Pure in Heart

For Jesus the Pharisees had mixed motives, they were not pure in heart. According to Matthew 21:31 a prostitute, with her clear motives, will enter heaven before a two-faced Pharisee. In modern language we would probably talk about being focused, or having integrity, or being self-aware.

The wrong target, clearly understood and consistently pursued, will result in greater progress than the best target that receives less than full attention. The humble person will accept that his or her targets will often be wrong. But the pure in heart will not allow the potential of being wrong dissuade them from focus, discipline, and doing what is possible.

The same humility will also help avoid obsession over the wrong target or confusing targets for purposes. Targets can change. Purposes should be much more persistent.


Target by Jasper Johns

Our ultimate purpose, according to Jesus, is to claim our authentic self and contribute to a just community. The targets we choose for advancing this purpose are important, but always provisional, and sometimes wrong, but still potentially helpful.

Bob Waterman and Tom Peters have argued famously that “attention is all there is.” According to these long-time McKinsey consultants the most important job of a manager is to decide what will be given attention.

How does change come about? First, and not so obvious it is the quantity of attention paid to the matter at hand rather than the quality, odd as that statement might sound. When senior folks… start to focus on a newish “it”… then the rest of the organization starts to pay attention to “it.” And what gets attended to gets done. Thus, if you want to focus on quality, Focus on quality, period. If you haven’t focused on quality a lot before, you won’t know exactly what to talk about at first. Conversations will drag, will be abstract. It doesn’t matter a whit. Everybody will eventually get the drift – that you’re focused on quality (and not some other, former priority – and equally important message). It doesn’t have to be a good conversation about quality, just a conversation about quality. In some fashion, pay significant attention to the blemmies, and somehow the blemmie rate goes down. Not because of a specific program you invented, but because of the energy that comes to be focused on “it.” (Peters and Austin, page 270)

The purpose is fulfilling the potential of the enterprise. The current target is reducing the blemmie rate. The clear motive can contribute to achieving the ultimate purpose.

Is reducing the blemmie rate the crucial target that must be achieved to advance the purposes of the enterprise? Who can know for certain? But if you sincerely perceive a crucial connection and you consistently pursue the target you should, at least, further clarify the relationship between that target and your purpose – as long as you do not confuse target with purpose.

This confusion was the fundamental error of the Pharisees. In their pursuit of righteousness the Pharisees developed a series of very ambitious targets. They pursued the targets – mostly related to pious living – with great consistency but too often without much self-criticism.

Overtime many Pharisees forgot their original motivation and purpose, and replaced it with satisfaction in achieving targets. Rather than righteousness, they settled for self-righteousness.

Clarity, sincerity, consistency, and humility are keys to being pure in heart. If we are very clear about our purposes, sincere in selecting targets to advance those purposes, consistent in pursuing our targets, and humble in assessing progress in achieving our purposes we are much more likely to differentiate the real from the unreal. For Jesus the ultimate reality is knowing God.

In business our realities are considerably less profound.

Merciful

Today mercy is used mostly in a religious or legal context. We throw ourselves on the mercy of God or the mercy of the court. In both cases, the implication is we are being judged and asking for a generous decision.

To be merciful is most often understood as forgiving and, perhaps, especially to extend a kind of undeserved forgiveness.

This kind of mercy is discussed by Jesus and others in the Bible, but this is probably not the mercy that Jesus refers to in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is almost certainly discussing the Hebrew רחם or racham, which is much closer to the English for empathize, or identify-with, or deeply-know, or even love.

Racham is the concept of mercy most often used in Isaiah and which is most coherent with the prophet’s focus on justice, righteousness, and peace. In Isaiah 49:15 we read, “Can a woman forget her sucking child that she should not have mercy on the son of her womb.” This use of racham is sometimes translated as compassion or love. There is such a deep sense of common identity that the other is treated as the self.

This profound sense of empathy produces a kind of understanding that may seem generous to those outside the relationship. But for the truly merciful they are not being generous, they are being just. Through their shared identity with and understanding of the other they are able to make a judgment that is entirely appropriate for the context.

The ability to authentically empathize is considered a key factor in emotional intelligence. Warren Bennis, in his classic study of corporate leadership, identifies empathy as a critical skill in getting people on your side. He quotes former Lucky Stores CEO Don Ritchey to make the point, “I think one of the biggest turn-ons is for people to know that their peers and particularly their bosses not only know they’re there but know pretty intimately what they’re doing and are involved with them on an almost daily basis, that it’s a partnership, that you’re really trying to run this thing well together, that if something goes wrong our goal is to fix it, not see who we can nail.” (On Becoming a Leader, page 147)

Humility and empathy are complementary conditions. One of the most counter-productive attributes of leadership is misplaced empathy, or what psychologists would call projection. In this situation, rather than perceiving what the other feels, we project on the other what we feel. This is as a big a turn-off as real empathy is a turn-on.

Outside our organizations a keen sense of empathy can be a great competitive advantage in marketing. An authentic empathy may be the best differentiator between sales and marketing. The salesman wants you to buy something regardless of your needs. A marketing effort is – or should be – focused on responding to authentic needs.

For Jesus being merciful is coming to know and understand others as well as you know and understand yourself. In such a relationship you will naturally honor the authentic character and value of the other. In so honoring the other you will act justly. In this way both justice and righteousness are achieved.

Originally the English word mercy was much more coherent with the teaching of Jesus. The word is derived from the Latin word, merces, which means the price of goods or wages. In exchanging fair value for fair value we are behaving in accord with the original meaning of mercy.

Hunger and Thirst

The first three preconditions for strategic insight – humility, learning from experience, listening and cooperating – are focused on self-control. But in the fourth, and again in the final beatitude, there is encouragement for self-expression.

Jesus taught: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Righteousness is a difficult concept. The English word suggests “being right,” but this tends to beg a question rather than provide an easy answer. What is right?

The Greek in which the Gospel of Matthew was originally written uses the term: dikaiosune. For the ancient Greeks dikaiosune was the quest for the right way to live. The nature of dikaiosune is the central issue in Plato’s Republic. Aristotle used the term to describe the well-balanced or well-ordered life.

The book of Isaiah uses the term tsedaq which implies a condition of being spiritually clean. When we are righteous we are clean; we are restored; we are renewed. The implication is we have reclaimed an earlier and more fundamental identity. This is almost certainly the concept of righteousness to which Jesus was referring. For Jesus our true self is an expression of God and represents the outcome of our relationship with God.

Jesus congratulates us if we hunger and thirst for finding our true self. Until we become our true self we are empty, weak, and distracted. Only in claiming our true self and behaving consistently with our true self will we experience fulfillment.

For business leaders this strategic insight relates to both individuals and organizations.

What is the strength of each individual? How can management unleash and focus that strength? What is the firm’s core competence? How can management deploy and refine that competence?

Answering these questions provides much of the explanation for why the strategy of each enterprise will be different. The individuals involved are always unique. The organization’s core competence – emerging from these individuals, the mix of customers, the culture, and so many other contingencies – will never be the same as even the closest competitor in the most generic product-line.

Margaret Wheatley, an American management consultant, writes:

Companies organized around core competencies provide a good example of how an organization can obtain internal stability that leads both to well-defined boundaries and to openness over time. A business that focuses on its core competencies identifies itself as a portfolio of skills rather than as a portfolio of business units. It can respond quickly to new opportunities because it is not locked into the rigid boundaries of preestablished end products or businesses. Such an organization is both sensitive to its environment, and resilient from it. In deciding on products and markets, it is guided internally by its competencies, not just the attractiveness or difficulty of a particular market. The presence of a strong competency identity makes the company less vulnerable to environmental fluctuations; it develops an autonomy that makes it unnecessary to be always reactive.

The core competence of a firm emerges from a wide array of interrelationships. If recognized, the core competence can be refined and enhanced. Too often it is neglected and never finds its potential.

The authentic self also emerges from a wide array of interrelationships. The potential of the authentic self is dependent on the choices that each of us make to nurture or neglect our true self.

Thomas Merton, a Twentieth Century mystic in the Catholic tradition, writes:

A tree gives glory to God first of all by being a tree. For in being what God means for it to be, it is imitating an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree… With us it is different. God leaves us free to be whatever we like. We can be ourselves or not, as we please… There is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace, and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find him, I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him. (Seeds of Contemplation, pages 24-29)

Wheatley argues that during periods of profound change the ability of an enterprise to respond rapidly and effectively to feedback requires a “strong competency identity.” It is this fundamental sense-of-self that provides an essential stability in the midst of dramatic environmental fluctuations. She writes:

Self-reference is what facilitates orderly change in turbulent environments. In human organizations, a clear sense of identity – of the values, traditions, aspirations, competencies, and culture that guide the operation – is the real source of independence from the environment. When the environment demands a new response, there is a reference point for change. This prevents the vacillations and the random search for new customers and new ventures that have destroyed so many businesses over the past several years. (Wheatley, page 94)

Righteousness is discovering who we are meant to be and becoming that unique expression of God that is available to no other person.

The core competence of an enterprise can be understood as the sum of righteousness found in its relationships. Each employee, investor, and customer is seeking his or her authentic self. Nurturing this seeking provides the firm a unique position and a sustainable competitive advantage.

In our organizations, we should hunger and thirst for finding our core competence and keeping faith with it. In our individual lives, Jesus proclaims we should hunger and thirst to find our true self. We should behave as if our very existence depends on finding ourselves.

In today’s rapidly changing world without a unique sense of self it is unlikely that either organizations or individuals will survive much less flourish.

Meek

Translated from the original Greek in which the gospel was written, we read “Blessed are the meek.” The ancient Greek πραΰς or praus can imply lowly and, perhaps, oppressed.

But the word Jesus used was almost certainly the Hebrew term used in Isaiah. This is ‘arnav which is much closer to the English word “gentle.” In the context of Isaiah ‘arnav is also suggestive of those who “cooperate in the purposes of God” or who are ready to listen to God. So we can understand this beatitude as, “Congratulations to those who listen and cooperate with God.”

In a business context: Congratulations to those who listen and cooperate with what they hear.

In recent years business processes have increasingly focused on generating “feedback” from shareholders, customers, employees, and others. The term feedback originates from theories of quantum physics and complex adaptive systems. These are scientific fields that study the natural reality of order within chaos.

Fundamental to these theories is the recognition that systems characterized by chaos are also the most resilient systems and those most likely to keep growing. Since change and growth are so important to business leaders, they have been quick to see potential lessons-learned in translating the reality of quantum physics to the reality of business.

A key characteristic of complex adaptive systems is how they listen and cooperate with feedback. In these systems there is a constant exchange of energy between events that are subtly yet profoundly connected. When feedback is rapidly assimilated by the system, the system changes and grows. This often involves a radical re-ordering of the system. But order is usually maintained.

The illustration above shows two regions of space for a Hénon map where the system is self-organizing around a strange attractor. (Michelitsch and Rössler 1989). Weisstein, Eric W. "Hénon Map." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HenonMap.html

The principal impediment to the preservation of order-within-change is a rigidity that rejects feedback. In such cases the result is entropy and eventual elimination.

In modern business we seek to measure and track everything we can. This is – or should be – the first step in listening. The feedback we receive from market surveys, employee meetings, focus groups, sales reports, financial statements, and more can help us understand how the future is taking shape. A strategist – like a quantum physicist – will be especially interested in tracking the relationships between these various sources of feedback.

As we review the results of feedback we can choose to cooperate with the emergent future or we can try to resist it. The insights of quantum physics would advise cooperation.

So would Jesus: Blessed are those who listen and cooperate with God.

Mourning

We mourn our losses. We mourn no longer being with friends and colleagues. We mourn the death of hopes and dreams. We mourn the passing of our youth and the sense of boundless possibilities.

But with each business failure we learn – or have the chance to learn – a great deal.

There is in the popular culture a tendency to quickly move past disappointments. This is not what Jesus taught. He said, “Blessed are those who mourn.” Another translation is, “Congratulations to those who grieve.”

Chrysostom asserts that to mourn is, once again, a chance for greater self-command. He preached, “This commandment is fitted to teach us entire self-control… For they that mourn, mourn for misdoings, and to such it is enough to enjoy forgiveness, and thereby to answer for themselves.” In mourning we reflect on the failure – large or small – seeking answers. When we find the answers, in mourning we will also accept responsibility for our role in the failure.

Chrysostom’s modern successor is evidently Peter Drucker who writes, “Management by objectives and self-control makes the commonweal the aim of every manager. It substitutes for control from the outside the stricter, more exacting, and more effective control of the inside. It motivates the manager to action, not because somebody tells him to do something or talks him into doing it, but because the objective task demands it.” (Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, page 442)

When the manager fails to achieve the objective set out, he or she should mourn, seek to understand why, and examine any personal role in the failure.

Mourning is different from “being sad.” Mourning is a structured process of learning and recovery. In modern Judaism there are three stages of mourning: shiva, sholshim, and yizkor. The first-century Jesus would recognize the basic structure, if not the details of this structure.

Shiva is a seven day period of personal and community grieving. Shiva embraces the suffering that is part of loss and gives us a chance to fully engage the suffering. During shiva the mourners avoid washing clothes, getting a haircut, wearing new clothes, trimming their nails and other acts that would obscure the reality of suffering. Shiva focuses on finding meaning in the loss.

For twenty-three days after completing shiva, mourners gradually reenter everyday life. This period of shloshim encourages the mourners to integrate the meaning uncovered during shiva into their daily life. This is an intentional but gradual process.

Thirty days after the funeral the period of mourning comes to a close. But on significant holidays a ritual of remembrance is practiced. This Yizkor is designed to keep alive the memory of the meaning found through mourning.

The structured process of mourning is focused on finding meaning or making meaning from the loss. If we engage our losses mindfully we will find meaning. This is why mourners are congratulated. By intentionally reflecting on what we have lost and why we have lost it, we will find meaning and the chance to apply that meaning to the rest of our life.

Business leaders should embrace every loss, go through a structured process of learning from the loss, and actively apply what they learn to future work.

(The eight principles for strategic insight can be found in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter five, verses one to twelve.)

Poor in Spirit

St. John Chrysostom’s fourth century sermon on the beatitudes insists that to be poor in spirit is to be “humble and contrite in mind.” The Saint also suggests, “He blesses them first, who by choice are humble and contract themselves.” Self-righteousness is avoided through purposefully cultivated humility.

Humility is not a virtue that immediately leaps to mind when considering most business leaders. Partly this is an artifact of media coverage. There is a tendency to focus on the flamboyant, such as Donald Trump or Larry Ellison. We probably hear the most about those who are accused of serious wrong-doing, such as Bernard Madoff or Dennis Kozlowski. Excessive humility seldom seems to be the charge.

Psychometric studies of a broad range of business managers find that, in fact, introverts are much more common in the executive suite than in the population at large. Humility is a very pragmatic virtue for business leadership. The humble person is inclined to ask more and listen better. Humility encourages self-reflection and self-correction. Admitting mistakes is important in building trust with others, especially those who may be dependent on you.

When I was in my twenties and thirties I often envied those peers who seemed free of self-doubt. There are certainly situations where this kind of confidence can be helpful. Start-ups – when something has to be created from nothing – can especially benefit from an impervious sense of personal destiny.

But by the time I was in my forties, most of my doubt-free colleagues had either burned-out or seemed to be churning through one “sure bet” after another. A few who got in early on the dot.com bubble took home a great deal of cash, but that experience, if anything, seemed to encourage humility rather than confirm confidence.

Despite my own tendency toward self-doubt, I have spent most of my professional life in start-ups. By the time I was working on my third or fourth business plan I had become very thankful for my tendency toward doubt. Doubt is realistic. Doubt is a good discipline.

A start-up, like many aspects of business-life, involves stepping off into the unknown. You can very seldom be sure what is coming next. To be strategic means engaging in an explicit process of attempting to anticipate what is most likely to be coming at you and what you want to do about it. This involves listening to others, reflecting on your own experiences, and asking questions of yourself and others. Doubt, uncertainty, and humility stimulate helpful questions.

When someone announces, “failure is not an option,” doubt is an appropriate response. Not only is failure an option, it is – at some level – almost assured. This kind of impervious confidence is a suspension of reality.

No great enterprise can be constructed entirely on the foundation of an individual’s tsedaq. No matter how profound the individual gift, it requires being worked out in community. The greater the individual gift, the greater the need for humility.

St. Chrysostom claims, “For as pride is the foundation of all wickedness, so is humility the principle of self-command.”

(The eight principles for strategic insight can be found in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter five, verses one to twelve.)

Strategic Attitude

The strategic environment for each enterprise is different. Even in the same market a strategy appropriate for one enterprise will seldom be best for another. Making the right strategic choice for the particular context and capabilities of an enterprise requires an extraordinary level of self-discipline and self-awareness on the part of senior management.

Before beginning his ministry Jesus put himself through a sustained period of personal testing. In the gospel of Matthew (Chapter 4) three particular temptations are reported: physical desire, pride, and power. In each case Jesus rejected the temptations as contrary to his fundamental identity with God.

The passion that drives performance can be difficult to direct. In the Hebrew Scriptures, King David is the classic case of great achievements clouded by failures of equal stature. David succumbed to physical desire with Bathsheba and suffered the consequences (2 Samuel:11); David’s pride in his son Absalom (2 Samuel 13-18) nearly destroyed the kingdom; David sought to over-extend his personal power (1 Chronicles:21) and seventy-thousand died as a result.

Scan the business headlines and David is clearly not alone. Great accomplishments are tarnished by indulging a personal preference with corporate money; or a sense of personal pride interferes with developing the next generation of executives; or an attempt to expand too quickly or too widely implodes.

External threat analysis, competitor analysis, and other efforts to understand what is happening outside the enterprise are important. But even more important to developing an effective strategy is internal assessment of competencies and fundamental characteristics. Self-assessment by the CEO and others involved in strategy development is essential.

Jesus began by focusing on his own character. In the wilderness he recognized the powerful potential to confuse his personal needs with the needs of his mission. Throughout his ministry we can see Jesus engaging in self-reflection and encouraging his disciples to do the same.

There is a stereotype of the entrepreneur who can never make the shift from creator to sustainer. A similar stereotype is the successful salesman who can never manage others, or the brilliant engineer who always complains that his creation will work wonderfully if users would just follow the instructions.

In each case the stereotype is most dramatic when the individual has discovered his or her own tsedaq – or personal identity with God – that empowers confident creativity. But in these examples tsedaq is not balanced with mishpat. There is righteousness but not justice. This is self-righteousness.

Self-righteous people are poor strategists. In fact they are dangerous strategists. Like David resisting the counsel of Joab, they tend to get people killed (or at least lose jobs or money).

Righteousness without justice focuses on the self to the exclusion of the community; it promotes the self and, at best, patronizes others. When the power of tsedaq is unbridled from the requirements of mishpat, the self oppresses the community. One of the principal features of the ministry of Jesus is his impatience with the self-righteous. He would reach out lovingly and patiently to sinners of almost every sort – except the self-righteous.

Error – even profound failure – can be helpful to everyone, except the self-righteous. David failed, but he also accepted responsibility. While others learn, the self-righteous blame. Self-righteousness obscures every truth except that which is convenient to the individual’s idolatry of self.

Jesus warned of the unreality of self-righteousness in quoting Isaiah, “You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes.” (Matthew 13)

Cultivating a balance of righteousness and justice – and avoiding self-righteousness – is at the very core of the teachings of Jesus. Only when the balance is achieved can we perceive reality and deal effectively with reality. In more common business terms we might say that cultivating a balance of personal confidence and commitment to the community is fundamental to fulfilling our purpose and potential.

The ancient word from which tsedaq was derived originally meant to clean. To become righteous is to reclaim our original condition, to rediscover our fundamental purposes. To become your true self is to become righteous.

There is enormous power and potential in becoming our true selves. But according to Jesus – building on Isaiah – it is only within community that we become our true selves. The ancient Hebrew for justice originally meant “to fit” as a lintel fits a doorway. Our true self must fit with the needs of the community – not visa versa.

Some true selves – certainly not all – have the ability to be strategists. In the Bible these are men and women who perceive clearly and move forward realistically. They understand the fundamental nature of the human condition and the social environment in which they are operating. They are sometimes prophets, sometimes judges, sometimes kings, and sometimes generals. Their role changes with the needs of the community. They share an accuracy and acuteness of perception.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus outlines eight spiritual disciplines for engaging reality:

Blessed are the poor in spirit…
Blessed are those who mourn…
Blessed are the meek…
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…
Blessed are the merciful…
Blessed are the pure in heart…
Blessed are the peacemakers…
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.

Over the next eight days we will examine each of the preconditions for strategic insight.