Translator: Alice Chambaretaud Reviewer: Robert Tucker
Why am I here with you today?
I'm here because 20 years ago,
I met an expert in project management
who was at the very end of an international carrier
and who had had high positions at the World Bank in Washington.
His name was Roger Declair.
I met him in Marseilles, near a car park,
on the university campus of Lumigny.
I had already heard him give some lectures, hold some conferences,
without ever being able to talk to him.
But I had liked that man,
who had real skills in managing development projects all over the world
of several millions, even billions of dollars,
but he was also a man who cared about helping poor countries,
who cared about mankind, and who had the ability to listen.
And, to me, he was a man of skills, but also a man of virtue,
and equally a man of culture and openness.
So, I greeted him, and I told him I too had a certain vision
of mankind, of economy, of management, of philosophy, of life.
But that I didn't really know what it was all worth,
and that I wanted to know, regarding his international experience,
what he could tell me.
He said, "I go to eat with the bosses
at a restaurant a quarter of an hour from here.
If you want, come along with me, and I'll hear what you have to say."
So we started walking together, and I improvised a short discourse.
When we arrived at the restaurant, I simply asked,
"What do you think about what I've just said?"
And he simply replied,
"Do you want to teach what you just told me?"
I was very surprised and asked, "Are you serious?"
He said, "Yes, you have things to tell employers, executives, students.
I have to leave, I have a meeting with bosses.
I'll give you my card, call me whenever you want."
So there I was standing on a parking lot with an expert's card in my hand.
I came back home that evening and said to my family,
"I just met someone. He wants me to give some lectures.
He doesn't really know what about, me neither."
And then I started thinking.
A few days later, sitting at my desk, I picked up pen and paper.
It was eight in the evening.
I worked all night, and, at five in the morning,
I had laid the foundations of what I called managerial philosophy,
which is to say a way to bring together
on the one hand the world of economy and management
and on the other philosophy, psychology,
and all great sacred texts of East and West.
To bring those fields together to see if we can hold together
both man's development and his efficiency,
and not have one but not the other.
Why am I telling you that?
Well, because I believe that man was faced with two things.
He had both concern for mankind
and concern for effectiveness.
That's today's subject: humanism and profit.
And if I tell you this, it's because beyond his technical skills,
which were very great,
well, this man was truly
profoundly human with me.
He was able to listen to me, to advise me, to trust me,
and he enabled me to form my career.
So, I believe it's possible to maintain the human dimension
and have money,
make a profit and allow the human factor.
I don't think there's a need to separate them.
We need to work with both one and the other.
For me, life isn't this or that, but this and that.
And I would say it's profit, and humanism and their relationship.
And I believe it's with this trinity we can move toward unity of living.
So let's flesh out a little humanism and profit.
Profit first.
I don't know if you know it,
but in Latin, "profit" comes from "pro facere,"
and "pro facere" means "in order to do or make."
It means profits are not necessarily an end goal.
Profits are first a tool,
a condition for the existence of the business, a means.
And, of course, you can earn money,
but I think the first objective remains to serve,
to create goods and wealth for the common good of mankind.
We mustn't forget that.
Of course, profits are important too; without money, there's no business.
But, let's take Francois Michelin, for example,
heir to the founders of the Michelin company.
Francois Michelin once said that profit is a measuring instrument,
a quality standard of the service I deliver with my business.
It's important therefore to have a profit logic,
but also important to have a sense of customer service.
So, I would now like to tell you a small anecdote about profitability.
Profitability, you may not know,
but Bernard de Clairvaux, St Bernard de Clairvaux,
is somewhat the father of this word, in the 12th century.
Bernard de Clairvaux was a Cistercian monk,
one of the great figures of the Christian world,
the founder of the Clairvaux Abbey.
One day someone asked him, "What is profitability?"
And Saint Bernard replied,
"Profitability, for me, is what's good for us monks,
in our enlightenment and our quest for the divine;
it's what's good too to the people we receive
and who come to rebuild their strength in our monastery;
and it's also what's good to the soil we cultivate,
and that we should respect."
You see, this man already was somehow a precursor of sustainable development.
He had the three dimensions: us, the others, the soil;
humanism and profit.
And I think we should find again a little
this path of St Bernard in the modern world.
"Commerce" comes from the Latin "cum"+"merx"
which means "with merchandises."
So commerce, it's a trading of human relationships
- sorry a trading of -
a merchant relationship, I should say.
But equally there is a second Latin root for "commerce"
which is "cum"+"merces,"
which will give "salary" and even "favor."
But "merces" also gives "merci."
So commerce is "with thanks", "cum mercis."
I say thank you, you say thank you, we say thank you to each other.
I think we have to recognize the merchant relationship we have,
but see commerce is also a commerce in human relationships.
The Anglo-Saxons have acquired a word that you may know.
"Coopetition" they say sometimes.
Of course, they're playing on "competition" and "cooperation."
I think they're right, even if not always,
and we neither by the way.
But it's important to have competition and cooperation.
Because I believe it's not good to kill the competition.
Why do I say so?
For two reasons.
Because to live we need others,
and because competition, in French "concurrence,"
comes from the Latin meaning "run together," and not "kill the other."
So we see we need connections, relationships,
and thus we need business ethics.
We talk a lot about it in the modern world,
this term "business ethics" as used by the Anglo-Saxons.
It's almost a fashion - it sounds good, we say it at business school.
Do we practice it in reality, business ethics?
Not always. Why?
Because we've forgotten some of Aristotle's discourses.
Aristotle spoke of ethics,
but he said that ethics, or "ethos," is the fair behavior
that we seek to show on the exterior.
But he said to have this fair behavior, we need to have "ithos,"
that is to say, strength of character.
It means you need to know yourself, to question yourself,
in order to go into that dimension which is the depth of man.
We always want everything to change externally,
but we don't want to change ourselves.
That can't work.
The ethos, ithos of Aristotle.
If you "know thyself" you can transform your outward actions; not otherwise.
So, here, with Aristotle, we meet
a little the world of humanism.
Humanism which is a thought movement,
an historical movement, an intellectual movement,
which comes from the Renaissance.
Montaigne, Thomas Moore, Erasmus,
Leonardo da Vinci, and others.
But you should know that during the Renaissance period
they also spoke of doing humanities.
And doing humanities meant
that whatever your profession or your future profession was -
medic, architect, economist -
well, you had to know Greek, Latin, and Greek, and Latin literature.
It was thought that someone who had that knowledge
could work better in, gain more insight into,
their field whichever it was.
And it wasn't about having book learning,
this knowledge base should provide understanding
and transform the way we act.
So, there was in humanism a philosophy of understanding
yielding a philosophy of action.
Humanism is reflection and action,
not to be separated; humanism and profit.
I would like now to make a comical reflection.
I was speaking earlier about the Michelin company which makes tires,
"pneumatic," you know the word?
Maybe in France, we have forgotten
that "pneuma," "pneumatic," comes from the Greek "pneuma."
For Hippocrates and others, 2,500 years ago,
"Pneuma" in Greek was breath, the dimension of depth.
Pneumatic intelligence was beyond the aesthetic, hedonistic,
and logical intelligences for the Greeks,
although they were also important.
They added this dimension of pneumatic intelligence.
"Pneuma" is depth beyond the appearance of things, below the surface.
Remember the myth of Plato's cave!
"Pneuma" is where the ordinary mental consciousness
is not allowed to enter.
It's the fine point of the soul for Plato.
It is the philosophy of "Berenice." It is the Hindu of India.
"Breath" is breathing in, inspiration, spirituality.
Perhaps we should refind some kind of laic spirituality,
in its broad sense, in our businesses?
So I believe that we now see the importance of linking
the diverse dimensions of mankind:
aesthetic, hedonistic, logic, pneumatic,
and to hold them all together.
Why? Because to me, Man is pluridimensional.
And we need it all, not just a part of ourselves.
One last parable: Hachiko's story.
It's a Zen story that is often told in Japan and in Zen monasteries.
It's the story of a horseman riding his horse
who draws near to a seed merchant.
And the horse steals some seed from the seed merchant.
And the merchant seeing
that goes to the horse and gives it a great kick in the buttocks.
And the horse takes off at a gallop with his rider.
And they pass a man some yards on who asks,
"Hey, where are you going?"
The horseman answers, "I don't know, ask my horse!"
So why am I telling you this?
Aren't we, in the modern world, being carried away at the gallop?
We run after time, we run after money, we run after profit, we run after growth,
without making the fine distinction from development.
But wouldn't it be better if it were we who held the reins of our horse?
That's to say, will we make the effort to learn to know ourselves,
- "know thyself," as the Greeks said - to go towards that depth?
Do we want to challenge ourselves to truly change the world?
"Connaissance" splits to "con"+"naissance"
according to Paul Claudel,
which is to say: "be born with."
It means we have to go beyond book learning,
we have to embody it, we have to enter
a process of dynamic transformation.
And then, it's about being born with yourself,
being born with others, being born with your own work,
being born with economic, ecologic, social,
technological, international dimensions,
being born with humanism and being born with profit,
not separating them but bringing them together to gain insight.
Thank you.
(Applause)