HUMAN GOVERNANCEREALIZATION OF ONENESS

Aziuddin Ahmad PhDProfessor of Risk Management

Graduate School of ManagementUniversity Putra Malaysia

Responsible Leadership Summit 2009Shaping Our Future

IMD Lausanne1st – 3rd February 2009

1

2

DISCUSSION CONTENTS

Evolution of business,

governance & role of leaders

What does it mean to be a HUMAN?Bringing

back human to the centreONENESS in life

which is in line withnew sciences &

ancient traditions

HUMAN GOVERNANCE• What is HG?• HG vs CG?

THE MESSAGE

3

Actualize a qualitative, subjective, spiritually devolutionary sacred view, morally & divinely ordained world bounded by SPIRITUAL standards & in line with quantum physics

Return to fitrah (innate nature), inside-out, sacred human-centric, principle- & values-based, tawhidic (unbroken wholeness epitome) meaningful leadership with sense of purpose

Transform mindset from centuries-old secular mechanistic ‘command-control’, outside-in, quantitative & positivistic to the quantum mould

4

THE APPROACH

Turn into the past in order to prepare for

the future

Revisit the etymology of words

Regain the original

meanings attached to the words

Must be looked upon

in its ontological

context

Not in its secularized

meaning devoid of spirituality

5

EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS

TODAY

• Business is the leading segment of society to achieve societal well-being

• Overtaken government’s role. Government facilitates

• Business NOW Rules

• Corporate leaders make decisions

• HUMANS in life make decision

• Getting through dilemmas (permanent texture of life) require decisions

6

BUSINESS

ENVIRONMENT

TODAY

• No longer the same as before - then process was THE king

• Knowledge-based vs conveyer-belt, machine (mechanistic) economy

• If you manage business/corporations TODAY using YESTERDAYS model, you have no business/corporation TOMORROW!

• But today’s models ARE yesterdays!

7

HOW SACREDNESS LOST ITS CENTRALITY IN HUMAN

BEING

Artificial Person

Secular Being

Natural Person

Profane & Sacred Secular & Spiritualfictively separated

8

ENRONWORLDCOM

SUB-PRIME,BANKS

MADOFF,SATYAM

LIMITATIONS OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

HOW MANY MORE?

AND MORE SOXs!!!

9

• Corporate Governance mechanistic structure is already broken

• Cannot be repaired by patching/gluing, more regulations or legislation or policy

• Need to reinvent/redesign – Get out of conveyer-belt mentality

• We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them – Einstein

CORPORATE GOVERNANCEThe Unfolding Played Out & Still Playing Out

10

VALUE, VALUES &

GOVERNANCE

• Limitation of valuing only what can be measured

• A CLASH! There is tension between human values & performance oriented value

• But ONENESS & INTERCONNECTEDNESS is a given

• NEED new measures to measure what is meaningful NOT the measurable only – Einstein

• Need to balance continuum of paradox (yin yang)

• Need a NEW GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE

11

NEED TO RETURN TO

THE REAL MEANING OF BUSINESS

Is the purpose of business

just business?

Must it transcend business?

Is it not an enterprise to reach felicity?

Leadership shapes & plays a critical role

Financial bottom-line

only?

MUST be profit WITH BARAKAH

(AN ENTERPRISE/PRINCIPAL ACTIVITY)

12

TOWARDS A NEW ARRAY OF DESCRIPTIVES

• Disclosure• Transparent• Integrity• Edico venditor• Emergent• Meaning• Essence• Substance• Principle- & values-based• Innate nature (fitrah)• Adab & ihsan• Quantum science• Wholeness• Inner-out• Spirit of law

Corporate GovernanceLegal/Artificial Person?• Discovery• Translucent• Conformance• Caveat emptor• Dead• Symbol• Label• Form• Rule-based• Legal enactments• Rules & compliance• Newtonian classical• Fragmented• Outer-in• Letter of law

13

• Turn to history to dissect the real ontological meaning of words, otherwise we will only apprehend a shadow

• REGAIN the spiritual & sacred (vertical) dimension they are supposed to encapsulate

RETURN FROM BACK TO

• cosmos

• Mercator projection

• canvas

• map

• logic

• kosmos

• globe

• inner vision

• terrain

• logos

WORDS EMANATE MEANING

14

TAWHIDIC ONENESS – CONVERGENCE IN SCIENCE &

ANCIENT TRADITIONS

• Wholly integral, interrelated & non-local cosmos – integrating material & non-material

• We must actualize this Tawhidic journey

• Ancient traditions & sacred texts all convey spirituality & interconnectedness

• Unbroken wholeness & indivisibility

15

HUMAN & PERCEPTION DEVICES

• Born with three devices of sense perception, intellection & contemplation

• Islamic teachings:– They have hearts, yet they do not

comprehend; they have eyes, yet they do not see; they have ears, yet they do not hear

– There are signs on the horizon & within themselves

• Are we limited to sense perception only?

• Sufism – The Spiritual HEART of Islam

16

HEART

HEART

PHYSICAL SENSES & THE MIND

WOMB BABIES TO TODDLERS

OLD AGE

FACULTY/DEVICE

ADULTHOOD

HEART

HEART

The Heart has its Reasons which Reasons knows not – Pascal

MODES OF KNOWING

17

Three Modes of Knowing

Born with coherence ability, we repressed

Cultural conditioning

emphasizes bodily senses over non-sense perception

Scientists demonstrate children

of 4 to 5 years old experience non-sense perception

LEADERSHIP IS ABOUT BEING HUMAN

18

Connotes stewardship & vicegerency – at once trustee/custodian to self, community &

universe

Senge et al – Awareness of wholeness of

nature stolen from us, replaced by assemblage of

parts

Chittick & Murata – Human

actualized by Adab, governed

by Ihsan

Hernandez – Leader makes decision while

factoring in the implications on future generation, the way

leaders behave shapes decision makers of future

generations

19

LEADERSHIP

• Is about the heart

• Is about BEING what you are, BEING HUMAN & doing

is the effect of being i.e. a consequential to being

• Is about balancing the oneness – balancing along the

continuum of obligation to corporation, obligation to

people & obligation to universe

• Is about living the spirituality, the interconnectedness

• Is about accepting participatory universe

20

ORGANIZATION MEASURES

• Einstein: Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be measured

• What measures to act as reference in arriving at decisions – the metrics & matrix

• Natural person measures good enough?

• Redefinition of success to encompass well-being of society not just maximization of shareholder value

21

NEED

Governance that:• Goes beyond sense perception / experience, to intellection (mind/brain) & contemplation (heart/consciousness)• Regain Human Centrality• Bring back the ‘Vertical’ Dimension• Human Integrity – Ihsan & Adab/Akhlaq• Corporations/Legal persons CANNOT mimic Human Beings

22

• Transformation – akin to metamorphosis from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly (via the IMAGINAL CELLS)

WAY FORWARD

TRANSFORMATIONIf there is no transformation inside each of us, all of

the structural change in the world will have no impact on our institutions!

Peter Block

23

HUMAN GOVERNANCE

Redefine Human as Soul of Being

REGAIN our sacredness:• innate nature (fitrah), • subjectivity & experiential, • emotions/feelings,• empathy• compassion• INNER KNOWING ability• SPIRITUALITY

24

WHAT DOES IT MEAN

TO BE HUMAN?

• Natural vs. Artificial/Legal person

• The spiritual is what makes human, human (Salleh & Ahmad, 2008 & Stapp, 2008)

• Physical is for locomotion

• Human’s drive is towards inspiration, meaning &

purpose

• Purpose – Ad Dhariyat Quran (51:56)

25

ISLAM, IMAN & IHSAN

• IHSAN – Virtue, Perfection, Excellence, Authentic

• Third dimension of Islam

• Life is series of dilemmas

• Ihsan is Governance

• Story of Muadh ibn Jabal

26

• Human Governance is about INTEGRITY• Latin integritas: integer, whole number, being

whole being one – AL TAWHID• Integrity is a state/condition• The actuator/actualizer to felicity & tranquility • Originally only be applied to human beings

27

Integrity – ala Bobby Jones when he still assessed himself a one stroke penalty even though no one else saw him touch the ball. Not the tournament official, not his playing partner, neither of them believed he actually touched the ball. He did the right thing even when no one was looking!

28

BENCHMARKING INTEGRITY

• What is legal MAY NOT be moral

• What is moral is legal

• INTEGRITY – IS IT LAW OR BEYOND LAW?

• Conformance or Beyond Conformance?

• Rising beyond the self: Rectification of character

– getting rid of bad attributes (Murata & Chittick, 1994)

• The HEART is the source of one’s integrity

29

COMPLIANCE- & VALUES-BASED

• Compliance-based approach is divorced from values and ethics i.e. THE SPIRIT

• Compliance-based system: what is not prohibited is allowed. Attention is NOT on doing what is right but on NOT DOING what is wrong, NOT on doing one’s best but on NOT DOING one’s worst

• Values-based encourages NOT to do ethical minimum but to DO ethical maximum

• Rules DO NOT inspire. Values DO

30

WHAT IS HG?

• an internal mechanism to guide human in emanating internal behaviour

•Human Governance is rooted in religiosity whose core criteria/measures or ‘standards’ is Spirituality

• Human Governance brings back due regard to the profoundness of governing the individual rather than the corporation which is the artificial legal person

31

HG vs CG

HG

• inside-out values-based conviction to guide human

• human is viewed as a non-material soul & embodied in the physical being

• human is NOT machine

• emphasizes the spirit of the law

CG

• external, outside-in rules & regulations to legislate the corporations

• parameter-driven & rule-based

• human is machine

• emphasizes the letter of the law

32

Oneness:- a coherent portrait of reality & a holistic way of knowing- brought about by personal experience, intuition and conscience balanced with reason and modern science

ONENESS REALIZED?

Oneness transcends the individual- our choice affects others, to act against another is to act against oneselfThe Fictive Belief: - ourselves, our thoughts and feelings perceived as separate from the rest

Moving on: Remove the filters & change band-width of sensors- Sensory Filter (rejection of use of intuition & sentient sensation)- Awareness Filter (rejection of anything unaware)- Belief System Filter (rejection of information that doesn’t conform to belief system)