The Conscious Manager: Zen for Decision Makers

REVIEWS

This page contains trade reviews of The Conscious Manager.  Comments and questions from individual readers are on the Reader Dialog page of this site.
For many of us with Western educated and disciplined minds, Zen is alluring but mysterious. To comprehend Zen requires that the Western mind unlearn much and spend years in dedication to its study and practice. This book is the best I’ve read at helping to understand how Western minds might benefit from Zen. It is aimed at managers, and all you need to do to appreciate the need for “conscious managers” is read the news about the state of business management. But, not only do we need conscious managers, we need conscious people.

The US has never faced the complexities of the current environment. And, all the signs say that life and business are just going to get more complex in the future. Despite all our efforts to return to simplicity, I’m afraid our burden is complexity.

Phillips begins his book with a quote from an overwrought manager, “Wear a lot of hats?” complained the over-tasked manager. “I have to wear a lot of faces. And I hate it. I wish I could be the same person at work, at home, and with friends. I want my life to be all of one piece, not a lot of fragments working against each other. Isn’t that what integrity means? How can I make choices and decisions without feeling torn?”

In eight chapters, the author covers beginnings, practice, opening, support, test, mission, recipe and perspective. Using his experience in Aikido (5th degree rank and 25 years as an instructor) and his practice of Zen as a layman, Phillips writes an insightful and sometimes moving explanation of what he has gained from his experience. He also describes accurately some of the problems of being a manager is today’s environment and how Zen can help people and organizations.

My favorite comment on Zen was given to me by my teacher when I asked him, Sensei… what is Zen? After a long pause, eye contact, and a smile he replied, If I say…it is not Zen.

Yes, any time you freeze reality in black and white words, it’s no longer Zen. Many fine Zen books have been written before this one. Their pages have inspired readers, wrapped sandwiches, and lined kitty litter boxes. May this book serve you well!

Now here is a more serious way to answer your question. The highway sign pointing to Detroit is not itself Detroit. This book is not Zen, but it is a pointer. Like the highway sign, it might help you slow down, and turn in the direction you already want to go.

So, here’s the difficulty I have as a reviewer. This book is not Zen. It’s pointing to Zen. Using the author's analogy, I’ve got to write a review about the directions to a place. I’ve never taken the journey and I’ve never experienced the place. Hmm…

I can comment on what’s in the book and excerpt some quotes I think might be valuable. The book contains the characteristics of a conscious manager. It also describes the steps along the Zen path of responsible decision making.

The book is loaded with quotes, all insightful and supportive of the ideas in the writing. It is written in a style that makes the concepts accessible to Western managers who think.

The author explains the connection between what is essentially a pacifist approach and it’s many militaristic applications:

Buddha’s teaching was in no way war like, and in many ways pacifistic. Yet its connection to martial arts, centuries later, was logical, as its connection to business today. Martial analogies serve the conscious manager well when he focuses on war’s imperative for strategic action, instantaneous response, and dealing with fear and compassion. However, war is destructive and tragic. Business and politics can involve ‘creative destruction’ that sweeps aside the old in favor of the new, but business and politics also construct wonderful new products, organizations and institutions. Analogies that focus only on the destructive aspects of war and management fail. In fact, we know that something is seriously wrong when a company's president (as actually happened in one firm known for indiscriminate downsizing) earns the nickname 'Chainsaw'.

The author generally alternates the use of he and she. At the heart of this approach is the concept of nonattachment. According to the author, we are all already enlightened. But our attachments are what prevent us from recognizing our enlightenment. (He warns about becoming attached to the pursuit of enlightenment.) Before we can get rid of our attachments, we must first become aware of what we are attached to. Then we can begin the work of understanding the attachments and ridding ourselves of them.

“How can a manager become aware of attachments? Through meditation, through mindful practice, through the support of other students of conscious management, through challenges and tests, and through instruction from a qualified, compatible teacher” he writes. This book provides guidance and clues as to how to accomplish this.

What is a conscious manager? Phillips provides these characteristics:
• Attends to detail but looks at context; tries to see the big picture
• Doesn’t believe everything he or she is told
• Rejects any labels
• Constantly hones personal skills
• Is committed to lifelong learning – for everyone in the organization
• Exercises respect and compassion, but not indulgence, in all dealings
• Is flexible but not wishy-washy
• Spares no effort to match the right people with the right jobs
• Lets employees put their best foot forward
• Controls the organization loosely
• Gives employees the chance to stretch themselves
• Tries to see the adversary’s point of view
• Shows a creative imagination
• Is focused and steadfast in pursuit of a mission
• Uses every tool at his or her command

The ingredients necessary for becoming a conscious manager are:
_ Hunger
_ An opening experience
_ A practice
_ Support
_ Tests
_ A mission

But enough from me describing the directions pointing the way to Zen. Buy the book and read the directions yourself. It's a great read!

Fred Phillips is an educator and executive who has taught Zen martial art for more than 25 years. As head of the management department at Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and technology, he has built the Northwest’s most admired management degree program for high technology leaders. He is the author of the textbook Market Oriented Technology Management: Innovating for Profit in Entrepreneurial Times, and Associate Editor of the journal Technological Forecasting & Social Change.

© 2004, The Innovation Roadmap
http://www.InnovationRoadmap.com

THE CONSCIOUS MANAGER, by Fred Phillips, is a must-read for any crisis manager who has also studied Zen and/or had multi-year experience with martial arts training.  Mr. Phillips, a 5th Dan black belt in Aikido, is head of the Management department at the Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology.  He applies the lessons learned through studying and teaching Zen martial arts to dealing with business challenges, including crises.  As a former martial arts student, I have used basic principles (e.g., allowing an opponents' force to work to your own best interests) in work with my clients.  Mr. Phillips takes such concepts to a MUCH higher level.  I suspect, however, that crisis managers without some foundation in Zen or martial arts would find all his references to same difficult to process.

From CRISIS MANAGER: The Internet Newsletter About Crisis Management
<03.01.03/ISSN:1528-3836/©2003 Jonathan Bernstein>


This month's selection: In The Conscious Manager: Zen for Decision Makers, you will enjoy learning the fourteen characteristics of a conscious manager and the six steps to a Zen path of responsible decision making. Read about courtesy in business, working for change, creativity, dignity and how to find inner resources. You are going to want a copy of this for your own library.

On the Edge Business Success Enewsletter, March 2003 http://www.bscusa.com/newsletter.htm#book


“How can one integrate these values - physicality, the reality of life and death, the imperative for sincerity and generosity - with the suit-and-tie pursuit of advantage in the business and political worlds?”  Fred Phillips poses big questions like this one in his new book, The Conscious Manager, subtitled “Zen for Decision Makers.” Luckily for the reader, he also provides thoughtful answers, presented in a conversational style with many current examples. All this in a slim volume of fewer than 130 pages (plus glossary, bibliography and notes).

The biggest mistake a reader can make in picking up this book is to expect a typical business or management book. Fred applies his passions for effective management, responsible citizenship and personal philosophy with quotes ranging from Lou Gerstner to Herman Hesse; from Zen philosophers to The Band; from Frank L. Baum to Nelson Mandela. There are notably few corporate examples or discussions of management principles or productivity. Instead, the reader is shown how to identify and carry personal values into corporate life, and to act on those values with integrity.

Conversational style makes far-reaching topics accessible
If you’ve ever had the chance to be in Fred’s classroom, as I have, you’ll find the same approach here: intelligent, conversational, challenging. Allow yourself to follow him as he discusses such far-reaching topics as death with dignity, the Seattle WTO riots and Japanese language, culture, and business environments. He weaves this improbable and ambitious set of topics into an opportunity for the reader to become not just a better manager, but a better individual. Fred’s approach applies to any decision maker - citizen, parent, or manager. As Fred says, “anyone who wants to take responsibility and act effectively in business life and private life will enjoy reading this book.”

Zen, martial art and management
Fred has been a practitioner of Zen meditation and a martial arts instructor for more than 25 years and has traveled back and forth between the US and Japan. It’s this experience that guides his book, with complementary ideas from East and West, and interspersed “looks inward at ourselves and outward at the commercial and political worlds.” Take a moment to think about it, and you’ll undoubtedly accept the analogy between martial arts and business.

The book is organized along a Zen path that includes six essential stations:

  1. Beginning: the individual develops a hunger or longing for a better way, a dissatisfaction with the status quo.
  2. Practice: the individual (or manager) casts about for a practice or teacher to help him/her find enlightenment.
  3. Opening experience: at some point, the manager experiences a psychological event of great intensity, an event that opens his/her consciousness to wider possibilities (this may happen before the practice stage).
  4. Support: The manager finds a community of people on the same path who offer mutual support.
  5. Tests: A number of tests - scheduled and unexpected, formal and informal - help the manager advance on the path and confirm or invalidate the practice.
  6. Mission: The manager chooses a mission to which he/she will apply new skills effectively and without interference from ego.
Each section includes a combination of discussion, examples, management challenges, Q&A and exercises.

Fred emphasizes that Zen is not a religion and can be effectively combined with other faiths and traditions; he wisely doesn’t attempt to address that in his book. He’s up-front in saying that Zen and Zen martial art “feel right” to him. Fred states that the book is designed to be accessible to any readers, whether or not they come to it with Zen or martial art training. However, I found that there were sections in which I felt a little like a precocious child listening in on an adult conversation: I got the gist of it, but was sure that I was missing underlying depth and subtlety. For some readers, that may be frustrating, although Fred’s supplementary glossary and notes are helpful. For others, it may spark the beginning of a new course of personal study. And that may be just what the author intended.

Fred Phillips, Ph.D., is well known locally as a leader and professor of the Management in Science and Technology (MST) department of the Oregon Graduate Institute (OGI). He founded the Center for Entrepreneurial Growth - now a joint center of Oregon Graduate Institute, Portland State University and the Northwestern School of Law at Lewis & Clark College - and is the author or co-author of many publications. He’s also an SAO board member.

The Conscious Manager was published by General Informatics LLC. The publisher includes a variety of additional resources at http://www.generalinformatics.com/CM/cm.htm.

By Cheryl Coupé, ©The Cursor , Newsletter of the Software Association of Oregon.  April, 2003.

Here’s a gem of a new book from OGI’s Fred Phillips. Fred heads up the management department at Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology. He balances the energy of an entrepreneur with the calm of Zen and has taught the martial art of aikido for 25 years. We really like this book, and will award three signed copies to selected winners ofthe Ad Man’s Trivia Contest.
Sanda News, Spring 2003.