Life After Death

In the March 2000 issue of Fast Company, philosopher Peter Koestenbaum grappled with the knotty intersection of competition and courage, work and meaning, success and human character. A classically trained philosopher and globe-trotting consultant with degrees in philosophy, physics, and theology from Stanford, Harvard, and Boston University, Koestenbaum has spent half a century pondering the questions that give most of us headaches: Why is there being instead of nothing? What does it mean to be a successful human being? How do we act when the risks seem overwhelming?

His agenda: to apply the power of philosophy to the big question of the day -- how to reconcile the often-brutal realities of business with basic human values -- and to create a new language of effective leadership. "Unless the distant goals of meaning, greatness, and destiny are addressed," Koestenbaum insists, "we can't make an intelligent decision about what to do tomorrow morning -- much less set strategy for a company or for a human life. Nothing is more practical than for people to deepen themselves. The more you understand the human condition, the more effective you are as a businessperson. Human depth makes business sense."

Confronted with the most basic existential questions in the wake of the September 11 attacks -- How do we behave as businesspeople and contribute as citizens? What's the meaning of our work? How do we lead our organizations and ourselves through this moment? -- Koestenbaum and his philosophical approach have never seemed more relevant. He recently shared with Fast Company his thinking on how the "shock of death" changes our lives and what it teaches us about leadership.

Philosophers wrestle with questions of evil, death, and meaning every day. Businesspeople don't. How do you make sense of September 11, of events that didn't just destroy buildings and end lives but shattered our sense of ourselves, our priorities, our work?

What we're facing -- as individuals, as leaders, as a society -- is the shock of death. The shock of death reveals deeper, hidden truths -- truths that are always there but which we avoid because they produce intense anxiety. Death reveals that our end is inevitable. It reveals that we are helpless and vulnerable. It also reveals that we are all free and responsible.

Of course, I don't want to hear any of that -- I'd rather be soothed. But the fact is, those are not the unpleasant realities of difficult times; those are revelations of eternal truths. What death ultimately reveals is the necessity of authentic leadership. Authentic leadership starts with understanding that we are all joined umbilically in a common fate.

Yesterday we thought: "Those brokers up in the towers are my competitors. They make more money than I do. I am going to beat them in the competition for clients' funds!" Today, we are confronted with the thought: "Now they are dead, and their offices are pulverized. Some jumped out of windows." Today, it's obvious that what matters is our common humanity, not that we are adversaries in the marketplace. How twisted have our values become that we forgot this for a moment? The world hasn't changed from self-sufficiency to dependency. No. We have changed from who we pretended to be to who we truly are.

The shock of death exists to teach you that your first decision -- and there is no other -- is to commit yourself to the creation of an ethical world, a civilized existence, a moral order. Am I an ethical person, first and foremost, always and with no exceptions? How can I, even for a moment, bypass this weighty cross-examination?

The shock of death teaches me to face my deepest guilt. I know it all could have been prevented. But now it's too late. We got lazy -- impoverished intelligence operations, absent-minded airport security. We were not alert enough to the political realities. We lost touch with our deepest principles. Or, simply, we are guilty because we did not do on Monday what Tuesday made too late. The question for us now is, What will happen tomorrow that can still be fixed today? Here is where my new resolve comes in. Here is where I will become a higher-quality human being. Here is where I become a leader.

If ever there was a leadership moment, it is now. What does this tragedy teach us about leadership?

The horror of September 11 is a message that our society has received before and not heeded. If we do not heed it this time, an even tougher consequence will follow -- an even more powerful wake-up call. And if we do not wake up, the next one will be louder. How many more decibels do we require? Have we not reached infinity as it is?