The New Spirit of Work

He wrote a statement outlining what would need to be done to put spirituality on the organization's core agenda. Two months later, when he returned from a trip to Vietnam, his proposal to create a "values circle" - which would meet to talk about that agenda - had become a reality. "I volunteered to show up," Barrett says. "When the meeting started, someone said, 'We need somebody to work on this full-time.' I volunteered again."

He was given yet another new title: values coordinator. By April 1996, his work was finally bearing fruit. The values circle had begun a process to align the World Bank's activities with a core set of values. Barrett was given a mandate to do four specific things: increase membership in the circle; develop a values tool kit; train 50 people to use the tools in the kit and to promote the circle's mission; a and build Web site that would deal with values and that would link to the World Bank's own site.

By the end of the year, Barrett had accomplished all of these things. "The vice president of human resources was ready to roll out the program throughout the organization. We were ready with all the trainers," Barrett says. "It was on everybody's lips. A year earlier, nobody was talking about it. Now my mission was complete."

Once again, it was time to leave - time to make yet another leap into the unknown. Barrett would be abandoning a $180,000 job and a reputation as a global expert. He would be leaving one of the world's most prestigious financial institutions to enter a field that some consider flaky and in which he was barely known. Still, the choice was clear: In June 1997, he left to set up his consultancy.

In the past year, he has taken on corporate and governmental clients from around the world. He has conducted workshops for people interested in measuring social responsibility and spiritual values in business. He boasts a list of prestigious clients: the Newspaper Association of America, a large Istanbul-based conglomerate called TATKO, the Swiss Development Cooperation, the Australian office of McKinsey & Co. In April, he spoke at the first UNESCO Business Forum in Stockholm. This August, he will conduct a three-day training session in Oslo.

The Wealth of the World

The Boston conference is winding down, and Barrett - still working the ballrooms, workshops, and corridors - is summarizing his message. Ultimately, he says, the point isn't about spirituality. It's about the future: What must each of us do to create a sustainable world economy?

"The trick is, you have to have profit before you can do anything at all," Barrett says. He has another slide that emphasizes the economic realities. In 1996, 447 billionaires had a net worth equal to the combined income of the poorest half of the world's population. Wealth, Barrett says, has become the most important determinant of political power. "We need new ways to distribute this wealth," Barrett says. "Corporations must take on more social responsibility, and governments need to become more like business - more efficient and cost-effective."

But what about the long-term outlook? On a global level, Barrett's vision can easily be dismissed: It's grounded on a foolishly optimistic faith in the ability of people and organizations to change simply because they decide they should. Anyone who has gone through a large-scale reorganization knows how difficult change is. Yet Barrett remains unflappable.

"This conference is significantly more real than any I've been to in the past," he says. "I'm terribly optimistic about the future. Over the next few years, we're going to see the rapid development of the practical side of these ideas. It's going to be huge, this questioning of beliefs and assumptions. This is all going to happen."

David Dorsey (dedorsey@aol.com), a Rochester-based journalist and novelist, is a frequent contributor to Fast Company. You can reach Richard Barrett by email (richard@corptools.com).