by John Renesch
Chapter Six: ONE HELLUVA RIDE
June 6, Palo Alto, Stanford University, Memorial Hall, 7:09 PM PST
The auditorium was filling rapidly. Steven looked around at the incoming crowd as he and Mark talked in the lobby. Every time they started to head for their seats, one of them saw someone he knew and a short conversation ensued. An awkwardness filled the air, probably due to the unusual mixture of themes for the evening.
He had originally heard of this event from Mark who'd asked him to be his guest. Mark had received an announcement about it from Michael Ray, the Stanford professor they'd talked about some weeks back. Dr. Ray and two other presenters were scheduled to speak about the benefits of meditation for businesspeople, particularly managers. This event on the Stanford campus had more appeal to Steven because one of the other two presenters was Scott Herman, the CEO of Silicon Valley’s hottest company, ConText. Steven was a longtime admirer of this man, who'd been asked to serve as a White House advisor among other honors. His participation tonight added credibility to the influence of Eastern mysticism in Western organizations.
Steven knew this CEO and had felt comfortable enough to attend, but he'd been unprepared for the size of the crowd. The auditorium would be filled to capacity. Boy, he thought, maybe mixing spiritual practices and business wasn't as radical as I'd imagined.
Steven felt an uneasiness with which he had become very familiar recently. He was used to being on top of the curve when it came to trends in business. Historically, it had paid off for him to be slightly ahead of the curve. But in the matter of spirituality or consciousness, or whatever you called this esoteric stuff, he felt way behind the curve. This crowd was proof.
The third speaker was a woman who he hadn't heard of. She was Susie Foggerty, a famous financial planner who specialized in helping older and retired people manage their assets. It turned out she was also a bestselling author and had her own TV show….so she was a kind of rock star for the general public. But Steven hadn’t heard of her…probably because she dealt with the moms and pops while his world focused on institutions.
By the time they'd sat down, he and Mark had estimated they knew at least fifty other people there. As Ray walked up on the stage, Steven looked around. The auditorium was packed, with some people standing in the exits. Amazing, he thought.
Jean couldn’t believe her eyes. Here she was sitting among all these people…and whose face did she just see up front but Steven George’s—the big boss. Maybe she was mistaken, she thought. Maybe it was someone who just looked like him. But he was talking with another man, a man she'd also seen before. She couldn’t remember his name, but she was sure he was one of the board members. It had to be Mr. George.
She nudged her friend and said, “You won’t believe this, but my boss is here!” Her friend asked her if she meant her supervisor and Jean said, “No! It’s the man who owns the company—the whole damn company! I can’t believe he’s here, but there he is, along with one of the board members.”
She was eager for them to start the program and to watch the video of her friend’s teacher, Gurumayi. As her friend watched Ray on stage she whispered to Jean. “He’s also a member of the ashram and a devotee of Gurumayi,” she said with a bit of a wink pointing to the stage. “Really!” Jean exclaimed, feeling less trepidation about being seen here and more legitimacy.
Ray finished sorting a few pieces of paper, nervously adjusted the microphone, and said, “Good evening, everyone, and thanks for the great turnout.”
June 6, Hillsborough, George's home, 10:48 PM PST
When he got home, Catherine gave him a big hug and a long kiss. “How did it go?” she asked.
“Very interesting. Yes, very interesting,” Steven said. “It appears as though all the presenters were members of the same spiritual group. Followers, devotees—I'm not sure what to call them—of the Indian woman guru Gurumayi. There were also quite a few others from the ashram, if that's what its called. You know, the one over there in Oakland.”
“Oh, I know the ashram, honey. It’s the Siddha Yoga Meditation ashram, and I've been there with Sandya, remember?” she said.
“That's right. I forgot how far ahead of me you are on so much of this stuff, sweetheart. Anyway, I was blown away at the interest in this stuff. The place was packed! SRO! And the invitations went out just a few days before,” he said. “Catherine, I must have known four dozen people there. Mark knew another couple of dozen. I would never have dreamed that some of them would ever be interested in meditation. And it turns out many of them are regular meditators! Goes to show, we're never too old to be surprised.”
“So much for Mr. Know-It-All, eh?” she teased. “By the way, another load of books arrived today, sweetheart. Your New Age library is growing dramatically.”
“Thanks, honey. I still feel much more comfortable having them come here rather than to the office. I'm already getting a little bit of razzing from some of the guys. It's interesting though. I notice the women haven't made any jokes about it, just the men.”
Steven felt like a little kid opening his gifts at Christmas as he unpacked the books he'd ordered. Life was definitely simpler and easier to understand when business books focused on improving performance, avoiding pitfalls, and adhering to regulations. If one wanted to venture into philosophy or esoteric topics, those books would be found in an entirely different section of the bookstore or library. Now, with this new movement he'd discovered, the borders had become blurred, and the business reader had more choices.
Steven opened the first carton and removed three books. These were the ones Mark had mentioned last week. They'd arrived quite quickly. Ordering over the Internet could be very efficient if you knew exactly what you wanted. He thought one would be very interesting, a book written by a former Catholic priest called The Reinvention of Work. He took a quick glance at the jacket and realized that the author, Matthew Fox, was right here in the Bay Area! If he liked the book, maybe they could get together, he thought.
Seven new arrivals! He was impressed by his own appetite for this material and his patience for reading so much. He'd always considered reading books somewhat of a waste of time. The real action was out there…. doing deals, not sitting around reading about it, he could still hear himself saying.
Of course, Steven knew he didn't really read all these books. Some received a scan, some a slower scan, and some a quick read. He managed to get the gist of each one, though. As in many disciplines, there were some books written by people more interested in having their name on a book's cover than in making any sense. Some of them had been obviously written by someone who'd never had to make payroll, or fill a quota, or open a new territory. But all these books, taken together—the naïve, the pragmatic, the idealistic, and the esoteric—combined to form a body of thought, philosophy, whatever—that seemed intuitively essential to the state of the world right now.
He stepped back away from the table stacked with these new books and took a deep breath. Who would have ever imagined this old bird getting into this stuff? he asked himself.
June 10, Palo Alto, MacArthur Park Restaurant, 12:34 PM PST
The following Tuesday, Steven and Mark were having lunch at MacArthur Park, a restaurant near the Palo Alto train depot.
“You know, Peter Drucker and Deming were into this stuff a long time ago, but they weren't completely understood at the time,” Mark was saying. “Students of business, like me, just heard what we wanted to hear—how to take in their words, apply them to our best advantage in the business world, and make money with them. As is so often the case in the Western world, we focused on the form and the content of what they were saying. We ignored or didn't bother with the deeper contextual issues they were addressing. The West likes its information fast and adapts quickly to how it looks or seems to be—the cosmetic or superficial. We've never been as patient as older societies, so we often miss the point since we are so eager to get our idea or product to market. We have tended to run wit
h ideas before we really understand them fully.”
“Sounds like what teenagers do,” said Steven as he finished his pasta.
“Exactly!” Mark said. “We in the West are very much like adolescents—full of impatience, arrogance, and all the other traits associated with teenagers today. That's a great analogy!
“People here in the U.S. heard about Deming and the Japanese quality circles at a time when American manufacturing was admittedly taking a beating from across the Pacific. Detroit was finally humbled by its declining quality, so there was new receptivity….but instead of taking the time to understand Deming's basic principles and creating cultures of quality in our companies, we just adopted the form—what became known as Total Quality Management or TQM—and ran with it. So many American companies now go from one flavor-of-the-month technique to another. Nothing ever truly transforms the company culture. They just keep changing the cosmetics and get temporary improvements that sometimes make matters worse in the long run because workers get so tired after trying every flavor time after time!”
“Like constant downsizing,” Steven said, “or should I say ‘layoffs.’ That's what we used to call them. What happens when there's only the CEO left with an army of consultants and outsourced vendors?” he added sarcastically.
“I heard a CD of this guy campaigning for greater 'business literacy', as he put it,” Mark said.
“What did he mean by that?” Steven asked.
“He talked about all the new knowledge in other fields that business leaders need to be on top of in these days of rapid and continuous change. This is what he meant by being more literate, not just being able to read, but keeping up on discoveries about how the world really works and utilizing this knowledge in business,” Mark said.
“Like what?”
“Like chaos theory and complexity studies, which have direct application for complex economic systems and huge multinational corporations,” Mark answered. “He mentioned philosophy and mysticism too.”
“I used to think I was on top of everything, and I feel like a first-grader right now,” Steven said. “I used to think I was hot shit as a business leader, making pretty good money—”
Mark interrupted, “Pretty good money, hell! About ten mil a year, eh, Mr. George? “
Steven looked at Mark and smiled knowingly, but refused to take the bait. In fact, Mark was guessing considerably below his average these past few years.
“As I was saying,” Steven continued, “I really thought I knew about the world. I knew how to make money. I knew how to motivate people. I knew enough about a lot of things to converse intelligently in all the situations I found myself. I had a wonderful family, good friends. What else could a man want, huh? Then, bam! I discover a whole new world out there.”
He went on, “I'm waking up to how narrowly I've been thinking and how much impact I've had on the world…how much negative impact I have had on people because of my blindness. I feel like I need to relearn everything I learned in business school, plus a whole lot more. And that's just the knowledge part!
“Then there's the feelings, the emotional honesty I've avoided all my life. Feeling is a new experience for me, and I have a lot to learn about myself and what I've buried inside.
“It was so silly to think that I was at a plateau of some kind—where I was 'done.' Human beings are never done. It’s like Maslow said—you know, that guy who created the Hierarchy of Needs. He said it is man's basic nature to be discontent. As soon as we are comfortable at one level of need, we'll aspire to the next one. Self-actualization was about as far as he went, and that's plenty good for me. But…it's a lot of work!”
“Steven, it's much harder when you want to learn it all and change as soon as humanly possible. Like you seem to be doing,” Mark said in a concerned tone.
Steven took in Mark's comment, pondered it a moment, and leaned forward. “Mark,” he said deliberately, “I am so eager to learn about this stuff…I find it so exciting…I feel like I'm way behind and I want to catch up. “
“But don't you think you're going at this stuff pretty aggressively? Are you allowing yourself to take in all the subtleties of what you're learning?” Mark asked. “Or are you doing what I was just talking about—taking in all this superficially but not to a contextual level? After all, you are a Westerner. “
Steven felt some anger rise in his gut, anger at being criticized. But he also felt shame at the possibility Mark might be right. And he felt a knot in his stomach he'd only recently discovered was his meter for knowing when some truth was being told. Whenever this knot came up, along with a copper-like taste that accompanied it, he could tell that something was true and necessary, but would challenge his personal status quo, his paradigm, his beliefs.
“My first reaction is to argue that you are full of shit, Mark,” he said. “But behind that knee-jerk response is a sense you may be right. And that's so hard to admit right now. I'm not a far along as you are and that pisses me off!”
“You read O'Neil's book about the shadow side of excellence, didn't you?” Mark asked. “Isn't that one of the books I recommended?”
“Yes. I thought I told you how enlightening it was. I'm sorry if I didn't.”
“I'm bringing it up right now because of the great case he makes for how unacknowledged parts of ourselves can be major detriments to our lives and the people we care for. I think it was a brilliant book, and I wish more business leaders would read it.”
“Unfortunately, Mark, another trait of our Western industrialized society, especially us business types, is we read whatever's new and tend to ignore books after they've been out a while. O'Neil's book is several years old now, but it was a real eye-opener for me. I certainly wish more people would read it too. And, by the way, I have a recommendation to make to you, Mark.”
“Oh yeah. What’s that?” Mark asked as he reached for his notebook and pen.
“It's called Inevitable Grace and was written by an Italian—Ferrucci or something like that,” Steven said. “Anyway, it’s a real sleeper. It was actually translated from Italian, but was a great find for me. I think Tarcher published it, in case you want to get it.”
The waiter brought the bill, and Mark reached for it. “My turn,” he said authoritatively. Steven offered no resistance.
“You know, Mark, I'm starting to fall in love with books again. When I was kid, I enjoyed spending hours reading and letting myself be taken on imaginary journeys. Then I went to school and I began to hate the damn things. All they seemed to mean to me was homework and memorization. And then in business, it seemed there was never time for reading. All the fun went away for me, except for some occasional escape into a Stephen King novel or something like that. “
Mark's BMW was the first car to be driven up by the valet. They gave each other a short hug and said goodbye
June 12: New York City, Upper Manhattan, 5:15 PM (EST)
Ty paid the waiter and turned toward his colleague. They'd just finished their workout and we sitting in a posh drinkery a half block from the gym.
“Here’s to a great day!” he said as he picked up his glass.
“This must mean you made some decent profits today, eh, Ty?” his friend said. “The aerospace business isn’t as exciting as trading, but it sure is easier on the nerves. I don’t know how you do it, with all those price swings. It seems you’re either close to bankruptcy or totally in the chips, one extreme or the other.”
“That’s what makes it so exciting, my friend. That’s exactly why I love it,” Ty said. “The rush, the excitement, the glamour, knowing you could crash any time—like walking a tightrope or driving a very fast car. I love it!”
“Too exciting for my blood,” his companion said calmly. “Hell, I’m a engineer, for God’s sake, and I’m conservative by nature, which is probably why I get so many requests to serve on boards. I look good to investors—make them feel comfortable. So when a company sees I’m one of the directors, they feel a little safer. T
hat, plus my white hair,” he said, and took a sip from his whiskey sour.
“Speaking of boards, how many of them do you belong to?” asked Ty. Two more drinks and I’ll get what I’m after, he told himself. He smiled, admiring his own shrewdness, and focused his eyes on his companion, appearing to listen to every word.
June 17, San Francisco, Ventures International Headquarters, 2:43 PM PST
Back at his office, Steven met with Ruth for nearly an hour, going over the day's action items as well as several he'd been postponing. When they were finished with the agenda, Ruth asked if she could speak to him for a minute “as a friend.” Steven's interest was aroused. She sat down alongside of him and paused awkwardly.
“Oh well, I might as well just say it. Steven, some of us are getting concerned about you lately. You are here less and less, and I certainly miss having you around, and others here tell me they're concerned as well. As you know, several projects have been sitting waiting for your approval and, quite frankly, you've become a bottleneck around here.”
Not used to being so direct in her communications, Ruth sat back in her chair, showing some uneasiness at her candor.
A “bottleneck,” Steven thought, a wave of different emotions washing over him. Part of him wanted to be insulted. Part wanted to hug Ruth for her courage. Another part knew she was right.
“You’re right, Ruth, and thanks for verbalizing your concerns. Thank anyone else who has talked with you about this, and apologize for me to anybody you think needs it. That being said, however, I really need this time I'm taking away from the office. I'm sorry to be mysterious about it, but I have to do it right now. I know it won't stay this way for very long, and I'll do whatever I can to free up any logjams I'm causing.”
He took a breath. “I know it must be difficult for you and some of the others who rely on me, given that I have been a pretty “hands on” kind of CEO. I am more aware of it now that you've said this to me, Ruth. I know what it takes for you to address difficult issues, so I can imagine how much my absence has upset you. I really appreciate you telling me this. I really do.”
He paused, making sure she got his appreciation. “Let's get everyone together and find a way to solve this problem. You know my calendar. Let everyone who'll be part of this meeting know I don't want any politics. No kissing my ass. No pulling punches. Let them all know that it will be safe to come clean, okay?”
Ruth nodded, with some reservation. Steven looked her directly in the eyes. “I mean it, really I do, Ruth,” he said. “There won't be any backlash from me if everyone is honest. I promise.”
Friday morning, the entire headquarters team assembled in the conference room. It was obvious many key members of the management group thought Steven was distracted by something. Steven empathized with their concerns, listened to their points of view, and ultimately suggested he delegate some of his responsibilities. All in all, more than a dozen people's responsibilities changed, each taking some of the burden from him. Privately, they would negotiate salary adjustments with each person affected. By the end of the meeting, everyone was content about what had been achieved, including Steven.
Whispered expressions of amazement were abuzz in the hallways and restrooms after the meeting. “I thought he'd offer some resistance to giving up some control,” said one of the senior VPs to a colleague. “I have to admit I was completely flabbergasted! I'd have bet thousands we were wasting our time.”
Jean was impressed with Steven’s decision, but held him in a different light since she'd seen him that evening at Stanford. She also felt it would be inappropriate to do any gossiping about him. Why she and he had attended that event was their own personal business, not food for the gossip mill.
She wondered if perhaps she could speak with Steven privately. She would ask Ruth, she decided.
While Steven pursued his intense interest in self-discovery, he took some parental pride in watching his headquarters staff rise to the occasion, taking on additional duties and greater accountability. He wondered why he'd waited so long to let go of so many things. And then he realized why: it was that control thing he'd seen during his journey with Chelsea. He'd been a bit of a control freak all these years! The neat thing about all this, he said to himself, was that I didn't feel any embarrassment about having been that way before. That was then and this is now.
August 24, Executive Lounge, United Terminal, San Francisco International Airport, 7:56 AM PST
“Sorry I'm late, Mark. Have you been waiting long?”
“Only a few minutes, buddy. No need for fretting. Besides, I'm anxious to talk about your new discovery. Can't wait to hear about it!” Mark said.
Steven took off his jacket and laid it over the attaché case on the seat next to him.
“I'm not sure where to start, Mark. It's been one helluva week, let me tell you! I've been totally immersed in this stuff almost full time for the past four days…”
“At your billing rates, that's about a two million dollar investment,” his friend said with a smirk. Steven didn't acknowledge the wisecrack.
“Thursday I met with a very successful stockbroker who made me promise I wouldn't disclose either his name or his firm for reasons that will become obvious. He convinced me he is making millions of dollars for his clients with the aid of a clairvoyant he retains as his private consultant. He's with one of the big brokerage houses, in the Boston area, and she lives in Los Angeles. They talk several times a week, and she's now become a millionaire herself as a result of learning the market. Before hooking up with him, she only knew she could see things that were going to happen, like a psychic. I'm convinced this guy is legit. He's the real McCoy, Mark,” Steven said.
Mark sat there taking in his friend's enthusiasm with just a hint of skepticism.
“After coffee with him, I had lunch with Chelsea at the City Club downtown. She'd arranged for me to meet four contacts of Timothy's—two business consultants, a medical intuitive, and an MD. Each one of them had taken his program—what do they call it? The Course? Each one spoke very highly of it, and collectively they all pushed me pretty hard to take it.”
“Did you cave in and agree?” Mark asked.
“No. But I might consider it at some time…maybe. Anyway, these people were mainstream folks—well, everyone except the medical intuitive gal, and she was married to the MD. He agreed her work was far from being AMA-endorsed just yet, but he certainly validated her diagnosing abilities. He told me she'd spotted several tumors, infections, and other maladies as a result of merely talking to people on the telephone! Can you believe that? And when her clients went back to their doctors and asked them to look where the woman had seen their problem—sure enough! The scientific evidence verified her prognosis! And she never laid a hand on them! Her husband told me she had a seventy-seven percent accuracy rate in her diagnoses—which many Western practitioners can't match.”
Steven was clearly excited to be sharing so much. “This Course seems to have dramatically changed their lives. I asked a lot of questions, and I'm convinced each of them benefited enormously. The only reservation I had was they were so zealous about it, like back in those days when people I knew had taken the EST training and they became so preachy, so pushy about getting all their friends to do it.”
Mark nodded, silently agreeing. “So what did they tell you?”
“They all agreed they came away with a much stronger and direct knowledge of a Divinity, a God—or a Goddess, as some of them said. Each one of them had some negative memories about religion, just like me…mostly memories from childhood. They overcame those memories, those pre-judgments, and were able to access that sacred space where they felt like they were somehow in direct contact with this higher power, this ultimate energy.
“So, all four of these people found a whole new way to be with God,” Steven continued, “a way that was less regimented, less dogmatic, more empowering, and absolutely more loving without the fear and guilt and other baggage that usually ac
companies many religious traditions. The lunch was very uplifting and, I have to say, I nearly signed up there and then.”
“You sound really stoked, Steven,” Mark told his friend. “So, what else happened?”
“I met with a friend of a friend who used to work for the federal government in the DEA. This is the guy I told you about who I felt I could confide in about MDMA.”
Mark nodded.
“I need to keep his name confidential too. I know this is beginning to sound like Deep Throat or cloak and dagger, but it's all very real. Anyway, this guy tells me he tended to pretty much ignore the illicit use of what he called 'controlled substances' for personal growth use. He always knew a certain amount of activity was taking place with some of these materials, but felt it wasn't worth bothering about for a number of reasons…. No one was being hurt, there were no victims like you see with kids, addicts, and hookers strung out on street drugs, and complaints were almost nonexistent.”
“What about now, Steven? What about agents' attitudes now that he's no longer in that job?” asked Mark. “What about other agents and their attitudes now?”
“He only told me what he thought about it, Mark. He also warned that any agent, at any time, could take a run at this—after all, it is illegal—and make a mark for himself or herself. All he could say for sure was he never knew anyone who did so during his twenty years with enforcement.”
“But,” asked Mark, “did he mention how others felt about the use of illegal stuff for spiritual enlightenment or therapeutic healings?”
“He did mention a conversation he had early in his career with a Native American, a fellow enforcement officer he worked with for a couple of years. This man told him about the ways of his people—I forget which tribe—and how they routinely used peyote in their rituals. He himself had smoked grass a few times, so he wasn't a total redneck or anything. He was a dedicated agent who wanted to clean up our streets of predators who caused harm to others. He really wasn't a heavy-duty moralist out to enforce every letter of the law. But he knew some agents who were—some who had extreme fundamentalist views about the law, drugs and morality…. who had rather rigid beliefs and who could be ruthless.”
“So, he wasn't particularly encouraging about the laws changing soon or exempting certain uses?”
“No…afraid not, Mark,” Steven said. “There are some substances that possess huge potential for advancing human consciousness lumped in with the nasty addictive stuff like cocaine, crack, heroin, and all those other street drugs.”
“Well, sounds like Thursday was quite a full day for you,” Mark said.
Steven came back quickly. “Mark, the day is still young—all this happened before five. Then I had a dinner at Tadich's with a consultant based in Marin County. He has an impressive client list that includes Polaroid, MasterCard, Silicon Graphics, Bain and Company and a bunch of others. Anyway, he's no slouch and knows his business—been at it for over twenty years. This guy developed a testing process that identifies personality traits for managers and company leaders. They've discovered the qualities or characteristics that show up most frequently with good and excellent managers and leaders, and the footprints of the ideal or most desired traits, are consistent with what you and I would call a spiritual perspective! Isn't that incredible?”
Steven paused but it was clear to Mark his mind was really cooking. Then Steven asked, “He's invited me over to see their operation whenever I want to do it. Want to come with me?”
“I'd love to. Just let me know when and I'll go over with you, or meet you there.”
Steven went on. “After meeting with him, I'm really jazzed, right? Catherine picks me up out front of the restaurant and takes me over to a salon hosted by a friend of hers in Pacific Heights. Anyway, this European physicist fellow is the guest of honor. His name is…I can't remember how to say it, but he was very interesting. Then they showed a movie based on a book he wrote called Mindwalk. Several big name actors portrayed characters wrestling with the conflicts and challenges of modern day living using quantum physics as a portal for seeing things differently.”
“And all this is still Thursday!”
“Yes. Still Thursday. The evening was delightful. Then on Friday I'd been scheduled to talk with several people in the morning. The first meeting was with a good friend of Paul Hawken, the guy who started the Smith and Hawken garden tool company. A few years ago, he wrote this book called The Ecology of Commerce. I was only slightly aware of it until I talked to Ray Anderson, a colleague from Georgia who started a carpet manufacturing company and took it public. I think it was or still is the largest modular carpet maker in the world. He's got plants in dozens of countries. Enough of that. Anyway, Ray gets this book of Hawken's and has this 'epiphany,' as he calls it. He decides to make his company, one that's very petrochemical-dependent, into a sustainable business in just a couple of years.
“Ray went on to write a book and confessed in print that after reading the Hawken book and doing his own research, he had to admit he was a ‘plunderer of the earth” and a thief—yeah, he called himself a thief! Albeit a legal thief.” He then named the ‘perverse tax laws’ as his accomplices and, in print, committed himself to turning the situation around in his company.
“When I hear about Ray's commitment, and wonder how he can do this, I got an earful of what many companies in Europe have done—you know, the Europeans are ahead of us on many fronts, particularly on the environmental stuff, and we Americans aren't used to having anybody ahead of us…anyway, this fellow is going to arrange for me to meet with Hawken and possibly get an audit of Ventures—like a 'green' audit.”
“Oh, really! You think the board will agree with you?” Mark asked.
“I think so,” Steven said. “How about you? You're one of them.”
“Sure I would, but…Well, maybe, you know…they might at that, Steven. We've got some pretty good people on the board, and only a couple are really purely financial minded these days. I was thinking about how we used to be, a couple of years ago, but the thinking is changing. The difficulty we had with that acquisition at the last board meeting is an example of how we've changed,” Mark said.
“Well, Mark, your joining us a couple of years ago was a big change. Don't underestimate the impact you've had.”
Mark smiled. “Thanks. I'd like to think I'm making a positive contribution.”
“No doubt. No doubt. So the next person I met with was a friend of one of our senior vice presidents—Rich Hightower. Rich was in on the staff meeting where I let go of a lot of my responsibilities. He learned of my quest there at the meeting and later let me know he was a good friend of Angeles Arrien, a popular author of New Age books who is also committed to promoting the benefits of diversity. She and I met for nearly an hour. She's started a foundation aimed at fostering cross-cultural understanding and is a genuine, warm-hearted person.
“During our time together, I realized how blind I've been to all the discriminations so many people need to endure. After all, I'm white, male, middle-aged, Anglo, raised Christian—get the picture? What do I know about being different from the rest of the crowd?” Steven said.
“You and me both, buddy. It's like a man trying to guess what it's like to be pregnant.”
“Anyway, Angie really opened my eyes, but she did it without shocking me into awareness, like some activists do—you know what I mean? She was convincing without pushing her point of view at me. Subtle…but very effective. I liked her a lot.
“Then I had a telephone meeting with a man I'd heard quite a bit about from several people. His name is Charles Handy and—”
“Oh,” Mark said. “I know him. I've read his book on the 'Era of Unreason' or something like that…back in the late eighties?”
“It was The Age of Unreason and, yes, it was about that time,” Steven said. “Anyway, he and his wife live alternatively in London and Italy, and Ruth set it up to talk with him by telephone while he was in Southern California.
“We had a great talk. I'd received a lot of information about him beforehand, and read two of his books before we talked. He is such a pillar of wisdom—a real elder in this business philosophy arena. I invited him and his wife to visit Catherine and me soon, and I really hope they'll take me up on it. “
“How is it meeting all these new people, Steven?” Mark asked.
“I'm having a ball, Mark!” Steven said through a wide grin. “Okay, so my last meeting on Friday was with a man who calls himself a shaman.”
Mark nodded.
“So this older guy—must have been seventy-five to eighty—comes in wearing what looked to me like a costume from a play, like The King and I or something. I have to admit, it was a little embarrassing having him come into the office,” Steven said.
“Anyway I arranged this appointment myself, because I was nervous about Ruth knowing of my interest in this subject. His name is Pasha and he's quite the renowned expert in chemical substances and altered states. He used to produce MDMA before the FDA made it illegal, and has hundreds of case histories of people using it for therapeutic purposes or spiritual exploration. He knows about all the studies and books published on this. I was nervous having him come to my office, but that day was the only time I could see him.
“We only had about thirty five minutes when all was said and done, but I got a ton of information. Not only was he a fount of wisdom and experience, but he left me several tapes and a number of books about MDMA, including several reports he'd written personally. While it's most definitely an underground activity, he certainly has a worldwide reputation as one of the primary authorities. He's even got a Web site about his research!” Steven said.
“Wow. But you said you had an intense four days, so I presume the weekend was also noteworthy,” Mark said.
“Catherine had arranged for a family brunch on Sunday and invited Chelsea to come down to the house Saturday morning,” Steven said. “So guess who drives Chelsea down from the city?”
Mark shook his head. “Who?”
“Timothy Warden! Timothy is sitting there in our kitchen having tea with my wife and daughter when I walk in. I was very surprised and a little awkward, I'm afraid. But it was a very rich experience for both Catherine and me. You know Catherine had some concerns about—well, you know, the cult-like feeling.”
Mark nodded, recalling their earlier conversations.
“Well, after an hour together Catherine felt much better about it all. Then she and Chelsea went off somewhere, and Timothy and I spent another hour or so talking. I learned so much from him—not as a teacher or guru. He was simply a wealth of information about New Age authors who write about business and credible business authors who write about spirituality. He admits that many of them are more explicit than others, but he really knew a lot about this subject, and I found him to be a huge resource for what I'm looking for.
“I'm also not a fool. I know he would probably always be seeking financial support for his organization and spending time with me just might result in a contribution to his foundation,” Steven said. “But, I found the time with him saved me many hours on my own.”
“So?” Mark leaned forward, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Steven looked mildly abashed. “Yes, yes, yes. I gave him a check. But it was well worth it, Mark, really.”
“I'm not criticizing you, Steven. Just curious, that's all.” But Mark's face still retained the trace of a smirk.
“Timothy knew many mainstream business authors and well-credentialed consultants. I was impressed he was as knowledgeable about the business world as he was. He told me he thought the business community was where all the leverage for major change was, and if business could change one little bit, it would make a huge difference in how the world evolved. He knows the M.I.T. guy who wrote that big seller about learning organizations.”
“Our conversation reminded me of just how much impact business has on society. I’ve been keenly aware of the positive impact business has for all of my career but I’ve just started to see the enormous power and influence we have, positive and negative. I guess I usually think of politicians as the ones with the power and influence but I can now see it has been us, the business people, who have created new values, new standards for society, as we create markets and direct our resources.
“This is another way of saying I’m getting the awesome responsibility that goes with the power, not just to ‘give back to the community’ but to be responsible for the world.”
Mark raised an eyebrow as his friend paused.
“Sound radical, Mark?”
“Well, for you…yes!” he replied with some hesitancy.
“Well, we sell our stuff all over the world and we have plants all over the world. There’s almost no place on Earth our impact isn’t felt. So why should we only ‘give back’ to the city where we are headquartered? The world is our community!”
Mark smiled as he saw his friend processing his insights on the spot. He thought, Steven is really on a roll!
“One of the most sobering realizations I’ve had in recent weeks is my business is not about real markets. Real markets produce something—a product or a service. People exchange money for something. That’s the marketplace we speak of when we think of the ‘economy.’ But Ventures deals with speculation….not even true investment. Investment is when you put money into a company so it can purchase inventory, gear up production, hire more people and then generate more profit which can provide the investors with a return after some time goes by. Over the years an investor has his or her risk rewarded with dividends. That’s investing.
“Making bets on price drops and falls, fluctuations in exchange rates, with the goal of taking profits on an almost hourly basis is closer to gambling than it is investing. My God, Mark, most of what passes for “the economy” has nothing to do with generating value other than profit…and most of that is electronically transacted!”
“Maybe you are a ‘speculation banker’ not an investment banker, Steve,” Mark says with his familiar smirk.
“It’s hard to face up to when it has been your life, the way you’ve lived and worked all your life,” said Steven, not too amused at Mark’s pun. “The New York Times Business Editor called this larger economy the 'electronic economy' a few year ago. He said it was thirty to fifty times bigger than the economy we normally think of. Fifty times! That's scary, Mark. And…it was simply profit-taking, day-trading, futures and options! Only one to three percent of all that activity has anything to do with exchanging value…the rest is all speculation!”
“Somehow, Mark, this hit me right between the eyes. I never realized the degree to which this global economic system was so much out of balance. Maybe I was too close to the forest…. Investing was once what we did with our extra money—you know, like the surplus…what was left over after the work product or service had been delivered. Business owners would take some of their reserves and put it in the stock market so it could work for them rather than sitting in a savings account. It was like the tail of the dog, but the dog was clearly where the value lay, where the action really was, where the primary focus was.
“Now the tail has started wagging the dog. The tail has become fifty times heavier than the dog, and the dog's value is dwarfed by this immense tail!”
“For God’s sake, they are even TV infomercials for seminars on how Joe Lunch Bucket can become a successful day trader. Pretty soon, no one will be working and the country will turn into one giant Las Vegas or Atlantic City!”
Mark reached over to pat him on the shoulder. “Boy, this really hit you hard, didn't it?”
“Sure did,” said Steven as he looked out the window at the 747 taxing by. “And here I am, heading off to make another big score, and close the Watkins deal.”
“Will you be okay?” Mark asked.
“Oh, sure, Mark. I've done this a few times in my career,” Steven said sarcastically. “I'll get squared away, close the deal a
nd Ventures will make a few million more dollars for the shareholders. But, in quieter moments, my friend, I'm questioning the way we are proceeding. Harman called it pretty accurately in his book. Business is the locomotive pulling the train, leading the way. So somebody in business needs to pay attention to where we are headed as a society, right? Somebody needs to look out the windshield to see where the tracks are leading us, isn't that right?”
Both men were silent. The reality of the words was sobering, especially given the investment both men had in knowing how the system worked all these years and being somewhat masterful at playing it for the best material gains.
Steven checks his watch and silently dumps his coffee cup in the trash. He closes his briefcase. It is time to run the security gauntlet and get to the gate. He shakes hands with Mark and, breaking the silence, thanks him for meeting him at the airport.
“Good luck with the Watkins deal, Steve,” he says somewhat somberly as they part, “and have a great time in the Big Apple.”
August 24: Bayshore Freeway, just North of the Millbrae exit, San Francisco Peninsula, 8:15 AM PST
She was driving as fast as traffic would allow. Jean was late for an appointment. She crept past the airport and watched a United 747 lift off bound for who knows where.
She called the office and informed her co-workers she would be late, and gave them her present location.
Why did she feel so harried these days? Her mind flashed on a graffiti message she saw one day in the City: “Hurry: the eighth deadly sin.” Why did she allow herself to get so busy she couldn’t keep her commitments? Why was she starting to feel like a prisoner of her own doing?
August 26, New York City, JFK Airport, 7:34 AM
Waiting for the next flight back to San Francisco, Steven has plenty of time. Most of his spare moments lately have been spent wondering about what he called “the delta”—the difference between what he wanted and the present reality. Before this personal epiphany it had seemed like he was completely happy.
But he wouldn’t trade his present consciousness for anything.
Still, he had to admit to a nagging uneasiness. He was completely happy on a personal level, extremely content with the way his inner life was going and all his personal relationships; but he had a growing discontent with the way he was working—the way he was running his business. His work life now seemed quite disconnected from his personal life.
He had closed the Watkins deal…the signed contracts were in his briefcase. It couldn’t have gone better. Yet he didn’t have that same fist-pumping excitement he used to have after he closed a deal. The deal would make them millions, for sure, but he found it difficult to feel very congratulatory. Besides the potential score in the profits column, as close to a ‘sure thing’ as possible, there wasn’t much else in the deal that made his heart sing. It would be another deal that moved money from the pockets of lots of other people and into the pockets of his investors. A few winners and many losers in the giant casino in the sky, he thought. At least these winners are my clients.
His talk with Mark before he left on this trip came back to him. Besides personal wealth for himself and his clients, what other value was he creating? Was the world any better because of what he did every day? While he and his family certainly appreciated the lifestyle they enjoyed, the material success, what else about this busy often hectic life turned him on? Maybe he should retire and simply enjoy his family for the rest of his life.
He'd heard of conflicted living, or what some called “double-mindedness.” And he wondered if he had slipped into this state, his heart and his mind in opposition to each other.
It had occurred to him that the nation’s founders did not envision the modern corporation—legally a “person” who never died. Corporations had fixed lives and responsibilities to the state when the U.S. Constitution was drafted. The modern multinational corporation—the person who never died—was indeed the species that dominated the world—the King Kong! After all, it had more influence than any other entity—any person, state or institution. It controlled the future of all other species—including whales, sharks, lions and tigers, bacteria or antibodies, or any other living cells, human, animal, or mineral.
Rain forest destruction, global warming, whale and dolphin slaughters, chemical topsoil contamination, species extinction, aquifer depletion, the growing disparity between the rich and the poor, obsessive consumption and many other negative influences affecting our collective future were only a few of the trends caused by large corporate interests that Steven could now see.
He recalled his corporate law professor telling him when the corporation was legally modified in the late 1800s to be an institution that never died—like a vampire. Some critics had suggested this perpetual life was at the heart of many of the world’s problems, leaving no one truly accountable for a corporation's behavior.
The combination of an entity that never died which totally dominated every other species painted a terrifying picture. Few people, Steven realized, thought of the modern business organization as being at the top of the food chain, but it certainly was true.
Steven had heard about a book that compared modern day attitudes toward capital to the divine right of kings—whereby people deferred to those with capital like they used to defer to royalty, until they awakened and realized deference to royalty was simply a tradition. Once this deference lost its legitimacy modern democracy was born.
Steven allowed the full impact of this to settle in. He felt a huge relief as he more fully realized what he had always known, but never allowed himself to focus on. And why not? Because he would have had to admit he was one of the guys working for a system that was dysfunctional and extremely selfish. It worked to make money for the few, including him, but it was killing the masses.
Stunned by the depth of this realization, Steven felt his denial ending. This must be like it is when alcoholics realize they have a problem, he thought, and stop lying to themselves by minimizing, trivializing, and denying the impact they are having on their own lives and the lives of others.
He wanted a drink right now. Part of him wanted to numb the feeling of awesome responsibility. More than that, he was feeling enormous remorse, much more intense that he could ever remember.
But another part of him wanted to start a new course. He now knew this intensity was exactly what he needed to feel if he were ever going to have that deep, personal relationship with himself. This was a “tipping point” for him—a place where he could go either way, back to the darkness and avoiding the truth and the intensity, or forward to new possibilities. His mind wanted to go back to the old ways. But his heart knew better.
Ventures International was as guilty of all this as any other corporation in the world. And now that Steven knew this, he could not forget he knew it. He could not continue his denial, his innocence, his lack of awareness any longer. His blinders had been removed, and now he had to do something about it.
It was no secret to those around him—Catherine and his family, Ruth and his closest colleagues at work—that his awakening had rubbed his nose in the dung left over by the world’s business organizations, the system he had helped perpetuate. Since his personal transformation, it was increasingly difficult for him to remain satisfied with his life and continue to work every day. He now knew his company was having a negative effect on the future of the world, global society, and the quality of all life in general.
He had a choice. He could sell his shares and leave the firm, retiring fat and happy— thus assuring his family’s financial security for as long as he could imagine. In other words, he could drop out of the system and take care of his loved ones, while abandoning the rest of the world and ignoring what would be inherited by future generations. This was not at all attractive although it was the safe thing to do.
He could also try to forget what realizations he had had, and simply ride the horse a bit longer, pretending he'd never had his epiphany. Living this way would b
e intolerable, he thought.
Or, he could try to change his company into one that served society in more constructive ways. He had no idea how he would do this, but it was the choice he was leaning toward. But how to accomplish such a Herculean feat? There was no model, no examples to follow. Memories of his earlier days as an entrepreneur danced in Steven's mind.
The Lounge hostess tapped him on the forearm, nudging him from his deep reverie. His flight home was ready to board.
