SMI recently traveled to the Carmel home of Dr. Peter Koestenbaum, co-author with Peter Block of Freedom and Accountability at Work. Dr. Koestenbaum is the founder and chairman of PIB.Net, (for Philosophy in Business), and the Koestenbaum Institute, headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2000, he asked the hard questions in the influential Fast Company article Do You Have the Will to Lead?
Through prior correspondence, Dr. Koestenbaum was familiar with self-management and The Morning Star Company. Now 85 years young, he still works hard traveling, writing, speaking and consulting with businesses (at the time of the visit he was preparing for a workshop in the Palace of Versailles). He possesses a fascinating family history, leaving his native Germany in 1937 (where he watched Hitler on parade as a young boy) for Venezuela, where he grew up. His prodigious talents led him to degrees in physics and philosophy (B.A.) from Stanford, an M.A. in philosophy from Harvard, a Ph.D. in philosophy from Boston University, and classes in music and philosophy from U.C. Berkeley. From there he went on to a distinguished career at San Jose State University, where he was a professor of philosophy for 34 years and won the Statewide Outstanding Professor Award.
In addition to Freedom and Accountability at Work, he has authored the books Leadership: The Inner Side of Greatness and The Philosophic Consultant: Revolutionizing Organizations with Ideas. Dr. Koestenbaum is also the developer of the Leadership Diamond®, which focuses on the power of depth to examine (among other things) the structure of free will, courage, paradox and polarity.
Peter and his wife Patty shared incredible graciousness and generosity of time throughout the better part of a day of tea and conversation. The Self-Management Institute would like to profusely thank them both for their hospitality, and to Dr. Peter Koestenbaum for his thoughts.
The words of Dr. Peter Koestenbaum, except where noted:
The ultimate unit of human existence is a dialogue. That's Martin Buber, doing exactly what he says. So the title of probably the most important book I've written, which I wrote many years ago, going back into the late '50s, of course, it's a series of essays, it's The Vitality of Death. It's 600 pages long. Small print. And still available. You can buy it on the Internet. But it's unfortunate that I rely on that so much because everything else I've done after that is a development out of it. The title is sort of clever, I thought, and it caught some attention. And my oldest son refers to it as Vigor Mortis, which is very appropriate. Because the existential theme behind that is that the thought of death organizes your life for you. That if you really face your death now, then you can bring meaning into life, which is not a minor idea.
You live and – the expression that I think I used is that we are a being unto death. And of course, that comes Kierkegaard, who talks about The Sickness Unto Death, which is one of those more important books and so on. So that death organizes your life for you. The second thing is that I had this conference with the EVTA Organization, the European Vocational Training Association, where Mr. Tommaso [Grimaldi], who is the chairman of the board of that organization, an NGO, it covers twenty nations in Europe, he said, what your labor market requires is not The Vitality of Death, but it's experiencing the death of vitality. And I really appreciated that recognition of that title. And that inversion was right on target.
And the third point is that I have a second book out dealing with that same topic called Is There An Answer to Death?, which came out just a few years later. It was just about five years or six years later from the publication of The Vitality of Death, which was in 1971. And that was written in 1976. A series of three books in the humanistic, psychology series, which was then edited by Rollo May and Charles Hampton Turner. And that series had three books in it. And that was a short-lived series. But I appreciated that opportunity.
In there, a friend of mine called Cam Danielson, who runs a consortium that is outstanding, an international consortium in leadership, said that that was my most important book. And what was the most important part in that book is that I say that death is an invention.
And I just sent out to a colleague a copy of the title – front page article of in The New York Times yesterday, which is about suicide, which you may or may not have heard. The Center for Disease Control or CDC released a study that's a continuous study on suicide in the United States. And there's some pretty alarming statistics in there. You can have a copy of that. That the suicide rates in this country now exceed the rates of death by automobile accident, which used to be the biggest – you know, rate of death in, I guess, accidental death. It's no longer that high. They had 33,000 deaths last year by car accidents, which is horrible to think of. And 38,000 deaths by suicide. And that's supposed to be an underestimation. And then also, they have a number of articles written on the suicide rate in the army. And that it has been higher than the rate of death in the battlefield. Which is an indictment of something.
You go to the army not to kill yourself, but to be in very good physical health, unless you get hit, in some way. And there's a very, very touching story at the end of that. It's part of the blog of someone saying that my brother was unemployed. Is a very well trained IT guy. He was unemployed, and he couldn't even get an interview. And he finally ran out of unemployment insurance payments. And then he uses [his] 401K. He used that savings plan and that went out. And he got more and more depressed, more and more alienated and more and more discouraged, lost his meaning and got more depressed. And then he killed himself.
And I heard yesterday on the News Hour somebody called them to say that there's a whole generation [at risk] – the suicide rate has increased most sharply among the Baby Boomers. In their age 50s. Which is connected with the loss of meaning, dignity, the complete violation of expectations of what life might be. The next generation not being as fortunate as this generation, but the first time the curve's going the other way. And then this economist started to cry. You can see him. He was there last night. How can we do this to a major part of the best people in our country? That nobody really cares that they all of a sudden become street people, essentially, not because of their fault. There's just no job available.
And I would say that there are six major – I would argue there are six major driving forces in life. And I get that indirectly from an old psychology – really from a philosophical -- theory, which was made into a psychological test by a psychologist who was very famous when I went to school. Gordon Alport. In the '50s, he was [at the] Psychology Department at Harvard after the Psychology Department split into two. One had to deal with experimental psychology, and the other one with humanistic psychology. And the popular department became the one in humanistic psychology, was called social relations. And the Psychology Department then was much more experimental. That was a major political event at that university when I was there. And it was more than just at Harvard. It was everywhere. So, the test is based on six driving forces in life. And Alport was a key figure in putting it together.
One is the search for wealth, which is the one that I'm emphasizing right now, which means the economic man. The person who thinks in terms of money, and which is what you do professionally [if] you were the CFO of the company – that was the expectation, that you would help the company look at the world that way. Second, the driving force would be power. And that's the political man. And that doesn't have to be self-serving. Power [is] necessary for any kind of administration, for running a nation, running a company, running anything. Power is required. Third one is love, which is then the social person, which is if you're going to do ethics, then that's pretty much what you're talking about right now as a driving force. Of course, all of them are in [all of us] to a degree. They're connected. The other one is the esthetic force, the world of art. The esthetic man. Rollo May calls it the cry for myth. Then there's the theoretical man, the Einstein who's into truth. And then you have the religious man who is into harmony.
And the age that followed the World War II was really the main theme of that famous Norwegian economist Thorsten Veblen, who said there's a conspicuous consumption. And he wrote a book about the theory of the leisure class. And I had a colleague who was a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, Smith. He had just two initials. I forgot what they were. T.S. Smith or something. He was a congressman from Illinois and a professor of philosophy. And he was the editor of the Journal of Ethics. And he gave an address, which was, I guess, his retirement address on Thorsten Veblen's theory of the leisure class. But titling his speech, "Leisure of the Theory Class" [laughter]. And I think you understand that. I come from a very different direction in my philosophy in business, which I think is appropriate to the age in which we find ourselves right now. And I think it's, therefore, the thing that we need right now. And I want to make sure that that's how it's being taken, which is to put economics at the top. I think that's what the world is asking for right now.
And I think the Baby Boomers will feel that. And I think my children feel that, all of them. And I think that people in my situation are very much in that position. And that's a big group of people. And so I think that the Baby Boomers may be the generation that will also create the problems because it's such a massive group of people. How many millions are in there? And they're World War II babies. And they expect a lot. They expect [much] and their children are getting nothing. One of the most critical statistics is the enormous debt that families are now burdened with because of the college loans. I mean, it's an unbelievable situation. So the thinking of starting after college with debt or that the phone is gonna be ringing. If you have a degree from the Harvard Business School, you mean the phone isn't ringing off the hook? What phone? We can't afford a phone [laughter].
So I did quite a few lectures at the Harvard Alumni Association, especially for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of people who have fancy degrees, but can't get a job. And there's a special section at Harvard for the counseling of students who got a Ph.D. in humanities and can't get a job. And for ten years after they get that degree, they are supported in some way by that.
And these people are in deep distress. Their children are a mess because of how that affects families and so on. Because you can cover up a lot of existential issues with money. But if there is no money, then the surface – like a low tide, uncovers all the sunken ships.
So my approach is one of ambition and greatness and entrepreneurship. That's the only solution to the economic situation. It's no longer looking for a job. It's like waiting for the perfect woman before you get married. So you [remain a] bachelor, and that's it. So looking for a [good] job isn't the way to think. And when people get mad because there are no jobs, no one's going to take care of you in this world. If you don't take care of yourself, then you are nobody. You may be a nobody anyway.
And if you have gotten some of my letters, I end them with this pathetic quotation from Van Gogh – I don't know if you've seen that or not. From Van Gogh's letters to his brother. Oh, it's incredible. I've got this long thing after my signature of philosophy. And answer the quotation from Van Gogh, whose brother was an art guy, and he managed to sell one painting in his entire life. And he lived on nothing. And he shot himself in the stomach, what, in his 30s. And today his paintings – they start selling at $50,000,000 each and more.
And he was bipolar, he was an alcoholic, he was on drugs, he was rude and bad mood, unpleasant. And so he writes to his brother, that he is the lowest of the low. Nobody acknowledges him and shouldn't. He doesn't deserve it. “But when I take a brush and I paint, I see the stars”. And so he hopes that some day there will be somebody who will appreciate that art of his.
Little did he know that the work has lifted him up to something that he was never able to experience. So what I try to do is to take the history of philosophy, which I think is a unified phenomenon – philosophy is disparate and goes in all directions. And philosophy departments used to be highly political. Like economic departments. And it's really a very unpleasant experience to live in that situation.
I got my starting salary at the university in 19 – I don't know, in the '60s [and] was in the 99th percentile of [pay] at the very top. I started at $4,000 a year. And even then, that wasn't anything you could even begin to live on. And then I had four children. So that's always a big struggle to do that. And so many of my colleagues started in business, made a lot of money, and then became philosophers. I started being a philosopher. Made hardly any money, and then went into business to make some money. Except when the recession hit, who needs a philosopher? You know, who needs anyone? Who needs a consultant? Who needs an HR department? We don't need any of that. Who needs support? Fire all the managers.
That's really the way to do it. So I address that issue. I address the suicide issue. I address the issue that what you do when the avocado hits the fan. What do you do when things just don't work out for you? And even if you do well on Wall Street, there are so many rules and regulations that [impact] every day. You can't move. Even the way you hold your pencil it's gonna be regulated [laughter]. We don't want any lefties. You’ve got to write with the right hand. So there are these fears. When you do any transactions - you want to change an account from this bank to that bank, well, that will take about six months before all the papers are signed and delivered. And by then, you forgot where you did the transaction. Or you spend millions of dollars to get a stock quotation across the wires that is one-thousand of a millisecond ahead of the next one. And in that thousandth of a millisecond, there will be all kinds of transactions that are making you rich. Well, I can't think that fast [laughter]. And many people think that philosophy in business means to bring soul into business. Soul. And that's beautiful. But now the issue is people need jobs. And the people who have jobs that are traditionally not helping people with their education. You would not expect a person with a Master's degree in economics to drive a taxi. There’s [something] wrong, undignified about the taxi. It's with an immigrant who is in a transition period from a third world country to this country you see sometimes driving a taxi. Then you have a culture shock taxi [laughter].
So what I do, to put it very simply, is I think I'm a good philosopher. I take the history of philosophy, and I say the history of philosophy is about helping to build worldviews. And that a worldview is what you live by. It's not a common word in the English language. It's a very common one in German. So it's the need to create worldviews that give your life meaning, gives you a purpose, answers the eternal questions, which have been answered for you and probably religious behind that, probably. And also motivate you. If you want to motivate somebody, you've got to understand this worldview. And if you don't understand the [person’s] worldview, you're likely to offend them with your second sentence, no matter what you say.
SMI: Is it possible for one person to motivate another person? Or do you just create conditions so that a person can motivate himself?
Those are excellent questions, you see. I think the question is the beginning of a conversation. And now, this changes the subject, which is fine because this is what a dialogue is all about, you see. It is really a statement that cuts a lot of corners or whatever you want to call it or knots and gets right to the basic point, which is then that maybe the most important insight about the human condition is to understand free will. And free will, responsibility, accountability, really understand those things.
And that is, of course, what you're building your business on. That's the entrepreneurial mindset. And it's also the view that I support. But that doesn't mean you can't motivate another human being. That certainly is what is the STEM approach, which is based on science, technology, engineering, and math. That approach, we'll say, will never tell you that people are self-motivated, but that you have to motivate them or create conditions where motivation will grow.
And so it's really a question where do you assign responsibility? And all of those issues. And those are big issues. And I would say that maybe task one, maybe job one in the company is to make this point a centerpiece of discussion because there's a hidden agenda that gets you into the emotive theory of ethics. That if you say only you can motivate yourself, you're not just stating a fact. You're also stating a position that you would like to have that other person agree with. That's not as emotive language. Or an illocutionary language– language doesn't just report things, but tries to get things done. So if I ask you a question, how old are you, and you said “x”, my question was not meaning just a declarative statement that just says today is Saturday. But it's a question that tries to get an action going. A statement that gets an action going to ask you a question. And then you answer it. You know, I got to do the work with my statement. And it's got some results.
Or if I was a judge and I sentence you to jail, then that's an action. And that's called illocutionary language or emotive language or what have you. So when you ask me that question, you are really making a statement that you come from a position in which dogma is that people can only motivate themselves, and so they're responsible in an extreme for what they do, which can often be experienced as an insensitive because you don't understand my problems. You think you [know] my problems, but I can't get out of this situation and so on.
So we have to be a lot more refined to get in there. And the way to get more refined is to have an intelligent conversation about that topic. And so if you want to immediately transfer that into management, I would say what an organization requires is, at minimum, an opportunity or maybe a mandate to have Socratic dialogues or to have diving conversations -- to make having philosophical conversations about leadership something that is expected in this organization.
And what I do with my [Leadership] diamond, is that I say that there are twelve questions that I want you to know about that if you are familiar with those twelve questions, you will be really able to speak intelligently about leadership questions.
You'll have tremendous power to speak about leadership questions if you speak intelligently. If you understand those twelve questions or clusters of questions. And so we have, in a nutshell, what I believe that the history of philosophy – what I would call the history of philosophy could be a source of a dozen clusters of questions that you should ask. And to be familiar with how complex that asking really is. And – excuse me. I'm thinking about next week as we're talking. And you just gave me an idea here. Thank you – for that [laughter]. You never start with yourself. You always start with your audience. The audience makes a speaker. But how to do that isn't all that easy.
So I started out by saying that I talk to people how to make a success of themselves on the job market today. Or what the job market really means. And politically and all of that. And not to be depending on jobs, but on entrepreneurship.
Bill Bridges wrote a – he was a professor of English at Williams College. Wrote – and you don't know [how hard it is to] remember that name Bridges. And I always forget it. I don't know why. I must be jealous of him or something [Laughter]. Bill Bridges. I met him once. He wrote a brilliant book called Transitions. And you may be familiar with it. An all-time best seller.
A really good book. You know, really how to make these transitions, how to move, change. You can't cross a precipice or a [crevasse] in small steps. You’ve got to be bold [laughter]. That is true. That's an important thing to keep in mind. You either make it or you don't. So he wrote an essay for Fortune Magazine at least fifteen years ago, maybe more. It was on the cover. It was called The End of The Job. And he said then it's not about unemployment. The concept of job has lost its meaning. And so I addressed that -- how to use philosophy to do better business. It's not about putting soul in the business. It's not about how to deal with business issues as if it were medical issues or psychiatric issues. It's not about adjustment. But it is: we've got to make it in the economy no matter what. Sartre put it well: "Man is a being without excuses."
So that's really all I have to say is that I have developed what I consider a very sophisticated system to use the history of philosophy, which will turn most people off, to develop a theory of the person, a systematic presentation. What it means to exist as a human being in the world. I will describe that for you in some detail. I've got thousands of pages of diagrams or what have you to make it simple [laughter]. As long as you read all this stuff. So I will give you a presentation of the key ingredients of that view of the person. And then I will assure you that if you really have that in you, if you really have that in your possession, you will be able to manage things in business far better than before.
And so you have to give people the tools to get it. It's very important. And the tools are often philosophic thinking. Now, the chair or the director of the CDC was on the news explaining suicide is not a moral issue, but it's a medical issue. And we give doctors ways of dealing with that and all of that and so on. And when people are comfortable maybe one of those techniques [works], as it were, but philosophy is about the very best practice to deal with issues of suicide that you will ever find. In other words, suicide means [loss of] meaning. Not only your meaning, but you're also in a situation, which is so pernicious that there's no way out. Well, any general would find themselves in that situation every day. Or every politician would find themselves every day. So you have to learn how to deal with impossible situations in life. And that's where I like to come in as a philosopher. And I say that's where philosophy comes in. And of course, maybe the most famous book written about that is Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. But you know, the original title of that book, right? I mean, it's a really good title, From Death Camp to Existentialism. That's a good title. That tells you how the existential philosophy is when you're really in a concentration camp, you don't have any Supplemental Security Income or whatever to support you or what have you or an emergency suicide number to call. You only have abuse to look forward to.
And there was a film that the British Intelligence Service has. They have the most incredible films of about ten German generals who had been imprisoned. Who had been captured after the war or something like that. And they were taken to the concentration camp by Eisenhower to take a look and see what it was like. And then they were shown the pictures. And they were recorded in having conversations about what they really thought about being a general. And the German army, when they saw those horrible pictures – if you've been in Berlin at the center of the Holocaust Memorial, there is a place close to Hitler's bunker, which has all these pictures. More than almost anywhere else.
And you know, showing those pictures. And you really think that you were responsible for that, you think this was necessary to do in a war. And then you hear them talking, and that's – “we don't deserve to live”. And really, I mean, they could speak freely now. They were free after the war. And to hear them talk, though, a loyal German officer, doing their thing or what have you, they weren't expected to figure out how to address that issue. And then they also had a film on the first profiling, psychological profiling of a foreign leader was of Adolf Hitler. Roosevelt started that whole project.
And what they found out about him is unbelievable. So anyway, I think I've said enough about the [Leadership] diamond, but basically, saying nothing, but you can use some examples of how that might work. And I think the free will that you just mentioned is a good example.
And the other one is to take what we call the outer diamond, is to say before you make any decision, you have to recognize that there are four themes that are to be considered that interact constantly. And they are four very different topics. And you can't ignore any of them, even if you may want to.
And they go under the simple names of Courage, Ethics, Reality, and Vision. And we spend quite a bit of time trying to deconstruct them, what they might mean emotionally and otherwise. And that chances are that anything – any issue that you will ever face has that character to it.
And that you need to explore each one of those themes. What acts of courage are required for this? What are the ethical implications of all this? What's reality? Is that wonderful statement by one of these German – what's the rank above general? Marshal. Field Marshal. Impressive title [laughter]. We don't have that in this country. But they do have it in Russia. And in Germany and all of that. Field Marshal, saying that no amount of eloquence will keep a victorious army out at the gates. Let's get real [laughter]. Never mind the eloquence. You've got the power and you're gonna do it. And that's the reality. Strong questions like – what acts of courage will life expect of you in the next six months? And how will you respond? What story do you tell yourself and others that explains why you're not doing what you know you actually have to do?
Yeah, and you have these strong questions for that. And then you can say that some of the obstacles you have to go beyond as you go further, so we call [out] another four questions. You've got to learn how to deepen the conversation. Ask me the same question four times, and then maybe the fourth answer I'll give you, and then we can start talking. I give you the first answer, won't do any good. Now, come on, now, that's not yet quite the right answer. Well, let me think. Second answer. By the fourth time, well, maybe we could talk about something. Like the Chinese taught me. He said, now that we have signed our contract, we, in China, we came to negotiate seriously now [laughter]. And so we shall. Don't think there's an easy answer. Just do it. Or we tell those who say it can't be done to get out of the way. And let those who can’t– no, those who say it can't be done to get out of the way for those who are doing it.
The first one is to activate some deeper conversations about this. The second one would be striving for greatness. That theme of [being] larger-than-life is very appealing in some way. You know, let's do the things that no one ever thought could be done. Star Trek, where no one has gone before.
The third one is facing the shadows. Which is really dealing with self-deception. And the last one is to managing polarity or paradox. You know. And that's what the Israelis are facing right now in the Middle East. Whichever events turn out, it's not good for them. Whatever. You know, whatever the solution in Syria is – hates Israel, but has left it in peace, pretty much. There's nothing that can happen in Syria that's gonna be good for Israel. Nothing. Or for anybody else for that matter. And the whole Middle East is pretty much that way. And that doesn't sound good for anyone.
And so how do you deal with paradoxes? And so those are some of the ways of setting the territory that makes for eight themes. You got four on the outer diamond, which would be courage, ethics, reality, and vision, but the synonyms, which expand that, which would be identity for courage. You know, those are sort of trigger words. Belonging, for ethics. Those are more powerful words, actually.
And then security for reality. And then achievement for vision. And if you sort of question people in those areas, they get pretty upset. You're an underperformer. No, now, wait a minute [laughter]. Or you know, one of the things about you is you just don't have any guts. Wait a minute, it doesn't make me feel that good. I'm gonna roll up my sleeves and have a conversation with you. Or you know, you've never heard the word reality, have you? And accomplishment? Well, you're an underachiever. Just accept it. You know, just be happy. Just accept yourself as being an underachiever. Be happy. So those are all charged words. And just to consider those as a template leads to powerful conversations.
And then you have those eight points, really twelve points. And then the first two are the individual and the world. I and my environment. Those are the old philosophical problems. Who I am, what's the world like we live in. And that leads to a different set of issues. A different set of problems and questions. And it has to do more with the meaning of life. Like the chicken that comes out of the egg and stands there like what do I do now.
Immanuel Kant, maybe the greatest figure in western philosophy, had three questions. Very famous [in] philosophy. Who I am, who am I. The second, what would I to do? What I do. And the third, what can I hope? Very famous three questions. And philosophers have spent thousands of pages [laughter] each to try to come up with these terms. And I spend a lot of time on those issues. And that makes ten issues, ten questions. They're all questions. The ninth – the tenth – the eleventh question is about spirituality. The possibility of a spiritual view of life. What does that look like? And I like to spend a lot of time on that.
And the last issue is going to market. And I say to people the following: That Plato made the discovery at the dawn of Western Civilization that to remember something and to try to figure out something are similar experiences. So if I give you a riddle, what is it, that in the morning walks on four legs, at noon on two legs, and in the evening, on three legs the answer, right? That was the question of the sphinx. And that's the whole story of Oedipus. There was a plague because of so
