From the Desk of Patricia Aburdene

Me again? Yes. I’m going for shorter, more frequent newsletters. It’s Twitteresque.

Back in Boulder (I bypassed Boston and the storm) after an exciting Miami speech for Florida Atlantic University’s Program in the Study of Spirituality — and a great audience: equally passionate about business and Spirit.

Early on, however, a sincere, if traditional gentleman, blew the whistle on our little love fest with a concern I’ve gotten before but heard with fresh ears. I’d just told the story of HP inkjet honcho Greg Merten, who added hundreds of millions to HP’s bottom line through the spiritual value of Trust (See Megatrends 2010, pp 1-2).

“I’m all for spirituality, the man said, “but not in business. What’s the motive? If it’s to make more money,” he added, “that’s not spirituality; it’s materialism!”

I honor your viewpoint, I said, but I don’t see it that way. I’d hate to shut down corporate meditation because it makes people innovative and companies profitable!

When the man continued to raise well-meant objections, the audience engaged frankly with him, some suggesting he had a “Money is Bad” bias. All in all, we had a  very lively discussion. Two hours flew by. I met new friends and went off to dinner with my old friend Astrologer Barbara Hamilton and her daughter Sarah.

But on the plane home, I recalled that Tami Simon, founder of Sounds True, the premier producer of spiritual audio programs (which starts meetings with a moment of silence and has a meditation room), chided me for connecting Spirit and profit. “I have no idea if what we do [spiritually] makes us money or loses us money,” she said with passion. “We do it because it has intrinsic value.”

Come to think of it, Greg Merten did not devote a full day every 4-6 weeks to team dynamics to enrich the bottom line. He did it to get better at relationships.

Can a questionable (read greedy?) motive impugn the value of Spirit in business? I still don’t think so. But today, thanks to a gentleman in Miami, I’d venture to say I now think the question is a healthy and thoughtful one.

Thanks to Lexie Potamkin and Nathan Katz for a memorable Miami adventure.

I just got home from the Oslo Summit and Business for Peace Award conference. Talk about an international event! Honorees and speakers came from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe to Oslo City Hall, site of the Noble Peace Prize Awards, to a spectacular room covered in magnificent murals. I’ll now describe the day’s three parts, but fair warning: I’ve saved the best for last!

Part 1: The Business for Peace Foundation, our sponsors, wowed us with welcoming videos from Nobel Peace Prize winners Muhammad Yunus and Wangari Maathai (of course, we all wished they were there in person). They then lined up Jan Egeland, Director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and negotiator the 1993 Oslo Agreement between Israel and the PLO, to moderate the day.

Mr. Egeland faced an ambitious morning in the debut of The Natural Resource Charter, a set of principles on how resource-rich, but comparatively poor countries can harness these assets for the benefit of their people. How enlightening to hear from President Festus Mogae, Botswana’s recently retired head of state, describe the ins and outs of the diamond trade, including complex negotiations with De Beers and how Botswana set up a fund earmarked for future generations. Nigeria’s Nuhu Ribadu, an outspoken crime buster, and UNIDO’s Dr. Kandeh Yumkella rounded out the African perspective.

Next a team of resource experts headed by Stanford University Professor Michael Spence, the Nobel Prize winner in Economics, introduced the Charter, reviewed its guidelines and opening the floor for debate.

Part 2: The overall conference theme: “The World in Recession –- A Call for a More Ethically Aware Capitalism?” was certainly a perfect intro to Conscious Capitalism and I was thrilled to speak during Part 2, which began with a frank and enlightening keynote by China’s top trade negotiator Mr. Long Youngtu, Secretary-General of Asia’s Boao Forum (The Norwegians explained that Boao is a sort of Asian rival to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.) Mr. Long candidly reported that once China understood the potential of “win-win” negotiations – a foreign concept until recently - its trade relationships could really move forward.

In preparing my talk, I came across (well, actually, it was my researcher Joy Moloney) three green Norwegian initiatives that knocked my socks off and fit right into the Values-driven Consumer module. Here they are:

• Norway vowed to be carbon neutral by 2050, then changed it to 2030!
• 80 Oslo buses run on sewage & save half a Euro per liter. Emissions? Zero!
• Norway is testing less expensive, “floating” wind turbines, which will revolutionize the wind sector with turbines in deep ocean waters.

Norway, home of solar pioneer REC, might be the green capital of Europe.

Former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, now president of the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights, offered the “Western” view. George Washington University professor Tim Fort, my colleague from Conscious Capitalist “Club,” spoke via satellite. In a lively panel after our talks, Professor Juan Carlos Echeverry from Universidad de los Andes and Borge Brende, Managing Director of the World Economic Forum and former Norwegian minister, joined in.

Part 3: The day culminated in our meeting the seven finalists for Business for Peace Award: Sweden’s Anders Dahlvig, CEO of furniture giant IKEA; Sudan’s Dr. “Mo” Ibrahim, founder the Prize for Achievement in African Leadership; Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Jameel, whose Grameen-Jamel Pan Arab Initiative focuses on micro credit; The USA’s Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric and the force behind green initiatives; Uganda’s Josephine Okot, founder of Victoria Seeds, China’s Jiang Jianqing, Chairman of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and China’s Zhengrong Shi, CEO of Suntech Power. For more details on the finalists’ outstanding achievements, please visit: www.businessforpeace.no

It was my great fortune to spend time with finalist Josephine Okot, the dynamic seed entrepreneur, and to discover her awesome work transforming northern Uganda refuges into farmers (Talk about microfinance) and her devout supporter and friend the UK’s Alison Hall, IBMer by day, Victoria Seed enthusiast in her off duty hours.

Who “won?” They all did – and Business for Peace wisely emphasized this point. Nevertheless, the top prize and the exquisite sculpture entitled “The Just Man,” (pictured above) by Bruce Naigles, an American sculptor living in Norway, went to IKEA’s Anders Dahlvig. (Fun for me because in my remarks, I’d cited IKEA’s Value/Values proposition: “Champagne Taste on a Beer Budget.”)

The Personal Part: My time in Oslo was particularly rich personally. I made many Norwegian friends, like Inge, Kat, Anne Lise, Nicolai, Jon, Johan and Borge, Special thanks to Per Saxgaard and Anne Lene Hompland for inviting me and for their warm hospitality. Finally, I thank Bjorn Vestgaard, a Crimson Circle fan like me, and project manager for Oslo’s proposed World Trade Center. Bjorn recommended me to Business for Peace and made this whole, wonderful adventure possible.

Frankfurt. Early one Monday morning in late Feburary, I look out at 70 or so business people, mostly middle-aged men. A few of them look as if they might want to duck out for a second cup of coffee. I myself am wondering how well it is going to go over for an American to preach corporate responsibility here. After all, when Europe pioneered the social side of Conscious Capitalism decades ago, American called it Socialism. That said, the spiritual side of Conscious Capitalism — how managers, consumers and investors embody values like integrity, compassion and purpose – is, from what I’ve seen, of growing interest to Germans.

In any event, I’ve done my homework: I’m armed with German examples of ultra-green consumer trends and great German companies who’ve won the International Spirit at Work Award or a spot on the Sustainable Business (SB) 20. Or rather Joy Moloney has done my homework. Joy (then Van Elderen) my researcher on past megatrends books, is back on board, finding facts and figures still astound me.

Traveling to Frankfurt, I’ve come across some interesting finds, too. In Paris to change planes, I grab a Herald Tribune. There on page one are headlines that will surely concern my audience, “Germany Inc. gets wake-up call: First jail sentence in VW scandal” and “Liechtenstein a ‘tax haven’?” My friend and colleague Sabine Beidemeyer, whom looked forward to visiting in Frankfurt, had briefed me on both these stories People were shocked, she said, that a prominent executive stashed his cash in nearby Liechtenstein. Tax audits revealed he was hardly alone.

It was beginning to look as if Germany were facing its own version of the 2001 U.S. “accounting scandals” which catapulted Socially Responsibility Investing and the Spirituality in Business to prominence.

Back in front of my audience, I hold up the Tribune, read the scandalous headlines and watch several heads nod. Now, I alert them to the French economic journal “Enjeux” whose cover story seems written just for me. My French-born life and business partner Alain Bolea and I often discuss how open the French are to social values, while remaining ambivalent at best to any reference to spirituality. Imagine my reaction then to Enjeux’s cover story: “Comment manager sans perdre son ame,” that is, How to manage without losing your soul.

Bingo. (Or maybe Voila!) Maybe the word “soul” plays better in France than “spirit.”

Between Volkswagen, Liechtenstein, saving your soul, a few German examples and a lot of numbers, I am beginning to come across to the group. Frankly, I’d was a bit nervous (My international experience with spirituality in business not always been great. But I’ll save that story for another time). Today I feel little resistance, if any. This audience is in fact open. They keep eye contact, smile sometimes signal their agreement. Later, many chat with me, share their own stories, say they liked my talk.

This is all great because my news is that I have a German publisher! When I saw seen Sabine last fall at the International Spirit at Work Awards conference in Atlanta, I’d complained about my lack of a German pub.

“I know just the right one,” she said confidently. “I will talk to them.” Next thing I know, I get an offer from J. Kamphausen, who published Lance Secretan’s book – and Eckhardt Tolle’s too. A great company. Thank you, Sabine. I tell you: there is nothing like the magic of my goddess friends!

Thanks, also to Nadja Rossman, my new editor at Kamphausen, whom I met in Frankfurt and who interviewed me in the beautiful and famous “Writer’s Bar,” at the Steigenburger Frankfurter Hof, where I am told, “Everybody” gets together at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Nadja asks me the most thoughtful, amazing questions I’ve ever gotten. She makes me think and pulls out the best answers. You’ll find the PDF of another interview she did earlier this year in the German “exist enzielle,” a magazine for women entrepreneurs. Nadja’s next story will appear in a journal for HR managers.

Stay tuned…

The Swedish coaching firm “Lots/Mindo” whose CEO Hans Akerbloom, I met at the World Business Academy’s Global Mind Change Forum in September 2005, brought me to Sweden the first week of May.

Before I even got there, a huge article appeared in “Dagens Industri,” Sweden’s Wall Street Journal. There were several exciting events, including lunch with Scandinavian Business Leaders in a historic Stockholm hotel and several days at a conference center surrounded by parks and forests outside of the city center. Megatrends 2010 made the TV news twice!

Initially I worried that Scandinavia (which practically invented Conscious Capitalism) might not appreciate hearing about it from a U.S. based author. How wrong I was. Not only did folks feel revitalized by the message, they were excited to extend their take on Conscious Capitalism into the spiritual side.

Scandinavians speak English very well (and often other languages too) but I have to report an intriguing linguistic episode. One conference participant shared, “So Patricia is talking about the shift from brain storming to brain stealing.”

Damn I thought, I NEVER said anything about stealing people’s brains. Turns out I misunderstood. He really meant “brain stilling,” as in meditation. Yes, exactly! (Brainstorming is still a great tool, especially after brain stilling.)

Spring got off to a great start at the Virginia Festival of the Book. I was delighted so many of you emailed to say you liked the talk at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, later broadcast on CSPAN’s “Book TV” It was also covered by a local station. Pop me an email if you want the DVD.