Corporate Soul Retrieval

Jay Arthur
888-468-1537
303-7569144
knowwareman@
mindspring.com
KnowWare Int., Inc.
2244 S. Olive St.
Denver, CO 80224

 

 

 

Many corporations, in their quest for profits or in response to changes in their environment, seem to lose their vitality and movement forward. It's as if they have lost their soul or some part of it. This leads us to questions: What is the corporate soul? How do corporations "lose" part of their soul? Do corporate changes cause soul loss in employees? How can shamans retrieve and restore corporate souls?

What is the Corporate Soul?

Organizations are conscious entities, possessing many of the properties of living systems. Fred Alan Wolf

The only systems of management that tend to stand the test of time are adaptable ones, often ones that can grow and evolve into systems which hardly resemnble their predecessorts. David Whyte

There are two ways of envisioning or experiencing the corporate soul:

  1. Individual Soul. The soul of a firm is incarnated and lives beyond the involvement of the people working there, especially its founder. The Bell System, for example, outlived Alexander Graham Bell. Ford Motor outlived Henry Ford and so on. Like individuals, corporate souls exist and are made manifest on this planet by the work of individuals who grow the corporate body, the vessel where spirit resides. If we view a corporation as a complex organism having a corporate headquarters and an employee body, then it's easy to imagine it having a soul.
    In my experience of performing corporate soul retrieval, I almost always find an individual soul, separate from the spirit of the employees.
    Occasionally I find the organization has no "soul," but is merely an amalgamation of energies. In this case, it needs a transmission of spirit.
  2. Collective Spirit. The spirit of a firm is composed of the spirits of the people that work there--a web of relationships. In essence, the collective consciousness and spirit of the employees is the spirit of the business, but a company's soul is more than the sum of its parts. The corporate soul is interwoven with the community it serves. We speak of team "spirit." So isn't corporate spirit simply a larger example? What William Pollard--CEO Service Master calls "Evidence of a vital, living soul at work--the soul of each person joining together with others to become the soul of the firm."
Soul loss leaves the corp-orate "body" open to disease and parasitic infection. In many small companies the spirit or soul of the founder is the spirit of the business. This is why so many small companies wither and die when their founder dies. Without some "transfer" or "transmission" of the soul of the business, the business dies or is absorbed by some larger company. Jack Welch said: My goal is to get the small company's soul and the small company's speed inside our big company.

What is the nature of the corporate soul?

If a corporate soul is the collective consciousness of those that work there, then Rupert Sheldrake calls these a "morphic field," a quantum field of knowledge of the business. Margaret Wheatley, in The New Science of Leadership, asks: "What if we think of the corporate soul as a field that permeates the spaces and organizes behavior?" The soul has been described as:

How does a corporation know if it has lost part of its soul?

If the firm does not have a moral reference point, it has the potential to contribute to the bankruptcy of the human soul. William Pollard

All illness has a spiritual identity. Before the Industrial Revolution, each person was often identified by their craft: shoemaker, candlestick maker, etc. With the coming of the industrial revolution, each person became viewed as a unit of production--a pair of hands, not a whole person with a soul that hungers for meaning and purpose. In a human being, when the spirit leaves, the body lapses into a coma. When the soul leaves a business, the business lapses into a coma. If a company is having problems with its people, purpose, or direction, then it is a "company without a soul," says William Pollard, CEO of ServiceMaster and author of The Soul of the Firm. We hear the phrase: "He sold out" and if we listen closely, we can hear the phrase: "He souled out." He gave up part of his soul to get whatever material thing was to be gotten.

How does a corporation lose part of its soul?

Modern business life arises from a love of the upper world, of material products, of order and organization. David Whyte
  1. Traumatic events: The breakup (i.e., split) of the Bell System orphaned the "Baby Bells." The split between work life and soul life. Other possible traumas include: illness, abuse, and rape.
  2. Mergers and Takeovers: Two corporate spirits come together, but often only one corporate headquarters remains over the two bodies and spirits. Unless these two spirits can be integrated into one, the company will be divested at a later time.
  3. Downsizing: If the corporate soul is made up of the many souls employed there, then downsizing causes soul loss. We've all been places that seemed like the Night of the Living Dead. At what point, we might wonder, does the loss of long term employees spell the end of the firm?
  4. New Blood: Bringing in "new blood" or "hired guns" often causes soul loss. New leaders do not know either the employees or the customers, but often set off in new directions that are in conflict with the corporation's purpose--its soul work.
  5. Loss or imbalance of purpose and direction: In essence the soul strays from its path. It loses sight of what we stand for, what we're good at, what people pay for. Mission from:
    1. Tom's of Maine--Common Good and Profit, financially successful and environmentally sensitive and socially responsible
    2. Motorola - apply technology to the benefit of the public
    3. Sony - experience the sheer joy of advancing technology and applying it for the public's benefit
    4. Boeing - to push the leading edge of aviation, taking on huge challenges and doing what others cannot do.
      Five characteristics of a good core purpose: 1. Has to inspire those inside the company 2. Has to be as valid 100 years from now as it is today 3. help you think expansively about what you could do but aren't 4. help you decide what not to do 5. has to be truly authentic to your company 6. Beliefs and Values: Traditional
      • right move = most profitable
      • good = most profit
      Tom's of Main
      • Customer is not a statistic, but a person
      • Connection
      • Company is community
    5. Thief of Souls--abduction
      • Managers who strive for "power over" other people in an attempt to fill the emptyness left by their own soul loss.
      • Power "over" steals souls and gives thief "false power."
      • Which leads to purden of unusable power
      • Which leads back to powerlessness
      • Misuse of Technology
      My computer cannot go underwater, it is not built to withstand the turbulent and fathomless atmospheres of the soul. David Whyte
      Technology has become a god to be served, not a tool to be used. Desired State of a corporation's soul:
      • vitality
      • aliveness
      • connectedness

How can a Shaman retrieve and restore the Corporate Soul?

Preserving the soul in corporate America means reclaiming all those human soul qualities sacrificed on the altar of organizational survival. David Whyte

In The New Culture of Desire, the author, Melinda Davis, speaks of using soul retrieval to "help marketers better visualize and heal the souls of their brands and their companies. The idea is straightforward, if a brand is a living thing, with an image in the world, a personality, a web of complicated relationships, and the possibility of growth or death, does it not also have a kind of soul?"

For humans, the shaman journeys into other worlds to find and retrieve lost parts of the soul. Upon returning, the shaman blows the spirit back into the chakras-what shamans call "the eyes of light" of the person. If we view a corporation as having a corporate head-quarters and an employee "body", then it is relatively easy to perform soul retrieval on a corporation by using one of its employees as a "surrogate" for the retrieval.

An employee, especially a senior leader or CEO, is part of the "body" of the business. Since they work inside the energy body of the business, it's a simple process to get them to step out of themselves and into the energy body of the corporation. Then the soul retrieval can proceed just as it would with an individual.

How does an employee know if he or she has lost part of their soul?

A close friend of mine looked around one day and wondered how he could carefully construct, over so many years, a daily life he could barely endure. David Whyte

Young spirits can shrivel and die on contact when ambushed by the orphaned and disowned shadows of many corporate cultures. David Whyte

Soul loss can occur through a trauma like downsizing or just the slow erosion caused by daily interactions. Do you have a lack of energy or enthusiasm? Is there a part of yourself that you just can't seem to "get back to?" If so, that part of you may have decided to escape the physical world and retreat to the spiritual world.

Soul Retrieval of Employees

Through intent, power animals, and drumming, the shaman journeys into the three worlds to retrieve soul parts from a single soul. Retrieving parts from many souls fragmented by corporate change would mean bringing back lots of parts for lots of people. The natives of Burma, for example, can retrieve the soul of a rice crop to cure an illness in the crop. My healing "mesa" of stones said that the rituals for retrieving many soul parts had been long forgotten, but that they would help me remember.

Emerson said that "Souls are not saved in bundles." But spirit guides directed me to use clear crystals to "hoover" up the lost soul parts, agreements, passions and treasures lost by employees. Upon returning from a soul retrieval, I clear these crystals to the four directions, allowing lost soul parts to return to their owners.

Soul Integration

The seat of the soul is not inside a person, or outside a person, but the very place where they overlap and meet with their world. Gerald de Nerval

Mergers and acquisitions can cause soul loss unless handled properly. Integration of two corporate souls is possible because corporations share a common lineage: the village.

Soul Separations

Corporate souls can be separated into separate companies through rites of mitosis and replication. Just as twins are two souls of the same cell.

Corporate Chakras

Body Language

Headquarters Ear Management listens a mission into reality Body Employees New Blood Right Arm Division Virus Thought virus Parasites

Living Companies

The average Fortune 500 company has a life-span of 40-50 years. Yet there are companies that have been around for up to four centuries. There are two types of companies:

Building community takes a long time, but you can destroy it 12-24 months. When Qwest bought US West, for example, it only took 20 months to drive the stock from $60 to $1/share.

Living things share common characteristics:

Living companies stay alive by: Living companies are reflective: They question their experience and values constantly. They value vitality, flexibility, focus and innovation. Living companies are simultaneously diverse and cohesive.

Too many large organizations today have been crippled by the cancer of bureaucracy and an expanding midriff of middle management.
William Pollard

The tools for diagnosing and treating organizational behavior--to change culture and consciousness--are in infancy. Ichak Adizes

Living systems experience health problems:
Size and time are not causes of growth and aging. There are 100-year-young companies and 10-year-old companies. Ichak Adizes

(C) 2003 Jay Arthur (888) 468-1537 knowwareman@mindspring.com

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