Spirit In Business

What happened with Spirit in Business

Spirit in Business was founded on the premise that creating businesses that respect life rather than destroy it requires a shift in the mind, a change in consciousness. Our mission is to explore and further the role of consciousness, ethics and values in business leadership. The response to this mission has been overwhelming.

After organizing four major global conferences (Amsterdam 1999, New York 2002, San Francisco 2003 and Zurich 2004) and a dozen smaller seminars across the world, including in Sao Paolo, Bangkok, Vienna and Bhutan, it occurred to us as the founders of Spirit in Business, that we were losing sight of why we began. So we decided to stop and assess where we were and how we wanted to move forward. Today we are writing to update you on that assessment and how we envision the future.

A short history :

True to our original vision, we were motivated by a desire to add value to this deep inquiry into the intersection of spirit and business and enrich the lives of people that joined us at SiB meetings by creating an organizational structure. We set up a not-for-profit foundation in the US (SiB Inc.) and the Netherlands (SiB Europe), with two Boards, a few dozen Stewards and Host Committees in the cities where we convened meetings, wonderful Strategic Partners, and we hired staff. We co-founded and hosted the International Spirit at Work Awards and hosted this important ceremony and honor three times. We developed business plans, organized fundraising initiatives and designed and implemented organizational structures.

We spent a great deal of time organizing conferences and meetings, and trying to figure out how we could manage these activities on an ongoing basis. We attempted to create a membership organization and offer services of value to the people in our network: In Australia and Switzerland, national SiB chapters emerged, run by local boards. We were trying to meet the ‘demand in the market place,’ a logical approach for people trained in business – an approach, we learned, that was fraught with divisions and challenges that were directly counter to our mission.

It soon became apparent there were deep differences in how we should reach our lofty goals. Some who joined us had financial needs and hoped that SiB would create a living for them. Others believed we should simply stick to convening meetings on a purely voluntary basis. Eventually, even the goals themselves started to become fuzzy, tending to be overly ambitious or too mundane and business-like. The people committed to making SiB a reality were not aligned. We were not walking our talk.

A significant change was needed.

In the spring of 2005 we held two retreats with the Spirit in Business boards and some key advisors. Through a culture scan conducted by Richard Barrett, our 30 most active stewards and advisors indicated what values they wanted to see most in our organization: clarity of vision and alignment of leaders clearly topped the list.

So we revisited the original vision, deepened it, and laid out what needed doing. The original vision of SiB was still very much alive, yet it became clear that this vision would require a vehicle and approach different than the original conception of Spirit in Business to flourish.

Here are some of the outcomes:

First, we reconsidered our name. We recognized that the word ‘spirit’ triggered connotations about religion that were often unhelpful when trying to engage in meaningful dialogue with business leaders. Second, we realized that our large open conferences were good at creating inspiring dialogues, but they did little to develop research and learning opportunities for leaders – something many people we encountered said they wanted. Third, we realized that if we wanted to create real impact on business, the focus needed to be on executives. People in influential positions often had little interest in attending our large conferences.

Last but not least: we understood that business leaders live the values of business. They are willing to pay for services, but only so long as sustainable value is delivered. With the open not-for-profit focus of SiB, our organization was unable to deliver this level of value. In fact, the chaordic nature of our group, lack of a clear business model and financial transparency scared many leaders away. To move forward, we had to be equally versed and authentic in the domains of both spirit AND business.

In our planning retreats we went back to the drawing board. We reconstituted the Board and recommitted to financial transparency for the benefit of our initial and future donors and stakeholders.

We also made the following resolutions:

We will create a network for business leaders with a clear and financially sustainable offering under a more conventional name than SiB, backed up by an R&D function which tracks the ever-refining insights of science, especially neuroscience, which has recently validated that transformation is real. This is now launched as the Global Leaders Academy.
We will write a book describing the main findings from the many dialogs we had at SiB meetings, starting with the first dialogue with H.H. the Dalai Lama in Amsterdam. This work is under way.
We will refer people who are interested in open meetings, conferences and networks to great, likeminded initiatives such as Be The Change, Society for Organizational Learning, The Association for Spirit at Work, the European Bahai Business Forum and the Tallberg Forum (www.bethechange.org.uk; www.solonline.org; www.spiritatwork.org; www.ebbf.org; www.tallbergfoundation.org).

Looking ahead:

As a result of these decisions, we came to the natural point of putting Spirit in Business as we all experienced it into a temporary sleep, to be awakened when the time is ripe again for convening open dialogues. Rather than feeling sad about this (which we did), we now feel that it reflects a process of taking responsibility and reaching organizational maturity.

Through this transformation we also can return to the simplicity that inspired the first dialogue with H.H. the Dalai Lama and European business leaders, convened in Amsterdam exactly seven years ago. We return and go forward with SiB as a quiet convener of the Dalai Lama with leaders and researchers in furthering the understanding of mindfulness, ethics, compassionate leadership and designing an economy that works for everyone.

So now it is time to celebrate what we have learned and how we have been enriched by the multitude of people, meetings and conversations that were the cornerstone of the Spirit in Business. We rejoice at seeing that change in business is happening; it is profound and paradigm shifting.

In the last decade we have seen the CSR movement becoming mainstream. Ethics returning to the boardroom as integral to corporate governance, and values-based leadership becoming the norm for many large organizations committed to building high performance cultures. Spirituality has in fact re-entered the business world, often manifesting through new leadership development language and initiatives to improve the workplace integrating personal values with business success.

Much remains to be done. Global poverty, global disease, global violence, eco-system decline and climate change continue unabated. But there is no reason to be resigned to accepting the seemingly unavoidable. The world is calling for more targeted, more precise and more sustainable initiatives.

We believe that spirituality, or any belief in the human mind and soul, can spur us into action and bring value to the planet. Spirit in Business is such an attempt. We thank all of you for supporting us on this journey. We thank our fellow co-founders, especially Marcello Palazzi, for their passion and generous contribution in time. We also thank our donors, especially Ermanno Managni and John Smith. We feel strengthened in the knowledge that we are with many and that we all do our best to improve the world around us. The tipping point comes closer every day.

Sander Tideman
Anders Faijersson Ferguson
Co-Founders & Co-Chairs
Spirit in Business