Spiritual Solutions to Economic Problems - through Baha'i consultation
( Picture from The Consultation Institute )
The Great Being saith: The heaven of divine wisdom is illumined with the two luminaries of consultation and compassion. Take ye counsel together in all matters, inasmuch as consultation is the lamp of guidance which leadeth the way, and is the bestower of understanding.
("Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh Revealed after the Kitáb-i-Aqdas" [rev. ed.], (Haifa: Bahá'í World 1982), p. 168)
All Baha'is are directed to use "consultation", in matters great and small. But what exactly is consultation? Why does it work?
Below I give my own understanding of these questions, along with some references to other sources of information about Baha'i Consultation.
Consultation is at the other end of the spectrum from the classic, legacy, Western concept of a business meeting, where each person comes with their own agenda and attempts to outmaneuver and outvote each other and their goal is to "win" the meeting and get their way on some issue. In a typical meeting the boss runs the meeting and presents his idea first, then asks for comments and opinions. Generally people know what's good for them and all agree. Afterwards no one has any idea why they just spent an hour when the outcome was known before they went into the room. Communication is very one-way, top-down. The idea identified as the Boss's idea wins. Opposition may be brutally hammered down, and hard feelings or resentment carried over for years after the "decision" is reached. For the most part disagreement is self-censored. The objective is a "win", even if the "losers" are totally outraged and outmaneuvered by trickery or power.
On the other hand, Consultation involves people assembling hoping to discover what is right, not who is right. A wide range of views and opinions is actively sought from each person in the room, even the quiet ones, and listened to attentively and politely. The behavior is civil if not exemplary. One goal is that, regardless of the "outcome" of the matter under question, everyone will leave the meeting at least as good friends, and preferably stronger friends, than they were when they arrived. Members who disagree with the views presented by others have an obligation to speak their piece as they see it. The objective is a heartfelt unanimous realization of the right course of action, with everyone behind it.
What's interesting is that the literature of management has done a complete U-turn in the last 100 years, from advocating very tight top-down management to advocating multidisciplinary groups given discretion to find their own pathway.
The reason for this change in industrial practices is that the problems have changed. In 1900 it was common for the top management to be experts in everything they needed to know, and the workers simply had to follow instructions to produce good output. As the century progressed, the competition increased dramatically, the complexity of problems increased enormously, the speed required for solutions shortened, and no single person could possibly know enough to solve the problem by himself.
Companies that tried to continue the "old way" of top-down decision-making, like the auto makers General Motors and Ford, just couldn't believe they were being outrun by participatory decision-making companies like Toyota and Honda.
Auto companies were not unique however. A large number of large-scale disasters of management or operation were traced back to the suppression of dissenting views or lack of diverse opinions, including such things as the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion, Three-Mile Island meltdown, and most airline "accidents" that resulted in loss of life. Further investigation showed that similar problems were occurring in Hospitals, where suppression of dissenting opinions was resulting in patient harm, amputation of the wrong arm or leg, etc. where someone knew the situation was going wrong, but was unwilling to speak up.
Current best thinking in the field is in a book titled Teaming by Amy Edmondson, a faculty member at Harvard Business School, who discusses the key concept of "psychological safety" required for a dissenter, especially of lower rank, to speak up when they see a problem. It turns out it is not enough to get the right people with a diverse set of knowledge and viewpoints into the room, they must feel safe from retaliation if they share their opinion.
All of which brings us back to Baha'i Consultation, which predates the current management wisdom by 150 years and gives clear instructions as to what is required.
The prime requisites for them that take counsel together are purity of motive, radiance of spirit, detachment from all else save God, attraction to His Divine Fragrances, humility and lowliness amongst His loved ones, patience and long-suffering in difficulties and servitude to His exalted Threshold. Should they be graciously aided to acquire these attributes, victory from the unseen Kingdom of Bahá shall be vouchsafed to them.... The members thereof must take counsel together in such wise that no occasion for ill-feeling or discord may arise. This can be attained when every member expresseth with absolute freedom his own opinion and setteth forth his argument. Should any one oppose, he must on no account feel hurt for not until matters are fully discussed can the right way be revealed. The shining spark of truth cometh forth only after the clash of differing opinions. If after discussion, a decision be carried unanimously, well and good; but if the Lord forbid, differences of opinion should arise, a majority of voices must prevail.
(`Abdu'l-Bahá, cited in a letter dated 5 March 1922 written by Shoghi Effendi to the Bahá'ís of the United States and Canada, published in "Bahá'í Administration: Selected Messages 1922-1932", p. 21-22)
So we here get the message that "intention matters." Rather than suppressing human emotion and the role of the heart, as in a legacy "business meeting" that should be purely rational, consultation should include the full emotional and spiritual human capacity in a search for a pathway that looks right, feels right, and is right.
Trustworthiness, scrupulous honesty, and loving civility are virtues that are not just nice to have, they are absolutely required for consultation to work successfully. Even the famous "Toyota Way" is very clear that at the core is a a change of heart, not a change of tools.
There is a spiritual dimension as well to a perfect consultation. While the persons consulting are present, they also need to be, effectively, polished mirrors or hollow reeds, reflecting the love of God into and among the persons present, to illuminate the dark corners and allow a solution to emerge. The solution discovered is as likely to be along a totally unexpected dimension that allows a win-win-win to occur between "sides", revealing the pathway to "unity above diversity" which more "dissolves" the problem than "solving" it. The solution comes through the firebox of the hearts reflecting love, and not through some sort of mental or fully-rational process of mathematically ranking options or other such computations.
As Daniel Goleman's books Emotional Intelligence, and more recent Social Intelligence have documented scientifically, humans are not really poorly functioning rational engines, but highly tuned beings hard-wired to operate in emotional synchrony with tremendous shared insight.
If there is no shared love, there will be no solution revealed.
If there is shared love, love of God and love for each other in a shared destiny on this one planet we all inhabit, then true miracles can be revealed through the most unlikely members, and we can move towards the Most Great Peace.
A summary of quotations from the Baha'i Sacred Writings can be found here:
http://bahai-library.com/compilation_consultation and a brief informal video introduction to consultation for those who prefer video is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VH-4qHd3OQ .
A classic Baha'i book is John Kolstoe's Consultation: A Universal Lamp of Guidance.
A Baha'i inspired book of techniques for handling logistics of meetings is Trip Barthel's Transforming Conflict into Concensus - 9 keys to Synergy.
Although the emotional and spiritual qualities are required for truly finding Spiritual Solutions to Economic Problems, valuable approaches for group dynamics can be found in
Getting To Yes (Fisher, Ury, and Patton) and
The Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making (3rd Edition) by Sam Kaner.
I discovered in writing this that there is a group called The Consultation Institute in the UK, which is somewhat interesting since I was considering starting my own non-profit 501(c)(3) in the USA to do just that. I don't know anything else about them, but here's a link to them and I do like their charter!
The Consultation Institute
