

profits achieved from the higher purpose journey in the usual
manner–relieving debt, higher return to shareholders and increase
in working capital or financial reserves etc. If, however, your
organisation decides to contribute some of those increased profits
to ecological purposes, the opportunities available to it really are
boundless.
We live in a world with global revenue of in excess of 30 trillion
dollars per year, a world where this revenue provides many people
from more developed countries with average incomes exceeding
$40,000 per year. Even so, in such countries there is relative pov-
erty and kids and families are living on the streets. There are also
well respected organisations with the expertise and commitment
to get the most out of any contribution towards relieving the pain
of people more unfortunate and or disenfranchised than many of
us.
Around 2.8 billion of the people who share this planet with us,
which equates to more than half of all people living in developing
countries, are living on an income of less than $700 per year. Of
this 2.8 billion, some 1.2 billion earn less than one dollar per day.
33,000 of the children of our world die each and every day in
the developing countries of our world. In every minute of every
day, an average of in excess of one woman dies giving birth. Over
100 million children, the majority of them young girls, cannot go
to school, as a consequence of family poverty. People are becom-
ing more and more conscious of these problems and the big na-
tions of the world are more and more focused on positive action
to relieve the situation. The solution will not be easy. In several
places, despotic political leaders make it difficult and sometimes
impossible for much needed financial help to get to where it is
intended to go.
With the world’s population predicted to grow by 3 billion peo-
ple over the next 50 years, none of us can afford to close our mind
to the problem and how it really is–and will continue to be more
112
so–OUR problem. Can any of us leave everything that needs to be

done to the governments of the world?
Are any of us prepared to do so in the long term? If you are
even contemplating the corporate higher purpose journey, you
will, in all likelihood, understand the reality that it’s not a case of
we ‘haves’ and them ‘have nots’–it’s simply a case of a single ‘us’!.
I’m not attempting judgment of any person or organisation.
I certainly endorse your everyday profit-enhancing management
issues. My own working life became so much more joyful when
I planned it around strong family-work-self balance, and when I
ceased trying to be the first Australian writer and public speaker
to consistently earn U.S speaker equivalent fees (which are well in
excess of those typically paid in my country due to the significantly
larger US organisations, market, and audience sizes) and identified
my higher purpose to understand my client’s needs, and to ‘pack-
age’ lessons from my own business experience to try to help them
resolve their problems, and to take joy in the process of doing so.
Believe me, it works. Now that I’ve left ‘Big Corporate’ and have
established my small business by following my identified higher
purpose, I’ve been able to take a couple of months to write a series
of business, project management and general management related
‘e-books’. All the revenue from the sale of these e-books, which
you can review at www.alanpatching.com, goes to charity.
If you decide to take your own higher purpose journey into re-
lationships beyond those with customers/clients, employees and
other stakeholders, your aligned people will no doubt be very will-
ing to assist with direction. If you adopt my view that ‘I am able to
contribute more effectively by assisting experts to assist others or
other meaningful causes in and of society’, you could consider any
number of options, including but not limited to:
• Direct donations of cash or other resources to worthy causes.

For example, I understand The Body Shop chain allows any of
its people one week off each year on full pay to volunteer for
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community or charity work. You might want to use that idea as

inspiration.
• If you have some spare cash to invest, why not consider invest-
ing with an outfit like the World Bank’s Triple A Rated IBRD
(International Bank for Reconstruction and Development)
which raises money in world financial markets (through bonds
issues) and provides low interest rates to its developing country
borrowers.
• Investment in an organisation such as the recently formed Social

Ventures Australia, which represents an innovative world model
for modern philanthropy. You can learn more about SVA at
www.socialventures.com.au
The opportunities for higher purpose endeavours are virtually

unlimited. I believe the higher purpose model will evolve as a
corporate necessity as human consciousness continues to grow
exponentially. I have no doubt the increasing sensitivity of both
customers/clients and employees alike will make adoption of the
model, at least to the extent of greater focus on relationships with
those groups than on purely economic issues, a minimum require-
ment. I must add that I believe a lot of ‘effort’ in this direction
to date to be little more than lip service in some organisations,
and little more than economics or marketing/P.R. effort clothed in
relationship/ecological garments.
That will no longer suffice. We need to have and to understand
and to follow a purpose to a far greater extent than the simply
superficial. Only this will engage our people and only that engage-
ment will see our customers and their needs always and genuinely
treated with the respect they deserve. After all, our organisations
owe them their very continued existence.
Which leads us to the question of commonality of purpose in
the context of both your organisation and your customers’, each
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comprising perhaps large numbers of people. Clearly, any pur-

pose held secret among only the upper management echelons is
really going to miss the point. The entire human capital base must
be engaged and enrolled for maximum positive effect, and that can
only begin to occur when journey leaders engage upper manage-
ment echelons to spread the word.
Tip 4 - Ensure your higher purpose is such that, in striving for its
realisation, every person in your organisation is convinced they
will realise some of the purpose of their own existence
That might sound like some metaphysical extravaganza being
defined. However, it really is a simple matter. As a general rule,
the more complex your stated higher purpose is, the greater will be
the likelihood that your people will have difficulty understanding
it, relating to and embracing it, and enrolling in it.
The key to success is to learn from the various human tragedies
mentioned earlier in this book. Those tragedies showed that when
it comes to the crunch, we human beings feel a deep connection
with our fellow human beings. Some of us might have stronger
feelings on conservation issues than do others. Some of us might
have very definite views in the direction of strongly controlling
development in our neighbourhoods, while others might see that
expansion of development in already developed areas is to be ex-
pected and should be tolerated.
On any number of higher purpose than solely economic issues,
people can be expected to have a fairly wide ranging set of opin-
ions. However, there are certain issues which do appear to have a
distinct universal appeal as higher purpose objectives. These can
be broadly categorised as:
• Concern for social justice issues

• Concern for the poor and underprivileged in particular
• Concern for immediate community
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As a starting point I doubt anyone could go too far wrong in adopt-

ing a higher purpose aimed at meaningful contribution in respect
of one of these key areas.
I am not for a minute suggesting environmental issues, and
others, should not be considered. What is to become your higher
purpose is for discussion and decision within your organisation
and should be determined in light of your specific corporate cir-
cumstances. For example, it’s very unlikely a timber products cor-
poration would adopt a higher purpose such as seeking to prevent
any further timber felling. However it might be that such an or-
ganisation has the higher purpose of ensuring responsible felling
in line with established limits etc. and reforestation at a greater rate
than consumption. Even that higher purpose might be regarded
as not too lofty by many people. That being the case, the ‘higher
purpose’ stated above might better be a secondary purpose to one
in some way devised from the ‘universal three’ described above, or
some other purpose along these lines.
Having said that, it is incumbent upon me to again stress that
higher purpose identification and establishment is very much a
‘horses for courses’ matter. The higher purpose you identify for
your organisation might well have nothing whatever in common
with the earlier mentioned ‘universal three’. I presented them as a
safe and meaningful starting point for organisations new to, and
just commencing, their journey.
Tip 5 - Make your corporate purpose bigger than Everest.
Make it compelling. Make it exciting. And don’t be overly conser-

vative. Don’t allow ‘spin’ doctors to define it.
One thing’s certain, if you and your colleagues don’t conscious-
ly ‘double take’ when someone puts your corporate purpose into
words for the first time, then those words or that purpose are not
the ones to go with.
A higher purpose of great and meaningful grandeur has some
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chance to ‘register’ to the extent it transports the person into ‘lim-

inal’ space–the space beyond dominant hemisphere logic (even
beyond thinking of any kind) and at the threshold of that special
something or somewhere deep within everyone of us that is our
very soul–before the brain or the heart can deal with it. Awe in-
spiring is by no means too strong a term to describe this experi-
ence.
Before I proceed, let me say I expect some readers to have
baulked a little at this last paragraph, either because:
• It sounds like a foreign language
• They can imagine no circumstance in which anything to do

with their place of employment could be in any way inspiring
let alone awe-inspiring
• They think I’ve just gone soft in the head.
With that in mind, I am compelled to contextualise my point.

Firstly, let’s take a closer look at the concept of ‘liminal’ space.
The word is more likely to be encountered in texts dealing with
that phase during a person’s spiritual journey wherein they enter
the ‘emptiness’ (to use the Buddhist term) or ‘unknowing’ that
precedes what Buddhists would call enlightenment, Hindu’s call
nirvana and Christians, perhaps, unity with God. Use whatever
term you prefer-in the context of liminal space they all mean the
same thing–the threshold of an experience well beyond anything
to do with, or able to be comprehended by, false self or ego.
At the personal level, people who embarked on a spiritual jour-
ney have usually either experienced a tremendous setback in life–
one which made them realise they are not as in control of their life
as they might have liked to think–or they’ve experienced liminal
space, which is the only place or time where God or (the Universe
or Untimate Reality as best suits your personal beliefs) can get to
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them and inspire them to embark on an ego (false self) busting

journey of personal transformation. The more usual keys to the
entrance-way to liminal space include:
• Death of a loved one, especially if unexpected
• Experiences of nature
• Great poetry or music which simply ‘resonates’ within one’s soul

and which in all probability isn’t played with a ‘doof doof ’ beat.
The idea of being sure to establish a big and awe-inspiring higher

purpose is to take people to some corporate equivalent of liminal
space. To register with such impact, and such depth, and such reso-
nance that each person is immediately taken beyond any capacity
for (perhaps usual–even habitual) cynicism, into an immediate
contemplation of possibilities and more importantly, how those
possibilities are completely in line with his or her own values,
sensitivities and perceived reasons for being on planet earth.
In short, if your stated higher purpose must be big enough and
more awesome than Everest – so be it! Understanding this point
will help you appreciate the significance of Point 8 when we get to
it.
Tip 6 - Remember this is ‘spiritual’ rather than ‘managerial’ leader-

ship.
I make this point more for emphasis of the main thrust of this book
than as a new and separate idea within this section. Leadership
in the managerial context is something most readers will compre-
hend. The following concepts come immediately to mind:
• looking up to those beneath us with as much respect as you look

up to those above us
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• aligning, mentoring and coaching people towards achievement

of a vision rather than managing their performance by setting
and monitoring objectives’ and
• ‘preaching’ by example, using words only when necessary
Spiritual leadership is perhaps harder to define, although I high-

ly suspect there is some overlap between more finely developed
managerial leadership and aspects of spiritual leadership. I refer
specifically to matters like caring for people, fairness in dealing
with them, and respect for their cultural, sexual and religious pref-
erences etc.
However, spiritual leadership goes beyond these issues. It is
rooted in a clear understanding of the connectedness of all things.
It is by inherent nature focused on the ecological rather than the
economics. It values diversity and embraces paradox at a level the
more left-brain managerial leadership style would find difficult,
and often impossible, to entertain.
Spiritual leadership recognises the futility of dominative power
and embraces humility and fosters it as personal and broader lev-
els.
This description falls well short of being in any way exhaustive,
but I believe it is sufficient to make the point.
Spiritual leadership is usually a quality quite different from
technical and financials focused leadership and management and
is usually well demonstrated and practiced only by those who are
or have been on a personal spiritual journey and have experienced
some degree of personal transformation.
Tip 7 - Don’t do the ‘vision’ thing by creating and writing, then

forgetting
I can do no more than refer you back to point 5 and emphasise the
following. Avoid doing the vision thing of creating and writing,
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and then forgetting. Your higher purpose, if effectively identified,

is supposed to ‘get’ people deep down in their souls. To do that it
has to reach beyond a lot of (possible negative) corporate condi-
tioning. Contrary to a personal higher purpose, people usually
must experience it from outside-in as a concept to fire their souls
before it can come from inside-out as the compelling driver of
everything you stand for and do as an organisation.
Tip 8 - Remember to celebrate success
You might have noticed that ‘celebrate success’ appears in two plac-
es in this book. Apart from being the eighth point of the tips for
establishing your organisation’s higher purpose, it appears earlier
as the seventh point of the total process of the higher purpose
journey. This is intentional. It is crucially important to inspire
further success by showing appreciation through celebration for
smaller successes along the journey-and for the duration of the
journey, which means always.
It’s also important to celebrate major milestones. When you
establish and announce your corporate higher purpose within
your organisation (presuming all discussion and feedback was im-
mediately supportive of it and enrolment following quickly) or
after the two way communication process with the people work-
ing within the organisation (more on this in the next chapter) has
led to widespread embracing of and enrolment in your (properly
defined) higher purpose statement, there’s great reason to launch
your new corporate life in alignment with and pursuit of the newly
identified higher purpose with great celebration. Perhaps more
reason than at just one other time, and that’s when pursuit of a
higher purpose sees your organisation make a significant and tan-
gible difference in its own community, or in the lives of some of
the world’s ‘little’ and/or largely forgotten people. I know when
this happens, tears of joy will justifiably flow from the eyes of even
your toughest people and the rising of those celebratory cham-
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pagne bubbles, including in the alcohol free champagne of my nu-

merous Middle Eastern friends, will be a silent metaphor for the
great things yet to come.
I’ve previously described the circumstances in which it was
impossible to celebrate the successful completion of the Sydney
Olympic Stadium at the actual time of formal certification of
its completion. The circumstances were quite different at other
(earlier) times of the development when major milestones were
achieved and we joined with the contractors and organised what
turned out to be memorable celebrations of success.
The instance that springs most readily to mind was the celebra-
tion of timely achievement of the project’s second major mile-
stone, which was completion of the erection and installation of
the two main roof arches. We organised a sit down dinner for
every representative of the head contractors, the contractors, the
owners, the managers and operators, the consultant team and the
government agencies who had been in any way involved up until
that time. I think most will remember that meal, and most will
remember the hoax presentation by outstanding Sydney corporate
comedian, David Cummins. What will never be forgotten is the
simple and relatively inexpensive gift we arranged for each person,
thanks to the assistance of my good friend Max Hitchins, better
known to his clients, for reasons you will soon understand, as The
Hospitality Doctor.
The subject of the stadium celebration came up when I was
‘shooting the breeze’ with Max one evening, and he suggested we
give each person attending the dinner a bottle of wine–one with
a very special label. Max arranged for the label design to contain
a picture of the last roof arch section being hoisted into position.
He also arranged for each bottle to have the label personalised for
the recipient. For example, my team mate Bill Zagami received a
bottle with a label that read, ‘Thank you Bill, for your contribution
to achievement of Milestone 2 on the Sydney Olympic Project’.
I realised the gifts had been very well received on the evening
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Alan Patching
of our celebratory dinner. However, it took me a further 4 years

to fully comprehend just how well received they had been. At the
time of the opening ceremony of the Athen Olympics in 2004, I
was invited to a bar-b-que at the home of one of the Stadium team
members. I couldn’t help but notice the Sydney Stadium celebra-
tion wine standing proudly on the mantle piece. ‘Dusted off for
the occasion, I’m surprised it hasn’t been drunk by now’, I com-
mented. The assembled group cast collective disparaging glances,
and the bottle’s owner replied the bottle would never be opened
but would become a family heirloom. He further stated that ev-
eryone he had spoken with since the project days were also keeping
their wine safely corked and stored as a family heirloom.
The simple story shows that celebrating success need not be an
expensive exercise, certainly not relative to the cost of any particu-
lar project endeavour. It also shows that the power of a celebration
actively lies more in its uniqueness, relevance and appropriateness
at a personal level than in any lavishness or extravagance. It shows
that meaningful celebration is not forgotten.
I am firmly committed to the belief that your organisation’s
higher purpose pursuits will be all the more successful for the pur-
poseful, meaningful, and relevant celebration of milestones identi-
fied in advance and achieved along the journey.
By the way, I’m really grateful the people from the Stadium team
generally decided to leave their bottles of wine unopened–my bud-
get at the time could extend only to some very cheap red!
And now, let’s return to our discussion of the steps of the orga-
nizational higher purpose journey.

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Chapter Nine
Step 4 - Spread the Word

Seeking Alignment and Enrolment
Once you’ve committed to running your corporation in align-

ment with a higher purpose, and have identified a ‘starting point’
higher purpose, spread the word to every far reaching corner of
the organisation until you have as complete alignment with and
enrolment in that higher purpose as is reasonably possible.
This point might appear, on first glance, completely self explan-
atory. Nonetheless, there are three key areas to emphasise. The
first is the perhaps confusing at first term ‘starting point higher
purpose’. The second is the extent of effort involved in a successful
‘spreading of the word’. The third is the concept of ‘enrolment’ in
this context.
Let’s take a little time to review and understand these issues.
Starting point higher purpose.

I’m going to write paradoxically here. While I think a starting
point higherpurpose is a very important thing to have, I know in
my deeper managerial thinking that it’s not absolutely essential.
The reason I think its important to have one is much the same as
the reason I presented in the previous chapter for it needing to be
awesome–bigger than Everest. In many organisations there simply
will be a need for a mechanism to get quickly beyond the everyday
doubt and cynicism, and beyond the ‘oh, not another change to
keep the managers employed’ type of attitude. As I noted in the
previous chapter, it needs to take people to a place we’ll call the
corporate equivalent of liminal space–to that threshold between
two spaces or positions. The space or position where people might
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Alan Patching
not yet be completely into a new space/position/attitude by expo-

sure to your starting point higher purpose, but they most certainly
have been jolted out of the usual space/position/attitude of cyni-
cism, doubt and perhaps even abject disbelief regarding aspects of
everyday corporate life.
While I think it’s a good thing to announce the commencement
of your journey to a higher purpose driven corporate existence
with an awesome starting point higher purpose for the reasons
we’ve just outlined, I do recognise that, in all things corporate, we
need to avoid falling victim to the ‘bottleneck principle’ wherever
possible.
The ‘bottleneck principle’ simply says the bottleneck is always
at the top of the bottle, and the bulk of the great content is at the
bottom. What a great metaphor to keep top of mind when taking
any leadership and/or management role in any organisation.
If we apply the bottleneck principle to our corporate higher
purpose endeavours, we would quickly conclude that perhaps the
best possible and real higher purpose of our organisation could
better be identified from the bottom of the bottle–from among/
within the people who make up the organisation. After all, by
definition, if ‘the corporate higher purpose’ is not embraced and
enrolled in as a higher purpose of the collective people of the or-
ganisation, it simply is not a corporate higher purpose, and so no
amount of ‘branding’ activity will make it anything other than a
marketing or public relations statement in these circumstances.
And why, in my moments of deeper management thinking, do
I believe a starting point higher purpose is not really essential?
Simply because all organisations are not the same. Your organisa-
tion might already possess, perhaps even demonstrate, a pervading
consciousness of and sensitivity to social and community issues. It
might already contribute to society and community in some tan-
gible way other than by the benefits to consumers of your superior
products and/or services. In fact, only you can determine where
your organisation lies on the continuum between complete igno-
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rance of, and no demonstrated interest in social, community and

other higher purpose issues and complete and tangible commit-
ment to such issues.
At what I shall refer to as ‘the less enlightened’ end of this con-
tinuum, a starting point higher purpose will be essential, and it
will need to be truly awesome. Even with an awesome higher pur-
pose announcement in an outfit like this, some people are likely to
respond not from the corporate liminal space into which you were
seeking to lead them, but rather from a position of concern regard-
ing where you sustained the brain damage.
At the ‘more enlightened’ end of the continuum, it is likely that
putting too much effort into higher purpose identification will be
a waste of time for the simple reason that there are so many people
within the organisation who could identify a higher purpose equal
or superior in compelling awe inspiring power to anything man-
agement might propose.
Each of you will need to determine the position at which your
organisation lies on this continuum. Having done so, you will
be in a better position to decide whether your journey is best
commenced with a starting point higher purpose designed to take
your people to the ‘corporate liminal space’ in which further two
way communication can enhance that higher purpose to some-
thing in which the great majority of people are prepared to enroll.
Perhaps you will decide upon a direct approach to your people
with an announcement that you seek their assistance in identify-
ing the higher purpose in alignment with which your organisation
will operate into the future. Regardless of whichever approach you
choose, don’t attempt to go too far forward on your higher purpose
journey without two way communication with your people.
Effort in spreading the word
Let’s now address the various communication processes that are

likely to be involved in a successful higher purpose campaign.
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Alan Patching
In 1996 I collaborated with best selling author and psychologist Dr

Denis Waitley of the USA to write The Futureproof Corporation. In
our research into successful and not so successful attempts at major
corporate change (and culture change in particular) we found one
very interesting fact. Successful champions of change communi-
cated with all their people concerning the change between five and
twenty times more then change managers who were not satisfied
with their outcomes. Most of the successful change champions
communicated with their people about the change over 100 times
between conception to completion of the process. And it was by
no means one-way communication. I believe ‘spreading the word’
successfully about your corporation’s effort to identify and estab-
lish its higher purpose will require a similar level of communica-
tion to that employed by successful change managers, and for that
reason, I will briefly expand upon the communication techniques
they typically employ.
• Chief Executive Office/President’s addresses
Only one thing will be more powerful than a passionate address by

the top executive in the organisation about your campaign to iden-
tify, establish, and run your business strictly in accordance with,
a higher purpose. That will be the same senior executive send-
ing the very clear message that his or her presentation was very
much a statement of spiritual leadership and not merely manage-
rial lip service. To achieve this, the senior executive must be, and
be seen to be, the driving force behind, and very much interested
in and involved with, the higher purpose journey. I emphatically
recommend the Chairman/CEO/President/Managing Director
deliver you launch address–and I am convinced the optimum way
to launch it–is to target the leadership team as much as the rank
and file. No organisation can establish a truly ‘higher purpose’ for
continued existence with anything other than the highest level of
commitment among its leaders. The launch address by your CEO
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or President can go a long way toward stiffening the conviction of

doubting senior leaders, and the corporation will be the better for
everyone in its hierarchy hearing the words that seek to do exactly
that.
In some instances it may be necessary for the senior-most ex-
cecutive to get the message across to doubting junior management
is an approach similar to one once used by the President of the
Matsushita Corporation of Japan. He stood up in front of a meet-
ing of management and shareholders at a crucial time in the com-
pany’s history, said a few brief words, and immediately returned to
his seat. His well chosen words had exactly the impact he sought.
They were ‘either we will manage our necessary change effectively
or I will change our management’.
• Cascading communication session
These are the normal management face to face communication

meetings where senior leaders meet with those from the next level
and so on until the message has been verbally relayed right through-
out the organisation. The most effective version of cascading face to
face communication, without doubt, is the single level duplication
approach. This involves having each higher level leader attend the
session at which his most senior subordinates pass on the informa-
tion he has recently passed on to them. This achieves two things.
Firstly, it affords the opportunity for correction or clarification of
any misinterpretations in the passing on of the essential message.
Secondly it subtly reinforces the importance of the entire exercise
and demonstrates higher management commitment. Of course,
apart from clarifying misinterpretations or answering questions,
the senior manager’s role should effectively be that of observer.
• Focus Groups
These fill their usual all-important function of getting feedback
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Alan Patching
from the human capital base–and depending on circumstances,

possibly even the customer base-at various milestones throughout
the exercise. I advise a mix of random selection of focus group
membership, and cross-functional division or section election of
representatives. I see no compelling reason for long-term reten-
tion of any particular focus group membership. Representatives
of every hierarchial level should have involvement in some of the
focus group activity, and it’s important that they are seen to have
such involvement. In addition, at least some sectional or divi-
sional representatives should be elected by their peers rather than
appointed by management.
• Workshops
These are mainly used for and by the key group driving the higher
purpose identification and establishment ‘campaign’. However, by
inviting others to provide input or to witness/observe proceedings
along the way, what is essentially a working forum can expand to
become a broader communication function.
• Memos, emails and newsletters
All of these have their place in the communication exercise. Howev-

er, none of them should replace the previously listed communica-
tions media, but rather only be used to support them. I can think
of not a single person in the entire corporate world I know who
would honestly declare they’d embrace and enthuse over receiving
another memo or email in their working day. Do you know such
people? The clear message is any emails are memos used in your
‘spreading the word campaign’ will need to be sufficiently differ-
ent and interesting to avoid falling victim to a stroke of the ‘delete’
key before being read. To keep emails and memos brief and to the
point, and have them sent right from the Chief Executive Offi-
cer where possible, and in his or her own words, is probably the
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soundest advice I can give on this point.

Newsletters too frequently become laborious, yet too infre-
quently, they have diminished value. The decision on frequency, if
you choose to use the newsletter medium, will often depend upon
the size of your organisation and the time you believe the identifi-
cation and establishment of your higher purpose will take.
If you choose to use a newsletter medium, I’d advise having
content comprising a brief status report, a word from the CEO–in
his or her own words again, and not written by the copywriters
and spin merchants in the marketing department for the CEO’s
signature (for no other reason than it must ‘feel’ real and ground-
ed, and sound like something the CEO would personally say) with
the remainder made up of a record of the general human capital
involvement in and reaction to the unfolding exercise.
• Posters, mouse pads, pocket summaries etc.
There’s no doubt that consistent reinforcement of message is an

essential component of a successful communication campaign.
Posters, computer ‘mouse pads’, screen savers, pocket summaries
and the like all have their place in the communication toolset.
However, to use these too early (i.e. to begin message reinforce-
ment before message comprehension and acceptance) will have
a negative effect. In addition, never begin a message reinforce-
ment exercise using posters etc. unless and until there is an obvi-
ous embracing of the higher purpose by management and that
embracing is demonstrated in day to day behaviour. It really must
be a case of ‘spread the news’ and use words only when you need to’
at all levels of management. Until management are ‘enrolled’ don’t
waste your time with reinforcement of messages at other levels of
the organisation.
• Tapes and/or CDs or MP3 files
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Alan Patching
Audio is one of my personal favourite communication techniques.

However don’t use it as a separate medium, but as part of a media
package. For example, record important speeches by the CEO/
President or leaders of the higher purpose establishment project,
so that those who could not attend get to hear it, and those who
did, get reinforcement.
I find that audio usually works better than video or written ma-
terial, because people can listen to it while traveling and exercising.
In this way it effectively takes no time from their busy day. These
days it’s not even necessary to record audio as tapes or CD’s. One
can directly record to a computer and email files for downloading
to MP3 and similar technology.
There are many other methods of communication available,
but these should suffice to give you an idea of the range of pos-
sibilities to include in your mix. Despite our conditioning regard-
ing the power of various news distribution media today, and this
is effectively what we are addressing here, for an exercise like this,
the real power lies in live senior leaders looking into the faces of
live audiences of their people and with meaningful words deliv-
ered with passion from a place of purpose and commitment deep
within, telling things just how they are.
Communication and the higher purpose journey
I’d like to finish this point with a small confession. While I’m
convinced communication, and plenty of it, in the right form at the
right frequency and from the right people, will be a key to overall
success, simply because it is a necessary precedent to enrolment,
I must say there’s a chance a successful higher purpose establish-
ment exercise could and should require less communication (but
still plenty of it) than a successful vision establishment exercise
of similar magnitude. My reason for this statement, is if you
begin with advising your people what you’re all about–running
the corporation with a primary purpose which in some explic-
130
itly expressed focus clearly amounts to contributing to a better

local, national or world community-you’re likely to get a far better
response than beginning with a statement that you are adopting
a vision, for example, of improving your position on the list of
the top ten businesses in your industry at least two positions over
three years, even if you do add the mandatory reference to valuing
your employees and customers above all else at all times during
your quest.
Because the higher purpose approach to future business will
sound so foreign (based on previous business practice) in some
corporations, you might very well get an immediate reaction of a
room full of rolling eyeballs punctuated with irreverent comments
along the lines of seeking to find exactly what substance has af-
fected the speaker’s thinking.
What I’m getting at is the amount of communication for a
higher purpose establishment might very well be dictated by the
power of that initial launch conference–and I strongly believe that
is the appropriate launch forum. If a conference is not feasible,
why not close the office for an afternoon, hook up all the branches
via a video link and start with a bang. The same could be said for
the launch of a vision seeking exercise. But most of your people
have been through them before, and they will take a lot of con-
vincing to stop the eye rolling for the simple reasons you are deal-
ing (with most vision exercises, anyway) with purely extrinsic (to
your people) motivation, and history had shown that many vision
exercises are really little more than low level marketing exercises
anyway.
I reiterate the prime importance of the top corporate executives
actually leading this exercise. They might choose to have a more
polished and convincing speaker join the presentation for obvious
reasons, but the CEO/President and their most senior executives
simply cannot abdicate from the responsibility of being there, be-
ing seen to be there, and leaving not a shadow of doubt concerning
their complete conviction about and commitment to the higher
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purpose approach to conducting the business into the future.

If the company is serious about the higher purpose approach,
and if the CEO/President’s presentation is structured to get beyond
a ‘here we go again’ reaction, I’m convinced there’s high chance the
people who make up the organisation will pay attention, and this
is a definite precedent to their enrolment, and to the success of the
higher purpose journey.
With vision exercises, it is essential that the vision is set with
some involvement from people across all levels of the corporate
hierarchy if they are to have any real chance of working. It might
well be the senior management spend a few days in some creative
thinking enhancing five star resort to determine what the vision
should be, and the other levels representative’s then adjust and re-
fine the words describing the vision in focus groups and workshop
forums. That, to my mind, would be the minimum required to
achieve the necessary involvement (and being seen to be involved)
of representatives of the entire organisation. The ideal to my mind
would be a far more extensive and intensive involvement of people
from across all corporate ranks and divisions, but a detailed dis-
cussion of formulating a corporate vision is not our purpose in
this book.
With the launch of a higher purpose for a corporation, two sim-
ple approaches (other than the ideal vision formulation exercise)
are appropriate. The first is for the CEO or President to launch
the exercise with an announcement that any worthwhile corporate
higher purpose must immediately ring of connection at some level
and/or to some meaningful degree with the personal higher pur-
poses recognised by the great majority of the people who comprise
the corporation and accordingly, there is no reason why the corpo-
rate higher purpose could not be identified by any person working
at any level of the hierarchy. I don’t know that a competition is the
ideal way for pursuing identification from within the ranks. After
all, if they accept the corporation really is making change for the
common good (as extended beyond the corporate profit borders)
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those touched by the launch presentation should quickly commit

to involvement–i.e. ‘enroll’.
Leaders must, however, face the reality that there often exists a
deep set cynicism borne of exposure to (on the surface of it) de-
cidedly similar attacks of leadership zeal and enthusiasm. Which
leads me to the alternative approach, and one I most definitely do
not endorse for corporate vision projects. This approach is for the
corporate leadership, involving as few or as many others as it sees
fit (if any), to establish the corporate higher purpose and simply
announce what it is, what it means, why it is being adopted-in-
deed why the sudden burst of corporate commonsense in the first
place. This is the approach I have presumed in writing this book
thus far, although I have drawn attention to the need to remain
open to dialogue and feedback from people across the organisa-
tion and indeed, to actively promote and orchestrate that dialogue
and feedback.
If the leaders have successfully established a higher purpose that
is something more than a thinly disguised profit agenda above all
else, one that really does express meaning well beyond money, al-
beit money may, indeed hopefully will, flow from its pursuit, there
is a strong chance the organisation’s people will engage in a posi-
tive consideration of enrolling in the pursuit of that purpose.
I have used the term ‘enrolment’ a number of times. An expla-
nation of its meaning in context is now appropriate.
Enrolment
Enrolment is not something people can be forced to do, and

attempting to force them would be a dumb move, anyway, if we want
them to stay enrolled. Enrolment is a voluntary action, usually the
consequence or end result of thorough consideration of available
information regarding options. With this in mind the importance
of leaders identifying a genuine higher purpose (with or without
feedback and/pr input from various levels of the organisation at
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various times) and presenting it clearly and honestly and from the
top, is clearly an extremely important precedent to enrolment by
human capital in pursuit of that higher purpose. There is no doubt
it is the best approach to engaging people into the personal consid-
eration and evaluation (and feedback and dialogue) that should
always precede any decision to enroll–and always will, for the type
of enrolment spiritual leaders seek in preparing for the pursuit of
a corporate higher purpose. Which prompts me to repeat and re-
endorse a comment I made towards the commencement of this
book. Never lose sight of the fact that establishing and pursuing a
higher purpose is an exercise is spiritual leadership, which is very
different in essence from managerial leadership. The latter will
always involve relatively high levels of analysis (albeit definitely
not to the exclusion of intuition). Spiritual leadership will always
involve a truly deep sense or love of intuition with far less analysis,
tending close to nil, than the managerial variety.
Spiritual leadership is more about tapping into a deep knowing
about what really are connecting higher purposes for people and
corporations in a quantum-like context, where all beings and all
things are connected in the larger reality anyway. Leadership that
‘gets’ this will be well on the way to the type of communication
with staff members/co-workers from which enrolment is a natural
consequence.
And now let’s move on to the next step of our organizational
higher purpose journey, which is to run the organization in accor-
dance with that higher purpose on a day to day basis.
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Chapter Ten
Step 5 – Run your organisation completely in

accordance with your established higher purpose
I’m going to make a few statements right at the commencement of

this chapter that I think might come as a surprise to you. Hope-
fully they will also come as something of an inspiring revelation.
The stages of the process I’ve described thus far might seem to be
fraught with difficulty. However, they will be a walk in the park
in comparison with the demands of the step we’ll be addressing in
this chapter.
I didn’t say the higher purpose journey will be easy. It’s certainly
a simple concept, it’s just not likely to be easy to realise. It’s a sim-
ple concept because it aligns in principle with what most people
see as a good thing to be doing-helping our planet and the people
on it less fortunate than us-perhaps even going about our business
with more focus or care for our customers/clients and less focus on
profit levels. It’s not easy to realise because it has to happen in the
corporate environment with its propensity for politics, competitive
and imperialistic attitudes, dog-eat-dog cultures, power personali-
ties and profit-above-all-else objectives. In short, it has to happen
in perhaps the most fertile breeding grounds for the human ego
imaginable. The great paradox is it cannot happen without some
level of transformation beyond ego, beyond false self, towards True
Self, at least in some collective, organisational sense. Now, I realise
that sounds like somewhat of a contradiction in terms, simply be-
cause transformation from false self to True Self is, by definition,
an individual journey and experience. I ask you to stay with me
a little longer, and hold the tension of the seemingly non-sensical
while we investigate any possibilities it might reveal.
I don’t for a second believe or suggest that within your organi-
sation, you can orchestrate or inspire a collective transformation-a
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Alan Patching
move out of the false self, beyond ego, and into the True Self-at a
chosen point of time, or indeed at any time. There simply are too
many reasons why that is highly unlikely to occur. In fact, it could
be virtually impossible. Hardened organisational attitudes and
behaviours (not to mention personal egos generally) which have
been formed and forged over hundreds of thousands of hours of
exposure to one type of environment or system are not simply go-
ing to soften and melt at the mere suggestion of an alternative en-
vironment or system. In addition, your organisation most likely
employss some younger people. The great psychologist, Carl Gus-
tav Jung, tells us it is a normal life process that we pursue what
he terms ‘individuation’, which is about ‘building the tower’, de-
veloping our ego, trying to experience ‘separate-ness’ and often,
fame and fortune, before we begin to pursue ‘transendence’, which
is simply the journey back to unity borne of the realisation that
individuation, and the actions and absorptions borne or it, cannot
provide the true freedom of spirit people seek in life.
That freedom of spirit can only come from detachment from
the desire for more and better of all the things the false self seeks
and desires. In other words, and in the words of Richard Rohr, it
comes from stopping the habit of ‘chasing more and more of what
does not work at a spiritual level.’. Sadly, relatively few people, par-
ticularly in our materialistic western societies, ever experience that
true freedom of spirit, even for a fleeting moment. I often won-
der how many of us will ever experience full transformation (or
‘transcedance’, to stay with Jung’s terminology) beyond ego and
into the True Self, the Soul self wherein total love, complete caring
and unassailable cosmic connectedness are the indestructible and
universal characteristics.
‘Hold on a minute’, I sense some readers would be thinking at
this point, if that last statement is anywhere near true, it’s likely that
if very few people in western society get beyond ego experience to
a True Self experience, how on earth is it going to be possible to
successfully establish, pursue, and achieve a corporate higher pur-
136
pose which relies on transformed people for its own realisation.

That really is the key question to which each person leading any
organisation in any higher purpose endeavour must really believe
he or she has a satisfactory answer, prior to proceeding too far. If
they do not, nagging doubts are likely to arise and place the exer-
cise at risk at several spots along the journey. So what is the answer
to that all important question?
Reason and wonder thinking
Again, I must say any spiritual journey–whether for an individual

or an organisation, will be punctuated with paradox. One such
paradox is that some of the clearest and most important questions
simply do not have clear and concise answers. More often than
not, they simply prompt further questions, rather than clear and
concise answers.
I will offer an answer to the question which gave rise to this
discussion. However I caution strongly against accepting it as the
answer. I don’t believe there is a universal the answer. Even if
there was, even if every possible answer was a variation on a single
theme, nothing much will be gained by any leader of the journey
simply seeing the ‘logic’ of the answer and adopting it for his or
her organisation in much the same manner as one might logically,
yet almost subconsciously, put on a raincoat before venturing out
on a drizzly day. The question is so important its answer needs to
be infused by contemplation rather than imposed by the power of
logic.
I get much joy from reading the works of mystics, writers and
poets from a wide range of religions and cultures. For example, I
love the work of Persian Sufi Islamic poets Rumi and Hafiz. I find
the work of the great Jewish mystic and author, Abraham Heschell
to be harder going but equally insightful. One thing I learned
from Heschell might be helpful for corporate people on the higher
purpose journey. In his book ‘God in Search of Man’, Heschell
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Alan Patching
proposes that we humans have the capacity to think in two basic

ways. These ways of thinking he calls ‘reason’ and ‘wonder’. Most
of us are very familiar with ‘reason’ thinking-the logical, linear,
left brain, cause and effect, this way or that way, my way or your
way thinking so prevalent in our western society in general, and
its organisations in particular. ‘Wonder’ thinking can be far more
insightful, yet is far rarer in our society and its organisations. It
is right brain thinking, non-linear, non-logical this and that, your
way and my way thinking, and contemplative rather than calcula-
tive. Heschell himself calls it, thinking with ‘radical amazement’.
I believe the leaders of any organisation’s higher purpose jour-
ney will be well served to engage in and to promote more ‘wonder’
thinking, not only in the early stages of the journey wherein one
seeks to identify one’s organisational higher purpose and to engage
people in the radical amazement of the concept, but also along the
way, to revitalise the very soul of the endeavour.
While it is only in ‘wonder’ thinking, in comtemplation of the
question which gave rise to this discussion, that each reader will
find the ‘right’ answer for themselves in respect of the particular
circumstances of their organisation, I will now, nonetheless, pro-
vide my response to that question.
The short answer is that we must do everything we can to get
people so excited on the inside, they cannot possibly help but show
and act out of that excitement, and in solid unity with others ex-
perience similar purpose induced organisational intrinsic excite-
ment on the outside–which, for our purposes, just happens to be
in their work environment and in all they do in that environment.
However, it will be the long and more detailed answer that I sus-
pect most leaders/managers would prefer, so I will dedicate much
of the remainder of this chapter to giving you that.
I’ll begin with what I consider to be an irrefutable proposition–that
nothing will fire people up more inside than the feeling of ‘right-
ness’; well being, harmony, serenity, achievement perhaps; being
‘in tune’ certainly; and ‘connectedness’, if you will, of living out of
138
the True Self. That is, being in alignment with their higher order
values and with a focus on the Soul Thing That Matters rather than
the $ole thing that matters. Before developing this proposition in
the context of our organisational higher purpose initiatives, I am
compelled to highlight yet another paradox. In the Soul Thing
That Matters approach, a decidedly more ‘right brain’ approach
wherein ‘this way and that way’, ‘your way and my way’ thinking is
normal, concepts routinely encompass their apparent antithesis.
Such an idea is simply impossible for the more left brain dictated
$ole thing that matters business approach, which usually consti-
tutes a very strict ‘this way or that way’, ‘my way or the highway’
mindset.
Let’s examine a very relevant example of this point. Thus far
in this book, I’ve been careful to stress the importance of being
genuine in organisational higher purpose pursuits. I’ve stressed
that an economic purpose is normal and to be expected for every
organisation and have made the point that all but completely un-
reasonable or unrealistic people have no problem recognising and
accepting this. I’ve also stressed that any higher purpose activity
adopted with the primary objective of attracting good public rela-
tions will very quickly backfire as a consequence of your people
seeing right through your economic motives. I’ve even made the
point that there’s nothing wrong with doing good things for the
community to attract press attention. Public relations activities
are part and parcel of business in our society.
However, the really important additional point I’ve made, and
want to stress here, is that if your organisation contributes to the
community and society with the singular purpose of attracting
good P.R. then that’s all you’ll get from your efforts, cash, and en-
ergy expenditure–good P.R. So much more is possible with an
ever so slight adjustment focus. If that same community or society
contribution was to be made as part of a genuine higher purpose
journey, simply because of a belief and commitment that organi-
sations should contribute something of their productivity and/or
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Alan Patching
potential to the environment and/or community or society etc in

which they enjoy the privilege of being able to experience pro-
ductivity and all that comes from it, and with no focus whatever
on P.R. objectives, I believe that it would experience a greater ‘re-
turn’ than the P.R. exercise would ever provide, and quite possibly
would attract substantial P.R. anyway without even seeking to do
so. I base my belief on my expectation that a genuine higher pur-
pose will ignite your people’s passion and, providing your work
environment doesn’t snuff out the embryonic flicker, it will only
be a matter of time, and not much time either, before teamwork
improves, productivity increases, customers get better service, mo-
tivation increases, and the thriving revitalised business begins to
attract the positive general and business attention that is the key
objective of a P.R. exercise in any case.
This might be a rather subtle example of paradox–that an or-
ganisation is more likely to get more of what it is seeking as its
destination (or objective) by not focusing on a simple $ole objec-
tive but rather on a Soul objective which embraces enjoying the
journey and not making the destination the sole organizational
raison d’etre, even though, in the corporate context, we realise the
journey must be inclusive of $ole objectives.
By a similar approach (notice I didn’t say ‘logical’-remember,
this is largely a right brain rather than left brain, contemplative
rather than calculative, and ‘wonder’ rather than ‘reason’ way of
thinking we are dealing with here) the ‘perfect’ higher purpose
journey incorporates, is inclusive of, ‘imperfection’. How can it
not be when it depends so much on such imperfect instruments
as human beings. The higher purpose journey fuelled by enthusi-
astic passion of on-purpose people must be open to and inclusive
of times of low energy and disappointment borne of things that
simply don’t go right, or were completely outside of the organisa-
tion’s control. The organisation on the journey will probably also
experience the paradox, in always seeking to do the right thing by
all its people, of sometimes disappointing some of them. Also, in
140
seeking to provide the environment in which its people can per-

form willingly at their best, an organisation should actually expect
to be disappointed by the performance of some of them.
The higher purpose organisation deals with paradox by under-
standing of the ‘inclusive’ nature of a ‘Soul Thing That Matters’
focus as demonstated in each of the previous examples.
In summary thus far, then, the ‘long answer’ to our question
begins with a recognition of the great necessity for journey leaders
to firstly ensure the journey is genuine. It truly must be primarily
for a higher purpose as defined earlier and not primarily for the
benefits of professing that higher purpose, even though, paradoxi-
cally, while planning for our journey to cost a little more than the
road we have just traveled, we won’t be at all surprised if it gives
us a better outcome in the $ole thing objectives we all recognise
and accept are essential, acceptable and honourable, Again, para-
doxically, our Soul Thing That Matters journey is inclusive of $ole
things that matter.
Work Environment
And now, let’s continue with that longer answer. Let’s now address
work environment and its importance on and to the journey.
This is one area where I am going to use a more left brain, logic
based, reason thinking, prescriptive and even somewhat hard line
approach in my suggestions. However, in keeping with the theme
of this book, I suggest you also remain open to other approaches
and to rely on your own conclusions and intuition regarding the
information you can attain from as many sources as possible, prior
to taking the first steps into any stage or aspect of your own organ-
isation’s journey.
The workplace environment issues that leaders simply must ad-
dress, if the higher purpose journey is to offer enjoyment and ex-
citement to the people whose attitude and response will determine
its destination (more accurately, ports of call) include:
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Alan Patching
• Unhealthy internal competition, imperialism and ‘turf

protection’
• ‘Silo’ mentality
• Corporate politics
• Organisation and system methodologies and procedures
• Corporate communication
• Avoiding making certain necessary difficult decisions
• Dealing with the organisational ‘shadow’.
The entire point of this always necessary and often difficult part
of the journey is to identify negative activity in your business, and
stop it or lead the transformation of it. The goal is to redirect the
effort, cash, resources and energy inevitably wasted in that nega-
tive activity into more appropriate and beneficial areas of your
corporate higher purpose (remember the Soul Thing That Matters
in business must embrace the $ole things that matter), and create
an environment in which ignited people passion can be guided
into a burning sense of connectedness and unity of purpose and a
feeling of boundless potential.
It is with that in mind, I shall now develop each of the above
points, and these in no way represent a full and conclusive list cov-
ering all organisational possibilities. Clearly, each higher purpose
leader will need to determine the issues that need to be addressed
for his or her own organisation. However, for most, I’d be sur-
prised if the majority of the list we’ve identified in our generic
discussion do not apply.
Unhealthy internal competition, imperialism and

turf protection
Virtually every spiritual tradition on this planet tells us the way

to the Soul experience for us human beings is not a journey of
ascendancy, accumulation of wealth and possessions, establish-
142
ment of uniqueness and fame, and acquisition of control and

power. The very first lines of the Sermon on the Mount in the
New Testament tells us that real wealth lies in being lowly, merci-
ful, and a supporter of social justice. (Wow! The higher purpose
journey proposed before a single stock market was ever a twinkle
in a budding broker’s eye).
Chapter 17 of the Book of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament
advises the Jews to select a king who does not want to accumulate
horses, or wives or wealth in Gold or Silver, as these would take
attention from the really important issues. The Holy Koran tells
us that the primary jihad is the battle to overcome the ego which
is centred on the matters of ascendancy and achievement in the
world. Rumi, the brilliant Sufi mystic (of the Islamic faith) wrote
“Human beings climb the ladder of egotism, but in the end, ev-
eryone must fall from this ladder. The higher you climb, the more
foolish you are, for your bones will be more badly broken” (Mas-
navi IV:2763-7). (Carl Jung once said the greatest learning of his
life came from ‘climbing down ten thousand ladders to make peace
with the piece of earth that I am’). Buddhism counsels detach-
ment, mercy and compassion, and ‘becoming empty’ and main-
taining a ‘beginners mind’. The Buddhist eight fold ‘Noble Way’
or ‘The Middle Path’ rejects all extremes of behaviour in people.
The spiritual tradition of Australia’s Indigenous people saw them
seeking information and wisdom, not wealth and possessions; they
never fought over land and always respected their environment.
The Tao tells us that sages (perfected individuals) are free of desire
and guide their people towards a similar path-a path of ‘creating’,
but not possessing, of working but not taking credit for the work
done, and of not striving to collect treasures’, or ‘to amass a store
of gold or jade’ or ‘to claim wealth and titles’.
Even people who have no interest in any form of spirituality or
religion might gain some useful wisdom from a study of the his-
tory and traditions of various spiritual followings. The common
themes in all these spiritual traditions-those of mercy, compas-
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Alan Patching
sion, humility and what I will call ‘descendancy’,or at least absence

of desire of ‘ascendancy’–fly in the face of much of what we hold
as precious values in western society in general and western corpo-
rations (not that my comments are limited to organisations from
western societies) in particular.
Trying to be better than the next person, to get better results, to
impress more, to achieve more, to earn more, to say more, to do
practically anything to do with any ‘more’ that might offer a little
more chance of more corporate ascendancy more quickly is the
name of the game, and at the organisational level, its pretty much
the only game there is.
Is there any wonder imperialism, competition, and protecting
one’s ego and image are so rife. Competition and imperialism in
business today make these traits in ‘big league’ sports look light-
weight. The irony is, of course, that modern ‘big league’ sports are
more often than not players in and very much part of modern big
league business and are very much ‘big’ corporations more than
they are sports–but I digress.
Wherever and whenever a high level of internal competition,
imperialism and personal image building exists in an organisation,
‘$ole thing’ dynamics, in their negative form, are at work. In con-
trast to these dynamics, Soul Thing dynamics are far more aligned
with the consistent and common message of the great spiritual tra-
ditions. They are about unity and not separation, journey rather
than destination, True Self rather than false self, detachment rather
than desire, and compassion, mercy and humility rather than con-
trol and dominative power. And I am not suggesting there’s never
a place for dominative power–only that there’s few circumstances
I can think of in which spiritual power would not be equally or
more effective. Dominative power comes from what we do, often
at false self level with false self motivation. Spiritual power comes
from what we are at the deepest level and is always a True Self
function.
144
The message for leaders of organisational higher purpose journeys,

for spiritual leaders, is clear. They must institute, and be clearly
seen to institute, a zero tolerance policy to all negative internal
competition and imperialism, power broking and image postur-
ing. At this stage, allow me to be very blunt about one important
point. Any leader who thinks that this will be in any way a simple
task either:
• Is involved in these negative activities him or herself (and per-

haps is not even consciously aware of it) and, if pursuing the
higher purpose option, is probably doing it for precisely the
wrong reasons (i.e. more for self promotion, image building and
points scoring).
• Has been so much into the softer side of the management/lead-

ership continuum (which extends from a complete ‘you can
only manage it if you can measure it, whether it’s inert or alive
and kicking’ attitude to one exclusively focused on the ‘look af-
ter people and profits will look after themselves’ approach) that
he or she is blind to the full dimensions of their own corporate
reality.
• Has his or her ‘act’, and that of his or her organisation, so well
‘together’ in terms of the ‘Soul Thing That Matters’ that there
really is not much point in reading further.
The fact is, for the great majority of organisations, including busi-
ness, schools, churches, hospitals, charities, government agen-
cies–large and small–establishing a zero tolerance policy to nega-
tive internal competition , imperialism and image/power broking
might be simply a matter of declaring and promulgating the policy,
but seeing it through and ensuring its realisation and maintenance
could be more burdensome than many might expect, especially if
the organisation is far more oriented towards the $ole thing that
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Alan Patching
matters than the Soul Thing That Matters.

The more analytical readers might be thinking I would have
served this book and its readers better by addressing this matter
earlier, perhaps even right up front. There are good reasons I de-
cided, after some serious contemplation, to leave this point until
this later stage of writing.
The main reason is that there is no ‘every detail defined’ ap-
proach to embarking on the corporate higher purpose journey,
even though it is crucially important that certain principles are
followed. The items we have identified in this chapter could spell
the end of the journey if leaders don’t deal with them. Even if the
concept of a higher purpose journey for your organisation doesn’t
appeal to you, even if you are single-mindedly and unashamedly
focused on the $ole thing that matters in business, you would be
well advised to take time to review the (wasted) cost impact on
your business of the seven issues we are addressing in this chap-
ter.
For some organisations, dealing with negative competition and
imperialism, and image and power building might need to occur
at the very early stages of the journey, simply because people in
leadership/management positions who practice these behaviours
are not very likely to respond positively to the higher purpose ini-
tiative for reasons other than solely personal gain, and such reasons
are the wrong reasons. Realising some of your personal Images of
Achievement in pursuit of a corporate higher purpose is quite dif-
ferent from acting solely for personal gain.
The early announcement of a zero tolerance policy in regard to
this issue, immediately and consistently followed by a serious and
obvious policing of that policy might be seen as a necessary pre-
requisite to removing cynicism about the entire higher purpose
proposal in some organisations. In others it might well be the case
that people simply align with and enroll in a higher purpose initia-
tive and the passion, enthusiasm, and sense of unity that follows
soon sees negative competition etc. disappear.
146
It may be difficult but it will be necessary for leaders to make the

decision about the timing and approach to dealing with this, and
the other issues we will address in this chapter, based on a consid-
ered assessment of the current circumstances, and the transforma-
tion potential that exists in their organisation.
Before we proceed to the next point, you may have noticed my
referring to ‘negative competition, imperialism and power and im-
age building’, which implies there are positive aspects to these be-
haviours. For clarity, I consider competition to be a most effective
performance enhancer. It can also really diminish performance.
Competition between your highly unified on-purpose organisa-
tion and others in your market place can be healthy and produc-
tive. Too much unhealthy internal competition between your sales
department and your design department seldom, if ever, is. Com-
petition between teams to come up with a new design for a logo
to use on your higher purpose journey e-zine might be a good
thing. However, competition between your projects people and
your accounts branch concerning who should get the final ‘say’ for
expenditure approvals within established and agreed project bud-
gets probably would not.
Any one with any significant corporate world experience will
understand this type of negative competition. In order to give
those fortunate enough never to have been exposed to it an un-
derstanding of why it is necessary to dedicate so much attention
to its eradication, I’ll describe a couple of real life examples while
withholding names to protect the guilty.
A respected and successful multi-national technology compa-
ny had a philosophy which really was a strictly followed policy,
that the sales department controlled everything. It was very much
a matter of ‘nothing happened in business until somebody sells
something to someone’–an old maxim. The problem was that this
policy presumed and claimed 100% ‘righteousness’, or rather the
people behind it did. Not surprisingly, none of these were engi-
neers or other technical people. The ‘techos’ were happier with
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Alan Patching
the philosophy which they’d like to see replace the sales oriented
policy, that ‘no-one cal sell anything to anybody until somebody
designs and manufactures it’.
As is usual in most similar situations, an independent outsider
can very quickly see some truth in both positions, and that a solu-
tion should be a simple matter to attain if people could subordi-
nate their philosophies or positions to the higher purpose of iden-
tifying and implementing a solution which is sensible, workable,
customer focused, beneficial to the organisation and not too harsh
on the players involved. Of course, to arrive at such a solution, ‘the
players’ have to get their egos out of the way. If they manage to do
this, no solution will look as harsh on them as it otherwise might
because, at the personal level, and usually within a team of like
minded personalities, it’s only really ego that’s capable of experi-
encing the type of ‘harshness’ we’re talking about.
In our example, sales department people visited clients and
prepared proposals or bids. They would talk to the engineering
department in so doing, take their technical specifications which
were designed to satisfy each client’s functional requirements, and
also get an estimate of cost from the design engineers. They’d then
prepare their proposals and take them to the prospective clients,
but not before they’d often reduced the engineer’s estimate ‘be-
cause we know from previous experience they always pad it out
because they think we’ll reduce it a little before we give it to the
client’. I don’t watch ‘The Simpsons’ but my teenage kids tell me
one of them says “Duh”. I don’t have a clue what ‘duh’ means, but
for some strange reason it just seems to be appropriate here. It just
sort of ‘fits’. Duh!
To make matters worse, after the customer/client reads the pro-
posal, they usually come back saying technically this company’s bid
is the best, but the price of the second best bidder is just that much
better it can’t be overlooked. Now any competent sales person will
be able to think of several ways to deal with this situation, but, let’s
face it, it’s always tougher to do than to talk about, and those same
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armchair sales critics would have to admit that with the month’s
sales figures being closed out that afternoon, and especially when
dealing with a valued repeat customer who you also regard as a
good friend, and even more so especially when this deal would lift
you into a higher bonus bracket, it’s very tempting to adopt the
‘I’ll beg forgiveness late than ask permission now’ attitude in rela-
tion to the unsuspecting (well, in the early days of this happening,
anyway) engineering department.
Fast forward to delivery time. A few problems develop. The
contingency is quickly consumed. The profit soon follows suit.
Management gets involved. Sales point to engineering’s inability
to deliver to budget. Engineering reply they are confident they can
deliver any job to their budgets–‘you know, the ones we give you,
as opposed to the ones you give the customer’. Sales retort that if
they put the engineer’s estimates into any proposal, there’d never
be any project to deliver, and so on it goes.
Management calls in the department heads and lays down the
law, and this slap on the wrist is then passed down to those in the
‘rank and file’ who ‘of course’ always are the real cause of the prob-
lem.
For the next project, engineering adds a little more padding
to ‘protect their turf ’ and their intra-corporate image. Naturally,
sales anticipated the move and reduce the engineers estimate a
little more than usual before submitting their bid. And so on the
cycle continues.
It might seem a miracle that any company with such a huge
problem could make any profit at all. However, this is a true story,
and this company did make good profits, and consistently. Imag-
ine how much better those profits could be, or how much bet-
ter customers could be serviced, or how much lower the overhead
component pf prices could be, or how much could be done for
employees or shareholders, or the communities in which the com-
pany operates, if only they could turn all that wasted effort into
savings.
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Fortunately, at my last meeting with their very capable and friendly

sales people, and their equally capable and charming engineers, I
got the impression both teams had had enough ‘pain’ and were
ready to accept advice about working more from a mutual gain
motivation. They had established and written the combined high-
er purpose of the sales/engineering departments in the bidding/
proposals process. Contemplation on how they might realise that
higher purpose saw them adopt a partnership approach with repre-
sentatives of both sales and engineering meeting with customers to
finalise all contracts with sales leading commercial aspects of the
process and engineering leading contract administration/delivery
aspects.
Everyone was winning and I hope and trust they still are.
I suspect many readers are thinking ‘but the solution was so
simple and obvious’.
Nothing is simple and obvious in any environment where nega-
tive competition and ‘turf protection’ leads to the ‘blame and jus-
tification’ game, which always entails blaming others (never ac-
cepting blame) and justifying our own position and action. The
effect of this type of all-too-common behaviour is to build a wall
between departments, or at least a veil which clouds vision and
perspective. And progress towards any higher purpose cannot oc-
cur until that wall crashes down or the veil is parted. Fortunately,
and paradoxically (there it is again), the best thing to part the veil
is a commonly held and unifying organisational higher purpose.
Some might say what I’ve described is not really about ‘com-
petition’ per se. I disagree. I think it is about competition in its
definitive sense and certainly about corporate imperialism and
‘turf protection’. It’s competition about who’s best, who’s right
and who’s wrong, who’s to blame and who looks good beyond the
mess. Negative competition, that’s what it most certainly is.
All of these things are about personal ego and via ‘cliques’ of
egos. They are extended within the organisational environment to
collective team ego, section ego, branch ego, divisional ego, and so
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on. Just as the personal ego, the false self of each and every human
being, must ‘die’ before the individual can experience his or her
Centre or True Self, the Big Self if you like, so the various forms
of corporate ego must die if the higher purpose journey is to stir
passion within all who make up the organisation.
How can we ensure the death of the false self, of corporate ego
based behaviour? At the policy level, zero tolerance must be the
standard throughout the organisation. This standard will have
maximum impact if:
1. It is formally communicated direct from the top level through-

out the organisation
2. It is routinely demonstrated and practiced by everyone in higher

level positions. These people must spread the word, but it should
be done by example, with further verbal or written communica-
tion on the matter, after the all important communication of the
initiation of the policy being kept to the absolute minimum
3. It should be ‘powerfully’ monitored and vigorously insisted

upon. Dominative power will be of little long term benefit. Spiri-
tual power (charismatic if you prefer, the terms are similar but not
exactly the same) is the way to go. Spiritual power is not about
coercion, force, and pointed influence. It is about living the better
way, you might see it as the third way, between dominative power
and complete lack of discipline, and so becoming, literally, a live
and moving audio visual aid or model for the transformation of
others.
If you come to the conclusion that some degree of dominative

power will be required to make ground towards your objective,
I’d advise continuing no further with other steps of the journey
until an encouraging balance has been achieved and is being main-
tained with spiritual or charismatic ‘power’. Don’t succumb to any
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feeling of failure if you need to do this. Remember, in any world

of spirituality, there will always exist the paradoxical inclusion
we have discussed earlier in this book. The journey will always
be a ‘three steps forward and 2 steps back’ experience. Perhaps
most important to remember when the going gets tough is the fact
that no spiritual journey is a ‘head trip’. It does not necessarily
take place primarily or substantially (and often in any way at all)
before sacred shrines or altars or in churches, mosques, temples
and synagogues, or, for that matter, in the penthouse, office suites
or designer boardrooms, although, again paradoxically, all of these
might be part of the journey–if only in so far as they direct atten-
tion to that first important step of the journey. It is not primarily
about anything ‘out there’ or ‘up there’, be it a God in the religious
sense, or Gods like money, wealth or shareholder value which, as
I see it, have a far more extensive and committed community of
worshippers (particularly in western society) than most places of
religious worship could ever consistently boast.
Any genuine spiritual journey, personal or corporate, will al-
ways be centred in the ‘now’. It will have its higher purposes so we
know when our path is forking and when we need to make a deci-
sion regarding which fork to follow. It will have its ups and downs.
But it will take place in the reality of the world we live in, and
it will be an everyday matter involving a wide range of everyday
people. If, on any higher purpose journey, we find ourselves deal-
ing with those ‘ordinary people’ and ‘ordinary events’ in a manner
other than we would deal with them if we suddenly found out they
were famous people or events associated with ‘important’ people,
it’s time for us to ask ourselves, at either personal or organisational
level (as is appropriate in the particular circumstances), ‘does this
behaviour align with my/our higher purpose?’ Does this behav-
iour align with any real meaning (in the deeper sense of the word)?
Is this behaviour some habitual, subconscious and negative behav-
iour that I must learn to be aware of, and to ‘nip it in the bud’
whenever it raises its somewhat less than attractive head?
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While I began this point with a message specifically for leaders of

higher corporate journey, I see I as important to finish it on this
more generic note. The work of leaders must surely become easier
if the wider range of their people can gain from reading words such
as these. Secondly, the work of my life’s journey, while happening
in this particular moment, this here and now. and has in mind
leaders of the organisations which operate in this ‘here and now’,
hopefully contains messages which come from traditions centuries
old and which have been proven to be timeless in personal applica-
tion. Because organisations are collections of people, I see great
sense and logic in extending these proven principles of so many
traditions and cultures into corporate context, even if my motiva-
tion to do so came more from contemplative than from calculative
thinking.
In developing this first point of the matters that must be inevi-
tably faced at the commencement of any corporate higher purpose
journey, I’m conscious of having covered material that will also
apply to several other points in our list. I will therefore close my
discussion regarding the first point with two other messages that
I believe will be helpful to you on any higher purpose journey,
whether it be personal or organisational. I certainly found them
extremely helpful in both areas. I first learnt both messages from a
man I’ve never met–Richard Rohr of the USA, to whom I referred
earlier. The first message I found helped in dealing with one of the
situations I’ve just described, finding I’d be dealing with people
(and issues) in a manner in which I’d not like them to treat me,
and being unaware that I’d ever been doing it.
That message simply is, ‘how we do anything is how we do ev-
erything’. If you find yourself debating or challenging the message
with logic rather than simply contemplating the wonder it con-
tains, can I suggest that you insert the word ‘likely’ or ‘probably’
to make it read ‘how I do anything is likely how I do everything’
for the moment, to avoid missing the message and the power of
the expression that follows. The expression needs no explanation,
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and I find it useful when I’m just about to speak tersely to some-
one, or after I’ve just done so, when it really isn’t/wasn’t warranted.
The expression worked for me in the early days after I first heard
Richard present it, by just popping into my head the instant I’d be-
haved in some unpleasant way. It was sort of like a trigger, which
prompted a ‘whoops’, an internal smile for ‘catching’ the behaviour,
albeit too late, and then (often) some serious back peddling to put
things right with the person/people whom I’d offended. For me, it
only took a dozen or so ‘whoops’ experiences before I was able to
‘catch’ and stop the behaviour before I acted it out. Mind you, if
my family read this, they might disagree and demand a correction
print run of the book.
Once ‘how you do anything is how you do everything’ became a
sort of behavour filter for me, I found it much easier–actually I got
to the point where I have no problem at all–to have other people
mention aspects of my behaviour which they found unacceptable.
Powerful stuff!
The second message is one which Richard credits to the Ger-
man Theologian and author, Karl Rahner. It goes along the lines
‘there are not two worlds, natural and supernatural. There is only
one world, and that world is supernatural’.
For me, that statement initiated much contemplation. I don’t
know how many times in my life I’ve rushed from meeting to
meeting, from project to project–hard to say how many times re-
ally. It sometimes seems like for a long time it was only once. It’s
just unfortunate that the ‘once’ extended for 25 years.
I’ll leave it for you to contemplate on whether or not the state-
ment has meaning for you in your personal or business life. Just
because the statement comes from a catholic Theologian need not
scare anyone off who is not religious, or is from a religion other
than the Church of Rome. I’m sure there are some religious peo-
ple from Rahner’s own faith who might read it and label Rahner
a heretic.
My own contemplation led me to a much higher level of aware-
154
ness of everything around me. I’m now more likely to balance

with a positive observation of a person, the negative impression
that hits as they introduce a new and, to me, obvious point of the
agenda of a meeting that has already extended well beyond my
preferred bed time. I find myself constantly and joyfully notic-
ing and enjoying simple things; a gentle breeze off the river of an
evening, and the soft sounds it creates in the trees. The myriad
shades of pink during a winter sunset. The crisp coolness of the
air and the chorus of birds having their last morsels of food on the
edge of the rainforest where I am writing these words. The sense
of usefulness that comes from ‘supervising’ my children as they
do their school projects (I use ‘supervising’in parenthesis you will
note, because if I write the truth which is that they are always tell-
ing me to ‘get lost’ because they want to do their own projects, and
I should find my own fun, and they might get into trouble if ever
their teachers read this book).
In short, the ‘one world’ concept, call it what you like, opened
up in me, both the tendency and a preference for far more ‘wonder’
thinking, to use Heschell’s term once again. I thoroughly recom-
mend you investigate/contemplate the possibilities for your own
business and personal life.
And now let’s move on to the next points leaders must address
at the commencement of any organisational higher purpose jour-
ney.
Silo Mentality
What an apt description for one of the biggest contributors to

wasted energy and resources of all kinds, including cash, in modern
organisations. Grain storage silos stand tall and strong, almost
always besides other tall and strong silos, perhaps even connected
to them by some element of structure. The only thing that ever
gets into each silo is what the person controlling the silo autho-
rises, and then it is put in through a relatively small entrance way,
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which is sealed and locked off immediately after the new content
is added. The only thing that flows out of a silo is what the person
controlling the facility authorises, and it goes to another party
who has paid for what he or she or it gets in some manner, and
once again through relatively small exits which are kept sealed and
locked.
To the extent of the description so far, the parallels between the
agricultural storage system for grain type silo and the organisa-
tional ‘storage system for information and other power, control and
influence bases’ type silo are both obvious and amazing. What a
shame the builders of organisational silos couldn’t adopt the more
positive characteristics of the grain storage silos, features like the
person controlling them being willing and able to move contents
freely from one silo to another for more efficient use of the facility
and its contents.
Silo mentality in organisations establishes strong invisible walls
between their various structural components. It encourages com-
mand and control of people within sections and divisions and
branches and teams by higher authority levels as a means of con-
tainment of the power generating (or supporting) information
within those entities. It forces the evolution of a corporate culture
in which people must perform (within the unwritten but nonethe-
less ‘enforced’ rules of the silo) in order to gain sufficient recogni-
tion and promotion to be ‘free’ of the system, by which time they
are likely to want to promote the continuation of the system to
prolong that hard earned personal authority and freedom.
In other words it encourages and fosters conformance in pref-
erence to performance.
Surely it is a far better approach, from both higher purpose and
corporate productivity perspectives, to simply give people the au-
thority and freedom they seek so they can perform. Of course, this
would need to be done in context of appropriate training, certifi-
cation, career path and accreditation arrangements.
Silo mentality creates fear based performance within the silo
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and breaks down unity across (connectedness between) the vari-

ous divisions etc of the organisation. There might appear to be
unity within the silo, but that will either be unity among the con-
trol and power mongers and those seeking to one day join them
in that ‘unity’, or a mask of fear based unity among those who are
controlled by the power brokers within the unit.
That’s a subtle yet incredibly important distinction, and it de-
serves emphasis. Leaders should cease making people in organisa-
tions perform so they can earn their freedom, and begin assuring
people (with appropriate experience and qualifications etc) know
they already have freedom so that they can actually perform. This
simply cannot happen within a silo mentality corporate culture. It
really is the stuff of spiritual leadership.
Indeed, one sure indication of a true spiritual leader is intol-
erance for and lack of interest in participating in, silo mentality
activities.
Anyone with an iota of knowledge and understanding of psy-
chology will tell you that fear is the key factor in formation of the
emotion driven and adrenalin imprinted State Dependent Memo-
ry phenomenon which is at the core of performance diminution.
Isn’t that ironic. The very fear inducing leadership style which
dominant power mongers of the silo culture adopt to force perfor-
mance as they see it is at the very core of performance reduction
and limitation that will eventually bring them to heal when de-
creased productivity and dropping organisational competitiveness
forces a review of the corporate modus operandi. Blind justice!
And now let’s take a look at corporate politics.
Corporate Politics
These come in two sizes, petty office politics, and the more heavy-
weight organisational office politics. Referring to the latter as
‘heavyweight’ should not be taken to imply that the petty version
can’t or doesn’t do considerable unnecessary damage. The rumour
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mongering and character assassinations that occur in the toilets

and tea rooms of the world’s corporations really can be devastat-
ing for the people on the receiving end. Office politics evolve from
the human frailties, ego, power building, and scapegoating, and
in that sense are the smaller sibling of organisational, or what is
better known as corporate politics.
Corporate Politics is the term now used to describe the unspec-
ified but widely understood dynamics applied to get things done
in organisations in the manner which meets the perpetrator’s ap-
proval, regardless of impact on others. They involve competition
between individuals or groups with the objective of attaining the
upper hand in regard to particular issues. In short they’re about
power. They might well be dressed up as any number of acceptable
sounding strategies, but everyone affected or involved usually has
no doubt they are really about power.
There’s no place for corporate politics of the negative type we’ve
become accustomed to in the higher purpose following organisa-
tion. However, I’m not about to suggest there’s no place for power
and politics in any organisation. To do so would be ludicrous.
Power and politics are central in all manner of human relation-
ships in all manner of complex ways. There is no question that
spiritual leaders hoping to get their people enrolled in the higher
purpose initiative will need to use influence. This being the case,
I’m not about to now demonstrate hypocrisy and say that no cor-
porate politics are to be tolerated. There very much will be a need
for appropriately applied power and influence if the higher pur-
pose initiative is to be successful in (possibly) the great majority of
organisations. However, it most definitely must be the right type
of power and influence.
It’s spiritual power, not dominative, we need in the corporate
politics of the higher purpose initiative. What’s more, we must
make one objective of the journey to be to go as far as possible
towards the eradication of politics based on dominative power as
we possibly can.
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Spiritual power comes from our True Self and is experienced by

those on the receiving end as prescence, friendship, caring, guid-
ance and love. In the organisational context it’s not conferred on
us by others. Dominative power of the negative kind isn’t neces-
sarily conferred in the corporate context either. It’s just that when
it’s tolerated, it pretty much has the same effect as it would if it has
been conferred. In the case of negative dominative power, toler-
ance is the equivalent of acceptance, which quickly becomes, in
effect, approval. So the bottom line is, tolerating (negative) domi-
native power is tantamount to informally conferring dominative
power.
I reiterate there is a place for formally conferred dominative
power, we call it authority, in every organisation and in all areas of
society. There would be a higher risk of chaos without it. How-
ever, the best people to have this authority, this dominative power,
are those who seldom need to use it because of the strength of their
charismatic and spiritual power. It’s this latter type of person who
comes from that deep place of wisdom which simply knows both
when the use of formal authority is necessary, and in what degree
to apply it. Would that the leaders of the countries of the world
get in touch with such wisdom! However, that’s a lot to ask for or
even imagine possible in a world so increasingly enamoured with
being different, bring ‘top dog’, being famous, being wealthy, in fact
bring pretty much everything apart from True Self. And it’s not
a new concept. The French coined a phrase for it a few centuries
back, ‘Le Roi-C’est Moi’. ‘The king–that’s me’; everybody’s motto
in their own little reality.
I’m hoping these observations regarding various aspects of cor-
porate politics contain within them a suggested remedy to this de-
structive dilemma of the corporate world. An experience based
firm grasp on corporate reality keeps emerging in my mind and
suggesting that there is little chance of completely eradicating neg-
ative corporate politics, not as long as out western corporate ad-
diction to power is so prevalent anyway. But another part of me, a
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deep part, reminds me of the myriad better aspects of the corpo-

rate world. Aspects like personal growth enhancing comeraderie
and teamwork; like outstanding generosity, in many instances, for
worthy social/community causes; like life saving and quality of life
enhancing innovation; like technology that shrinks our world–I
refer to communication and transport technology, and not the
type which attempts to ‘shrink it’ by blowing certain areas of its
surface to smithereens under the smokescreen of ‘divine guidance’
and ‘necessary pre-emptive defence’. If I am allowed one venture
beyond spirituality in the corporate context in this book, it’s sim-
ply to say I know of no spiritual teaching or wisdom, of no true
wisdom from any source for that matter, that wouldn’t agree that
any ‘guidance’ which suggests the use of dominative force–and
certainly in the gross manner in which it’s used in world politics
today–as being the answer to our problems is definitely not divine
guidance. The violence our world sees is virtually all based on the
age old practice of scapegoating–looking outside of ourselves for
the source of our problems and thinking if we remove that out-
side ‘source’ of our problems will be fixed. Our world killed over
100 million of its inhabitants with this mentality during the last
century, and the start of the 21st century is clearly showing we’ve
learned no lessons from that unfortunate experience.
Albert Einstein is famous for his theory of Relativity. Mr. Ein-
stein had a decent grasp on human nature too. He is credited with
two statements relevant to this point of discussion. The first is ‘no
problem can be resolved by the same mentality that created it’. The
second is ‘imagination is our preview of our future’. If only the
leaders of our world would take heed of these and be inspired to
something other than the fear and control style of leadership that
is so prevalent today.
Einstein’s statements are excellent advice for our personal and
organisational worlds as well. If we heeded them, we’d have far
less trouble dealing with personality issues and corporate politics,
and would be far less inclined to respond in ways that have no
160
chance of achieving anything except extended victimhood and

consequential increased politics.
We can begin fixing all our issues–personal, family, corporate
and global by shifting our attention from outside to inside. At any
of these levels, an honest audit of our own self seeking to identify
any of the characteristics we see as so abhorrent in those who try
to make us victims’ will always reveal our own capacity to dem-
onstrate precisely those characteristics to others. If you feel de-
fensive over this comment, its not me you should attack, and if its
assisted you with some clarity of insight, it’s not me you should
credit. This is the message of all great seers. Sure, they express
it in differing ways, but all effectively mean the same thing, and
why wouldn’t they if Truth is one? Hindu sages speak of a peace-
ful life and Islam’s jihad is primarily the internal battle against the
personal ego (and the ego’s capacity for scapegoating, victim hood
etc.). Taoism promotes overcoming ego and going with the flow
of Reality. And Christ hung on a cross and not only refused to ac-
cuse his attackers, but actually asked forgiveness for them. Where
is there any ambiguity in that?
The message may not be clear to some, but how can it possibly
be so obscure for so many? The beginning of the end of corpo-
rate politics commences when, regardless of the level of conflict
or victim hood or scapegoating or corporate politics we are in-
volved in, we look inside and come to the realisation that we (and
our behaviour) are or have been just as unacceptable as that of
the people we blame or accuse; we must come to realise we are
part of the problem and that others are not our problem, we are
our problem. Things begin to change when we see our way clear
to accept that we are not 100% right and those we accuse are not
100% wrong. All we generally have to do to reach that realisation
is extend the angle of our view or the span of the timeframe within
which we blame or accuse. When we see the other person might
be 10% right and we might be 10% wrong, we immediately get
20% (in overlap) to work with, and progress is then possible. We
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can best begin working for that overlap by asking ‘is there not now
sufficient reason to change attitude?’
Dealing with corporate politics is never easy, and it’s seldom
over. It’s just part of the journey and seldom a destination. For,
just when milestone is achieved, a single dynamic can change and
bring us back to the reaction mode from where those old habits
re-emerge. We then need further spiritual leadership to guide us
to realise life is not about ascendancy and ego. If we are lucky, we
will eventually get the message to stop trying to change the world
to fit our own idea of how it should be and allow ourselves to be
personally transformed by a Reality for greater than the almighty
‘I’ could ever be.
Corporate Politics are not bad. It’s only the negative domina-
tive power used in their conduct that’s bad. Corporate politics
effected with spiritual power, or even charismatic power to some
significant extent, are characterised by the transparency and the
‘collective good above my own’ attitude of champion families,
champion teams, and champion organisations.
Pursuit of a true higher purpose in committed and inspired
spiritual leaders is the only ‘weapon of mass destruction’ ever likely
to succeed against negative corporate politics in any context, and
non-combative intolerance, self awareness and self management
(extending to ego management if such a thing is humanly pos-
sible in our western corporate environment on a large scale) are
the hallmarks of the jihad all of us, regardless of race or creed, will
have to face on the journey.
Organisational Systems and Procedures
This might seem like a strange topic to follow our discussion of

corporate politics. However, spiritual leadership doesn’t exclude
a highly developed understanding of and capacity for, effective
management. Having said that, I don’t intend to develop this topic
extensively.
162
If any reader has the impression from my writing that this is the case,
let me apologise for having misled you and correct the perception
immediately. There always has been, and always will be, a place for
firm and fair management in every organisation. Indeed, I cannot
see how spiritual leadership in the corporate context could ever
not embrace firm and fair management practice. It’s simply not
the purpose of this book to address these, apart from under the
current topic. The only points I wish to make here are:
• Spiritual leadership does not impose systems and procedures on

people without giving those people the opportunity for input/
comment except in two circumstances. The first is when finan-
cial or other important circumstances demand drastic directive
action (even the doctor with the best of bedside manners will
sometimes need to act first and explain later. It could be life-
saving). The second is where new and inexperienced people,
or people experiencing a lapse in performance, might require a
firm hand for their own good and that of the organisation.
• Neither good management practice nor spiritual leadership al-

lows systems and procedures to proceed to apply with no audit
or review in circumstances wherein they simply are not produc-
ing the results expected.
Perhaps nowhere are there two points more relevant than in

organisations seeking to deliver strategy, at least in part, using
project management. It is common for managers to assign proj-
ects to people in the matrix management context, to emphasise a
requirement for the delivery of results and not excuses, and then to
demand delivery commences immediately without anywhere near
sufficient planning. When the inevitable changes surface during
project implementation, to overcome the project shortcomings
arising from lack of planning, those ‘leaders’ either blame project
managers or their people, never stopping for a minute to realise
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they’ve done nothing but continue with the same old ineffective
management approach but under a new name–project manage-
ment. The adage ‘fail to plan and you plan to fail’ does not cease
having relevance.
Such leaders often spend a fortune on training their people, and
such is the full extent of project management knowledge today that
this is usually a great idea. However, to teach your people tomor-
row’s skills and to continue to administer with yesterday’s general
management techniques is both an exercise in futility and usually
a significant loss of investment. And it most certainly doesn’t rep-
resent intelligent spiritual leadership.
In normal sound business circumstances, spiritual leaders will
always help maintain any established sense of purpose by ensuring
all levels of people have regular, frequent, honest and open input
regarding organisational systems and procedures. And they will
ensure systems and procedures align with the corporate purpose.
They would regard doing anything less as a dereliction of duty.
Difficult Decisions
Spiritual leadership is not soft, and it certainly is not always easy.

With any organisational higher purpose initiative, there is always
the possibility that certain people don’t ‘fit’ the path. It will some-
times be necessary to terminate the employment of these people,
always on the fairest arrangements, both to allow your journey to
continue, and to allow their own career experience to take perhaps
a better course. Spiritual leadership always ensures respect and
caring for a person’s integrity in such circumstances, which only
would arise as a last resort. Again, spiritual leadership might be
about a new reality for many organisations but it is never out of
touch with the reality that exists now. In fact, it sees divine influ-
ence in every ‘now’. Spiritual leaders will always act with compas-
sion, pursuing every reasonable opportunity to avoid unnecessary
burden or humiliation to anyone. But they do not shirk responsi-
164
bility. They do not back off hard decisions.

Spiritual leaders realise that the hard decision they know they
must make will not only benefit others in the organisation, and the
organisation as a business entity, it might also be more the first step
of a new and exciting journey of fulfillment for the person about
whom they are compelled to make that very difficult decision.
Dealing with the Corporate Shadow
In psychology, the term ‘Shadow’ is the concept developed by

famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. This is not the place
for a detailed description of the Jungian psychology behind the
concept, but some understanding of the Shadow at personal level
is necessary as a launch pad to developing the idea for any corpo-
rate context. The following précis is intended to provide this
understanding:
• The Shadow is the collection of unconscious aspects of our

psyche which we suppress because they are not aligned with the
image of ourselves we want to show the world.
• Our Shadow is not the ‘bad’ side of us, it’s just an aspect we
might not be proud of and simply do not want others to know
about.
• To reach psychological maturity, to become a ‘whole’ or inte-

grated person, we must face up to our shadow; we must make
friends with it, as it were. We don’t need to tell others about it,
but we do need to stop denying it and accept it as part of who we
are.
• Apart from helping us mature psychologically (and spiritu-

ally) facing up to our Shadow can really revitalise us as human
beings.
165
Alan Patching
In order to transport the concept of the Shadow to the organisa-

tional context, it will be useful for us to bring to mind some other
Jungian concepts, these being:
• To Jung, ego and self are not the same. Ego is the mask we wear
influenced by our status in society, position at work, nationality,
title etc. (Ego is effectively what I’ve referred to in this book a
False Self (borrowing from Thomas Merton)).
• For Jung, Self is wholeness and full integration of personality. In

the ‘spiritual’ discussion in this book, I’ve again borrowed from
Merton and referred to it as True Self. Of course the psycho-
logical Self and the spirituality True Self are not precisely the
same. However, having read much by and about Carl Gustav
Jung, I rather suspect he’d have no problem whatever with my
extension of his self concept to be synonymous with Merton’s
True Self concept, at the ultimate level of ‘personality’ develop-
ment. However, I’m not at all ‘precious’ about this opinion, and
certainly would not want any non-acceptance of it to get in the
way of further discussion of ‘Shadow’ in the corporate context.
• Identification (or confusion) of the ego as Self is usually the

beginning of the ego becoming inflated, and possibly to very
dangerous levels. Inflated ego sees the individual believing
himself/herself to be without fault (because of failure to face
and integrate the Shadow) and so beginning to see others as the
perpetrators of trouble, even to the extent of categorising them
as evil. Jung sees this process as ‘projecting’ our own (often irra-
tional) ‘Shadow’ onto others.
• When we see all wrong (anything wrong in most cases actually)

with another person, organisation, community, race, religion,
country etc., it’s us ‘projecting’ problems within ourself onto
that other person or entity etc.
166
• The only way we can do anything really effective, as individuals,

to change any situation with which we have an issue is to first
deal with (face up to) our own Shadow. That is, to integrate our
ego and our Shadow as part of the process of transcendence into
Self. ‘Transcendence’ is very much a Jungian term. The equiva-
lent phrase in the language of spirituality would be transforma-
tion from false self to True Self.
• And, finally, a Jungian concept of great interest for individuals

on the journey, and I would expect, for organisations contem-
plating its commencement.
Jung says our conscious personality is balanced by an unconscious

opposite. This unconscious opposite for males is feminine and is
called the Anima. For females, it is masculine, and is called the
Animus. These opposites often appear in dreams in many forms.
For man, the Anima always appears with the nature of Eros or love,
and/or represented by earth and water images. To balance any
propensity for polygamous relationship attitudes at the conscious
level in men, dreams involving the Anima will be ‘mono-relation-
al’, always including the same female figure, if indeed the dreams
do involve a female figure. The balance for (usually mono-rela-
tionship/monogamous) women usually involves logic or reason,
represented by images of air and fire. Female Animus dreams
usually involve a number of different male figures. (I know my
wife’s stories of her dreams are much more interesting than mine-
no wonder she likes to retire early each evening!).
I’m assuming there’s no need for me to explain or translate the
bullet point Jungian concepts for an organisational context. Jung
never intended them for anything other than individual applica-
tion to the best of my knowledge. However, the more I learn about
organisations and their politics, not to mention countries and in-
ternational politics, the more I believe the Jungian principles are
directly transportable to any entity involving people, and particu-
167
Alan Patching
larly organisations. Why wouldn’t they be? After all, an organisa-

tion is fundamentally a collection of people hopefully striving for
similar objectives. In other words, take away the legal instruments
and real estate, assets etc, and they’re nothing more than a collec-
tion of people.
Accept this point, and I cannot see how it’s possible not to ac-
cept that:
• Corporate ‘culture’ is simply the collective individual attitudes,

even if those attitudes are ‘mask’ rather than instinctual or ‘real’
due to a general perception of a need to comply with manage-
ment attitude ‘requirements’ out of concern (fear?) for ongoing
employment security and/or promotion eligibility.
• For organisations to change, first individuals must change.

When they do, and these will probably be those people I refer
to in this book as spiritual leaders, corporate magic can begin to
happen.
Organisations without such spiritual leaders are unlikely to prog-

ress far with any higher purpose journey, certainly not one which
is genuine and not primarily another ‘marketing and promotion’
exercise. Those with true spiritual leaders will not be able to avoid
addressing that corporate Shadow, not necessarily telling the world
about it, but facing it, accepting it as possibly even being a signifi-
cant aspect of what delivered the organisation to the threshold of
transformation–the liminal space within which the concepts in
this book can be ‘held’ and not rejected outright–and from the
almost inevitable conflict between these ecological concepts and
the necessary economics of organisational survival sustainability
and growth, a viable ‘third way’ for your organisation can begin to
evolve.
I see corporate politics, silo mentality and negative corporate
competition as sollectively constituting the Shadow of most orga-
168
nizations, and it is this Shadow that must be addressed during any

higher purpose exercise. When this is effectively done, the organi-
zation can move forward with high optimism for success.
This success will have more hope of being realised if progress
towards that realization is closely nurtured and monitored. Let us
now address the next step in the higher purpose journey, which
covers that nurturing and monitoring.
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Alan Patching
Chapter Eleven
Step 6 - Nurture and monitor progress, and

Step 7 – Celebrate success
Monitoring progress might sound a somewhat incongruous step

for our journey. It might be seen to have a very ‘text book manage-
ment’ ring about it. Indeed, that is precisely what I intend, but
very much with the objective in mind of nurturing the organisa-
tion towards the higher purpose experience this book attempts to
describe.
There are a number of reasons that I see monitoring progress as
a process of nurturing, and key among these are:
• I am not so naive as to think the negative aspects of organisa-

tional life discussed in the previous chapter will necessarily sim-
ply cease to exist even if the direction that their cessation is a re-
quirement comes from the top levels of the organisation. More
likely, until the higher purpose pursuit takes hold, a high level
direction that these negative activities will no longer be tolerated
will cause them to ‘go underground’ and be practiced covertly
along with any number of new and creative power plays. An ap-
propriate monitoring approach can go a long way to ensure that
instructions regarding intolerance of negative organisational
pursuits are observed, and to weed out those who simply refuse
to comply with the directives.
• Any prudent organisational leader attempting to introduce any

new approach to any aspect of operations would follow a re-
gime of monitoring effectiveness and adjusting aspects of the
approach to gain the very best results. Even an individual on a
personal spiritual journey will from time to time seek disccusion
with and advice from a spiritual director to help remain on the
170
‘straight and narrow’ (and that is certainly not to suggest that I

think any individual spiritual journey or organisational higher
purpose journey will necessary follow a path that is any in any
way straight and narrow-indeed the exact opposite is more likely
to be the case).
• Pursued correctly, the monitoring and nurturing process pro-

vides a very effective means of keeping people engaged at all lev-
els of the organisation.
In respect of the first point above, I believe it would be unrealistic

to assume that every employee at every level of an organisation will
engage in and promote the higher purpose initiative. Those who
might not engage but choose to take no active (or passive aggres-
sive, for that matter) counter stance to the initiative will usually
not be of risk to the programme. In fact, many of these are likely to
‘convert’ to engagement when they begin to see the positive effects
involvement can deliver.
It is the people who might actively resist the initiative to whom
most attention must be directed. Outright rejection is something
that can usually be addressed with relative ease, and continuing the
communication process detailed earlier herein should prove effec-
tive in dealing with this challenge to a worthwhile degree. How-
ever, it would be wise to expect to have to engage in one on one
discussion with some members of the organisation and to address
their concerns in a caring manner. Of course, to be able to do this,
one first needs to know that they have concerns, and it is the moni-
toring process that can provide this awareness.
The real problem will come from passive resisters-those who
sneer at the higher purpose initiative, denounce it as yet another in
a myriad of ‘change for the sake of change’ exercises, and attempt
to win support for their resistance in a clandestine manner. Un-
fortunately there are always likely to be those who respond to such
resisters-the very young and impressionable, the rebellious and the
171
Alan Patching
aggrieved being likely, but definitely not automatic-candidates. A

nurturing and monitoring program can be very effective in both
identifying the perpetrators of clandestine negativity, and their
likely targets, which affords leadership the opportunity to address
the concerns and doubts of these people directly. That is not to
say that there will be cases where there simply is little likelihood of
there ever being a positive ‘fit’ between certain people and the new
direction of the company and in such cases, a parting of the ways
might very well be the best approach for the benefit of all.
I do not intend to prescribe any particular monitoring and nur-
turing approach, because those who get to the point in the journey
where it is time to use such a process will have demonstrated a
resolve that will see little challenge in quickly identifying a moni-
toring regime which is ideal for their situation. Having said that,
there are some principles to monitoring that I believe offer the
prospect of optimising any system adopted, and these principles
are:
• The most senior executives of the organisation must be involved

and be seen to be involved-engaged and involved. It is doubtful
an organisation will get to the point where monitoring and nur-
turing is required unless the senior executives (or at least one at
the highest level) have been involved in initiating and pursuing
commencement of the higher purpose journey. It is essential
that such people remain involved and be seen to remain to be
involved when the monitoring and nurturing effort is begun.
If there is going to be resistance, if there is going to be a con-
tinuation of negative corporate activity-overt or clandestine, it
is most likely to be when the passion and enthusiasm for the
initiative is seen to be directed to a new pursuit.
• Monitoring is not a military style operation. Its purpose is to

weed out the negative activity, and to provide maximum sup-
port for those honestly giving the initiative their best efforts.
172
• Monitoring will work better with the involvement of all levels

of the organisation. I suggest establishment of a small group to
be charged with the responsibility for the monitoring operation.
The guidelines for establishment and operation of the group are
simple:
4It should comprise representatives from all levels of the organi-

sation
4To the maximum extent possible, the representatives of the non-
management levels (at least) should be elected by their peers and
not appointed by management
4It should meet regularly and be responsible for determining the
means of conducting the monitoring and nurturing operation,
such means would normally be approved by the highest level of
management (after any usual discussion of the approach recom-
mended)
4There should be regular rotation of membership of the moni-
toring group
4There should also be continuity of at least half of the member-
ship at every rotation for obvious efficiency reasons
4The monitoring group should be given a reasonable scope for
nurturing action, both in respect of the development of the new
approach to conducting the business of the organisation, and in
respect of the concerns of specific individuals. Only when indi-
viduals see this group as being effective in dealing with concerns
they might normally be reticent to make known will all members
of the organisation engage fully and for the long term
4The monitoring group must have direct access and be seen to
have direct access to the highest executive level of the organisa-
tion
4That top level of the organisation must respond and be sent to
respond to the reports and recommendations of the monitoring
group
4Finally all members of the organisation should be kept informed
173
Alan Patching
of the progress and activities of the higher purpose initiative,

and these activities should be a topic for description in the
organisation’s formal annual report
I will offer no more in relation to the monitoring and nurturing

activities other than to emphasise that the name of this step is the
proper description of this step. It is a monitoring and nurtur-
ing step. In other words it is a formal monitoring process for the
express purpose of nurturing the process of successful launching
and growing of the higher purpose initiative.
There is little more for me to write other than to wish you luck
in application of this all important step of the corporate higher
purpose journey. And of course to emphasise the importance of
the last step of the journey, which is to celebrate success. I will not
address that further here, but rather will refer you back to Tip 8 in
chapter 3, which addresses the importance of celebrating success.
174
Chapter Twelve
Conclusion
I want to conclude what is essentially a ‘soft skills for business’ book
with the reiteration that the contents are not intended to represent
a replacement of sound economic and business management prin-
ciples. Profit will always be a legitimate goal of business.
However, in today’s world of the rich getting richer and the
poor getting poorer, of significant social, poverty, environmental
and various other issues looming, and at a time when governments
of wealthy nations have to face the fast approaching crisis of the
costs of supporting aging populations, economics simply cannot
reasonably and morally continue to be the $ole thing that matters
in business. Organisations have a moral duty to turn some atten-
tion to the $oul Thing That Matters in Business.
While profit is a legitimate goal of business people will always
constitute the Soul of business – people who work in the business
and make it what it is, people in the immediate community where-
in the business is established, and people in the global community
connected at True Self level with people in every other community
or this planet.
Contributing in a ‘making a difference’ way to the global com-
munity at some level requires a journey which embraces and does
not ignore business economics, but which does move towards
identification and pursuit of a higher purpose (than profit for
profit’s sake) journey. That journey will not be easy. It will require
leadership, inspiration, and management. It will only commence
with a single step–the recognition of the need for the journey for a
purpose greater than the traditional primary goal of the organisa-
tion.
The person/people who ‘get’ that insight will truly be spiritual
leaders, and without them the first step is unlikely to even be taken,
175
Alan Patching
and the further steps are very likely to falter.

Allow me to practice what I preach. All author’s royalties from
this work will be donated to charity. Perhaps part of your higher
purpose journey will be to help me to help others by encourag-
ing your friends and business colleagues to acquire copies for their
organisations.
And if any reader would like to make part of their higher pur-
pose journey the sponsorship of publication of further copies of
the book, I’m sure the benefiting charities won’t object. The more
people we can get the message to, the greater the possibility we
have of really making a difference where a difference really needs
to be made.
I wish you luck on your journey and look forward to sharing it, if
only in spirit, with you.
176
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The $ole Soul Thing That Matters in Business

I dedicate this book to my family, Annie, Mark, Anthony, Courtney

Published by Revray Pty Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmit-

Copyright Alan Patching.

Cover design and book design by Saul Jarvie of Quo Consulting

Printed by Watson Ferguson Company

This book is the product of one of those experiences.

Background - Purpose of Book

Right up front I want to emphasise I am all for the traditional and

But it does seem to me that somewhere between one extreme–the

management principles, is precisely NOT what I’m proposing. I’m

resource wastage on unnecessary meetings and reports. This is

Getting things in perspective

corrected by the presentation of facts and evidence which differ

can be very difficult (if it is to be done correctly) and most of us

Moving beyond corporate vision

debate over such pedestrian things as the difference between vision

ment effort which would clearly be required to address emerging

ing a modern industry.

The corporate higher purpose journey

nomics focused and, therefore, as not-so-powerful ‘extrinsic’ mo-

This book discusses how you might go about that task.

It will be very difficult indeed to achieve a lot along the path of

So let’s briefly examine the characteristics of spiritual leaders.

The concept of ‘spiritual leadership’ is poised to become as widely

dent in world poverty. Indeed, a Harvard Business Review article

What they do about it is create an environment within which work,

Characteristics of the spiritual journey

The spiritual leader is a person who understands the characteristics

• An individual is likely to embark on his or her personal journey

• There is one major difference between a person changing habits

something (fear) but rather towards a compelling objective.

• The personal spiritual journey inevitably involves a transforma-

focus on economic matters (anymore than an individual can lose

• The individual spiritual journey inevitably involves integrat-

Similarly, the higher purpose journey for any organisation must

• The personal spiritual journey involves, inter alia, a certain

• The personal spiritual journey is not about religion, although

gious dogma. In its loosest definition, it is about becoming the

This listing of points doesn’t pretend to represent an extensive

Characteristics of spiritual leaders

Earlier in this chapter, I presented some examples which demon-

• They realise their primary role is to help make and manage

• They are aware of the shortcomings in their people and manage

• They are grounded ‘real’ people: There is no single description

of all aspects of spiritual leaders. Spiritual leaders take form

• They always embrace diversity.

• They are committed to the principle that it is difficult tending

• They are not at all into ‘blame and justification’ behaviour, or

• They see purpose in what they do, and it shows.

• They realise that people are motivated by moving towards

• They appreciate positive competition and understand the

• They understand that corporate values are what an organisation

• They are emotionally intelligent-aware of their own feelings and

• They understand that conflict can be productive and remain

• They understand that, just as different people have different

levels of experience, qualifications and intellectual develop-

• In the personal context their leadership style is one of point-

• They demonstrate indifference both to matters which have no

• They understand that there are no degrees of honesty and integ-

• They understand group dynamics and seek to ensure the opin-

the valued opinion of a single member or minority of the group.