The CEO and the Monk: One Company's Journey to Profit and Purpose by Robert B. Catell

Product Description

In a business era in which executives are taken away in handcuffs and corporate malfeasance and scandal dominates the business headlines, there is tremendous value in the stories of ethical companies and spiritual business leaders. The CEO and the Monk is one such compelling story, the story of KeySpan, the nations fifth largest energy giant and a profitable, Fortune 500 company, and the two KeySpan executives–one a former monk–whose unique working relationship is based on something as simple and powerful as "doing the right thing." This isnt yet another prescriptive business guide written by breathless consultants. It is a story about a real business and how two unusual and dedicated humanists can keep their eyes on profits and ethics at the same time.
Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #111986 in Books
Published on: 2004-01-16
Number of items: 1
Binding: Hardcover
256 pages
Editorial Reviews

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.
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Review
“… showing executives how to instill a philosophy that balances bottom-line demands with a sense of caring.” (The Deal, 15th March 2004)

"It's an odd partnership that makes for an offbeat but intriguing story." (Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge, March 8,2004)

"Entertaining and human story of making a business work by keeping an eye on the intangibles of the human experience." (HR.Com Book of the Year 2003, Runner-Up, January, 2004)

"If you're interested in CEO thinking, human resources issues, and corporate culture, ''The CEO and the Monk" is worth reading." (Boston Globe, March 7, 2004)

Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge, March 8,2004
"It's an odd partnership that makes for an offbeat but intriguing story."
Customer Reviews

Spiritual and Business-Savvy? Whodathunkit?
I work for an A/V company who does small trade shows and pharmaseutical companies. I ordinarally fall asleep during these presentations, but when Kenny hit the stage with his understated enthusiasm and wisdom about how the bottom lines of profit and spirituality can come together -- and make both bottom lines go up for all concerned -- I was transfixed.

All I do is run a sound board. I get a lot of free books from these shows, and to be honest I sell most of them on EBay.

I am keeping this one.

This should be a best seller!! BUY THIS BOOK!!!! Read why.
I'm not ordinarily a fan of business books, but I fell in love with this story about a company with heart, soul and a strong sense of moral responsibility and community. If we all lived our business lives like The CEO and The Monk, there would be no Enrons and all our bottom lines would be healthy.

There are so many places in the book that pull you up short and make you think, like the Monk's recalling words of Oliver Wendell Holmes: "Most of us go to our graves with our music still inside us." I felt energized reading this book, inspired to start all over again and make a difference. I am sharing this book with my staff. And, I've been buying copies and giving to friends who work in the corporate world. BUY THIS BOOK!!!!

Spiritually, Very Average......
This book is "ok". If you use the track record of corporations to measure Key Span (Brooklyn Union), then what they've done is good, not great, but good. If you use a spiritual or moral measure, then what they've done is quite mediocre. The main accomplishment is that of the monk, Kenny Moore, who was able to foster direct and non-judgemental communication between the workers and management. This is a good thing and many companies would do well to learn from this example. Key Span does do a lot of charity work, but their motives for doing so, by their own terms of "enlightened self-interest", are just that, selfish. The company pressures average workers to give up their free time to volunteer for charity. The result is that Key Span gets publicity at the expense of their unpaid workers. This is PR on the cheap and takes unfair advantage of the already financially strapped workers. They hire social workers to aid the company in extracting money from customers who are unable to pay. On the surface it sounds good, but it's just a ploy to increase company profits by increasing collections. Much of the book is about the inside scoop on various Brooklyn Union/Key Span mergers and aquisitions, a bit boring. The rest is a lot of back slapping of both CEO and the Monk. There's very little investigative journalism here in terms of exploring contrarian points of view. What Key Span has done is just "ok", not great. They stand out not because of what good they've done, but rather because of what very bad other corporations have done. The bottom line, foster honest communication between management and the workers. The rest of the book is meaningless. It's the same old same old, the workers toil in order to make executives rich. Nothing new. That the CEO and the Monk can't see this is more telling than anything told in the book.