March 11, 2010
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Umberto Fedeli and Fr. Spitzer at the breakfast event for business and community leaders in Cleveland. |
News from the Center
10 Valuable Insights from Fr. Spitzer’s Roadshow
Now that he’s free to work fulltime to advance the goals of his institutes, Fr. Robert Spitzer hasn’t just hit the ground running, he’s hit the air flying. In the month since his move to his new home base in Irvine, California, Fr. Spitzer has traveled to Phoenix, Cleveland, and Denver to introduce leaders to his philosophy and promote the work of the Spitzer Center. If you haven’t had a chance to hear him speak, here’s an overview of 10 key insights derived from the trio of talks he delivered in Cleveland.
1. Culture counts.
“A culture is sometimes viewed as an intangible – as something you don’t have to pay attention to,” Fr. Spitzer said in his breakfast talk in Cleveland. But culture plays as large a role in an organization’s performance as more traditional factors like products, processes, and services.
As proof, he pointed to a study by two Harvard Business School professors that measured the impact of culture on businesses over an 11-year period. Companies with constructive, Level 3 cultures were four times more effective in growing their revenue and saw a nine-fold greater increase in stock price than companies with passive-defensive (fear-based) or aggressive-defensive (arrogant) cultures. Most significantly, they also increased profits by 756 percent while the companies with non-constructive cultures had flat profits.
The clear message: “Culture counts.”
A non-constructive culture hurts profitability because employees “engage in destructive competition,” said Spitzer. These internal conflicts “lead to a huge increase in transactional costs. That means extra rungs of supervision, extra rules and politics, lots of legal fees, and high opportunity costs.”
He told Catholic service leaders that non-profit organizations had to worry about these problems just as much as businesses do. “For us as non-profits, any increase in opportunity costs is disastrous, and transaction costs are a terrible waste of scarce resources.” Building a constructive culture “drives down opportunity costs and waste, and increases morale, creativity, and the sense of community.”
3. If you want an ethical organization, you need a constructive culture.
Fr. Spitzer advised business leaders that ethics and culture are inextricably linked. In defensive cultures where fear or arrogance dominate, the desire for self-preservation or a win-at-all-costs attitude can make people unaware, or unconcerned, that they’re breaking the rules.
That’s why compliance-based education, although necessary, is insufficient. “It’s really important that people know collusion from non-collusion and necessary disclosure from non-necessary disclosure. But if you don’t have a constructive culture, you might as well be talking to an empty room.”
4. Cultural transformation requires personal transformation.
You can’t change a culture through exhortations or training. “Cultures are composed of individuals,” said Fr. Spitzer. "You need a critical mass of individuals who are convinced that certain identity propositions around a constructive culture are a good thing for them personally.”
If an organization wants to help people achieve true personal growth, the growth has to reflect a change that benefits the whole person, not just the workplace identity. “If people believe in something internally, and they believe that it works in their personal life and in their families … they are going to bring it to work with them. And eventually, if you get 20 to 25 percent of your people bringing it to work, you will have a constructive culture.”
5. Personal transformation depends on our definition of happiness.
Fr. Spitzer’s approach to personal growth “begins with a single insight from Aristotle: ‘Happiness is the one thing we will in and for itself; everything else is willed for the sake of happiness.’ This one term we carry around in our minds is controlling our destiny because it controls our decisions and relationships.”
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Catholic service leaders listen to Fr. Spitzer (reflected in the window in the background) as he speaks at a luncheon held on the patio of the Fedeli Group's offices in Cleveland. |
6. Unfortunately, if you’re like most people, your default drive is Level 2 happiness.
It’s unfortunate because, “Level 2, taken as an end in itself, will make you miserable,” Fr. Spitzer said. The misery flows from the constant need to compare ourselves to others – “the comparison game” – and the anxiety and isolation this game provokes.
When the desire to be perceived as better than others becomes one’s purpose in life, it leads to jealousy, fear, isolation, and contempt. That’s why, in Fr. Spitzer’s words, “Level 2 is a ticket to a self-created hell.”
7. Despite our bad default settings, we still have an innate desire for higher levels of happiness.
The key to avoiding a Level 2 hell is making Level 2 serve Level 3. “If you’re Level 3, you’re not concerned over who is more intelligent or less intelligent,” said Fr. Spitzer. “You care about using your intellectual gifts to make the optimal positive difference to those around you.
“Every single one of us has within us – if it hasn’t been jaded and covered over – the desire to make the world a better place for our having lived. We can’t stand the thought of living a life that has made no difference to somebody or something beyond ourselves.” Personal growth and cultural transformation occur when this desire is liberated and made our dominant sense of purpose in life.
8. It takes time and daily effort to overcome our subconscious attachment to Level 2.
Fr. Spitzer said his former Gonzaga students found it easy to reach Level 3 but hard to stay there. “They would say, ‘I can do this for about ten minutes, then I get dragged back to where I started from.’ And I’d tell them, ‘Hey! Me too!’” He recalled the time a friend told him, “My book is about to be published!” and instead of being glad for his friend, he was envious. “So, I said, ‘Good for you, but I’m about to write a better book in six months.’
“Where did that come from? From deep within my subconscious mind.”
Fr. Spitzer said it’s possible to change your subconscious mind, but it takes daily reflection over a period of months to start making progress. And progress means that, “instead of reverting to Level 2 thinking 20 times a day, you may only do it three or four times a day.”
Addressing Legatus, Fr. Spitzer said people of faith find it very helpful to use prayer as well as contemplation to form a Level 3 identity. He said simple, spontaneous prayers “allow grace to come into our lives precisely at the moment we really need it.” The prayers can be as short as one word: Help! “Never underestimate for a moment how much God wants to hear that prayer. He responds to it, just like parents respond to their children.”
He also recommended Thy will be done. “I say it 30 times a day – I really do. And that’s because I truly believe, in my heart of hearts, that God’s will always seeks optimal goodness, optimal love, and optimal justice.” And when you do fall back into Level 2 behavior, there’s always, Make good come out of whatever harm I might have done.
10. The Spitzer Center can help as well.
The Spitzer Center for Ethical Leadership offers a variety of programs to help leaders and organizations achieve a Level 3 identity and culture. That includes cultural assessment tools like the OCI and programs like Journey to Excellence that help guide personal and cultural transformation. For more information on what the Center has to offer, you can email Executive Director Jim Berlucchi at jim@spitzercenter.org or call the Center at 734-677-7770.
By John Keenan, Editor
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Legatus members line up to have Fr. Spitzer autograph copies of his book, Five Pillars of the Spiritual Life. |
A Busy First MonthFr. Spitzer addressed the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) in Phoenix on September 16.Spitzer Center Director Joseph Janiczek arranged for him to address the Colorado Chapter of Legatus on October 1.His busiest trip was the visit to Cleveland on September 23, where Umberto Fedeli, also a director of the Center, arranged breakfast, lunch, and dinner talks.
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2. Defensive cultures tend to suffer from large self-inflicted costs.
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Last changed: Feb 16 2010 at 10:42 AM