Spirituality in Business

Ken Blanchard (KB) in an interview with Raz Ingrasci (RI) from the Hoffman Institute...

"Raz Ingrasci: Increasingly people speak about spiritual values in business. What is going on?

Ken Blanchard: This is the first time in the history of business where you can be great at what you're doing today, and you're out of business tomorrow. My sense is that people become interested in spirituality when things are happening beyond their control. People are looking for some higher power to help them. It's amazing how people start to think about spirituality when they get sick, or they have some major problem, and finally realize they can't figure it all out themselves.

RI: There is also the sense that when one acts in alignment with a higher power, the action is more likely to lead to both success and satisfaction. So, people are looking for balance and flow, as well as success.

KB: Right. In the foreword to Bob Juppert's book Half Time, Peter Drucker says that 50 to 60 years ago there wasn't a lot of opportunity for success for people. You either owned a farm or a factory, or you were a farm or a factory laborer. Retirement was natural because people were retiring from what they didn't want to do in the first place. Today there are many more opportunities for success because of the technology and the changing world. Drucker said that today, people who have been successful, suddenly find themselves in their 40's trying to decide what else there is in life. One group doesn't get it, and they think they'd better continue to amass symbols of success, and another group starts to search inward for a spirituality that says there's got be something more than material success. Juppert says that people start moving from success to significance. The point of Half Time is we're in the locker room wondering "what am I going to do for the second half?" In the appendix to What Color is Your Parachute, Dick Bowles has a wonderful section where he says that you can't talk about your "calling" without talking about the "caller." That is another reason people get into spirituality."

Read the rest of the interview here.