Post-Enron, spirituality gains

Mitroff specializes in the study of crisis management and of spirituality and business. "The two are more connected than you might think," he says. And when it comes to crisis management, he says, there are two kinds of companies: "Those who get it, and those who don't."

The companies who "get it," about 15 percent of the corporate world, he says, are proactive rather than reactive. "They put people first, safety next, customer service third, and profits last. They're profitable, though, and they have only a third of the crises [faced by] the reactive companies – the other 85 percent."

The companies he describes as "spiritual organizations" are a subset of the proactive 15 percent.

"At one organization we visited, all the top executives were in AA," he says, referring to Alcoholics Anonymous. Mitroff thinks AA holds some promise as a model for corporate spirituality. "There was a shared outlook, a comfort zone, an ecumenical approach: They would refer to 'a higher power.' "

But just as AA requires the individual to admit to being an alcoholic, so its method would require a firm to acknowledge being dysfunctional. "That," says Mitroff, "is hard to do."

Jay Sidhu, president and chief executive of Sovereign Bancorp of Philadelphia, is a strong advocate for spirituality as good business. Talking about his work at a recent symposium on spirituality and business at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., he sounded as if he had a model, too.

During his tenure at Sovereign, which began in 1989, the company has seen 25 percent-plus returns to shareholders annually and has risen from the bottom to the top ranks of its industry.

Within his company, Mr. Sidhu prefers to speak of "values" rather than spirituality. He's skeptical of the notion that new corporate governance structures are needed in the business world: "Enron had about the best corporate governance procedures you could ever want."

He describes the $25 billion a year spent on imparting technical skills to managers as "the great training robbery."

What's needed, he says, is character and leadership training.

"But hardly any investments are being made in this area," he says, although he's convinced that 90 to 95 percent of success in the business world is due to "emotional intelligence" rather than technical skills. In this enlightened universe, "leaders truly become the sustainable competitive advantage," he concludes.

Melissa Bradley, president of New Capitalist, a New York-based consulting firm that helps people launch businesses, expresses surprise that Sidhu doesn't use the term spirituality within his company.

She suggests that being explicit about spirituality would help institutionalize it. "When you call it spirituality, you allow it to go to a higher level."

Page: 1 | 2