JENS SCHULTZE R
Inspiring Thoughts on How to Achieve Increased and Lasting Success through Happiness and Love
J E N S S C H U LT Z E R : O N T H E OT H E R S I D E
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ABOUT CREATING WEALTH
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Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there was a young man who went into the forest and said to his spiritual master, “I want to be boundlessly rich and, with this boundless wealth, I want to help others and cure the world. Could you tell me the secret of how to get rich?” And the spiritual master replied, “There are two goddesses in the hearts of all people. Everyone is in love with these elevated beings. But there is one particular secret that you must know, and I will tell you what it is. “Even though you love both goddesses, you must pay more attention to one of them. It is the goddess of creativity and wisdom. Her name is Sarasvati. Follow her, love her and give her all your attention. The other goddess, Lakshmi, is the goddess of wealth and prosperity. When you pay more attention to Sarasvati, Laskhmi grows terribly jealous and pays more attention to you. “The more you court the goddess of wisdom and creativity, the more the goddess of wealth and prosperity will court you. She will follow you wherever you go and never leave you. And the wealth that you are seeking will be available forever.”
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Endorsements
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Introduction
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Prologue
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1. NEW SUCCESS CRITERIA AND THE FIVE GIFTS 23 Happiness is the motivating force
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The five gifts
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MANAGEMENT’S HISTORICAL CHALLENGES
Nothing lasts forever
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Readiness to change
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Openness
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Creativity
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Cultural diversification
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Ethics
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What is a company?
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New forms of leadership
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WE HAVE A BODY, BUT WE ARE A SOUL
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The conscious human being
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Group consciousness
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The consciousness formula
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The consciousness model
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The company’s consciousness level
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The consciousness areas
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THE HAPPY COMPANY
The company’s love – your strength
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The maths of happiness
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The gifts
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The will to succeed
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The soul and the way to happiness
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Control your ego
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THE MAGICAL SPACE
The magic ingredients
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Access to the magic
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The typical industrial-age company
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The emotional universe
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The spirit’s domain
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The Laterna magica and eternity
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FROM IDEAS TO REALITY
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Leading with happiness
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The V-factor
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The transformation
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The success trap
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The virtual organisation
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Logos and Mythos
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The need for transparency
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THE LEADER’S RESPONSIBILITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY 173
Accountability for everyone
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Responsibility for the future
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Epilogue
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Glossary
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Key
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Literature
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Notes
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ENDORSEMENTS
“ON THE OTHER SIDE” puts leadership into a new perspective With entirely new words, pictures, and models, Jens Schultzer explains how to create the “magical space” through a new mindset and the unconscious emotional areas, where everything proves successful, and success and creativity give energy for continuous development of the company. Per Ladegaard Group Managing Director, Nykredit Shows the way to the happy company In his book “ON THE OTHER SIDE”, Jens Schultzer introduces us to thoughts and emotions that, in many a boardroom, are completely new and that may, at first, seem somewhat frightening; but, ultimately, many people will hopefully be taking the path towards the ‘happy company’ that Jens Schultzer describes. Kirsten and Peter Pruzan Authors of “Leadership with Wisdom”, and more. Fantastic book that is destined to be of importance Reading “ON THE OTHER SIDE” was a great experience. A fine balance between what is easy and obvious, which simply hits home, and the more complex material. A fantastic book that is simply destined to be of importance. Malene Frandsen Executive Coach and Process Manager, Owner of Hvide Hus Consulting
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Foreign, fascinating and inspiring – all at once In “ON THE OTHER SIDE”, Jens Schultzer specifies how spiritual leadership creates values and results in an organisation. In reality, this is fundamental research into an as-of-yet-unknown conceptual universe – foreign, fascinating and inspiring, all at once. Kai Hammerich Managing Director, Russell Reynolds Associates An important book that will make a difference With “ON THE OTHER SIDE”, Jens Schultzer has written an important book – important on many fronts. First of all, the principles and mentalities that Jens describes are completely universal; secondly, they are absolutely necessary to embrace as part of our future. This book ought to be included in the curriculum of any study that deals with human beings. We all have a responsibility to make our world a better place to live. As a leader, you have an even greater responsibility, as the influence and the impact you have on others is more significant. Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918) once wrote: “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” It is my belief that with this book in mind, it will be easier for you to make a positive difference in this world. I have read a ton of books on management, but never one like this that will enable the reader to make a difference in such a convincing way. René Viborg CEO, Zylinc A/S
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On the other side of traditional leadership philosophy and business theory “ON THE OTHER SIDE” discusses entirely new and future leadership challenges while at the same time introducing concepts for companies of the future, such as compassion, love, happiness – rather than pure profit. Concepts such as the “magical space”, the “happy company”, the “emotional universe” and the “spirit’s domain” are introduced as surprising tools for ensuring a company’s success. The book is literally on the other side of traditional leadership philosophy and business theory. Christian Have Communication Advisor, Owner of PR and Coadjutor at Aalborg University’s Department of Communication and Psychology and Copenhagen Business School’s Centre for Business Development and Management. Author of several books, including “Dreaming of Fame – The New Power of Correlation”. A demanding book with a deep insight Many years ago, the founder of Heinz said that “Heart power is stronger than horsepower.” “ON THE OTHER SIDE” is a very concentrated book about this topic, amongst others, where you are invited to get an insight into Jens Schultzer’s view of the world and how he has benefited from many years’ experience with top management combined with the wisdom of the East. For an ancient nerd like yours truly, it is an inspiring read, particularly because, historically, this topic has been forcefully argued several times before. It has worked for many great leaders, but has also been overpowered by materialism on a regular basis. Ulrik Bülow CEO, Otto Mønsted A/S
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INTRODUCTION of candles can be lit from a single candle, ” Thousands and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” Buddha
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ver since the birth of the industrial age in the mid-1800s, we have had a relatively conservative picture of what a company is. I would like to tear that picture up. It is like a photograph from that time: faded and hardened. It can even be difficult to see what it is supposed to depict. Similarly, the past perception of a company is hardly suited to meeting the challenges of the future. I don’t know which model is the answer, but I have some ideas and thoughts that I would like to share with you and that might be able to outline an entirely new and more up-to-date picture of a company. First of all, I believe that we need a new picture because circumstances are different and will become even more different in the future. When we change the picture of the company, we must change the way we run it as well. Or to put it differently: if our management were different, surely our companies would be different as well – and hopefully for the better. If we looked at companies from a new perspective, from another side, we would be able to manage them from the other side as well.
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I believe that we must change the entire foundation of why and how we run companies. To me, the many crises, bankruptcies, and legal actions we have been through are a visible sign that something is wrong. And I believe that it is the prioritisation that is wrong. It is not only a question of how we run our businesses, but why. That is why I have named this book “ON THE OTHER SIDE”. Because there must be another side to a company. A side with compassion, love, sympathy, and happiness as the way to success rather than simply a focus on short-term profit. The goal should be to create the “magical space” where success breeds success in a process that continues to be creative and developing and that produces results. This magical space can only be reached if the company culture moves up above the conventional, outer success criteria, such as money, status, power, and desire. However, this requires insight into and focus on the unconscious aspect of the interplay between human beings and leadership. I am going to try to open up a space where magic thrives. The magic that is so important for creating development, innovation, motivation, and creative energy. And I will draw the outline of a space reigned by true wisdom and where love thrives. Why? Because it is imperative that we focus on different values. We must change priorities so that we also take the inner criteria for success into consideration: happiness in the form of love, joy, and peace. So, the way to go is not the way of pain. No, it is a path towards greater insight, empathy, love, and happiness. Because when we meet our in-
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ner success criteria, we will get better at creating physical results at the same time. In order to illustrate some of these thoughts and ideas, I have gathered a number of very different examples, located in each chapter of the book. These are isolated glimpses from the real world that have caught my attention as being interesting and inspiring. This book is therefore meant as an introduction to a debate or as inspiration for your own considerations about your company’s future. You are the one who should be drawing the conclusions, because only you can do it for yourself. You are the one who should evaluate how to use these thoughts and suggestions, because you are the one at the ford who needs to get to the other side. It is my hope that this book will trigger something. I would like to trigger your thoughts and dreams. Because they create the future. “ON THE OTHER SIDE” is not a textbook or a handbook, because those talk about what management has experienced already. It is neither science nor theory, nor a ready-made concept. These are merely thoughts. Though the thoughts originated from practical experience from a long and rewarding life as a leader, it is no monopoly of any truth. That is the truth about this book. It is about the truth. It is about looking behind the facade, on the other side, and then leading from there. I think it pays off!
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This book is a matter between you and me. It is my experience and contemplations, but it is your processing of the material that will create the results. I have had help from many sides. Learned persons – experienced, wellread, innovative and creative people – have heard and read about my thoughts and offered me advice and their opinion along the way. Amongst the many people who have helped, I would like particularly to thank Ulrik Bülow, Flemming Enevold, Malene Frandsen, Kai Hammerich, Vibeke Hartkorn, Christian Have, Jan Hegnsvang, Per Ladegaard, Christian Mørck, Kirsten Pruzan Mikkelsen, Peter Pruzan, Derek Seagrief, René Viborg and not least Birgitte Mørck Schultzer and my children, Anders, Malene, Sebastian and Martin. I am very grateful for their contributions, which have been invaluable. They share in any adulation that this book might receive, while the responsibility and criticism should be directed towards me.
I hope you will find the following pages inspiring and beneficial. Enjoy. Jens Schultzer
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PROLOGUE
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he industrial age and the information society have enriched a great part of the world with material wealth beyond measure. Our companies have been able to produce much more than we need to get by. From being an agricultural society, hardly able to support itself, our companies have created a society of abundance in less than 200 years. In the mid-1940s, the heyday of the industrial age, a time marked by the Second World War, American psychologist Abraham Maslow note 1 formulated what he perceived to be the fundamental human needs. These are illustrated in the “Maslow’s pyramid of needs” figure. The most basic needs, such as food, clothing, and safety, are at the bottom of the pyramid and must be met before the higher needs can be met, according to Maslow. Although Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was criticised at the time, it has become a fixed element of a large part of traditional psychology and leadership literature and has contributed considerably to our perception of companies and the role they play today. Maslow’s fundamental needs are, to a great extent, the needs that our industrial society has been fully able to meet for many of us.
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Maslows behovspyramide
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Selvrealisering
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SelvvĂŚrdsbehov/PrĂŚstationsbehov
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Sociale behov
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Sikkerhed og tryghed
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Fysiske behov
Despite the fact that we left the industrial age behind a long time ago, our view of companies, their management, and their role in society continues to be characterised by the mindset of the industrial age. The information age, which has led to big, technological changes, has not greatly affected the dominance of the industrial age within leadership
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thinking. We still operate with processes, organisational diagrams, lines of authority, returns on investment (ROI), and growth philosophies the way we did during the industrial age. Our perception of companies and their nature hasn’t changed that much, either. For centuries, we have had a relatively conservative picture of what a company was and the role it played in society. The distribution of roles in the corporate world amongst managers, staff, negotiators, customers, shareholders, etc. has been pretty steady. The same applies to the companies’ relationship to society and the public sector. We have experienced how shareholding stakeholders have prevented companies from developing in the long term, which has led to many leaders’ time horizon being focused on the next quarterly financial statement. What this attitude has led to speaks for itself, but there’s one expression to illustrate it: financial crisis. We move from crisis to crisis and conflict to conflict with ever-shorter intervals in between and ever-deeper consequences. At the same time, we are facing a number of man-made problems, such as pollution, climate change, increase in population, poverty, overconsumption of energy, etc., and combating them will require extraordinary efforts from all of us in the years to come. Add to that what is, presumably, the biggest challenge, the scope of which we are only now beginning to realise: a lack of resources. Not only are we destroying the earth; we are also wasting the limited raw materials that are available, and this applies not just to oil, but to metals, minerals, etc. If the other two thirds of the earth’s population are to have the same living standards as us, created in the same way, we will simply run out of resources.
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We must ask ourselves whether, as leaders and companies, if we are sufficiently equipped to meet the challenges that we are facing in an ever-accelerating global development with new market forces and new players, the climate threat, resource shortages, etc. In addition to these almost gigantic challenges, we are facing a saturation phenomenon. Many markets are gradually becoming saturated with traditional industrial products, so there is not much growth to gain here. We are therefore seeing a trend towards monopolisation. Companies have also been run so rationally, resources been so scarce, and energy and environmental requirements increasing to such an extent that there really isn’t room for much more growth. Many successful companies have come to be run so well that there is not much more rationalisation potential left. In addition, these companies are now so guideline-managed and so well run that they have become boring to work for. In their eagerness for growth and quarterly profits, they have lost their spark – the new, undiscovered element that made the good employees experience work as something new, developing, and exciting. With this saturation phenomenon, the speed of change has increased exponentially, not least because of the predominant globalisation. A constant, exponentially increasing speed of change and an ever-increasing globalisation are challenges that the leadership philosophers of the industrial age are poorly equipped to handle. One of the reasons is that they aim at handling self-interests, streamlining, and standardisation, and with their fundamental philosophy, they are thus not geared
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towards the world that is waiting. A world where the interests of the common good must be met before self-interests, and yet where, at the same time, people demand to be seen and respected for their uniqueness. Today’s leaders tend to perceive companies as fixed things, but in doing so, they risk being left behind. The future will require completely different and less firm structures. A prerequisite for success in the “new” world is a different attitude towards how to define success, which therefore also requires the success criteria of the corporate world to change. Up until now we have been driven by criteria such as growth, profit, and selfish gratification of the needs in Maslow’s pyramid. Those are daily goals for most companies, their owners, and management, and therefore also for their employees. In my opinion, we are today standing on top of, or very close to the top of, what these criteria create opportunities for. We are figuratively speaking looking at the wall. If we wish to continue to develop our companies and socio-economics, a paradigm shift is needed in both the business concept and the management philosophy, as well as in the success criteria that are supposed to drive development. The choice is now between development and divestment.
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NEW SUCCESS CRITERIA AND THE FIVE GIFTS
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ather than exclusively or primarily focusing on outer success criteria, represented by Maslow’s needs, the way to develop our companies is by placing a higher stake on what I would call the inner success criteria. I would call the inner success criteria. Let me make it clear now that my thoughts and ideas about future management are not intended to be a complete alternative to current management principles. Don’t throw away what you have learned and experienced. I’m not advocating a total rejection of the principles and results that the industrial and information ages have given us, either. My belief is that a supplement is needed – a better balance between the outer and inner success criteria and, in some cases, the assignment of greater priority to principles that have been neglected thus far. It is about expanding the management philosophy with a spiritual aspect. About adding values that go beyond Maslow’s pyramid and provide the company and its employees with all-new tools and opportunities for expression. There are success criteria that can make us happier while giving us an opportunity to experience greater and more stable success than we know today. These are criteria that are in better agreement with the future and its challenges, but that are also compatible with a company’s activities. There are already companies who benefit from them, who experience being in the magical space where creativity flourishes; they succeed with everything, and everyone is happy. First and foremost, I am calling for a different view of what success is. 23