The Spiritual Age of Business

The world is changing at a rapid pace. The kinds of businesses that are succeeding today, quite frankly, may have never made it past the development phase in prior decades. Behemoths that have dominated centuries of economic interaction are now on life support. Too many people are simply blaming this on a combination of mediocre government policy and a few corporate bad apples. But to understand that the world economy is run by some of the smartest people on earth, and then blame the whole thing on rudimentary assumptions about issues those at the top knew like the back of their hand, is disingenuous.

The true issue behind the potential collapse of the global system is a change in the fundamentals of commerce. An influx of information and a change in the way the majority of businesspeople look at the world around them has caused a major paradigm shift. And it is a shift towards a more natural, profitable way of doing business. However, it is also a shift that will seriously damage all economic institutions that refuse to adapt. We are moving into an age of business where only flexible companies that focus on their human assets, allowing the people within the firm to drive the success of the business instead of placing them in synthetic and restrictive roles, will come out ahead. This is being proven all across the modern economy, where the best places to work find healthy profit margins and the corrupt companies that once found it easy to out-compete their rivals are facing the imprisonment of their chief executives.

The best way of enhancing the human factor of your business, is to come to an understanding of the great paradigm shift that is taking place in the business community. It is a shift towards the most organic, most fluent kind of interaction between people: a more natural kind of transaction. The first thing that brought people together in order to construct something together, to create something positive, was our belief in something more than ourselves. Faith, belief, spirituality, whatever you want to call it – the main driving factor within it was the creation of more prosperous communities. Yet while the ancient Greeks may have feared not being spiritual would bring the wrath of the gods down upon their heads, today there is a more scientific approach being undertaken in introducing spirituality back into our wealth building. Today, we have the ability to realize that spirituality brings out the best in each of us individually and allows those contributions to amalgamate in such a form that the peak of human potential is reached. Instead of being spiritual in order to avoid the judgment of God, we are spiritual in order to reap the benefits of putting the good of the world ahead of ourselves.

This is the business tool of the future – creating more efficient, trustworthy, and caring networks of people in the business of raising their collective standards of living. Whether or not this translates into a global feeling of good will is yet to be seen, but it has already translated into a higher calibre business style that is stealing the hearts and minds of consumers away from old-school corporate monoliths. And this is just the beginning of a very long, very permanent, process going on all around us here in 2010 and beyond.

 

For more on this topic read God Goes to Work written by Tom Zender and available online and at bookstore everywhere. This timely book explains how successful individuals and firms are changing the way they do business by accessing and utilizing a vast reservoir of untapped energy. Learn why Spirituality is the basis for success and the most important asset you have in elevating you and your business to a new level of performance. www.TomZender.com

TOM ZENDER is President Emeritus of Unity that serves over three million people of all faiths worldwide. He is a recognized spiritual leader and corporate executive with decades of success, who has held management positions at General Electric and Honeywell, and was a Senior VP in NYSE and NASDAQ listed corporations. His corporate board experience includes NASDAQ and Toronto Stock Exchange listed companies.