When Lee Iacocca came to Chrysler when it was on its last legs. He helped shed Chrysler’s history of large, poorly-made cars; he helped it overcome the fear of death by getting financing from Congress; he brought in new design and production techniques that focused on the customer, not the company; and he created a vision for the future that continues to pull Chrysler into the next century. As a shamanic leader, Iacocca took Chrysler on the journey up and around the medicine spiral.

Whether you're a Native American or Peter Senge exploring "systems thinking," you view the world as cycles of time, not arrows of time with linear cause effects. Each day involves the cycle of the yellow sun rising in the east, the daylight hours, the setting sun, and the darkness of night. There is a birth, growth, maturation, and death of projects, companies, and people in a never ending cycle of re-creation.

All native people share some version of a medicine spiral that focuses on the four directions: south, west, north, and east. Each point of the compass serves as a way of thinking about the cycle of transition and transformation. Each direction is associated with an elemental force of nature and an animal that embodies that force:

•  South - Serpent that sheds the past as a snake sheds its skin
•  West - Jaguar that transcends fear of death
•  North - Hummingbird that drinks directly from the nectar of knowledge
•  East - Eagle/Condor that see over the horizon and into the future

The idea of using the energy of a power animal may at first seem strange, until one begins to notice all of the sports teams, automobiles, and other products that use these energies: Miami Dolphins, Cincinatti Bengals, Seattle Seahawks, Pittsburg Penguins, American Eagle, Cobra GT, Mustang, and so on. Animistic energies are used everywhere as corporate logos and product names.

The wheel represents the continuous cycles of all living systems, including corporations, cities, and nations. In the corporate environment, the shaman can begin to diagnose where a company is on the medicine wheel. This will influence how the shaman designs interventions. A company that needs to shed its past (south) may be incapable of fully creating a vision of the future (east). The work of the corporate shaman often begins in the south.

South - Serpent

The south is the way of the "wounded healer." The wounded healer must heal their own wounds and shed their past to begin their journey as a shaman. Almost every employee has been wounded in some way in today’s corporate machinery.

In my own case, this happened in early November, 1985; a day I lovingly refer to as Black Monday. I was walking through the aisles of what Henry Miller called the "Cosmodemonic Telephone and Telegraph Company," minding my own businesses when a staff manager named Bob walked up to me and said: "I’m really excited about working with you on the new flexible billing system." It was the first I’d heard about it. Regardless of how well intended, the meaning I took from his words were that what I had been working on was of no value and I was simply a pawn to be moved around on the chessboard of projects. Bob backpedaled when he realized I had no idea what he was talking about. "I thought you knew..." About that time the company offered a buyout, three years added to service and pension, incentive to leave. I took it. Looking back, I’d say that I was clinically depressed-what the shamans would call soul loss. A year later I rejoined the company in its new R&D organization. Nine years later I left again following a downsizing of a failed TQM department. In 1990, I began healing my own mind and spirit, first by learning NLP-Neuro-Linguistic Programming and then shamanism. Ultimately, I began to recreate myself as a speaker, trainer, consultant, and author. In this story you can see the journey of a corporate shaman:

• South-the wounding in 1985 and subsequent shedding of the company and my past
• West - overcoming my fear of unemployment - career and financial death
• North - learning about mind and spirit while transforming my past and designing a future.
• East - creating a vision of how to bring my original medicine to the world.

Similarly, corporations can be wounded by internal or external events and may need to learn how to shed the skin of their past to be able to grow and evolve. When companies change their relationship to the past, only then will the way to the future become clear. How can you tell if it's time for a change?

Symptom: stuck, looking back at old successes
Diagnosis: traumatized by recent changes that disrupt the status quo
Remedy: Shed the past
Ritual: Fire Ceremony

West - Jaguar

In the work of the west, shamans experience death to eliminate their fear of it. When you lose your fear of death, death becomes and ally, a trusted advisor. Shamans seek to act impeccably through principle-centered leadership. Similarly, corporations need to move beyond their fear of failure or death to act decisively. This fear often shows itself as paralysis through analysis-constant study and restudy when action is the only solution. Companies are only vulnerable when fear lives within them. In the work of the west, companies must come to know and understand their "shadow"-the disowned parts often projected onto other people or companies-customers, suppliers, or shareholders. Only by understanding and embracing the positive intent of the shadow can corporations fulfill their purpose. Most Fortune 500 companies, can be eaten by other corporations if they don't evolve or adapt to changing market conditions. They can be infected by parasitic leadership and thought viruses that spell their demise.

Symptom: Paralysis, fear of making choices
Diagnosis: Fear of death, fear of the future
Remedy: Overcome fears through action and reintegrate the corporate "shadow."
Ritual: Fire Ceremony

North - Hummingbird

When you don’t learn from knowledge directly, you learn through suffering.
- Alberto Villoldo

The north is the way of wisdom-the teacher who drinks directly from knowledge. Like the hummingbird, who drinks directly from flower of knowledge, corporations need to drink deeply from the well of knowledge to prepare themselves to move forward. Shed what you know to tap into knowing. In every company there is a deep well of wisdom that is rarely tapped.

In Living Companies, Arie de Geus found that living companies had to embrace and weather profound changes in their environment and the products they produced. These companies survived because they were "tolerant" of explorations at the fringes of their business environment (think Post-it Notes). Ultimately, these changes become the seeds of the company’s future success.

Symptom: Lack of fresh ideas, products, and markets
Diagnosis: Status quo, lack of new knowledge
Remedy: Drink from the wellspring of corporate and human knowledge
Ritual: Fire Ceremony

East - Eagle/Condor

The North American eagle or South American condor represent the power of vision. Once a company has shed its past, overcome its fear, and explored its possibilities and capabilities, it is ready to create a vision for the future. Great company leaders often have a vision of their company 50 or even 100 years in the future. This compelling future helps companies self-organize their processes and systems to survive well into the future. In the east, corporations create a vision that will pull them into the future. A company without a vision that stretches over the time horizon 50-100 years or more can easily fall prey to the shifting sands of today’s global marketplace.

Peter Schwartz, author of The Art of the Long View, spoke of Shell’s planning process that involves stepping into the future to create "scenarios." Leadership teams would try on three possible futures:

1. the worst possible environment
2. the best possible environment
3. status quo

By exploring the extremes and the center, Shell was able to anticipate and develop plans for various world changes that could profoundly affect the oil business. During the oil crisis of the 1970s, Shell grew from #7 to #2 in the world.

The shamanic leader knows it is difficult to create a "shared vision" if the corporation still hasn’t shed the skin of its past, moved beyond fear, and evaluated the market in search of opportunities. Inside a large corporation, various departments and organizations can be at very different stages of the medicine spiral.

Symptom: lack of direction and purpose
Diagnosis: lack of vision for the future
Remedy: create a compelling future
Tools: Divination, despacho
Ritual: Fire Ceremony

East-West Axis-Business is War

The East-West, Visionary-Warrior axis is the more masculine and dominant view of corporate leadership. This axis is unstable. This axis is about transformation, what Champy calls "reengineering." Rather than acting for the common good, leaders on this axis can become tyrants focused on business as war. In war, one seeks to kill or be killed, penetrate a market, outflank the competition. The mercenary-leader plays what James Carse, author of Finite and Infinite Games, calls a finite game: one with winners and losers. The impeccable warrior-leader plays an infinite game, where the goal is to continue play and the definition of evil is for a game to end.

North-South Axis-Business is Family

The North-South, Healer-Teacher axis is the more feminine view of corporate leadership. This axis is stable. This axis is about incremental change, what Deming called quality improvement. Leaders on this axis act in service of the common good, but may be too narrowly focused in the present. This metaphor of business involves family or school. The healer seeks to mend the psychological and spiritual scrapes and cuts caused by daily interactions. The teacher seeks to coach and mentor others on their journey.

Applications

The shamanic leader integrates the North-South with the East-West. The shamanic leader chooses and shapeshifts easily among the healer, warrior, teacher and visionary to achieve whatever outcome they desire. They always act in service of what’s best for the common good. The shamanic leader recognizes their shadow and seeks to reclaim its power to benefit the tribe.

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

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