"DharamshalaDreaming: A Travelers's Search for the meaning of work" -

Susana Barciela (from the Book on Insights on Leadership)
 

The fax arrived in February ,an invitation to a workshop on transformational leadership in the Himalayas. Transformational leadership? My first thought: it's another fad business term, made to roll off tongues as easily as employees fall from payrolls. We already have relationship leaders, team leaders, manager leaders, servant leaders. But the invitation came from Dinesh Chandra , a Plantation consultant with a background in total quality management and an interest in spiritual topics. He was facilitating the workshop. Along with peter Block author of Stewardship : Choosing Service Over Self-Interest and a couple of other hot management books. Both Chandra and Block did work I respected. So before the end of March I was stepping onto a Lufthansa flight that took me to New Delhi. This transformational stuff, I figured, had something to do with personal purpose and spirit, discovering what they were and aligning one's work with them. The subject was near to my heart and my profession. Work is my job. You see it in these columns each week. Mostly. I chafe at the inhumane workplaces we create and tolerate. We, lowly worker and big boss alike, treat each other pretty poorly. Look at the people who say they believe in ethics and respect but treat colleagues. Employees and clients with none. Look at the status of those who do the work and those who manage it. Look at the employees who would rather complain about their treatment than work to change it. I' have seen folks at every level flounder in business. Some are driven to succeed only to discover they are directionless. Others assume there are no better alternatives and turn bitter. Yet somehow, some people manage to find ways to create both meaningful wok and livelihoods . I wanted to know more about that process. Altogether, 18 of us gathered in Dharamshala, India, a town in the Himalayan foothills known best as the home of the Dalai Lama. Most of the participants were Indian executives, entrepreneurs and CEOs from all over the subcontinent. Despite all their material successes, they had serious intent and questions. Should you do what you enjoy, or learn to enjoy what you do? Is it right to insist on your values and to change the organization? Is it possible? Or do you just do whatever the company says; accept it put your own values aside? Am I the image I Project? What happens when you start managing perception? Isn't that manipulation? How do you use your personal transformation to transform the organization? ..Your transformation is enough, Block suggested." Maybe that is the purpose of the business- a place where the transformation can take place. Money is just the economics that allows it to happen." Maybe it was the setting, or the combination of people. We struggled to find answers to questions that don't have them. "We say to workers, We want you to take ownership, to participate. Behave as owners. But when it comes to profits, we say, 'No, the shareholders are the owners, "said K.V. Mathew, chief executive of L &T -McNeil, an equipment manufacturing company in Bombay. "Is this practicing what we preach?" Practice, of course, is difficult. We may have lofty motives. But traditional businesses operate by controlling people. Those in control, consciously or not, fear giving it up. Well-intentioned programs, such as total quality management and empowerment, easily turn into formulas and token rituals. "Rituals can become an opium, too" Mathew argued."That is not enough. We have to take tougher subjects: the systems, the processes, the structure. Otherwise, we end up with all this drinking coffee and hugging and end up with another religion." For four days we talked about leadership, about personal responsibility and choice. We wrestled with our own Limitations. We imagined workplaces that were communities, where people spoke frankly and pursued meaningful work. Where profit was required, but not sufficient as purpose. We didn't find pat answers, Yet in the asking of the questions, the transformation had begun. In the process, we slog along, taking hits, getting lost and sidetracked, and finding our path again. We solve one crisis. Another is sure to follow. We want the transformation to be over already. The truth is, transformation never ends. That's what it's like for those who long for work that is deeper and more satisfying. Even in business and even in America. It's up to us to create it. The point isn't to go to the Himalayas. Learn to climb

NOBLE VALUES

Geshe Sonam Rinchen, a Budhist monk and scholar at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, came to visit with 18 of us attending a workshop on Transformational Leadership in Dharamshala, India. The Geshe, a title

Geshe Sonam Rinchen. a Buddhist monk and scholar at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives. Came to visit with 18 of us attending a workshop on Transformational Leadership in Dharamshala, India. The Geshe, a title bestowed upon learned monks, introduced himself by saying he had title knowledge of business. Then he launched into an extemporaneous talk. "We all need things and money. We all need personal livelihood. But it should be earned in an honest way, within the noblest values of society. This doesn't really go against the ways of business. It what you do in the long term is exploitive and destructive, then one has to restrain one's greed, that Is the desire for a quick profit. "if we just talk and not change our attitudes, nothing will happen. If we change, then it has a snowball effect. More and more people start to change. We have to change by changing our minds, the way we think. That changes the physical and verbal actions and radiates to others. I got the feeling the Geshe knews more than he owned up to. Susana Barciela Editorial Board, Miami Herald 4475 S.W. 13 Street Miami FL 33134 (305) 376-3708 work The following chapter Is from the Book Insights on Leadership Published by John Wiley & Sons, 1 998 DHARAMSHALA DREAMING: A Traveler's Search for the Meaning of Work by Susana Barciela Some pilgrims go to the mountains seeking the meaning of life. I traveled to the mountains seeking the meaning of work - which qualifies as life for many of us Americans. In my case, the mountains were the Himalayas. Actually, they were the foothills. 1 went to Dharamshala, India, the town known best as home of the Dalai Lama, to attend a business conference of all things. For me, a Cuban American from Miami, it was a long stretch in more ways than the 13,452 frequent flyer miles to get there. I almost didn't go. The fax had arrived in February inviting me to this oddball workshop on transformational leadership. Off the bat I didn't like the words. Transformational leadership? I weary of faddish terms that roll off tongues as easily as employees fall from payrolls. Today firms tout the relationship leader. Team leader. Manager leader. Servant leader. Fill-in-the-blank leader. Too many words, not enough practice. But the invitation had come from Dinesh Chandra, a Fort Lauderdale consultant with a background in total quality management and an interest in spiritual topics that had led him to me. We had been talking off and on about values in business for about a year and he didn't appear a flake. Dinesh was one of the facilitators of the workshop, along with Peter Block, author of Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest and a couple of other hot management books. Both of them did work I respected. Cautiously, I checked my natural aversion toward management consultants, in particular those who write business best-sellers. I began to think of this Himalayan conference as a serious possibility. Of course, buried underneath a stack of publications and press releases on my desk, I proceeded to forget about the invitation for a month. Then one Monday, I woke up and couldn't shake Dharamshala from my thoughts. I wanted to go. After a year reading the The Tibetan Book of the Living and Dying, Tibetan Buddhism both fascinated and impressed me. How could 1 pass up the chance to visit the town that was home to the Dalai Lama? For years 1 had been meditating, practicing Yoga and chanting in Sanskrit in my own search for peace. How could 1 ignore the chance to visit India, birthplace to these practices? I might never have another opportunity to see the Himalayas. How could I say no to the highest mountains in the world? Yet reasoning does little to appease the gods of doubt. What if the conference were a joke? Other than Dinesh, an acquaintance, everyone else going would be a stranger. The cost, the time, the hassle were daunting. "It's a crapshoot," Peter Block told me when I tracked him down to confirm the event was for real. "But I think it's worth enough for me to give up a week of my life for no pay." To be honest, I knew of Block by reputation but hadn't read any of his books. I also knew he had been one of the founders of Designed Learning, the consulting firm that had come to my company, and not impressed me, the year before. It's hard to practice what you preach. "God is a four-letter word in business," I told Block. Of course, he said, "How can you be objective about God? It's personal. " Secretly, I was fishing for a reason not to go. It would be easier to stay in my comfort zone. Much easier to not stretch, not push myself, not risk any crisis. "So this is,' I asked Block, "About change from the inside out'?" "And the reverse. Both," he said. "This is about human beings and the search for meaning in their lives." Don't come if all you want to do is journalism, he challenged. "Come as a participant," Block said. "And if you go, you have to write about it." Friday, March 1 6, 12:48 a. m. Miami Today I paid for my flight. Tonight I can't sleep. In 12 days, less than two weeks, I'll be leaving. I called Dinesh for reassurance before pulling out my plastic for the airfare, $1,665 and change. The itinerary gets me to Delhi a day early. I leave a day late. "You can stay on the farm where we'll be for as long as you like, " Dinesh said. "So, you are coming?, " he quizzed. "Yes, I think so, " I said, surprising myself. Now, at I a. m. my dog Bud twitches in his sleep on the floor next to me. And I'm scared. The mantras don't calm me. I don't know what I fear more: traveling alone to an alien place, the strangers I'll have to trust, facing tough questions about my mission and my work. I'm afraid of the spiritual part of the journey. I'm afraid of opening up. I'm afraid of revealing myself. But I am more afraid of not trying to. ************* This transformational stuff, I figured, had something to do with personal purpose and spirit, discovering what they were and aligning one's work with them. The subject was near to my heart, and my profession. Work, you see, is my job. I'm a journalist paid to cover workplace issues for The Miami Herald. Since 1993 I've written a weekly column touching on issues ranging from bozo bosses to the end of lifetime employment. Born of memories of my immigrant parents, honed by my own minimum- wage labor, polished to perfection after I graduated to the corporate managerial elite, my biases are obvious in the columns I write. Mostly, I chafe at the inhumane workplaces we create and tolerate. The truth is, we lowly workers and big bosses alike treat each other poorly. Look at the people who say they believe in ethics and respect but treat colleagues, employees, and clients with none. Look at the status of those who do the work and those who manage it. Look at the employees who would rather complain about their treatment than work toward improving it. I caught on to the ways of business early on. In high school, when I worked a part-time clerical job in a hospital, there was the administrator who didn't direct so much as good day to me. Until the day I quit5, and he learned I was leaving to attend Harvard University. He saw fit then to meet me and wish me well. As if going to Harvard now made me a different person. As if as a Minimum wage part-timer I hadn't existed, didn't think, couldn't learn, or possibly do better. Yes, people are our most valuable resources - as long as the firm doesn't have to pay them much and they keep their mouths shut. Not surprisingly, I've seen many people grow bitter about their work. Settling into victim hood, some blame everyone but themselves for their job woes. Others attracted me more. These folks, programmed by the same social pressures, chose to explore less traditional tracks. I began writing about business people who brought their spiritual beliefs to work as a moral compass. I learned about managers who sought to serve both clients and employees. I sought out those for whom meaningful work outweighed the size of the paycheck. I found people who had traded high-pressure and high- paying jobs for simpler, more peaceful lives.

More than hippie throwbacks were seeking meaningful livelihoods and humane ways to do business. May be I saw this only to validate myself. My first 10 years in corporate America, I worked in managerial jobs for four Fortune 500 companies - Procter & Gamble, American Express, Harte- Hanks, and even my current parent company, Knight-Ridder. Each time I switched jobs, names and faces changed but not the phenomena. I would picture myself doing what my bosses and their bosses did and voila, I knew I would hate it. I didn't want to treat employees like generic expenses. And I never have been good at keeping my mouth shut. The truth is, it took all that time chasing MBA illusions of success to realize that the prize was booby-trapped. So five years ago by chance I found myself writing for a living. It's the only job I've managed to hold onto more than two years. I don't manage people and, I imagine, earn considerably less than classmates who graduated with me from Harvard Business School in 1983. I've never been happier. Yet more than ever, I wondered what kept more folks from finding their calling when, somehow, some people were creating both meaningful work and livelihoods. I wanted to know how we could create humane workplaces. What I could do with my own behavior, my own writing, within my own work group? For no good reason, I thought I might find better answers in the Himalayas. What I found were 17 other business people as perplexed as I was. ************ Friday, March 29, 12:40 a. m Miami time. By the streaks of red and gold outside my window, it's just after dawn. In three hours we touch down in Frankfort. A six-hour wait, then onto New Delhi. Ever since I decided to buy the plane ticket two weeks ago, I have been assailed by alternating bouts of dread and excitement. This odd business conference could push me to a higher level to a clearer direction. I'm tired of being tired. It could also be a bust. The eight-page fax from the Centers for Disease Control

listed every horrible disease I'll be exposed to in India: malaria. rabies, dengue -fever,

typhus, polio, hepatitis., parasites., etc., etc., etc. The vaccines hurt. as the doctor promised, like a kick in the pants. The guidebook warns of theft, haggling with vendors, lost passports, and the legendary Indian bureaucracy that can turn any minor glitch into days of delay. Maybe I should have stayed home. Maybe. But I will be sorry if I don't go. Crisis is a small price to pay for growth *****************

Even in the middle of the night New Delhi is hat, 78 degrees Fahrenheit, and muggy. It has taken 24 hours to get here. The air feels like Miami, enveloping me as I walk outdoors. Somewhere midair between Frankfort and Delhi, I realized I left at home all the phone numbers given me in case no one appeared at the airport to pick me up. Not to worry. As I exit customs, a small dark man in a beige uniform holds a sign with my name. No problems, no snags. Not even with the Indian bureaucracy. The man, Ravi Rao, chauffeurs me out of the airport crowds and we head south along rock-lined streets that look under perpetual construction. At 3 a.m. Delhi appears deserted, haunted only by ramshackle buildings and ghostly cows. Shuttered storefronts and living quarters look all crammed together. Ravi points to worn box-like apartment buildings. Government housing, he says. They look like the projects at home. Turning down a dirt road, houses grow in size and luxury. Past a series of closed gates, we stop at one labeled Khurana Farm. A guard slides open metal doors and another world unfolds. Inside, statues beckon toward a circular driveway, and in the darkness I make out sweeping trees, lush greenery, and an ultra modern, split-level house. "Excuse me," I ask Ravi, somewhat embarrassed. "Who is Mr. Khurana?"

Ravi hesitates. "A businessman," he says, sounding surprised. "I take it he's successful." "Mr. Khurana is the highest taxpayer in all of India," Ravi informs me. It is a description I will hear time and again, from different people in different cities during the length of my stay. ********* I learn much more about wealth, and its relative nature, in the next few days. Ravi is shocked that my Olympus camera cost $200. I am shocked when he tells me that the farm, occupied only on weekends and by occasional guests, employs about 25 servants. Having servants is not unusual, however, among the 200 million that make up India's middle class. With more than 700 million people living in miserable poverty, labor sells cheap. Imagine a country with close to 20 percent of the earth's population in the midst of an industrial revolution. Imagine the country opening its enormous markets to outsiders, and eager multinationals jumping in. This is India today. An economic free-for-all fuels opportunities for the country's entrepreneurs and educated professionals, even as foreign influences disrupt cultural traditions. Meanwhile, pervasive social problems - overpopulation, poor public health, corruption, income disparity - persist. When I meet the owner of the farmhouse, Ashwani Khurana is much younger than I imagined. Richer, too. Having made millions running a private lottery company, he is indeed one of the nation's highest taxpayers, though not its wealthiest citizen. In a country where corruption is as pervasive as poverty, paying that much in taxes means he reports more income than others who are much richer and more corrupt. Everything is relative. These days Ashwani is preoccupied with the environment. He has donated 30,000 trees to the City of Delhi in the last six years and is on track to give 70,000 more. He's already been to a previous transformational workshop in Dharamshala. He's going again, this time to meet Peter Block. ************** Sunday, March 31, 7.05 a. m, New Delhi I'm surprised at how comfortable I feel here. Of course, you can get used to servants offering tea every time you turn around. I seem not to be shocked by poverty, crowds, or the seedy-decayed looks of things outside the farmhouse. Perhaps you get used to being light years richer than folks around you. too. *************** Altogether, 18 of us are headed to Dharamshala. By the time the charter plane takes off, I've met Anil Sachdev, managing director of Eicher Consultancy Service in New Delhi and the facilitator who has organized the conference in India. I've also met Peter and Barbara Block. Both of them have backgrounds in organizational development and training, though Barbara has retired from the field. Peter still consults, now on his own since detaching from two consulting firms last year. I connected with them from the start, despite having all met while under the influence of jet lag. As a group, we meet for the first time at the airport Monday morning. Executives have flown in from all over the country - Calcutta, Madras, Mumbai, Bombay, Plune. We clamber into an 18-scat Archana Airways plane, shoehorn luggage into storage compartments, and surprisingly take off about on time. If beauty has anything to do with transformation, the process begins on the plane. Below us, terraced farms cut into the mountains like waves molded to the curving slopes. Ant-size trucks chug along roads that roller coaster around the tops of hills. Unassuming rivers trickle at the bottom of deep valleys they have carved for centuries out of the earth. Three hours later, we land on a speck of an airstrip. We are surrounded by mountain giants all green at the base, topped by white, set against a backdrop of impossibly blue, blue sky. A 40-minute drive to Upper Dharamshala gives a first taste of Himalayan life. The taxi takes hairpin turns over rutted pavement. On the right, the roadside is a sheer drop. The road feels too narrow, but oncoming cars pass. Just barely. Rhesus monkeys run, climb, stare. We drive past the Tibetan hospital where long-robed monks roam the sidewalks. Ahead, a shiny, maroon Jeep Cherokee bounces toward us. I expect tourists. I see instead four Buddhist monks inside the jeep, a sticker affixed to their windshield: Free Tibet. Those of us here for the transformation workshop fill Glenmoor Cottages, the guesthouse where we are meeting these four days. For our discussions, the furniture has been cleared out of the living room in the main house, a beautiful British-style summer residence, stone and white topped by a red tin roof. We begin after lunch, sitting on mattresses on the floor around the perimeter of the room. Someone lights a candle and Anil kicks off, innocently enough, asking folks to tell why they have come. When he says, "You can make money, and be successful, and still have values," I feel choked. The room is too small. It only gets harder for me when Anu Aga speaks. A month ago, she was in London visiting a new grandson. But everything has changed since. Her husband died of a heart attack on the way to the airport to welcome her home. Anu had been the human resource director for Thermax, the family firm in Pune south of Bombay. She's taken over as chairperson, now one of only a handful women chief executives in all of India. She's been besieged by work, business, and family demands since. Anu reveals all this to strangers without wavering, a small smile visiting her face. She doesn't sound self-pitying or bitter. Only deep circles under her eyes hint at her sorrow. The organizers figured she wouldn't make it to the conference. She figured coming would give her needed time to think. And grieve in her own way, I suspect. I, who was devastated a year ago after the death of a beloved aunt, am awed by Anu's presence. It dawns on me. Today, April I, would have been the 67th birthday of this aunt, Tia Nica - my Tarot teacher, confessor and muse. "All of use have work to do while we are here," Barbara tells the group. "We just have to get on with it.' Maybe it's the setting, or, the tone set by Anil, Dinesh and Anu. I am surprised, and impressed, by the raw honesty. In settings like this, high- powered business executives often play mine-is-bigger. Mine is the best company. Our customers love us. Workers think we're great. I see little of that posturing here. Well, just a little. "I have 600 people working under me and 1 am managing with the power of love," says M.K. Jalan, an entrepreneur from Calcutta who began importing steel and ended up building a lucrative trading business. .

Despite the bravado, his questions hit the mark for many in the room. Now 48 and set for material needs, M.K. is wondering what to do in his next 25 years. He also broaches the subject of honesty. M.K. questions: Does he really need to reveal everything to his workers, his vendors, his family'? Should he be transparent, that is, not hide those inconvenient details so easily left unsaid? What if revealing production costs to a customer is bad for business? "When I have been transparent, I lose," M.K. says. "If I tell the cost I'm honest. Then they want me to lower the price and won't pay so much." And what if his workers were to ask M.K., the man who manages with love, how much top management makes? M.K. admits, he wouldn't tell. 'How can you manage with love and hold back?" retorts K.V. Mathew, chief executive of L&T-McNeil Ltd., an equipment manufacturing company in Bombay.

K.V. has been stirring under the blanket he has wrapped around him. I'm not sure if he's agitated by a worsening flu or the discussion. He speaks faster: People are very liberal with love. But do we really mean what we say? Are we prepared to be transparent? To love unconditionally? We say to workers we want you to take ownership, to participate. Behave as owners. But when it comes to profits, we say no, the shareholders are the owners. Is this practicing what we preach? I am reluctant to speak of love, because I feel it's a big hypocrisy. I go to the orphanage and volunteer there, but I can't love those children unconditionally. I can't love them like I love my children. And I want to be able to love unconditionally.

I really like K.V. His rootedness will bring us back to earth over and over again. And M.K., who surprises me speaking little in the following sessions will be among those who visibly shift most. By now a number of folks have mentioned they, like Ashwani, have come to hear Peter Block. Last to introduce himself, Sundar Iyer takes an altogether different tack. "I am here because my boss called me up and told me I was going to Dharamshala and I said okay. I don't know what transformation leadership is. I never read any of the materials sent," says Sundar, one of two national sales managers for Silicon Graphics at the conference. Then, with apologies and a mischievous smile, Sundar adds he has never heard of Peter Block. The ice is definitively broken. The Himalayan cold seeps into the summer house. Thankfully, we are brought blankets and pots of hot chai, the ever present milky-sweet Indian tea that reminds me of my own cafe con leche. The respite is short, though. When Dinesh asks what are our "transformation" questions, out tumble those things that run around in the head when work lets up and sleep hasn't kicked in. Can anything good come without commitment and attachment? Should you do what you enjoy, or learn to enjoy what you do? What is my role in the divine play? What is the force that keeps partners together? Can we forget and forgive? Am I the image I project? What happens when you start managing perception? Isn't that manipulation'? "In the U.S.,' I say, "It's called management." Is it right to insist on your values and to change the organization? Is it possible? Or do you just do whatever the company says, accept it, put your own values aside'?

Peter tells us he is questioning his role as the expert. How much does commanding the center of attention have to do with service to others? How much is about arrogance and control? Me, I want a more humane work world, not that I know what that really looks like. We all want definitive answers to questions that don't have them. How do you use your personal transformation to transform the organization? "Your transformation is enough," Peter suggests. "Maybe that is the purpose of the business - a place where the transformation can take place. Money is just the economics that allows it to happen." ************ Tuesday (I think) April 2, 7. 1 0 a. m. Glenmoor Cottages I am sitting here on the terrace, overlooking a breathtaking valley. The new sun bathes everything in gold. Below, houses cut into the sides of the hills like jeweled steps in a staircase. Above, taller hills, covered in lush green. 7he air smells, well, clean I do not recognize the odor. At 6,300feet, we are below the snow line. Yet the room was ridiculously cold last night, until I crept under the fat quilt and tucked its sides around me as if I were a mummy. Drifting off exhausted, I could hear a few diehards singing traditional Hindu songs. ************ The colors, the coolness, the quiet here invite meditation. I smile recalling the secret of upper management once confided to me by an executive: the higher the rank, the closer the attention span approaches that of a gerbil. Some call that efficient. I'm not convinced.

You need quiet to hear your heart above the din of your ego. The static that bombards us in our daily work life too easily separates us from our own humanity. Standing still, somehow, helps us reclaim it. Standing still in the shadow of the world's tallest mountains couldn't have been a better reminder. The questions don't end by day two of the conference. But we begin to debate answers. Organizational structure, for example, reveals underlying assumptions about people and business. "We organize like a triangle, for dominion," Peter says. The chief executive occupies the top point, employees arranged underneath to carry the burden. "I long for communion, like a circle,' he says. "To be in a circle means redistribution of power." But how to get there. To go from patriarchy to community. To bridge the chasm between the managers and the managed. I argue that we should. Because long term, the only way to maximize the value produced by a group is to cultivate the productive power of each individual. And you can't goad individuals into performing at peak through control, nickel-and-diming or micromanagement. Such a transformation, like any change profound and irreversible, rarely happens overnight. Anil tells of his father, a civil planning officer in the Indian army whose career had topped out. Life after work consisted of eating, drinking and playing cards. Until one day a card buddy interrupted their game to go see a guru and Anil's father followed. The next day, Anil's father stopped drinking, and smoking and turned vegetarian. He and the family became devotees of the guru, embarking on a spiritual path that included meditation and retreats at the Chinmaya Ashram, a short drive from Dharamshala. "Change happens with respect to the changeless," Anil says. "Like a fault line, cracks develop undetected. Then one day, something happens. You realize there is something deeper. You are in touch with what really lies inside." Anil believes the only way to change the world is to change yourself. Good people make good leaders. Good leaders articulate what people really need, but only when they understand what that need is. Then the power comes from the people, not because the leader tells them what to do, but because you are describing what they want and filing a void. This describes servant leadership. Again, I am reminded of my late aunt. Anil has described a process Tia f4ica fell into naturally, though she would never have called it leadership, much less servant or transformational. Her concern was to find livelihoods, and hope, for people she cared about. She ended up transforming her dilapidated Havana community by teaching art to her neighbors. We, her family and longtime friends, called her f4ica. Professionally she was Antonia Eiriz, a Cuban painter who gathered international awards and critical praise during the 1960s. She is still recognized today. One of her works was selected for the art exhibition accompanying the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. But in the 1970s, she stopped painting. She stopped cold at the height of her professional success. As if nothing had changed, she retired to a quiet life in a wood house built by my grandfather in Juanelo, the working class barrio where she was born and where everyone knew her. Concerned about helping others develop skills and confidence, Nica began teaching neighbors how to work papier mache. The project evolved into an after-school activities program. When kids began bringing home polychrome paper roosters, parents wanted in as well. Soon, people all over Juanelo were collecting discarded newspapers, learning to draw with dots and lines, painting with Mercurochrome and sculpting with flour paste. The kids created their own theater, with their own words and masks, all captured in an award-winning documentary Art of the People. Juanelo later mounted its own papier mache exhibition. And f4ica traveled the island training other teachers. What started out as a small idea took root and bears fruit still. In Cuba today, tourists buy tie-dyed cloth and papier mache crafts descendant from the modest techniques taught by Nica in Juanelo. To this day, from seeds f4ica planted, uncounted folks earn their livelihoods from creative work. One of the first neighbors she taught works as a restorer for Cuba's National Museum of Fine Arts. Another has traveled to international crafts shows exhibiting papier mache pieces. And the man who grew up across the street from Rica is one of the most talented craft artists in the country, though he is schizophrenic and couldn't keep himself clean much less earn anything before learning papier mache. All this because of Nica, who would be embarrassed by too many accolades. Because her actions came from the heart, not the ego. And they were based on an unshakable belief in the power of people to create. Everyone can draw, paint, and create, she said. When we create from our core, we are like God. Even if the end result is a purple paper chicken, the creative process itself can transform your being. Nica saw it happen in people who never imagined they could create art. I think it was the taste of their own limitlessness. I think that's how it could be in business, too. People desire to grow, to create, to learn and improve, I believe. We want compassion and joy. It's exhilarating to shine.

What is it that stops us? What darkness drives us to build and tolerate inhuman institutions'? And what keeps us from creating human ones? ************* Geshe Sonam Rinchen, a Buddhist monk, arrives after lunch smiling, smiling. The Geshe, a title bestowed upon learned monks, bows and sits with us on the floor along with Ruth Sonam, his Oxford-educated translator. We are staring. There is something spellbinding about the Geshe's face, his beautiful smile. He radiates. He is a teacher at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, an international center for scholarly studies in Dharamsala (as spelled by the Tibetans without the second h). An hour ago, he tells us, the Library's director asked if he would meet with us at Glenmoor Cottages. He: What do they wish me to speak about'? The director: They'll tell you. Learning we are business people, Geshe Rinchen professes little knowledge of our field. Then he launches into a 40-minute extemporaneous talk: The thing about desire and attachment emotions is that when they begin, they feel like friends. But they bring trouble in the long term they are possessive. They make us reluctant to let go. Those emotions may be very attractive for a business person. He flashes a sly smile. "But if you gather in and can't let go," he squeezes his hands as if churning, until he opens them in the shape of a bowl, "you can't gather in more." I get the feeling the Geshe knows more than he owns up to. We need to weigh the impact of our actions, he suggests, both in the short and the long run. We should consider the impact not only on ourselves and our spiritual growth, but on our company, our country, even our planet. We have to control our mind, so that the mind - its anger, greed, and other disturbing emotions - doesn't control us. Without having heard M.K.'s questions about transparency, the Geshe answers them. When you feel you have to hide something, he says, ask yourself whether you should be doing that something: We all need things and money. We all need personal livelihood. But it should be earned in an honest way, within the noblest values of society. This doesn't really go against the ways of business. If what you do in the long term is exploitive and destructive, then one has to restrain one's greed, that is the desire for a quick profit. If we just talk and not change our attitudes, nothing will happen. If we change, then it has a snowball c ct. More and more people start to change. We have to change by changing our minds, the way we think. That changes the physical and verbal actions and radiates to others. When we can hold disturbing emotions at bay, we can remain calm and clear headed in the face of any obstacle. "If the thought in our heart is good, then whatever we display is okay, even anger," he says. The idea is to be like a delicious mango: ripe on the inside and ripe outside. If you can't be that mango, better to be ripe on the inside and appear tough outside. The worst mangos are those that appear ripe outside, but inside are hard as stone. The Geshe says: There is nothing wrong with going to work- If you work sincerely, with a certain amount of affection for those that ha opportunity, then work becomes a spiritual practice. If you are doing it with a good heart, then everything comes. If the employer has affection for the workforce, all the better. If all they think of is profit not so good. Translator Ruth Sonam tells us that the Geshe is touched by us, that we've come together from different cultures and are meeting here with openness and desire to learn from each other. He hasn't seen many business folks on such pilgrimages. Geshe Rinchen, from the Trehor region of Kham in Eastern Tibet, ran away from home at age 12 to join a neighboring monastery. After an uprising against the Chinese in 1959, like the Dalai Lama and other persecuted monks, he fled into exile.

The Geshe doesn't mention that more than 1 million Tibetans, from a nation of six million, have died at the hands of the Chinese since their invasion of Tibet in 1950. He doesn't talk about the 6,000 Tibetan monasteries and temples gutted, about the uncounted monks and nuns tortured, the forests stripped of trees, or the systematic attempts by the Chinese to obliterate Tibetan culture. When he is asked how he feels toward the Chinese, he answers simply:

I don't think their behavior is honest. Never mind their behavior with respect to Tibet, but with their own people. The craving for control is very strong. But 1 can truthfully say I don't feel angry. There are too many of them to get angry with. Geshe Rinchen laughs and we join him in his gentle humor.

After questioning, poking and wondering for 15 hours, after listening and

drinking chai with the Geshe, what more was left to say ?

My fears were unfounded, I decide. There was no crisis. There's nothing to

getting out of the comfort zone. I would coast the rest of the conference

Right.

Gathered after dinner, still basking in the Geshe's glow, it doesn't take long

to figure out my relaxation had been premature.

This session is about personal limitations. We are to confront our dark sides. Face the anger that torpedoes loving intentions. The arrogance that turns charity into condescension. The disturbing desires that sabotage Dinesh starts by telling of his wife. Not that he lied to her necessarily, only held back on the whole truth. 13y the time he realized she knew the truth all along, she was dying of cancer. By then, little time was left for real authenticity in their relationship. Now, he says, he only wants honest relationships. And he knows fear of intimacy gets in the way. It's a personal limitation he pushes against. For him, confronting the memories in a supportive community is a way of healing. For us in the room, the tension has grown hotter than the fire in which we are to burn whatever limitation holds us back. Like my thoughts, the hot wood sizzles and cracks - the only sounds in a silence so oppressive breathing feels difficult. I don't want to stir. I don't want to look at their faces. I don't want to know their pain. I don't want to know my own. Too late. Those that follow Dinesh speak in voices as hushed as in confessional. They expose deep hurts. I must end this affair that has paralyzed my life. I'm going to try, again, to mend my ragged marriage. I can't stand the war in my home between my mother and my wife. Others reveal studied introspection. Barbara wants to let go of her inner critic. Peter wants to let go of arrogance and the need to control. Me, I own up to craving approval. Any way you slice it, vulnerability isn't easy. Those who say nothing appear most shell-shocked. pinned by the silence that hangs between each revelation, each one of us is thinking, thinking. Who will go next? What I don't say, I obsess over in the silence. How much does fear censor my behavior? Do I, even subconsciously, tone down my writing? Why can't I curb anger and frustration'? How much energy have I wasted pretending I am someone else at work? I flash on Harvard Business School and past corporate jobs, where the game demanded dress-for-success and think-for-success. You could look forward to the ultimate career, one that began with a six-digit salary, followed by more money, fame and five-star vacations. You fired people, moved for promotions, jumped ship for a better offer. You didn't blink at marketing cancer or useless, overpriced services, or playing fast and loose with truth or the law. Business was business. I don't want that game anymore - though old programing dies hard and I know I get sucked in every now and again. There are advantages to being older. Earning enough to cover the basics, being clearer about values, I don't need promotions for show. When you don't need what the corporation offers, you have little to lose. After all, at the end of the tiring day, we suffer our demons alone. ************* Wednesday, April 2, Glenmoor Cottages, Dharamshala. You think the world will shake and change. Yet the sun rises behind the foothills, clearing the mist from the valley below as every other morning. The wooded hills still ooze peace. The demons may not be gone, but few wish to mention them the morning after. It's too soon, too raw. We comment on the power of silence. We move on. What is it that creates a community anyway'. Is it shared pain, like last night's? Is it noble purpose'? Do we need enemies - like Hurricane Andrew, the Soviet Union, or a vicious competitor - to unite a group? "How can I, or anyone else who chooses to call himself a leader know everyone's dreams? And then articulate them year after year'?" Anu asks. "What if," Peter responds, "executives had term limits?"

The ultimate goal really does make a difference.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, employees at my newspaper put forth more than their best efforts. Hundreds of us, even some who had lost their own homes, worked 14-hour days to get information out to those who needed it. Volunteers woke before dawn to deliver newspapers to ravaged neighborhoods. Strangers became concerned coworkers. We served each other and our community. There was no time, and no reason, for half-truths.

Staring at devastation beyond imagination, 2,000 employees fused in single-minded purpose: to resurrect South Florida. Were acted as one. But it didn't last. It rarely does.

After crisis passes, purpose dissipates. Colleagues who once collaborated bicker over petty territorialities. We point fingers, trying to blame anyone and everyone else for mistakes we all contribute to. Our egos hurt. Our arrogance divides us from each other, and the communities we claim to serve.

Increasing shareholder value doesn't cut it as a purpose to die for.

"Profit is a requirement," K.V. reminds us.

Profit is necessary, of course. But not sufficient. 'Profit as a purpose leads to despair. If it's the prime purpose, sooner or later, customers get exploited," Peter argues. 'Growing richer or bigger may sustain you at age 30. After that, how many Mercedes can you drive? Why does bigger mean better."

Even a big, noble goal like reducing poverty isn't enough. Peter insists:

HOW is important also. Because the end is always used by corporations as justification to do in human things. I see you as organizing agents. You are here because you are at a crisis of success. What Will I do with this prison of success? How can I renew myself, so I can renew my company? There are many great answers. It starts with you deciding you have to relate to your company in a different way. Community is not the point. It's the container. Everyone wants to know the how. How does anyone create an organizational container that nurtures honest communication and a higher purpose? Dinesh describes a South Florida bank where tellers give marbles to each other to show appreciation. M.K. says his employees have coffee together every morning. Shree Sridhar, a Silicon Graphics sales manager, recalls an office where the intercom was banished so that people would actually talk in person. In a town south of Delhi where there has been no ethnic violence, Anil tells us, Hindus and Muslims smoke around the fire together. K.V., once again, brings us back to the earth. I'm not against idealism, but we should also look at our feet. Rituals can become an opium too. That is not enough. We have to take tougher subjects: the systems, the processes, the structure. Otherwise, we end up with all this drinking coffee and hugging and end up with another religion. People find many ways to say ah-ha. M.K. now believes he can live with transparency. "The introspection really helps," he says. Others realize they have to change. That if introspection is hard, communicating honestly with others is harder. That, deep at the heart, someone else's problem is often the same as your problem. Even K.V. feels renewed faith that many, many people around the globe are interested in building better communities. Regardless of the hours we talk, we find no prefabricated answers. Peter offers us his truth. Just because there are no answers doesn't mean there is nothing I can do about it. 7'he struggle is the solution. Values and organization: we want them to come together. The ultimate test is how to take these ideas to improve the quality of lives for workers at lower levels. If you can't do that at your level, how can you ask others to do it? You have no right to demand. Demand that those who better understand their experience, at every level, find their voice and speak up. The point is not to replicate this experience. But to spread, to a large number of people, the idea that we are creating our lives. The reason blaming others is appealing is because it feels good. God gave us choice. With freedom comes wrongdoing. If there was no evil, what would happen to good? The fact that we're going to die gives meaning to what we do. If you want cultures of caring, community, and compassion, it only comes with choice and freedom. The problem is that we've created institutions designed to take away choice. Most of you are in places designed for predictability and control. If you don't have a sense of choice and freedom in your life, how can you offer it to anyone else? If I want accountability, I need choice. Anything else is business as usual, perhaps with a humane touch.

Peter seems to speak without effort, in language that flows clear and convincing. He articulates in cohesive thoughts with conviction. It is his gift. Aided I'm sure by 30 years of practice. When Peter speaks, you want to believe. Is it the power of the ideas? Or that of the speeker? Procedures without purpose are just going to fail You need the purpose to sustain you AND you need your feet on the ground. Ultimately, what you do has to survive the Tibetan plain of the marketplace. New age stuff that is like cotton candy dies in the marketplace. Yet if you get to the practical too soon, forget about the purpose. Most of my industry is willing to get to the practical without doing the grounding. As Bharat would say, we have 84 million lifetimes to go through before we get to Nirvana, and that's if there are no stops or setbacks. Peter says he's questioning his knack for drawing attention, his disposition to control. Funny how we battle hardest those things we don't like in ourselves. This is why it pays to search for your calling. To find the things we love and care about, and inspire us to create value for all of us. That's what we try to pin down on day three when we each write personal mission statements. They run the gamut: To be like a mango. To spread the word that one can be successful and lead a virtuous life. To be more introspective, experience the power of silence and be less manipulative. To follow a path as loving as possible. The statements are heartfelt. Like Barbara's: To move from the outer life to the inner; from the man made to the natural; from the complicated to the simpler lifestyle; to serve, not self-serving service, but compassionate service. To regain innocence. My calling is to write. And as 1 articulate my personal statement, 1 feel the power of intention: to use the gifts 1 have been given, particularly writing and life experience, to urge people to discover what is human in all of us. ************* We are ready for a break and it comes in a most welcome field trip to Norbulingka Institute, an arts center dedicated to preserving Tibetan culture in exile. It's been three days since I've ridden in a car and now the mountain roads seem less narrow, the drops not as threateningly steep. I have the funny sense that the pine-cloaked mountains, strong and protecting, are watching over us. Their beauty, or maybe the thin air, makes me lightheaded. Going there I really don't know what to expect. In any case, I am not prepared for this. A blue, decorated archway, superimposed on a wall of solid stone blocks, frames the entrance. Inside, the sound of running water wipes away the noise of passing traffic. Prayer flags flap in the wind. Buildings are painted in soothing blues, reds and yellows, decorated with delicate flowers and birds and an abundance of carved columns. We cross an arched wood bridge and an interior patio and head for the temple, the first floor of a red building. Lifting the red and blue flag hung over its doorway, we enter barefoot. I bring with me a white gauze, a prayer scarf given to me by a Buddhist friend for blessing. Save for a couple of elderly women, the temple is empty. And silent. Not the agonized silence of self-reproach, but an absence that sounds like surrender. Undoubtedly this is a holy place. I sit on the stone floor cross-legged, close my eyes, and disappear. When I return, the others are gone. I have no idea how much time has passed. When I join my subdued friends outside, we climb three flights to a terrace on top of the temple building for yet another breathtaking view of the Himalayan foothills. I wonder if we can see Tibet. Only after returning to Miami, do I discover we visited a place that serves as a house for the Dalai Lama, as an alternative to his main residence near the big temple by McLeod Ganj. ************* Thursday, April 4, 6:05 am, Glenmoor Cottages Last night, our last in Dharamshala, called for celebration. Ajai Singh Glenmoor's owner, built us a big bonfire to ward off the cold. 'One must thank God to live in a place such as this,'Mr. Singh told me. Glenmoor has belonged to his family 50 or so years. As a child, he came every summer and just loved the place. A few years back, he built cottages and began renting rooms. He and his family now live amid the beloved mountains year round. 'I hear you only like nice guests,' I told Mr. Singh 'God has been good,' he replied, 'to provide us only with the very best.' On this, our last morning, I am running late. I've lost my way back to Glenmoor after an early hike to the Church of St. John in the Wilderness, an idyllic spot where Lord Elgin, as in the Parthenon marbles and Viceroy of India, was buried in 1863. My heart is racing from rushing and climbing. So much for peace. I'm glad to squeak into the living room on time, breathless. We have only a couple of hours left together for final thoughts and well wishing. Sundar, who's been uncharacteristically quiet, tells us he's been bothered since the night we fed limitations to the fire. He didn't speak out then. But after much thought and little sleep, he doesn't like how he manipulates people. He calls himself dishonest. This is not easy for Sundar to get out. His voice is raspy, halting, his eyes teary. He tells how he awoke Shree, his coworker, in the middle of the night to detail how he, Sundar, had manipulated him over the years. He tells us how he vowed to Shree that he will stop. Sitting quietly nearby, Shree shows no sign of anger or mistrust. Paying the price of owning up to his demons, Sundar is being harsh with himself. It's not as if he can't be honest. Indeed, the first time he spoke to this group he was quite frank: He was at this conference because the boss ordered him here. Sundar thought he was along for the ride. As it turns out, the ride took him farther than he expected. I not sure this will be a turning point for Sundar, or for any of us. Though I can't imagine any of us ignoring this experience entirely. Each step, no matter how small or tenuous, counts. Maybe one day, like Anil's father, one of us will wake up and change an entire life. Meanwhile we slog along, taking our hits, getting lost and sidetracked, finding our path again, learning the hard way, learning to make it easier. The vans have arrived to take us to the airport. I have one last question, one I have been afraid to pose to the group: I ask for permission to write their stories. Almost in unison they nod their heads and encourage me. They tell me to use their real names. They want me to write. "Susana," K.V. turns to me "I don't want your being a part of our group to cloud your journalistic judgment." I am so amused. Here is the man who criticizes himself for not loving unconditionally and he is offering me unconditional trust. Like the tin man in the Wizard of Oz, K.V. only thinks he doesn't have a heart. My instincts were right, after all. The wheel of fortune spins. We perceive the, fates to bless some more than others. But in our jobs and outside of them, each of us chooses to make the best or worst of whatever befalls us. We solve one crisis. Another is sure to follow. As Peter observed, "This is the 22nd year of my midlife crisis." I traveled to Dharamshala afraid of finding my crisis, and found those of 17 others. We all wanted transformation to be over already. The truth is, transformation never ends. We can comfort ourselves living on the surface. But that's not enough for those who long for work that is deeper and more satisfying. Even in business and even in America. It's up to us to create it. The point isn't to go to the Himalayas. Learn to climb.