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care for the whole (whether it deserves it or not).         Growing up and achieving our citizenship papers is marked by a commencement. We have been invited to give the commencement address at our own graduation, the beginning of saying Yes to our own freedom, our own readiness to assume full accountability. Our freedom begins with knowing our intentions, knowing what matters to us, knowing which values will guide our actions. The question, then, is what are we willing to commit to?

A Broken Promise

There was time when the workplace answered the question of commitment for us. At least it did for me. When I began work at Exxon I stepped quite naturally into a social contract. I made a commitment to the company and, in exchange, they made a commitment to my future. The contract was affirmed right in the beginning. In the recruiting interview they asked me predictable questions about how I saw my future and then they talked about how they saw it. If I worked hard, met their objectives, was open to learning, and adapted to their style and culture, the path was clear. In six months I would get a $35 monthly raise (this was a long time ago), in eighteen months I could expect a better job title, in two to two-and-a-half years, a promotion to supervisor. Section head title came after three to five years, but with my potential, it would more likely be three. I was introduced to managers who had moved along this path, role models, the works.

The same afternoon I was taken with my wife on a tour of the area and shown where new employees typically lived, then across the highway where senior staff resided, and then up the hill, ambitiously named the Watchung Mountain, where the executives lived. I didn’t exactly pick out a specific house on the hill, but the Tudor with a double garage kind of spoke to me.

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All that was left was for me to say yes, which I did after stalling two days to indicate I had other offers and was choosing Exxon for the right reasons.

Soon after I was on board, the oil crisis hit and Exxon had its firstever layoff at my division—and everything changed forever. It took a few years to realize that this would become a way of life, that the pattern was set. The social contract was broken, the deal was off, and eventually we all knew it. The contract that I would work hard and they would take care of me was broken, and then some.

Commitment without Barter

Here we are in the new century and most of us cannot even remember that contract. We now celebrate the era of free agency. We have taken the negatives of abandonment and betrayal by the companies that employed us and turned them into individual entrepreneurial positives. We are free agents, as in the sports world, which means we sell our services to the highest bidder. I am CEO of I, Inc., and the culture tells me at every turn that my commitment should be to myself, to build my own skills, to market myself as a product, to travel with my pension. If I am an MBA grad from a decent school, I am into exit strategies. Make the money first and then do what matters. Companies, in turn, outsource whatever they can, reduce benefits where possible, make no commitments to employees other than a day’s fair pay, or at least a day’s pay.

This leaves us having to choose that which, previously, was a given. What do I care about and want to give my best attention to? The culture tells me to manage my career to my own best advantage. The opportunity open to us is to decide to commit to something larger even though there is no promise in return. The economist says don’t be a fool. Maximize you, the product. Go with the best offer. If no promise is made, no commitment is required.

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This alienates me from my self, it objectifies me, and it happens by my own hand. So an essential step toward choosing Yes is the decision to commit to something larger than me, indifferent to the bargains available to me. Something shifts within me when I commit to an institution with no expectation of return. As long as I am in this job, I will care about this place. The answer to barter is generosity.

The Place Matters

Now the question becomes what I define as “this place.” Is it my unit, my team, my organization? The traditional answer to this question is: Identify narrowly and build it well. Steward your unit well, guard your property line well, and the rest will take care of itself. The challenge facing us, that will define us, is how wide a boundary do we draw for ourselves? Who looks after the common ground of the whole institution? The culture says it is top management’s job to care for the institution, our job is to focus on the task at hand. Let those above us hold it all together. This is the narrow-interest model.

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We need to realize that we may be distrusted and accused of altruism if we demonstrate care for the institution as a whole. We might give back budget money or suggest that some people in our group would do better to report to another manager. We might volunteer that many of the things we do are not worth doing and would best be stopped. To take these actions would be definitely counter cultural, so we have a chance to be a fool. The questions that serve us are What do we care about? and How do we act on that intention, in the face of the cultural messages? and Will we do this with no anticipation of reward and some expectation of contempt? For when we focus on the whole, at the possible cost to our unit, it quietly pressures others to do the same, and this pressure is not welcome. Violating tacit agreements for the sake of the business used to be called rate-busting.

Institutional Purpose

The question of commitment is the same for the institution. It has to decide whose interests it is there to serve. The economist’s answer is, “It’s the shareholders, stupid!” Economists have even declared that any act of pure social responsibility is against the shareholders’ interests, and the owners can take management to court for wasting assets on social concerns.

The question of purpose is more complicated for a not-for-profit, or what some call public benefit, organization. Their mission statement usually involves caring for some common good. But their way of operating has its own boundary questions. Is it a service agency only there to serve its target population? Is it in competition with other agencies for scarce funding? Whom are we here to serve? is the most profound institutional question of commitment. Conventional wisdom places our boundary at the property line. The city line is the boundary for local government, the national border is the limit for world leaders.

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For example, take a community center that offers health and recreational services. It has a fitness facility, day care center, and a program of youth activities. Is it in competition with other community centers in nearby towns? Is it in competition with private fitness centers and private day care centers? Most of its employees believe they are in competition and act accordingly. They think that their objective is to be the Number One community center in the region.

Instead, why not decide that its mission is to support community everywhere, to support fitness wherever people choose to work out, to support day care for all families who need it?

This would indicate that the center’s real purpose is to act on a set of values about interdependence, civic engagement, family, health, and caring for the next generation. If we were to take these values seriously, we would believe that we have a stake in the success of all community centers, fitness facilities, and day care operations. We would create an alliance of these other organizations and work to improve them all. We would look at the strengths of each operation and have the best teach the rest. We would share operating information and perhaps have overlapping board memberships to support the younger or struggling centers.

The marketing strategy would be to get more people exercising, more kids cared for, more community involvement in the area. The community center I have in mind has 2,000 members. All the community centers, fitness centers, and day care facilities in the region have about 8,000 active members. There are 75,000 people living in the region. Why not say that the marketing goal is to get another 10,000 people actively participating, regardless of where they go?

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Now you might say that most organizations already belong to an association that promotes their interests. But most associations protect the boundaries of their individual members rather than overlap and expand their boundaries. Few “competitors” are committed to each other’s success. The shift to Yes would be to take seriously the service and values mission of the institution, and treat more casually its boundaries and domain. The climate for this kind of thinking is increasingly receptive with the increase of alliances and partnerships, but the mindset of “This is my unit, my division, my organization” is still strong. It is interesting that when we seriously suggest a wider notion of what is “ours,” we are told that we are too idealistic. To which I would say, Thank you!

If I keep the boundary line at what I own, then no one is attending to the common ground and it grows fallow. In the economist’s mind the free market will take care of that. Survival of the fattest. Could it be that the ground has value for its own sake, not for its economic potential?

Good Fences Make Poor Neighbors

The classic response to ideas like these is a mixture of cynicism and fear. If we advocate giving away what we own, yielding on our own economic interests, caring for something for its own sake, we are asked to justify it as being in the best long-term interests of the institution. Or of the individual. Self-interest, whether short or long term, is the only acceptable explanation for our motivation. Philanthropy got transferred to the marketing department. Jobs for urban poor kids are justified to keep the streets quiet. Investment in formerly red-lined urban areas is done to protect our brand, our property, our growth potential in the longer run. This kind of reasoning is a measure of our cynicism.

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This is the world that was handed to us. This mindset drains the life, the humanity, the soul out of us. And, ultimately, it limits our freedom, for acting on a purpose that is narrowly defined makes us smaller, less capable of independent action, even at our moment of success.

But how do we reconcile individual purpose with institutional purpose? Suppose you decide to care for the whole? You commit to the whole organization, even at the expense of your unit; you commit to the industry, to the community, to the environment, to creating a habitable workplace, or to a family-friendly world. If the leaders of your organization choose differently, what does this mean for you?

Nothing.

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For who decides institutional purpose, or institutional values? Convention says it is top management. But why would we so easily transfer to a leader what matters most to us? The mindset that expresses Yes, our freedom, and the strength of our own capacity to take action is the thinking that we decide what the world around us should become. In fact, you can bet that most institutions in our lifetime will define themselves as economic or narrow-service organizations. This is their gift to us, for now we know the choices we make are our own.

Work Is a Good Place to Be

The workplaces we inhabit are perfect platforms for expressing our own intentions. My workplace is where I will find my voice. It is where I discover that I have all that I require, and because it has little more to offer me, it has lost its hold on me. It does not matter whether our organization’s leadership shares our values. It is enough to hope that they share values among themselves. Leave them alone. They are not here to meet our expectations. They exist to run an organization, not us. In fact, much of what institutional leadership does today comes from what they thought we wanted and needed yesterday. It may be possible that the institution will listen to us the moment we find our voice.

Now, some rationalize their caution by saying let me play the game so I can get into the game. If I am not elected, my voice will not matter. I will sing their song today so that I may play my own composition later. This is a fool’s delay. For the leaders of today had the same belief. They waited to find their own voice until they were in a position of power. At some point they looked around and discovered their time had passed, their voice misplaced. Someone put the cake out in the rain. Their desires lost their vitality from lack of use. Why do we think we will be any different?

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The intent is to stay whole and maintain our own center. Robert Sardello, as we shall see later, writes in Facing the World with Soul that we must bring our true selves into the world. If the world operates without a center, it can cost us ours. If a community has no center, or a building shows few signs of life, something has died within us. This is why we have a stake in urban vitality and economic and social strength. The lack of it leaves unresolved conflict within us. Moving to the edge of the city won’t help. If we are creating the world, then it is creating us at the same time and even if we look away, or move away, we remain eternally connected to something larger. This we cannot escape.