Writings
An Epoch Change in Our Paradigms, page 2
As you know, at the essence of what we are doing at Hanover is wedding individual fulfillment with societal service and economic success. Put differently, we want to design a company with the enabling conditions so people can use their jobs to reach the fourth or fifth steps on Maslow’s ladder (his hierarchy of needs).
I believe the governing ideas and practices of Hanover Insurance Companies have wider application than to one company or industry. Many friends such as yourself have encouraged me in this view and suggested activities to introduce the philosophy to a larger audience.
My innate appetite for philosophy and business has been leveraged by two fortunate conditions. First has been access to some unusual people, such as Jack Adam (my predecessor at Hanover), John Beckett, Peter Senge, Charles Hampden-Turner, Chris Argyris, yourself, and others who are original thinkers. Many have been authors: E.F. Schumacher, M. Scott Peck, John Gardner, Teilhard de Chardin, Douglas McGregor, and Willis Harmon, to name a few.
The second condition is the fortunate circumstance to head a company to which I apply my learning. I appreciate the value of this unique arrangement more as I meet with my colleagues from academia or even those who are one rung from the top of some of the world’s most renowned companies. It would be frustrating for me to think through issues and not have a vehicle through which I apply what I learn. I believe you and my friends from the academic community will identify with that observation.
In rebuttal, you might be inclined to say, ‘‘If you spread your wings, so to speak, you would get the satisfaction of seeing your ideas and experience helping more people and having a larger handprint on the world.’’ But if I were to follow that path, I would no longer be a practicing thinker who sells his ideas. And there is nothing wrong with the latter. It is just not me right now. My uniqueness is that I am one of the few spokespersons for vision-driven, value-guided institutional governance who actually does what he talks about. While admittedly my audiences outside Hanover are limited, they see and appreciate the connection between thinking and doing. It is the source of my authenticity.
Hanover and its people are special. It is one of the best kept secrets in the business world. I believe I can lead the organization to new levels of capabilities. Further, I believe the people of Hanover can take me to new levels of understanding and learning more effectively than any other situation I can envision. Looked at from another vantage point, I find it unattractive working in surroundings where politics and linear thinking dominate and where it would be necessary to treat conditions we in Hanover overcame many years ago.
Again, let me digress. You and I frequently discussed our shared belief that epoch change is taking place throughout the world. Ordinary change, as we have known it in recent history, has been born out of technological advances or liberating social customs. Epoch transitions are born out of fundamental changes in how people see things. Today’s dominant reality is largely based on the scientific paradigm: theories from Descartes, Newton, Einstein, and succeeding generations of renowned scientists. The scientific paradigm began in the sixteenth century. It followed a paradigm that was based on religion, spirits, and the arts.
Paradigm shifts in dominant emphasis are accompanied by a degree of change that is traumatic to individuals who perceive their world coming apart at the seams. History teaches us that shifts from one technology to another, such as farming to industrial to computer, strain the stress tolerance of many people.