Speaking to the Harvard Business Review, the former CEO of Honeywell, Lawrence Bossidy, said that in his mind, there was ‘nothing more important than hiring and developing people’. ‘At the end of the day,’ he said, ‘you bet on people, not strategies’. Contributor Will Williams, Founder – Will Williams Meditation.
Of course, he’s right. It’s something any human resources professional knows. In fact, it’s an idea that lies at the very heart of human resources: it’s people who provide the inspiration, creativity and energy that allows businesses to flourish. And when people combine in productive ways, there’s really no limit to what they can achieve. You could say that a high-functioning business is the ultimate expression of the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
But hiring people and developing their skills form only part of the picture. Each worker also needs to be in the right frame of mind in order to thrive personally and help the broader business to grow. They must be social as well as independent, compassionate as well as resolute in pursuit of their goals. In a sentence, a good worker has to understand the needs of the group as well as the responsibilities of the individual.
But this has been lost. Skim-read any business paper and it won’t take long to come across depressing headlines about the state of work in the US and UK today. Productivity is low, innovation is scarce and staff are, on the whole, dissatisfied. Absenteeism, meanwhile, costs the economy millions every year.
The reasons for this are many, but they have their roots in a way of thinking that emerged more than a century ago. It was a mindset that suited the factories of the industrial era, but is now ill-equipped for our unique 21st-century setting. It entails an over-emphasis on robotic modes of working, a goal-orientated, short-term approach, and a kind of fetishisation of efficiency, productivity and growth.
Over the decades, we’ve trained ourselves neutrally to see the world and perform tasks in a very linear way, but it’s come at the cost of being able to appreciate context and subtlety, to collaborate and form close bonds, and to work for each other as well as ourselves. Without these qualities, individuals can’t pull in the same direction.
At the same time, life is speeding up. We receive more stimulation in a day than we did in a month before the advent of electricity. This overwhelms our nervous system and make us hyper-vigilant and negative. We become irritable, which we transfer to our colleagues and friends whether we want to do so or not.
In times of crisis, doing what HR professionals do best—managing and supporting staff—can become pretty daunting. And that’s where meditation comes in. With meditation—easy to do, inexpensive and highly effective—these same HR professionals have a means of reversing the changes in mindset that have caused businesses to become stagnant and professional life to become unsatisfying.
Scientific studies have shown that at a stroke, meditation can calm the over-stimulated amygdala (the brain’s alarm system) to help reduce the output of stress and fight-or-flight hormones. It thickens the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, improving memory, engagement, problem-solving and prioritisation. It improves our interpersonal skills and makes us more willing to be collaborative. And it allows to see the world in a different, more contextualised way, making us better critical thinkers and more creative ones.
At Google, Nike and Apple, meditation has become a staple activity seen as essential in reducing burnout and improving patience and creativity. But that doesn’t make it the preserve of the most modern, forward-thinking companies. In fact, Vedic meditation has existed for more than 10,000 years, and it emerged among ordinary, everyday people as a means to make life easier. It’s just as effective for bankers as it is for creatives, and once embraced in a business, a virtuous cycle soon begins that makes employees work better, rather than more, and rediscover their enjoyment of work and their relationships with their co-workers.
For HR professionals, meditation can become the most effective resource at your disposal. It’s something that at once improves satisfaction, cooperation and—that ‘Holy Grail’ of any business – productivity. But it’s really much more than that: meditation is a way to empower people to realise their potential. And when those people work together in a business, it flourishes.
