Liberating the Corporate Soul

by Richard Barrett

Book Overview

Tapping into the latent creativity and productivity in an organizations employees are two of the most important things any successful business should be concerned with. In a world where competition has become global, successful companies are learning to build competitive advantage through their human capital.

In turbulent times, strategic success will also hinge on whether, in the eyes of the employees and society-at-large, the organization...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0750670711
• ISBN13: 9780750670715
• Release Date: October 1998
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 246 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

The process of building a visionary organization

"This book has been such a journey. I started out with two ideas. The first idea was that organizational transformation must look and feel a lot like personal transformation. The second idea was that the values held by successful companies must be similar to the values held by successful individuals. These two ideas led me on a journey of discovery that gladdened my heart...This book...provides a road map and tools for those who want to travel the same path" (from the Foreward).In this context, Richard Barrett, in Chapter 11, shows a comprehensive framework for building a visionary organization. Here, he defines a visionary organization as a long-living, successful organization that cares about its employees, its customers, the local community, the environment, and a society at large. According to him, visionary organizations take social responsibility very seriously, and they display six important characteristics:1. They have strong, positive, values-driven cultures.2. They make a lasting commitment to learning and self-renewal.3. They are continually adapting themselves based on feedback from internal and external environments.4. They make strategic alliances with internal and external partners, customers, and suppliers.5. They are willing to take risk and experiment.6. They have a balanced values-based approach to measuring performance that includes such factors as corporate survival (financial results), corporate fitness (efficiency, productivity, and quality), collaboration with suppliers and customers, continuous learning and self-development (corporate evolution), organizational cohesion and employee fulfillment (corporate culture), and corporate contribution to the local community and society.Hence, he develops a three-phase process for building a visionary organization: (1) preparation, (2) implementation, and (3) maintaining an evolutionary culture.Finally, during the process of building a visionary organization, he writes that "the critical factors in successful transformations are (a) the management team's commitment to modeling the new values and behaviors; (b) integrating the new values into the structural incentives of the human resource processes of the organization; (c) building psychological ownership by involving employees in defining the missiom, vision, and values and the Balanced Needs Scorecard objectives and targets; (d) helping employees to think like owners; and (e) assigning responsibilities and developing structural mechanisms to support innovation, learning, and cultural renewal."Highly recommended.

A Quantum Leap in Compassionate Corporate Transformation

In his visionary and hopeful book, Global Mind Change, The Promise of the 21st Century (1990), futurist Willis Harman observed that we are in the midst of the greatest social shift since the Middle Ages, a change in the actual belief structure of Western society. As the dominant institution in society, Willis felt business had an obligation and the potential to lead this shift. In Creative Work: The Constructive Role of Business in a Transforming Society (1990), he provided some benchmarks of new paradigm business and examples of a handful of leading companies.Richard Barrett is clearly an inspired central figure in empowering the business world to take its place as an evolutionary and transformational force. Through his consulting practice, speaking engagements and now his powerful new book, Liberating the Corporate Soul, Richard presents the business world a gift of immense proportions providing a clear understanding of how to liberate the untapped creative brilliance, deep compassion and universal love that has been trapped within the prisons of old paradigm business models. He challenges business leaders to "create strategic goals that call for quantum increases in performance that promote transformational thinking." "These improvements are achieved", he says, "only by taking a systems approach-a shift in basic assumptions that create a new way of being and doing - evolution". "Not doing things differently, but doing different things." Not shifting things around a table but creating a new table. "When individuals are asked to participate in transformational thinking they tap into their intuition and creativity. This type of thinking can only be maintained in corporate cultures that are built around trust, employee involvement and openness."He cites the research of Collins and Porras whose book, Built to Last, proves that "contrary to business school doctrine, maximizing shareholder wealth and profits are not the dominant driving forces in most long lasting successful companies. Throughout the history of most visionary companies a core ideology existed that transcended purely economic considerations."Quoting mystic poet Kahil Gibran, who said "work is love made visible", he goes on to say that "the challenge for companies in the twenty-first century is to create a work environment that encourages personal fulfillment-taking care of employees' physical, emotional, mental and spiritual needs....to live out their passions and provide them with opportunities for service". According to a 1995 Newsweek article, 58% of Americans feel the need to experience spiritual growth. "What better place", Richard asks, "than through your work?Building on the work of humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow, he finds that "most companies are stuck in the lower levels of consciousness he has identified as survival, relationship or self-esteem consciousness."Barrett has developed the Balanced Need Scorecard and other powerful

A superb approach to blending values with the bottom line

New Book Provides Road Map and Tools For Building Visionary, Values-Based Businesses(Washington, D.C. - December 1, 1998) You don't have to look far these days to witness the growing trend in business to nurture the corporate "soul." Once muttered in hushed tones of self-conscious reserve, soft-sounding words like "values" and "meaning" and "spirituality" are becoming as bold and common in the corporate lexicon as hard-nosed phrases like "bottom-line" and "return on investment." Until recently, though, the two vocabularies have struggled to come together in any cohesive, systematic process for guiding the strategies and actions of corporate America. In a new book entitled Liberating the Corporate Soul (Butterworth-Heinemann publishers), author and business consultant, Richard Barrett, bridges that gap with an approach to organizational planning that will warm the hearts of human resources, corporate affairs and financial people alike. The book begins with a review of Barrett's central thesis that "who you are and what you stand for are becoming just as important as what you sell." Next, Barrett describes his Corporate Transformation ToolsSM which is a set of measurement instruments for "auditing" individual and organizational values. Finally, the book provides a framework for using those tools to build a visionary, values-based organization.Barrett's model is based partly on the landmark work of Abraham Maslow who defined the human "hierarchy of needs" on four main levels - security, relationship, self-esteem, and self-actualization. "Maslow himself concluded, however, that self-actualized individuals were actually motivated by higher states of consciousness, including spiritual needs," says Barrett. "But he never fully delineated what those states were."Liberating the Corporate Soul expands on Maslow's work with a detailed explanation of Barrett's Seven Levels of Organizational Consciousness (survival, relationship, self-esteem, transformation, organization, community, and society) and Seven Levels of Leadership Consciousness (authoritarian, paternalist, manager, facilitator, collaborator, partner/servant, wisdom/visionary). According to Barrett, one level isn't necessarily superior to another. "All are relevant. It's really more a question of balance," he says. "However, it is at the higher levels of consciousness that organizations are meeting spiritual needs that focus more on the common good than individual self-interest."The book's message and methodology are receiving acclaim from noted business leaders and authors throughout the world. Martin Rutte, co-author of the popular Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work calls Barrett's book "the bold, practical blueprint we need for moving business to the next evolutionary level. Sweeping, brilliant, a sense of the grandeur of the new paradigm of business." Marcello Palazzi, Co-Founder and Chair of the Progessio Foundation in The Netherlands say

One of the best books on practical spirituality at work

Liberating the Corporate Soul is one of the most practical books to come out on spirituality in the workplace. Barrett builds a strong case for the need to see organizations as living entities and how doing so provides a competitive advantage. His basic premise is that you cannot have organizational transformation without individual transformation. The heart of this book is Barrett's model of Seven Levels of Organizational Consciousness. Through the process of a Values Audit, this model is used to "support organizations in building cultural capital, strengthening human resource capacity, developing values-based leaderships and promoting socially and environmentally sustainable development." There is a thorough description of the Corporate Tools used to implement the model as well as detailed case studies. The book provides numerous exercises and practical steps that leaders can take to build their organizations into a more successful and long-lasting company. It is extremely well-researched, drawing on the work of the most progressive organizational thinkers of our time. I highly recommend this book to those people who see that the world is changing and that a new paradigm of work and of organizations is being called for. This book helps you to understand the trends that are driving this change, provides a vision for what a visionary organization can be like, and then gives you the roadmap on how to get there. Barrett has been successfully consulting with organizations all over the world, and we are fortunate that he is sharing his wisdom, his experience, and his transformational tools and processes with us.

Superb tools for building a Values-Driven Organization.

New Book Provides Road Map and Tools For Building Visionary, Values-Based BusinessesYou don't have to look far these days to witness the growing trend in business to nurture the corporate "soul." Once muttered in hushed tones of self-conscious reserve, soft-sounding words like "values" and "meaning" and "spirituality" are becoming as bold and common in the corporate lexicon as hard-nosed phrases like "bottom-line" and "return on investment." Until recently, though, the two vocabularies have not come together in a comprehensive, systematic process for guiding the strategies and actions of corporate America. In a new book entitled Liberating the Corporate Soul (Butterworth-Heinemann publishers), author and business consultant, Richard Barrett, bridges that gap with an approach to organizational planning that will warm the hearts of human resources, corporate affairs and financial people alike. The book begins with a review of the rationale and research supporting Barrett's central thesis that "who you are and what you stand for are becoming just as important as what you sell." Next, Barrett describes his Corporate Transformation ToolsSM which is a set of measurement instruments for "auditing" individual and organizational values. Finally, the book provides a framework for using those tools to build a visionary, values-based organization.Barrett's model is based partly on the landmark work of Abraham Maslow who defined the human "hierarchy of needs" on four main levels - security, relationship, self-esteem, and self-actualization. "Maslow himself concluded, however, that self-actualized individuals were actually motivated by higher states of consciousness, including spiritual needs," says Barrett. "But he never fully delineated what those states were."Liberating the Corporate Soul expands on Maslow's work with a detailed explanation of Barrett's Seven Levels of Organizational Consciousness (survival, relationship, self-esteem, transformation, organization, community, and society) and Seven Levels of Leadership Consciousness (authoritarian, paternalist, manager, facilitator, collaborator, partner/servant, wisdom/visionary). According to Barrett, individuals and organizations have to strike a balance between the various levels of consciousness. "One level isn't necessarily superior to another. It's really more a question of balance," he says. "However, it is at the higher levels of consciousness that organizations are meeting spiritual needs that focus more on the common good than individual self-interest."The book's message and methodology are receiving acclaim from noted business leaders and authors throughout the world. Martin Rutte, co-author of the popular Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work calls Barrett's book "the bold, practical blueprint we need for moving business to the next evolutionary level. Sweeping, brilliant, a sense of the grandeur of the new paradigm of business." Marcello Palaz