my personal life, and have always been highly intrigued by them, wondering how they occurred. Over the years my curiosity has grown, particularly about how these experiences occur collectively within a group or team of people. I have come to see this as the most subtle territory of leadership, creating the conditions for “predictable miracles.”
My quest to understand synchronicity arose out of a series of events in my life that led me into a process of inner transformation. As a result of this transformation I decided to follow a dream that I had held close to my heart for a number of years. It was the most difficult decision I had ever made, but the day I made it, I crossed a threshold. From that moment on, what happened to me had the most mysterious quality about it. Things began falling into place almost effortlessly, and I began to discover remarkable people who were to provide crucial assistance to me. This lasted for over a year. Then I lost the flow and almost destroyed the dream I had worked so hard to establish. Ultimately I regained the capacity to participate in what I later came to understand as an unfolding creative order.
These experiences led me to search for the meaning behind extraordinary moments in time. Why did so many doors open for me after I crossed the threshold? How did I lose the capacity to create the future I had envisioned? How did I regain that capacity? What principles could be discerned from these experiences? If this dynamic occurs in individuals, why can’t it occur collectively in organizations and even societies as well? What qualities of leadership could inspire this dynamic to occur?
I am the first to acknowledge that in attempting to address these questions we are exploring the frontiers of human knowledge, and that whatever is said here is only a beginning. But this is the story of my personal journey in search of the answers to those questions, and of my inner transformation along the way. I invite you to take that journey with me. Along the way, you will meet some of the people who are leading the renaissance now occurring in many disciplines: philosophy, physics, neurobiology, leadership theory, and organizational learning. These people are breaking the boundaries between disparate disciplines and transforming them at their farthest reaches – where for me they all converge, leading to a deeper understanding of how human beings, both individually and collectively, might develop the capacity to see what wants to emerge in this world and thus have the opportunity to shape the future instead of simply responding to the forces at large.
This book is organized in four parts that track the journey Joseph Campbell describes in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell presents a composite picture of the heroic quest, which is an archetype of the change process humans and, I suggest, organizations alike can pass through. Even though this is my story, I don’t intend it to be an autobiography. To the contrary, it’s intended to be everybody’s story; that’s why I’ve referred to my family members – who have played such crucial roles in my own journey – only when it is essential to the story itself. As Campbell pointed out, the hero’s journey is the journey of any of us who elect to search for our true destiny. It reflects the inevitable passages we encounter as we discover how to create the future. We hardly have the language to describe the fundamental shift of mind that permits us to participate in this unfolding creative order. A story is the most powerful way, indeed, the only way I know to begin.
I have intentionally written this book in a way to embody the journey itself, so that the earlier chapters represent the level of consciousness I experienced at that particular point in time. The best way I know to carry the reader into the journey itself is to echo for the reader what I was actually experiencing. I struggled with this decision because some of the incidents in the earlier chapters are not very flattering. Yet all of our experiences form an essential part of our developmental path, helping to shape us into what we are in the process of becoming. In that sense, as I look back, I am less judgmental about those earlier days. I encourage you to do likewise as you consider your own journey.
The story begins with “Preparing to Journey,” a description of the inauthentic life and the call to adventure, which comes in many ways, both subtle and explicit. It is the call to become what we were meant to become, the call to achieve our vital design. Part Two, “Crossing the Threshold,” describes the moment of decision, when we say “yes” to the call to adventure. If we have truly committed to follow our dream, we will find that a powerful force exists beyond ourselves and our conscious will, a force that helps us along the way, nurturing our quest and transformation. Part Three tells of “The Hero’s Journey,” the inevitable supreme ordeal that tests our commitment to the direction we have taken and offers us the opportunity to learn from our failures. The final section, “The Gift,” describes the story of the quest accomplished and what it has brought both to individuals and to society as a whole. Here I describe the process of transformation on the journey.
Peter Senge’s introduction is designed to be a sort of road map for the reader. Senge is the author of the pathbreaking book, The Fifth Discipline, which caused a worldwide groundswell of interest in learning organizations. For the past fifteen years, Senge and a number of his colleagues at MIT have been working to understand how to move organizations along the path of learning. They believe that the essence of a learning organization involves not only the development of new capacities, but also fundamental shifts of mind, individually and collectively – the very shifts that are the subject of this book. Nothing of real substance happens, they say, without this kind of transformation. Given this interest in transformation and how it can be most effectively led, it seemed appropriate to ask Peter to write the introduction. I also had a more personal reason for requesting this of him. As Peter explains in the introduction, he was deeply involved in helping me to write the book, and he was present with me almost the entire time as I made the journey toward wholeness that I describe within these pages.
It only remains for me to tell you about the serious reservations I have had about writing and publishing this book. How could I begin to tell others about the journey toward personal transformation when I find myself so often caught in my own shortcomings? I found a great deal of comfort in reading Henri J. M. Nouwen’s book Reaching Out. Nouwen said that for a long time he hesitated to write that book, but that he had found consolation and encouragement in the words of seventh-century ascetic, John of the Ladder:
If some are still dominated by their former bad habits, and yet can teach by mere words, let them teach. … For perhaps, by being put to shame by their own words, they will eventually begin to practice what they teach.
I hope that this book will serve you in your own personal transformation and that you will come to an even deeper understanding than is revealed here of how these predictable miracles might occur in your life, in the leadership of your organization, and in society as a whole.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book traces a journey that spans four decades of my life. Along the way, I have met the most remarkable people who added important new dimensions to my understanding and to my life. Many are mentioned among the pages of this book, but others are not. To all of them, I express my deepest and most heartfelt gratitude.
I owe an additional debt of gratitude to many others:
• To my partners at Bracewell and Giuliani, who have continued to build the firm with integrity and excellence. Our deep bonds of friendship, which were forged during the early years of building the firm, remain today.
• To the American Leadership Forum national trustees and the local chapter founders and executive directors, who served over the years and who devoted their commitment, energy, and resources to the enterprise. I wish to particularly acknowledge Dennis Mullane and Harry F. Merrow, Chairman and Executive Director, respectively, of the very first independent American Leadership Forum Chapter. They had the courage and foresight to step forward in the earliest days and acted as my mentors and guides throughout my tenure with the Forum.
• To the staff of the American
