The New Spirit of Work

Richard Barrett has an honest face. his bristling eyebrows, graying hair, and clear blue eyes - made to seem slightly larger by the thick lenses of his spectacles - create an aura of instant trust. His manner, voice, and English accent are reminiscent of Clarence, the slightly bemused angel who was sent to Earth to earn his wings in Frank Capra's classic movie "It's a Wonderful Life."

But instead of standing on a bridge in Bedford Falls, the 53-year-old Barrett is standing behind a podium at Boston's Park Plaza Hotel. It's an early-spring morning. Before him are more than 300 people who have assembled for the First International Symposium on Spirituality and Business, presented by the Andover Newton Theological School. They have convened in the Georgian Room, a cavernous ballroom with velvet drapery, large chandeliers, and ornate mirrors. On one wall hangs a reproduction of Gilbert Stuart's famous unfinished portrait of George Washington. It's a perfect icon for this meeting -- which is also part of a work in progress, and which unabashedly aspires to be historic.

Like a talk-show host, Barrett walks to the edge of the stage and holds a microphone in front of one of the participants.

"How are you feeling today, sir?" Barrett asks the man.

"Fine," the man says.

"Fine," Barrett repeats into the microphone. "Hmmm. That stands for Feelings Inside Not Expressed."

The crowd laughs.

"When people ask me how I'm doing, I say that I'm bordering on the fantastic," Barrett continues. "Can you say that? How are you today?"

"Bordering on the fantastic!" the crowd calls out in unison.

He has hit an appropriate note for this group: funny but not flip, earnest but without piety or bombast. Everyone's warmed up. The room is humming. The coffee urns are half-empty. The pastry plates are bare. Notebooks are out. Then, after an attentive silence falls across the room, Barrett compresses into a one-hour speech - part inspiration, part application - what normally takes him a three-day seminar to describe.

"I want to change the philosophy of business at the global level - in my lifetime. It will happen. Amazing things are going to happen in the next 10 years," Barrett says. "They're happening already."

Barrett is preaching the gospel of spirituality in the workplace - but with a difference. Where others earnestly emphasize the human element in work, Barrett speaks the language of pragmatism: He offers a quantifiable approach to measuring the alignment between organizational and individual beliefs. His premise is simple: People and companies do well, financially and otherwise, to the degree that their interests match their values. To create that alignment, you have to see it. And to see it, you have to find a way to measure it. Barrett has a way to measure that alignment - and a vision for improving it.

Over the past few years, Barrett has been to many seminars where people talk about introducing spiritual values into the workplace. He has attended such gatherings in Mazatlán and in São Paulo, in Minneapolis and in Washington, DC. But the group in Boston is different. The dominant look favors cropped, graying hair. Dark suits are everywhere, as are outfits featuring pearls, worsted skirts, and silk blouses. People here have come to a business meeting: They have Fil-O-Faxes on their laps, business cards with Web addresses in their pockets, cellular phones in their briefcases. At some spirituality seminars, the attendees are looking for prophets. At this one, they're looking for profits.

Barrett and his partner, Joan Shafer - in January, she joined Barrett and Associates, the Alexandria, Virginia-based consultancy that he founded in 1997 - have a mission: to promote a model for business that allows people, in their daily work, to remain true to their deepest beliefs. Adopting such a model, Barrett and Shafer argue, will soon become the only way for companies to make a profit, because it will soon become the only way for companies to stay creative.

Barrett believes that innovation in business has become a runaway train - the train that everyone needs to ride. Perpetual innovation offers the only hope of business and personal success, but it thrives only in an atmosphere of trust. To create that trust, a business must ground everything it does in sustainable values. People need to believe in what they do for a living before they can tap their deepest creative potential.

Onstage, Barrett throws a couple of slides onto a big screen. In 1997, 76% of consumers polled said that - assuming no difference in price or quality - they would switch brands to align themselves with a good cause. In another poll, 75% of graduating MBA students said that a company should consider its impact on society in such areas as the environment, equal opportunity, family relationships, and community involvement. A full 50% said that they would take a cut in salary to work for a socially responsible company.

A cynic might say that yuppies still want to drive their BMWs - but that they no longer want to feel guilty behind the wheel.

Barrett would say that people who have learned to make a living now want to make a difference.