#90 from R&D Innovator Volume 3, Number 4         April 1994

Taking Commitment and Inspiration to the Level of Reverence
by Jack Hawley, Ph.D.

Dr. Hawley is the founder of Team Climate Associates and president of John A. Hawley Associates.  His management consulting firm works with large private and government organizations on matters of organization transformation.  This article is adapted from his book, Reawakening the Spirit in Work: The Power of Dharmic Management (Berrett-Koehler, 1993).

I was in the board room of a new client company, reaching to make a point about commitment levels in organizations.   I walked to the chalkboard, and drew a horizontal line.  My next comment surprised me--and my client:  

"There's a reverence continuum in organizations," I said, and noticed some brows starting to furrow.  I saw more quizzical looks than I'm comfortable with.

Reverence?  What is it, and how could it possibly have implications for the modern R&D lab?  Why was I blabbing about something as seemingly irrelevant as reverence, and why should you care about it?

I define reverence as dedication, eagerness, and enthusiasm.  It's an attitude that contains a measure of deep admiration and respect, and a bit of devotedness.  When you think about it, these are qualities yearned for and needed in most organizations, including R&D organizations.

I first became interested in reverence when a visitor from India stayed with my family.  Over the months, I noticed her ability to "see" things that escaped the rest of us.  Perhaps most striking was her veneration of worldly things.  She said that her father had taught her to treat all things--not just people--with deference.  "Don't just barge through a door," he would tell her.  "Turn the knob slowly and swing it through its arc carefully."

My children looked politely askance, but I could see that something about her calm, determined, self-sufficient character was rubbing off on them. 

Let's cut back to a slightly-embarrassed Jack Hawley, standing between a chalkboard and a roomful of slightly-exasperated managers.  Trusting my instinct, I continue on the path I laid for myself and divide the line representing "reverence continuum" in two.  On one side are the "uncivilized organizations," the ones with mean-spirited, indifferent, apathetic people and relationships.  Leaving these hopeless organizations, I move toward the humane, civilized ones, and divide that realm into four types of organizations: polite, caring, respectful, and reverential.

Four Types of Organizations

Polite organizations have manners; they remind me of the thin civility that the British sometimes exhibit.  Interact with them, and you're unlikely to come away feeling abraded, even if the politeness may be somewhat forced.

In a caring organization--which I sometimes think of it as a polite one that "grew up" and took its own rhetoric seriously--members are more concerned and attentive.  They watch out for each other, for the organization, and for the customers. 

This type of company has a noticeably heightened consciousness, and almost everybody likes working in such a place.  Several examples cross my mind, one of them seems to fit here—a laboratory that performs routine analyses.  The lab is basically an analytical machine, staffed with humans in cubicles.  If you didn't know better, you'd think they were the faceless automatons of Brave New World, heads down, pecking at their spectrometers.  But when a technician's machine broke down, others eagerly adapted to accommodate the individual on their spectrometers while hers was being fixed.

When I got to this point in my spiel, the managers in the room didn't look quite so lost--they saw I was starting to make sense, to talk about the problems of their work lives.  So I proceeded by suggesting that if caring behavior becomes a habit, it can rise to the level I call respectful.  

I asked the group to imagine an organization soaked in respect and to list the type of interactions and feelings they would expect.  High on the list were consideration toward one another, holding others in esteem, admiration, kindness, and valuing others.

This was a good list, and the only thing I added is that this is the type of organization that people all over are calling for.  I decided to go for broke and point out that unlimited respect could grow into something called reverence.

Reverence

Having made my bed, I proceeded to lie down.  I first asked the group to recollect the most interesting project they had ever worked on, or the greatest boss they had ever worked for, or the best team they had ever worked on.  Was there reverence in those situations?  Certainly!  Everyone quickly and even vehemently nodded agreement.  Then, I made it clear that we’re not talking about pious mutterings in dark places, but about feelings of ownership, the eagerness, dedication, caring, and enthusiasm that are shown in the reverential organization.  There's deep admiration and respect.  And there's deep conviction, if not outright devotion.  These are the qualities found in great organizations.

Reverence, in short, is a state of intensified commitment—a super-motivated state of being.  Commitment is the grail that managers eternally seek, and that people feel good about when they experience it at work.

As I "unpeeled" reverence to find its inner layers, I talked about fondness, deep appreciation, and gratitude.  Closer to the core, I think, is a high caring and veneration.  And clearly, when you look dispassionately, these are the fundamentals of a great human organization.

Ask someone, "How's the organization these days?"  You seldom hear that the widgets came out with a slight defect last week and that the wombat project was over budget.  Rather, people talk about the humanity of the organization: my boss is a prince, or my supervisor is a bozo, things like that.  The words may not include affection, caring, respect, devotedness, and so forth, but the concepts are present.

These sound like the sort of soft-headed emotions that are being tossed at thousands of managers these days.  But they are the stuff of great organizations.  And the ideas embedded in reverence aren't only emotions--they're energies.  The combined ideas that make up reverence are a power, a force.  This mighty stuff magnifies meaning, and it's just waiting to be called upon.  Superb managers know this and use it to further their organizations.  You need reverence to excel in R&D.

To put it simply, I'd suggest that you strive to develop reverence--nothing less--for the project, the mission, the products, the customers and your colleagues. 

Is reverence a surprising ingredient of the new stew we're stirring in tomorrow's corporation?  Perhaps.  But it's an essential one.