A New Capitalism We Can Live By: An Interview with Danah Zohar

from Leverage Points Issue 54

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Danah Zohar, author of the bestselling books The Quantum Self, The Quantum Society, and ReWiring the Corporate Brain, will be a keynote speaker at the 2004 Pegasus Conference, Building Collaborations to Change Our Organizations and the World: Systems Thinking in Action®, to be held on December 1–3 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. A physicist, philosopher, management thought leader, educator, and author, she teaches organizations and executives how modern science can transform how they think and lead. Her work to extend the principles of quantum physics into a new understanding of human consciousness, psychology, and social organization has led to her current groundbreaking books (coauthored with Ian Marshall) on spiritual intelligence and spiritual capital.

In SQ: Connecting with Our Spiritual Intelligence, Danah presents scientific evidence for the existence of spiritual intelligence (SQ), a center in the human brain that lies at the core of innovation and creative leadership. In her most recent work, Spiritual Capital: Wealth We Can Live By, she takes the concept of spiritual intelligence and applies it to the business world. The sustainable vision for capitalism she provides is rooted in a values-based culture in which businesses generate a decent profit while acting to raise the common good and ensure the sustainability of their enterprises. In the following conversation between Danah Zohar and Leverage Points editor Kali Saposnick, Danah discusses the influence of quantum physics on her thinking and how, by building spiritual capital, we can create effective, sustainable collaborations.

Leverage Points: How has your scientific background influenced your thinking about systems thinking, collaboration, and spiritual capital?

Danah Zohar: My scientific background has influenced all my thinking, even the spiritual thinking in my personal life. I discovered quantum physics at 15, and it stood my whole world on its head. The ways things based in Newtonian physics differ from those based in the quantum physics paradigm has been the whole substance of my work and runs through it completely.

Newtonian physics conceives of the universe essentially as little billiard balls, atoms with hard boundaries. According to this principle, there's no way to change an atom—scientists in the early days didn't know about subatomic particles or any of the things that have so radically changed our way of understanding nature. In the Newtonian model, when two of these billiard balls meet, they bump into and knock each other off course, but neither changes the other.

Ideas such as individualism and replaceable parts in industrial settings emerged from Newton's idea of atomism. So did the notion that I am essentially alone in the world, isolated from people. Even Freud said, you are an object to me and I'm an object to you, and we can never meet each other.

Quantum systems, on the other hand, are thought to be concretized balls of energy that take on different forms as they relate to each other through participating in the system together. When two quantum systems meet, they overlap and combine their total identity. All the patterns of dynamic energy within these systems change dramatically in relation to each other, leading to the emergence of a whole new thing that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Human systems are also patterns of dynamic energy. Our bodies do not have hard and fast boundaries like billiard balls. What we interact with changes us, even at the psychological level. For instance, stress can make us ill and cause physical disease in certain body parts. Similarly, being in a successful relationship changes us in positive ways. My hair color and so on stays the same, but our interaction changes my character, my aspirations, and so forth.

From this perspective, it's no longer about "me and you" but about "us." It's not separation; it's integration. It's not isolation; it's an understanding that we're all part of one great big interwoven system. These new ideas are critical to understanding how we can make shifts in organizational culture, collaboration, and teamwork.

LP: How does your concept of spiritual intelligence apply to these ideas?

DZ: Spiritual intelligence is how we understand the deeper meaning in life, the deeper purpose, the deeper values that underlie our behavior. It is the part of us that asks questions such as, how do our systems differ, and how do we use our meanings and purpose to build collaborations that behave more like quantum systems? Why is that working for a common purpose fosters a more creative, integrated, holistic team? And what does this type of work do to the members of the collaboration as they participate at this level?

When we act like a collection of bouncing billiard balls in a box, we're often acting against each other. There's a lot of conflict, competition, jealousy, grudges, and anger. I argue that today's business culture is operating from the four negative motivations of fear, greed, anger, and self-assertion. If you want to create holistic collaborations where team members become systems within a system, allowing them to become creative and emergent at every level, then you've got to act from the higher motivations. Those are the more "quantum" motivations if you like, whereas our negative behaviors stem from the more "Newtonian" motivations.

In a quantum paradigm, two systems are so overlapped and combined that they're interwoven with and bound up in each other's identity. You don't get the same kind of conflict, grudges, and anger because you've all become part of one system working together. You grow together and you create together. Everything becomes more positive. When we come together for a common purpose, we become nicer to each other because the common purpose binds us.

LP: What is the relationship between spiritual capital and collaboration?

DZ: Spiritual capital is the wealth or power an individual or organization has, based on their deepest meanings, values, and purposes. It is reflected in what that individual or organization exists for, believes in, aspires to, and takes responsibility for. We build spiritual capital by asking spiritually intelligent questions, such as why do I exist, what is the purpose of my life, what do I really want to achieve?

If the spiritual capital of a collaboration is high, that is, if a group has a common aspiration for its existence that they take responsibility for, then their collaboration will be an organic synthesis of the people participating. If the spiritual capital is low, it means you either don't know what you aspire to or you don't aspire to anything very high. It means you don't know why you exist or you just exist to make a profit. It means you don't think about what you take responsibility for because you're caught up in your immediate goal, your short-term thinking. Spiritual capital, if it's low, can tear a collaboration to pieces. Spiritual capital, if it's high, is the glue that holds it together.

LP: In your book you write about 12 principles of transformation that constitute spiritual intelligence. Are any in particular especially crucial to embed in one's behavior?

DZ: I think all 12 are quite crucial. Remember, they're not Newtonian principles; they're holistic principles in that each is internally related to the others. They don't belong in any particular hierarchy (see the "12 Principles of Transformation" in the right-hand column).

Bearing that in mind, there are a few we can focus on for purposes of collaboration. One key principle is self-awareness, to know what you believe in and value, what deeply motivates you, your deepest purpose in life. Being vision- and value-led is also important. This means acting from principles and deep beliefs and living life accordingly. If I had to stop at three, I would include celebration of diversity, which is valuing other people and unfamiliar situations for their differences, not despite them. In natural complex adaptive systems, the presence of the different other causes the system to evolve and leads to good mutations, adaptations, new situations. If you just meet others like yourself, then your own system doesn't change, and it might even begin to atrophy from lack of stimulation.

Ideally, a collaboration needs to be open to many points of view while being grounded in common values and purposes. We need to realize that every individual on the planet has a different way of going about living these values and purposes, and your difference can teach me something, can make me grow.

LP: How do you get a critical mass of individuals to act from higher motivations and evoke those qualities in others?

DZ: One way is the impact that an inspirational leader who walks the talk can have on those who work for him or her. People recognize when he or she practices most of the 12 principles of spiritual intelligence, and they're influenced to aspire to those principles as well. Another way is by conducting dialogue groups at various levels—a team, an entire organization, a culture, a nation—to uncover the motivations of the people involved.

Most of us are usually not aware that we're acting from lower motivations. If I asked you to take a motivations test, you'd probably come out smelling like a rose, because we all think our motivations are high. But in a dialogue group where people are listening to and observing each other, the group can help each other become aware of what is truly motivating their behavior.

LP: Many people might have a hard time embracing the concept of spiritual capital—especially those who strongly believe in modern capitalism. How do you sell people on the concept?

DZ: The big link is sustainability. Do you want it to last or not? Do you care about anything beyond the next quarterly return? And deeper questions too, such as can you afford not to care about anything beyond the next quarterly return?

We all know that most Fortune 500 companies go under within five years. We know that we're raping the planet. Harbingers of an impending global crisis are in the paper every week. For example, we're having oil shortages, we're not finding new fuels, and the high price of oil is going to affect our ability to grow economies. Capitalism as we know it today is a monster consuming itself. It's not sustainable, and it's going to lead to a major global crisis.

By building spiritual capital, however, individuals and organizations can become much more sustainable. Sustainability depends on building up the foundations of your collaboration, your life, your organization. If we make the changes I recommend, if we develop the kind of capitalism that has wider concerns, deeper values, and higher purposes, it will not only be sustainable, but I think we will find it makes more profit.