Business Shamanism

Imagine this: You're asked to deliver a memo to your CEO in the boardroom. As you approach you hear the sound of drumming. You cautiously open the door and on the floor, surrounded by burning candles, you behold the CEO and board of directors lying, flat with their eyes closed, being drawn into the rhythmic beat of the drum. Are you hallucinating? No. All is well. Richard Whiteley, bestselling author of The Corporate Shaman, is leading them on a journey to find their power animals. The corporate culture as we have come to know it may never be the same. An MBA graduate of the Harvard Business School, Whiteley is a successful management consultant and urban shaman who uses drumming and shamanic techniques to restore spirit to the business community. 

Daniel Pinchbeck, co-founder of Evolver, a lifestyle community platform that publishes Reality Sandwich, an online magazine centered around spirituality, philosophy and activism, proposes "Business Shamanism" as a new avant-garde art form. According to Pinchbeck, "business shamanism is the repurposing of the tools and instruments of the corporate culture and the mainstream economy to bring about social change, archaic revival, planetary regeneration, deeper initiation. The goal is to build a platform for radical revision, for a fundamental shift in perception and behavior, so that the alternative -- what author Charles Eisenstein calls 'the more beautiful world we know in our hearts is possible' -- manifests in our time."

Thus, what is it about shamanism that makes it the tool of choice to tackle contemporary business issues? First of all, shamanism is not a religion, but rather a pragmatic and results oriented methodology. Shamanism represents a universal conceptual framework found among indigenous tribal humans. It includes the belief that the natural world has two aspects: ordinary everyday awareness, formed by our habitual behaviors, patterns of belief, social norms, and cultural conditioning, and a second non-ordinary awareness accessed through altered states, or trance, induced by shamanic practices such as repetitive drumming. This second-order awareness can be developed over time or appear all at once, but once it is discerned the world is never the same. According to shamanic theory, the ordinary and non-ordinary worlds interact continuously, and a shamanic practitioner can gain knowledge about how to alter ordinary reality by taking direct action in the non-ordinary aspect of the world. Out of this world view emerges the corporate shaman, a consultant who recognizes business as an organism, not machine, and reestablishes healthy internal environments in corporations.

The interest in shamanism and its potential applications in the business world appear to be part of a more widespread phenomenon. A study conducted by McKinsey of Australia found that when companies conduct programs that utilize spiritual techniques for their employees, productivity improves and turnover is greatly reduced. Essentially, spiritually-centered practices are manifestations of a wider trend that many organizations attempt to follow in their own ways, that is, to go beyond the bottom line and create a culture that promotes company loyalty, employee bonding, team spirit, and workplace satisfaction. According to Professor Ian Mitroff of USC Marshall School of Business, "Spirituality could be the ultimate competitive advantage." 

In his own words, Richard Whiteley does not intend to promote shamanism as the ultimate solution to life's problems and challenges. Instead, his view on this subject reflects the fundamental concept of shamanism itself: use it if it works for you, and if it works, why question it? Try it yourself.