R. Catell, K. Moore, G. Rifkin – The CEO and the Monk: One Company’s Journey to Profit and Purpose

Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (January 16, 2004)
Language: English

 

From Publishers Weekly

The sublime union of temporal and spiritual power in the business world is celebrated in this earnest corporate hagiography. The titular monk is ex-Catholic clergyman Moore, a “thoughtful, provocative, gentle and good-natured” man with “the interpersonal skills of a priest, the serenity of a monk, the unbiased attitude of a business neophyte and a stark absence of a personal agenda.” Signing on to the human resources department of gas utility Brooklyn Union, Moore becomes a confessor to troubled colleagues and a spiritual advisor to CEO Catell. As the energy market deregulates and Brooklyn Union metastasizes into energy conglomerate KeySpan through a series of traumatic mergers and acquisitions, Moore helps the company “hold on to its soul” through a regimen of high-concept human resources initiatives in which employees meditate, create murals, do improv comedy and vent their feelings, initiatives that are also supplemented by random acts of senseless beauty, like sending anonymous floral bouquets to unsung workers. Nominally the company ombudsman, Moore displays a combination of sacramental and community-building roles that makes him more like an archbishop; he likens one of his HR functions to a Catholic Mass, another to the Last Supper, and even presides, decked out in priestly vestments, over a “funeral” for Brooklyn Union. Employees roll their eyes at first, but Moore is stoutly supported by Catell, a “messianic CEO” whose “salvific task” Moore compares to that of Moses himself. In the book’s trinitarian chapter structure, business journalist Rifkin (Radical Marketing) offers third-person narrative sections praising the character and good works of the two KeySpan executives, followed by first-person sections in which Moore and Catell praise each other (and themselves.) The result is a fairly well-

written devotional tract that will inspire far more than it enlightens.