Shrinking the Camel
My friend Joan Ball over at Beliefnet recently attended a “Trust Summit” at the Harvard Club in New York City, where authors of the business books Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence (by social media gurus Chris Brogan and Julien Smith) and The Trusted Advisor (by David H. Maister, Charles Green and Robert M. Galford) were the featured speakers. The topic was how to build trust among your business constituents.
Their presentations were followed by a lengthy Q&A session, which Joan describes in her Blog post, “What Churches Can Learn from the Harvard Business School.”
After the line of social media experts had exhausted the authors with 90 minutes of questions attempting to decipher what these gurus might tag as the Next Big Thing, Joan stepped up to the microphone and asked a real good, simple question – one that all of us who are interested in business and spirituality will appreciate:
“How does a leader teach matters of virtue in an organization?”
Joan goes on in her Blog post to describe author Charles Green’s answer, as he discusses some interesting points about the need to shift capitalism philosophy away from one of pure competition to one of commerce, built on true relationship ethics. But then he throws out the real zinger:
“…the ultimate paradox is we need more ‘Buddhist Capitalism’. The best way to make money is to stop trying to make money. The best way to sell people is to stop trying to sell them. By serving customers, you will end up making a lot more money that someone who is trying to extract every last penny from their wallets. But not if you set out with it as your objective.”
He’s right, of course, but — Buddhist Capitalism? How did Jesus end up missing the boat here? Why not Jesus Capitalism? Or Christian Capitalism? Last I checked, Jesus was pretty much into authentic servanthood, too.
So there you have it. As Mr. Green and his fellow intelligencia in the Harvard Club are promoting a kinder, gentler business model for the future of commerce, they find a handy role model in Buddhism. For some odd reason, Christianity never made it out of the church pew to hit their radar screen as a compelling model of spirituality in commerce. I wonder why?
This may serve as a wake-up call for some Christian leaders in the business world, as it reveals – well, at the Harvard Club anyway – that the Buddhists have apparently become more spiritually relevant to our culture than Christians.
So, thanks, Joan, for asking the question. But now I have another shocking question for everyone:
What do you think Christian business leaders can learn from the Buddhists?
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