The Reality Of Business Leadership

It’s the eighth day of the twelfth moon, often recognized as the day of the Buddha’s enlightenment. As my first Buddhist meditation teacher, Zen Master Eido Roshi, would often say: “an auspicious day”.

And a good day to launch a blog. Especially one that links the cultivation of business leadership capacity to recent findings of neuroscience… and the long established practice of Buddhist Meditation.

What the Buddha saw on December 8th is the insight that is known as “dependent origination”. That being, our reality of the world originates in the mind in each and every moment through a causal process of interdependency with the world around us.

And what does this have to do with neuroscience? Everything. Research into the neural plasticity of the brain suggests that our physical neural wiring is influenced by the information we take in through the senses. Hard wiring is not so hard. Recent theories of intelligence suggest that the models of reality we carry around in our brains shape and screen what we perceive. Hard data is not so hard. The origination of reality in the mind is an interdependent, causal process.

And what does this have to do with business leadership? Everything. One of the greatest challenges of business leaders is to be more strategic. Great business leaders bring into being (originate) the reality of business plans and organizational capabilities over and over again, day in and day out. It is not so much the linear planning side of strategy that is wanting, but rather the ability to see reality as it is, the bare truth, and to see reality evolving as unfolds, changes, morphs. The nature of competitive markets is aptly described as “Creative Destruction”. (The Buddha called it impermanence.) Over and over, companies fail when its leaders are locked into old business models that do not keep pace with changes in the markets. Many ask why our leaders did not see the financial crisis coming. “Reality is an illusion albeit a persistent one.” (Albert Einstein) Opportunity comes with the ability to anticipate, see new realities, predict and act upon emerging trends.

Originicity: the leadership capacity to bring reality into being (originate) in each and every moment.