Next Page> 1 2 3 4 5

First, some of our resources:

1. Invincible hope: Recall that core to the Christian tradition that animates every Jesuit apostolate represented here is this extraordinary scripture verse, “For she who was thought to be barren is now in her seventh month. For nothing is impossible with God.” Hope makes the Christian’s attitude toward crises and problems fundamentally different than the attitude of those who rely on human resources alone—how much more powerful when hope is shared by the full team engaging the problem at hand. That hope, of course, is but one dimension of a second enormous resource we all draw upon, namely:

2. Shared faith in Christ Jesus, indeed, affiliation with a Society in His name: Even before considering the remarkable content of our faith, let’s not take for granted the incredible human power of any shared tradition. Faith bestows on this group a common language, common values, a common priority system: I can think of no multinational company engaged in as varied business lines as are represented in this room that could so easily find common explanation for being in those businesses, the values that need to motivate employees working within them, and so on. This shared faith, even in its human aspect, gives us an incredible leg-up over the great majority of human enterprises in attacking problems. Not even to mention, of course, the extraordinary content of that faith, and the shared opportunity for connection, consolation, and communion, not just with each other, of course, but with the Divine. Over these three days, attendees will pray together formally at least a half-dozen times; and just think of all the individual prayer of intercession, contemplation or discernment that will take place. No secular company on earth draws on that kind of unifying force…Those oil rig workers bobbing in the ocean next to burning oil rigs look skyward and place their trust in fallible human beings piloting far from perfect helicopters. Those gathered here look to surer support.

3. Everyone in this room inherits in some respect the legacy of what is probably the most incredible franchise in the history of organized religion. For over 400 years our predecessors have created a track record that has been to institutional religion what my JP Morgan was to investment banking, or, I say with hesitation here in the Maryland province, what the NY Yankees have been to baseball. I’m not aware that the Vatican has kept similar league tables of religious orders; but if they did, the Jesuits would surely boast an equally impressive record.
Any marketers in the room know that strong franchises are mysteriously resilient: It’s hard to kill a good brand. Johnson and Johnson, Coke, and McDonalds have in our lifetimes easily survived blunders that would have doomed marginal players in their industries. We today can thank our predecessors for giving us margin for error: it should spur our willingness to experiment, knowing that no one mistake will doom the Ignatian project. There is still more beauty to the power of franchise: clients and customers, truth be told, tend to think you’re better than you actually are. We shouldn’t feel apologetic or embarrassed about that, but honor our predecessors by investing wisely the brand capital they’ve bequeathed us: the Ignatian or Jesuit label can help jump start and win credibility for initiatives that would be beyond the capacity of other religious orders to mount.

4. We have an incredible track record of surmounting crises against all odds. The Jesuit company has throughout its long history grappled with crises that will make our current predicament seem like a normal days work. Imagine, for example, if we were sitting here in 1814, figuring out how to revive a company that hadn’t existed in 40 years. Or, those here from Georgetown, Scranton, or Wheeling who today summon help by e-mailing the Provincial or advertising in the Chronicle of Higher Education, might imagine how predecessors in the 1790s, working for a suppressed company, summoned help from Eastern European Jesuit colleagues with whom they had no working relationship and about whom they knew nothing. Jesuit predecessor generations have been suppressed globally, thrown out of more countries than you or I could count, in some cases multiple times; the founders were told by the pope that their global membership would not be permitted to exceed 60. In short, any true Ignatian team is good in a crisis. Why? That leads to the fifth and most practically relevant of the resources I want to enumerate:

5. The spiritual exercises….Any company’s capacity to navigate crisis is intimately related to its corporate culture, the shared set of values, often unspoken, that govern the way individuals in an organization treat each other and approach the work environment. Corporate culture is a high falutin’, somewhat slippery term, and business school academicians sometimes express the idea more accessibly as “the way we do things around here.” Uncannily, the earliest Jesuits used almost exactly the same phrase, speaking regularly about their nuestro modo de proceder, or our way of proceeding. That way of proceeding draws on their Constitutions, their lived example, their letters to one another, but above all on the Spiritual Exercises, and surely every strength I’ve discussed so far is encapsulated and mediated through those Exercises: it’s a specific way in which Jesuits and their colleagues can experience and speak about faith and hope, and, important for our purposes, these Exercises can instill the personal disposition necessary for attacking problems proactively. So let me now move from the resources that we draw upon to the more proactive question of how characteristically an Ignatian-inspired team might demonstrate personal and corporate leadership in approaching opportunities and challenges. I’m going to elaborate loosely but successively on four workplace values that I choose to call heroism, ingenuity, love, and self-awareness.

Next Page> 1 2 3 4 5