My account of my experiences with Intensives has run ahead of other aspects of my life. By March 1994, when I participated in an Intensive run by a student, I had hired four programmers, an office manager and a researcher to work in my business. With Eva and I working in it as well it was now too large to be easily accommodated in our home. So we rented office space in Milton Keynes and established Energy Advisory Services Ltd (EAS) as a ‘proper business’. Our turnover was now enough to pay all the salaries, buy new computers and still pay Eva and I a handsome dividend each year. Indeed, by now I had paid off the mortgage on The Old Manor House and started to put money into a pension fund for Eva. I was still looking for an exit strategy from the business – I knew I could not continue to give it enough time and manage my University job and run Intensives. So I returned to the idea of EAS taking on running the NHER scheme for the National Energy Foundation (NEF).
When I suggested it to the Director of the NEF he bit my hand off. He thought it was the ideal solution for the Foundation and would ensure a complete integration between the membership scheme, run by the NEF, and the software and training, provided by EAS. I proposed that I would be seconded from the University for three years – which meant that the new business would pay the University my salary and pension contributions and I would be able to retain my University post if I wanted to return to it after three years. It was also a viable exit strategy for me because if the combined business could afford to pay my salary then it could also afford to hire a replacement for me if I returned to the University.
I realised that this shift would be a major undertaking, not least because instead of running a business with 7 employees I would be managing one with over 20 employees. I explained all this to Eva and asked her to support me doing this for the next three years. I also promised that when it was over I would support her in whatever she wanted to do for the following three years. She accepted this – which also meant that she would basically give up her therapy and mind-clearing work and become an employee in the new business. It was a major shift in our lives, but one we took together.
At an early stage of thinking about the merger I decided that I wanted to put into practice the organisational theory that I was teaching to undergraduates as part of a number of Systems courses at the University. The core idea was encapsulated in the idea of a “Learning Organisation”. In most organisations when things went wrong or errors were made the immediate response was to determine who was to blame. In contrast in a Learning Organisation when something went wrong it was regarded as an opportunity for everyone involved to learn how to avoid the same mistake in the future. The difference sounds trivial, but in practice it makes an enormous difference to what it feels like to work in the organisation. If the research reports were to be believed it also made a significant difference to how well the organisation served its customers and was able to make profits.
With the small staff in EAS it had been very easy to implement a learning approach. Indeed we also had a profit sharing scheme and adopted a ‘person centred’ approach to management that encouraged people to develop their skills and ambitions in a direction of their choosing. This was going to be more difficult with the larger numbers in the new combined entity. It was also going to be difficult because the senior managers of the NHER scheme were very autocratic; they liked to tell people what to do and how to do it. In particular the central figure, Deborah, liked being in charge and I was not looking forward to being her boss.
Throughout the negotiations about how the new business would operate I was clear about what I wanted, but recognised that I was ‘sitting on my power’. I was effectively giving away the intellectual rights to some very successful software and training courses – in exchange for an exit strategy. Was I getting a good deal? To what degree was my advocacy of a learning – person – centred organisation simply a rerun of the power issues I had so badly mishandled in ERG 16 years earlier? At one point I visited my wise man with two key questions. The first was ‘why am I having such a problem with power?’ and the second was ‘Is it right to be making so much money?’ He said:
Never think that you have resolved power issues. They are the deepest attachments and are worked out last of all. Be vigilant. Never cease to be vigilant about how you are using your power. You should be decisive and provide leadership, which includes making tough decisions, but never lose sight of the people you are dealing with.
The more you sort yourself out and continue to be in the world then the more successful you will be. That is inevitable and correct. So accept the money and use it wisely. Use it to support the ‘temples’ you respect.
Sorting out the contractual details of this merger was an eye-opener for me. I started to understand a lot more about the world of business deals and why it was necessary to try to think of everything that could go wrong – and cover each eventuality in the contract. I was amazed at the hours spent in lawyers offices and the resulting bundle of legal contracts that Eva and I had to sign (because we were both Directors of EAS). The basis of the agreement was that EAS purchased the NHER scheme from the NEF in return for giving the NEF a 66% shareholding in EAS. After the merger, to reflect the change in the nature of the business, I changed its name from EAS to National Energy Services, NES Ltd, which is still trading today, some 23 years later.
The merger was scheduled to take place on Nov 1st 1994, a fortnight after my 50th birthday. Eva organised an amazing birthday celebration for me at a large country house, Castle Ashby in Northampton. The evening centred around a formal meal for all the 60 guests. They were organised on 6 tables, one for each part of my life. So there was a table of University colleagues, a table of people from EAS and NHER and another table with energy consultants with whom I worked regularly. Another table had our children and their partners, the fifth table had a few people from Intensives and the last table was for Eva and I and other immediate family. I invited my mother, but she didn’t come, choosing instead to have a holiday with her sister. She also claimed to have not realised it was my fiftieth birthday – which is probably true and captures the continuing dire state of our relationship. Despite this the evening was a fabulous success. Eva invited someone from each table to say something about me. I found it all very moving – and often very funny. I found it hard to let in how much people liked and admired me. It felt like an appropriate ending to a particular phase of our life.
One aspect of the merger for which I was not well prepared was that I became a full time manager – I had to leave the ‘interesting stuff’ to others. I was now managing a team of programmers instead of writing the code myself. This also meant a radical change in procedures. Up to this point all the details of the model, the code and the reasons for doing things a certain way were in my head – and since I was the only one changing the programmes this worked. Now all the software was being changed and maintained by a team of programmers who knew very little about the underlying physics and even less about why the programme had been constructed in a certain way. So I had to document all the model theory, the reasons for the way the code was written and the things to watch out for if making changes.
The Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC) were enthusiastic supporters of the energy rating scheme (the NHER) and required all builders constructing homes in Milton Keynes to obtain an NHER score of 10. This meant that the homes built were far more energy efficient than those simply complying with Building Regulations. The builders were happy to go along with this because they knew everyone building in MK had to meet the same standard – and they were not told how to meet the standard, so they could find innovative solutions. This meant that most national house builders became members of the NHER scheme and purchased and used its software.
A few months after the merger Eva suggested that rather than providing just the software to builders we should also think about ways of helping them market the energy efficient houses being built in MK. I came up with the idea of an Energy Cost Guarantee. Basically we would provide the builders with a guarantee that the total gas bill for one of their houses would be less than a certain amount – and if the bill were higher then we, NES Ltd, would refund the householder the difference. Because the houses were so efficient we were contemplating offering guarantees that the gas bill would be less than £250 per year (equivalent to about £500/year at today’s gas prices).
I could not resist remaining involved in the coding in some way, and so in the evenings I developed the code that enabled the NHER software to produce the guaranteed level of gas bill. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and thought that we were developing a really useful product – largely based on our confidence in the software’s ability to accurate predict running costs. However when we started trying to sell the idea to builders we encountered a luke warm reaction – indeed only a few of the more adventurous smaller builders took up the idea. Slowly the reason for this emerged.
The first clue was that our marketing manager decided to find out what the Energy Cost Guarantee would be on her house. It was about £300/year – and her gas bills were actually over £400. This was a cause for concern. She decided to investigate further. When her husband ventured into their loft he found that the loft insulation was all there – only it was still rolled up and not laid out to insulate the roof! It turned out that this was the reason why builders were so wary of the guarantee – it would show up defects in the way that they had constructed the house! Our confidence in our software was not matched by builder’s confidence in their product!
Shortly after the merger the Board put my name forward for the Royal Society/Esso prize for contributions to energy efficiency. I was named the winner along with colleagues at the Building Research Establishment with whom I had worked very closely whilst developing the computer model. It was a prestigious prize that included a Royal Society gold Medal. Eva thoroughly enjoyed being feted at the Royal Society. The photograph of me taken at the time shows that I was well pleased – if not smug!
After an initial honeymoon the merged business started to throw up the sort of problems that we had anticipated. People used to an autocratic management style didn’t know how to handle a radically different approach. It was not just senior managers like Deborah who found it difficult. Quite a number of the younger staff eventually left because they were not coming to work to further themselves or their career – they just wanted to be told what to do so that they could pay the mortgage and go out at the weekend. The idea of taking responsibility for what they did and learning how to do things better was not part of their world view. So the more ambitious staff thrived and loved it and a number of the remainder found jobs elsewhere.
Eva found working in the business very stressful. She set herself up as someone who would listen to people’s concerns – and ended up being overwhelmed by the petty squabbles that inevitably arise within a staff of 25. I had to face some difficult situations. There were two people working in marketing who intensely disliked each other, as a result they often behaved unprofessionally toward each other in front of clients. I decided that I had to fire them both, which I did a few weeks before Christmas. I remembered my wise man’s advice and did not lose sight of them as people, but they nevertheless found it hard losing their jobs.
I also found myself running into some of the traps I had run into whilst managing ERG almost twenty years earlier. In particular I noticed that rather than require people to up their game I would intervene by showing them how to do something better. However this lead to a culture of dependency where people came to expect me to rescue them if anything they did went wrong – and this also made them feel inadequate. Early in 1996, just over a year after the merger, I had a crisis with my Management Team and confronted them about time keeping, not developing their managerial skills and not preparing adequately for meetings. This had a beneficial effect for everyone except Deborah. She had been willing to go along with my ideas of managing in a different way but objected when I was telling her that she was not doing well enough.
In the summer of 1996 Eva and I were away from the business for four weeks, running a two week Intensive and then another Master’s Training Course. Both these events went really well – especially the two week. However, when we returned to work we found the office in uproar. Basically whilst we had been away Deborah had become more and more frustrated and had reverted to her old autocratic style. Whilst this was the norm prior to the merger, everyone had accepted it. But having experienced something more liberal they were no longer willing to accept it. It took Eva and I a week to sort out the mess that had been created and calm the relationships down to the point where people could focus on their work once more. However, from this time onwards Deborah became implacably opposed to everything I was proposing. She objected to my management style, disagreed with executive decisions and became less and less willing to contribute to the business as it was evolving.
I felt I was in a trap of my own making. I was seeking to promote a style of management in which rather than blaming someone for things going wrong there was a space for everyone to learn how to avoid repeating the error. I was now confronted by Deborah repeating a pattern of behaviour that caused chaos and distress – and she was unwilling to look at her part in it all. I thought that if I simply fired her I would be acting in the autocratic style that I was trying to persuade her to drop. So far all my attempts to have her adopt a different approach had failed. So I decided to visit my wise man for advice and help. Here’s what he said:
You are upset because you can’t have things your way. You have not let go wanting to have all the power. You are not empowering your managers – you want them to all do things your way rather than their own way. What you have to do is to take up the role of teacher. Teach them how to recognise their weaknesses and how to overcome them. Teach them new skills. This will strengthen the business however things turn out. You have to resolve your own conflicts in terms of objectives – it is only when you are clear that you can sort out and communicate priorities. Your predilection to confront and fire is you still wanting to be the dictator. You must drop that completely before anyone can trust you.
Following this advice I spent a few frustrating months talking to Deborah and the other managers trying to understand what they needed from me in order to become more effective and comfortable in their roles. The trouble was that even a mild confrontation from me triggered very defensive reactions – particularly in Deborah – so I was not able to make much headway. And in terms of relations in the office things were becoming progressively worse. At one point staff were telling me things that directly contradicted things that Deborah was telling me, which meant I was not certain of what was actually going on. As the December Board meeting approached I started to ponder my options.
Actually I feel very sad. It seems that I have come to a cross roads with respect to Deborah. I cannot face going on with … what exactly is it I find so hard? Her opposition, her negativity, her inability to control her emotions, her dishonesty, her talking negatively about me behind my back? I am certainly NOT supported and backed up by her. I find it harder and harder to trust that she is telling me the truth. And I think her judgement is often at odds with what’s happening. So what do I do? Make her redundant?
The weekend before the Board meeting Eva and I decided to address these issues and to do so by being stoned together. We had noticed that quite often being stoned would loosen our ways of looking at issues and often show us ways of solving issues between us and in the business. In the event it worked very well.
I started by saying that I was worried because I did not know whether getting rid of Deborah was a way for me to avoid facing a trip of my own or whether I was unnecessarily giving myself (and the business) a hard time. I then realised that the second option would only be true if I had actually dealt with the issue that Deborah was confronting in me. At this point Eva intervened and asked “If you have faced the issue brought up by Deborah what is it? What have you faced in relation to Deborah?
As Eva asked the question I felt it sink into my awareness. The first possibility that arose was that of asking for help. But almost as I saw that possibility the real issue became obvious. I had learned how not to fight, how to not use my power to win. I had withstood an incredible level of provocation from Deborah and had not once used either my cleverness nor my position as Managing Director to fight or make her wrong. I had consistently treated her well and avoided humiliating her. But she has not responded at a fundamental level. She has improved – but she still fights me on every issue and seeks other staff to collude with her.
What is really great is that I have confronted and largely resolved this issue in myself simply by resolving to treat other people well. I felt, and still feel, an enormous sense of relief now I know I have faced my side of the issue. I still have more to work on – but I am not out to win by fighting. Now I can talk to the Board about what is best for the business.
I am really relieved – and pleased. I think I have faced myself really well. I have consistently refused to act whilst I felt reactive. I have always sought everyone’s point of view – and seen in almost every case that there was no single culprit but instead a shared responsibility for an interpersonal mess.
Another part of the turn-around last night was that up to that point I felt I had failed. I had failed to turn Deborah around and create a good work team But now I can see the dimension in which I have succeeded – I failed to change Deborah but succeeded in changing myself!
The Board meeting on Monday morning was straightforward. I raised the issues around Deborah and found that the other Board members had, in their own ways, detected the animosity Deborah had toward me. They quizzed me about the role she had in the business and how it could be covered in the future. But within 5 minutes the Board agreed to make Deborah redundant. Indeed one of the Board members asked me why it took me so long to come to my conclusion! We then devised a way for her to be made redundant and to receive a handsome payment provided that she left the company gracefully and did not seek to fight our decision.
Because Deborah was a senior manager the Chairman of the Board told her she was being made redundant away from the office. The next day I made an appointment to meet with her. At the start of the meeting she was obviously furious and also vulnerable. I made contact with her and said “Look I know that you did your best and that what I was asking of you was too much. I also know that some of the staff could only see you as autocratic because that’s how you used to be with them – so they were making it very difficult for you to change as well. I’m sorry it has come to this, but I cannot manage the company with you so implacably opposed to me.” She visibly relaxed and the rest of the meeting was concerned with how she wanted to break the news to the rest of the staff, how long it would take her to clear up all the stuff on her desk and when she would finally leave. A few years later I heard that the crisis this created for Deborah was instrumental in her and her husband becoming much closer and she went on to have a child – something she had always wanted.
Shortly after resolving my issue with Deborah I noticed that I was trusting myself a great deal more. I trusted myself to be more powerful and more straight in responding to people. This was a direct result of recognising that I had finally learned not to fight, not to humiliate others and to treat them well even when I profoundly disagreed with them. So I trusted that I would not abuse my power or use it to belittle other people. When I was much younger, and way before I embarked on any sort of personal awareness, I used to demolish people intellectually – I literally beat them up with my intellect. I had not done that with Deborah, nor anyone else in the business, so I trusted myself more. This is completely consistent with a film I saw of one of Yogeshwar’s lectures whilst he was staying with us. In that lecture he said that everyone could be a lot more powerful in the world, but that they held back on being powerful for fear of injuring others. He therefore urged everyone to adopt the yogic principle of Ahimsa, non-violence, both to avoid injuring others and to allow themselves to be more powerful. Indeed he argued that until we trusted ourselves not to injure other people we would not allow ourselves to be powerful. The whole episode with Deborah confirmed, for me, that this was a valid thesis.
Within a month or so of Deborah leaving the business really started to take off. There was a far better atmosphere in the office, there was a sense of everyone working together without reservation and it was making a difference to our customers and our profitability. One area where there was an obvious improvement that everyone could see for themselves was in the organisation and manning of our annual NHER conference. When we merged the two businesses the conference was a boring two days with predictable speeches, workshops for people to catch up with new developments and a chance to get drunk at the conference dinner. Eva proposed that we should include some entertainment in the proceedings. I agreed and she planned a series of events that made a real difference. The first time Eva organised this she had our marketing manager (who used to be a rock singer) singing – to the tune of House of the Rising Sun, “There once was a house in Milton Keynes, with an NHER of one …” The lyrics continued with how to create a house with an NHER of 10 – and the applause went on for ages! But the difference the next year, after Deborah had left, was that all the staff were cheerful and contributing in many different ways. That year Eva put on a musical finale which ended with the audience singing (to John Lennon’s tune) “All we are a saying, is give HEES a chance”. HEES was a government funded scheme for retrofitting insulation to old properties; I don’t think it was a coincidence that within eighteen months we had won a very large and lucrative project in support of the HEES scheme.
The two week Intensive that I ran in 1996, when the issues around Deborah created chaos in the office, was without doubt the best that I had ever run. More than half the participants had experiences, several of them were very powerful and changed how people lived. I had been toying with the idea of Mastering a six week Intensive for a while, but had not found anyone willing to cook and be a monitor for that long. The people who were assisting me on the 1996 Intensive said that they would be up to doing the same if I wanted to run a six week. So suddenly that was a possibility. Now I had to assess whether I was up for it. Over the period following Deborah’s departure I self inspected about this a great deal. Here are relevant extracts from my journal:
All leaders have to be aware of the potential abuse of power and energy which followers/participants give to them. Now I feel pure enough to accept the energy and use if for Love. In the past I was hooked on the buzz of being given so much energy. Now I accept it with reluctance, partly because of the responsibility and partly because I know that ultimately people have to keep their power and energy for their own growth.
It’s funny how I’m reading books about Attainment and Mastery! Funny how I keep recognising myself in what I read! Funny that! I recognise that I have made it to a certain level – far enough to use my power and energy to facilitate others. Actually, I think that that is how I will make my own progress – by directing more of my energy to others as love and compassion.
Boy do I feel ready to run a 6-week! I have a much deeper level of understanding, rooted more and more in my everyday life – not just in a group room. I see myself as a teacher worth learning from. I set a very good example – and could do better yet, but it is already very good. (And there is still a voice in the back of my mind saying “that sounds big-headed”!)
My acupuncturist keeps accusing me of hiding my light, one of my best mates thinks I’ve made it and am resisting “putting on the mantle”. And hundreds of people think I am a great Enlightenment Master, including some very open people who are willing to trust me for a 6-week. I cannot ignore these powerful acknowledgements.
So it is obvious that I gained an enormous amount from facing the issues with Deborah. It marked a significant step forward in my long journey learning how to handle power responsibly. What is more it provided a key step for me to take prior to running a six week Enlightenment Intensive.
Six months after Deborah left the business I started the process of finding a replacement for me as Managing Director; I was finally engaging fully with my exit strategy. The Chairman of the Board insisted that we undertake the process as thoroughly as possible and to my horror placed an advert costing £20,000 and hired a firm of head hunters who would charge us another £10,000 for their services. Six weeks later the head hunters sent us a short list of six people from whom we selected three for interview. For me there was only one option when we came face to face with the candidates. His name was Brian Scannel and he and I hit it off straight away. Indeed after we had offered him the job and he had accepted he said that the main reason he accepted was that he wanted to come and work with me. Brian joined the business as a Marketing Director in October 1997 with a view to becoming the Managing Director the following April. The six month period of overlap enabled him to understand how the business was structured, get to know all the staff and to quietly make his own plans as to how to carry the business forward. And by April 1998, three and a half years after taking secondment from the University, Brian took over as MD and I was no longer employed by NES. I remained a member of the Board as the only shareholder other than the National Energy Foundation. So I remained engaged with the business, but not on a day-to-day basis.
There was one other significant event that occurred before I relinquished the MD role. A UK charity committed to promoting energy efficiency in Eastern Europe came to visit. They were very impressed with how much we had contributed to energy efficiency, both through energy ratings and influencing the Building Regulations. They wanted to know whether we could propose a volunteer to promote energy efficiency in the Ukraine. Ukraine was the home of Eva’s family, so I said yes and put Eva’s name forward. This was to have a significant impact on our lives. Throughout my period as MD of NES my relationship with Eva slowly developed and became more loving and secure. We were too busy to give our relationship much attention, but whenever we did, for example on holidays, we were delighted to find each other again and discover more about each other. There were also significant developments with all our children. I became seriously worried about my eldest son Reuben who was steadily becoming more and more inebriated. He worked in NES for a time and I had to insist that he not drink before coming to work – a sign that he was well into being an alcoholic. His brother Marcus was banned from driving after being caught drink driving. However, he ignored the ban and carried on driving. One evening, after downing 3 pints in a pub, he set of for Reuben’s birthday party and was flagged down by a police car. Rather than stopping he tried to escape and ended up being prosecuted for dangerous driving, driving whilst banned, driving over the limit, driving without insurance and anything else they could think of. He ended up being in prison for 6 months. I was the only one of his friends and family to visit him every week. It helped shift our relationship – but I found it extremely weird going to a prison once a week! Sophi was busy making plans to go to Australia with her partner, partly to spend time with her dad, partly to explore what life in Australia had to offer. Joe left home to go to University – the last to leave the family nest. Eva and I were definitely falling into the category of ‘empty nesters’.
Next.
A Master's Path 