Every once in a while, a leader appears in society who is totally dedicated to applying and living out the teachings of a great wisdom tradition in the everyday affairs of the world. Sometimes, depending on the particulars and circumstances, he or she becomes an agent of change, helping to transform society into one that increasingly works for the benefit of all. While these individuals can show up most anytime and anywhere, the following is about a contemporary of ours—Curtis Edward Bottum Jr. (pronounced “Boat-um”)—who showed up in his community and the world of business. Even though his parents had already named him Curtis, upon first seeing him his father declared, “He looks like a Bill to me.” So, he became a Curtis called Bill.
At the age of twenty, Bill became inspired by the words of Jesus, as recorded in the Biblical Book of Matthew (5:1-10). These verses serve as the introduction to what is now known as The Sermon on the Mount. Since each verse begins with “Blessed,” the pronouncements are called the “Beatitudes” (meaning blessedness or happiness). Through his own study and insight, Bill came to realize that the Beatitudes describe the best possible pattern for worthwhile living here on earth. Applying these teachings to the whole of life, including business, became his calling.
Within Your Reach
Bill’s journey with the Beatitudes began in 1947, when his younger brother asked him to teach his Sunday School class. Bill prepared by reading everything he could about Jesus. Finding that many scholars believe the Beatitudes are a summary of the teachings of Jesus, he decided to use them as his primary focus for the class. In what was to become a lifelong study, he went on to analyze the passages that immediately follow and amplify the Beatitudes, as well as the rest of the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. He found that the point of each lesson is reflected in the Beatitudes. He also discovered a previously unnoticed sequential relationship and linkage within the Beatitudes themselves.[1] Through his explorations, Bill came to realize that the “kingdom of heaven,” of which Jesus so often spoke, is not just a blissful hereafter, but also a potential reality for earthly life. As Jesus is quoted in the Bible, the kingdom of heaven is, “at hand,” “in your midst,” and “within your reach.” Bill believed that this kingdom exists wherever people live with right intention, relationship, and action.
After over a decade of study, Bill wrote and self-published a book on the Beatitudes in 1961 under the title, The Lost Message of Jesus. He later revised and expanded it three times over the next four decades, incorporating new insights and understandings from his continuing research and practice. The last revision was used to develop a study guide that he co-authored with Dorothy L. Lenz in 2002. Based on a suggestion by his wife, Olivia, the revised editions were all titled Within Your Reach. For Bill, that said it all; he truly believed it is possible to realize a kingdom of heaven on earth. According to the people who knew and worked with him, Bill lived into that realization in both his personal life at home and his professional life at Townsend and Bottum (T&B).
Seeker as CEO and Civic Leader
T&B was a worldwide leader in construction services that built and operated electrical power plants. At its peak in 1980, T&B employed over 5,000 people internationally and grossed over $350 million. The company was primarily building large, coal-fired power plants, along with Solar One, this country’s first solar-powered generating station.
Bill joined his dad at T&B as a young graduate engineer. For many years, however, he debated whether to continue his career in business (building power plants) or enter the ministry (studying and applying the Beatitudes). The issue was finally settled by a dream he had. In the dream, he received a sign that he could live out and combine the two careers as a single calling—finding ways to apply the Beatitudes in the world of business.[2] So, he resolved to stay on at the company. The uniqueness of this calling gave him unprecedented opportunity to change social systems and affect the lives of people across a wide entire spectrum of society.
Over the years, Bill became increasingly responsible for leading the family-owned enterprise, eventually becoming chief executive. As head of the company, Bill applied the wisdom teachings of the Beatitudes in the rough-and-tumble world of engineering and construction. The next twenty years of the T&B experience included periods of exciting expansion and growth, painful recession and retrenchment, and high-risk decentralization and diversification. Because of the downturn in new power plant construction that lasted throughout the 1980s and 90s, the company was eventually sold to become part of another firm. All of these developments—the ups and the downs, the good times and the bad times—became raw material for Bill in applying and living out the Beatitudes.
In addition to his executive leadership at T&B, Bill served in other ways. He regularly lectured and conducted workshops in local churches, and made presentations to civic groups and non-profit organizations. He was a personal mentor and spiritual adviser to many others. He also served extensively on various boards, including: St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, the Anthroposophical Society of America, and Robert K. Greenleaf International Center for Servant-Leadership. Many of the writings in this volume are part of these connections and service.
Guiding Principles and Attributes
It is important to note that while Bill chose to live out a specific spiritual tradition, he was very careful not to encroach upon the beliefs of others. For this reason, he recast the Beatitudes into non-sectarian language for the workplace, naming them “Guiding Principles and Attributes.”[3] Bill believed that these concepts were universal, common threads woven through the shared fabric of the great wisdom traditions. Because they show up around the world in different epochs and cultures, he also believed them to be archetypal patterns embedded deep within the human psyche. In any case, most anyone could find common ground with these values and concepts.
Executive Activism in Service to Transcendent Values
As a business leader, Bill continually surveyed and studied the evolving field of management theory and practice. He found that much of what was new and effective in the field—such as collaboration, partnership, teamwork, employee participation, empowerment, gainsharing, and dialogue—reflected the same values he found in the Beatitudes. It therefore seemed to him that the two domains were coming together. He was therefore able to adopt and use leading-edge management practices in a twofold way, achieving the business goals of T&B in a manner that was congruent with the Guiding Principles and Attributes. Through such confluences, Bill became an extraordinary business leader. Consider the remarkable range and substance of the following initiatives that he undertook at T&B:
- Governing Ideas and Culture. The fundamental postulates at T&B for an ethical business enterprise were: (1) providing products and services that meet legitimate human needs and benefit the world; and, (2) conducting business with absolute integrity. This focus on integrity was part of his father’s legacy at T&B. As Bill saw it, integrity was best measured by the degree of trust that the company’s stakeholders had in the organization and its agents. He therefore dedicated significant effort to create and sustain an organizational culture of trust, emphasizing openness, connection, collaboration and integrity. Related efforts included: revising T&B’s mission statement to reflect these values; eliminating reserved parking and special privileges for executives; using a round table in the conference room to promote equality and participation; and, above all, insisting on absolute integrity in all company dealings, even if it was financially disadvantageous to do so.
- Training and Development. Bill and his executive team discovered early on that communication and process skills could be learned. To support and further evoke the kind of communication and experience required to build trust, employees were trained in empathetic listening, conflict resolution, and team-building skills. Recognizing the need to improve and sustain all relationships, this training was, remarkably, also made available to T&B suppliers and clients. In addition, employees were exposed to a personal assessment system—the Life Styles Inventory—helping them gain greater understanding about and insights into themselves and their behavior.[4] Validated independently by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, the self-scoring system provided an individual profile of an employee’s personality, thinking style and attitudes. Interestingly, the system had an “Ideal Profile” that was deemed most effective for dealing with all life situations. When Bill and a friend completed the survey instrument to reflect the Guiding Principles and Attributes, they discovered that the resulting individual profile aligned perfectly with this Ideal Profile. For Bill, this was, “evidence that the message of Jesus taught 2,000 years ago was the most effective way to live in our world today.”[5] The discovery gave him new confidence and energy for applying the Beatitudes in daily life and business.
- Organizational Process. Bill hired and used leading-edge management consultants and independent thinkers who wanted to engage organizations in new ways, thereby creating a different and more enlightened kind of workplace. Working together, they facilitated gatherings and experiences that included both internal and external stakeholders (employees, clients, customers, suppliers and subcontractors) for specific projects. This process work was revolutionary at the time and effective in creating the kind of collaborative enterprise that Bill had envisioned.
- Profit Sharing. In the spirit of fairness and justice, twenty-five percent of net profits before taxes was earmarked and set aside annually for profit-sharing and employee bonuses. The remainder was used for taxes and re-investment in the company.
- Rightsizing. The dramatic ups and downs of the power-plant business required the company to expand and shrink its workforce accordingly. To ease the difficult process of downsizing and layoffs, T&B hired an outplacement specialist who recommended two important policies, both of which were adopted: (1) the executive or manager personally closest to the affected employee and, therefore, most anguished by the situation, was responsible for meeting with and informing the employee; and, (2) the employee’s manager or supervisor was responsible for finding the employee another job.[6]
- Leadership and Governance. Bill believed in what he called “a new kind of leader,” one motivated by a desire to serve rather than a drive for self-gain.[7] His role models included Jesus (e.g., washing the feet of his disciples), Gandhi, Dag Hammarskjold, and Martin Luther King, all of whom had died before he had a chance to meet them. So when he read Robert K. Greenleaf’s seminal essays, Servant as Leader and Institution as Servant, he asked his secretary to, “track down Bob Greenleaf wherever he was so I can meet him before it is too late.”[8] She found him alive and well at a Quaker retirement community in Pennsylvania, and Bill arranged to meet him there. Thus began a deep and lasting friendship, and T&B’s remarkable journey into servant-leadership. That journey encompassed the entire spectrum of Greenleaf’s extraordinary system, ranging from leader intentionality to governance. The latter employs a participatory approach to sharing executive power and decision-making via a council of equals, as opposed to the usual authoritarian approach of concentrating power in the hands of a “lone chief” or boss.[9] Bill became a pioneer in using a council of equals to govern and manage the T&B enterprise. In doing this, he gave up his unilateral authority as CEO, transferring the executive power of his office to the governing council. To support and nurture Greenleaf’s ideas at T&B, he also established an in-house training center and newsletter for servant-leadership. Bill’s personal relationship with Greenleaf and his own accomplishments as a servant-leader made him a lineage holder in this tradition.
- Ownership and Capital. Bill implemented a radical, new approach to ownership at T&B, transforming the enterprise into a non-stock, for-profit company owned by itself for the benefit of employees and customers. The innovative framework was based, in part, on the work of Austrian philosopher and mystic Rudolf Steiner, who advocated new forms of socioeconomic systems—ones that would serve the common good, rather than the interests of a privileged few. Steiner’s work and writings included a new way of viewing ownership, which excited Bill: “This was what I had been looking for as a way of reward and justice for employees while also assuring continuity and preventing hostile takeovers.”[10] Thanks to some creative work by sympathetic accountants and lawyers, Bill was able to change T&B from a family-owned business to a capital trust—a non-stock, for-profit company—owned by the employees. Instead of owning stock, each employee had a claim on a share of the profits. The enterprise was governed by a board of trustees, working as a council of equals in support of the employees and their pursuit of furthering the company’s mission and values.[11] This framework not only dedicated the enterprise to a larger good, but also protected it from hostile takeovers, removed the emphasis on short-term gains, and permitted capital to be more easily reallocated. In its new mode, T&B became “one of the few known instances in the world of a privately-owned business enterprise that had no proprietor, stockholders, or partners.”[12]
To be sure, Bill’s goal at T&B was idealistic and daunting: to create a business entity that acted in concert with spiritual values and teachings, while sustaining itself as a viable enterprise and resource for employees, clients and the world. Bill viewed the T&B venture as, “an experiment which conceived the business world as a huge laboratory in which to try to live out the pattern of the [Beatitudes].”[13] Regardless of outcomes in a worldly sense, he believed the experiment to be a worthwhile endeavor and contribution in humankind’s journey.
The T&B venture created a deep and lasting community, along with a growing aural tradition about it. Even though the company merged with another in 1997, former employees have continued to hold a traditional reunion each summer, as well as other get-togethers. At one such reunion, Bill presented each employee with a copy of the history of T&B, which he had written. In Bill’s final days, a number of employees put together a book for him, each individual contributing a page about how much Bill’s leadership and friendship had meant to them, testimony to the enduring nature of what they had lived out and accomplished together. Many who were fortunate to be part of it all continue to spread the word and tell others about their remarkable story and experience.
The Man Behind the Work
Bill’s face shone with a radiance that seemed to come from a light within. His extraordinarily blues eyes had a twinkle that said, “Welcome” to everyone he met, and hinted at an easy-going sense of humor and ready wit. Beneath that lay an impulsive but gentle energy for spontaneously responding to the needs of others. Overall, he was trusting, optimistic, generous, and humble. Unburdened by hidden agendas, he had just enough ego to take care of his basic legitimate needs, but not a measure more that would unjustly deprive another of such.
Bill lived simply. Even though he could have easily afforded an upscale home, he and the family chose to live in a modest, middle-class house and suburb. He invariably wore a plain blue suit and tie to the office, but the coat and tie were often displaced during the workday in favor of an open collar and rolled up sleeves. “He hurried about the offices with complete informality, listening to people intently and giving them warm encouragement.”[14] When new hires at T&B—regardless of their positions—were brought into his office to meet the President and CEO, he would come forward with an extended his hand and say, “Please, call me Bill.”
Bill owned and drove older mid-sized cars. His penchant for doing so sometimes embarrassed other T&B executives. After all, individuals in his position usually drove new luxury cars. On one occasion, a Saudi Arabian contingent was scheduled to visit T&B’s headquarters as part of their due diligence work for a major project. The executives worried that Bill’s older car would send the wrong message, undermining the sheiks’ confidence in the company. At their insistence, Bill agreed to buy a new car for picking up the visitors at the airport. So, he bought a brand new…mid-sized Buick! Nevertheless, while Bill was unpretentious and thrifty, he was also generous, giving unstintingly of both his time and materials resources.
Like all of us, Bill had his foibles. For one thing, he was a worrier. His unflagging concern for the welfare of others often translated into a low-level anxiety and apprehension. Moreover, he could become overly preoccupied with helping, especially when it came to those he loved the most. Sometimes, he was more hurt by negative criticism than he would let on, thereby cutting himself off from the kind of support that he so readily gave to others.
Bill loved to read, and he invariably had several books going at the same time. Besides books about the Beatitudes, he focused on the liberal arts, humanities, history, philosophy, business, and management. Fiction held little interest for him unless it was myth or poetry about living a meaningful life. He studied the books he found particularly helpful or inspirational, highlighting selected passages, folding page corners, making notations in the margins and inside covers, and affixing tabs to particular pages. He filled countless legal pads with notes on his readings, and could later readily recall and summarize what he had read. Whenever he found a book that he particularly liked, he would buy extra copies to give away. Shared books enhanced his friendships.
He had a passion for deep connection with others—what he called “communion.” As a mentor, he listened and responded with both sensitivity and wisdom. He had a knack for quickly discerning the essential aspects of a difficult situation or circumstance. Those who were troubled found that his presence engendered a palpable sense of healing. One person puts it this way, “After talking with Bill for a while, I realize that I seem to be the only one there—the only ego, that is. Beyond that, there is a sort of space in which I am being quietly held in a loving way…And then I realize that Bill is creating that space for me. It is a safe space—a space for me to be, to heal, and to discover who or what I really am and want to be…It is space for life.”[15] Bill kept an individual file folder for each person with whom he corresponded or mentored, saving their letters, adding pictures and including any related clippings. He also kept in daily touch with many people through a process, called “kything,” which is a contemplative way of communing with others.[16] Bill wrote people’s names along a spiral form he drew in his Franklin Planner. Upon awakening each morning, he would slowly wind his way through the spiral, kything in turn with each individual listed. The open-ended form of the spiral could easily accommodate an unlimited number of names.
Bill had a deep religious faith and played a very active role in his church community. Each morning and evening, he read from two books of daily inspirational readings. Although the readings repeated yearly, he invariably found them fresh and appropriate. During lunchtime at work, he meditated in his office.
Through such spiritual devotion and a lifetime of discipline, Bill brought the Beatitudes to life. He was open and teachable, sensitive to the needs of others, respectful of the spiritual nature of existence, enthusiastic and creative, above anger-based retribution, genuine in motive, a peacemaker, and able to grow through difficulty and suffering. He lived with the Beatitudes so intimately that, in speaking of them, he often just used their number. “That is a first Beatitude problem,” he would say, referring to a person’s struggle with selfishness.
For Bill, spirit came before matter, people came before profits, and doing what was right came before anything else. He believed in the inevitable flowering of human consciousness and effort, culminating in a global society and new world order based upon empathy, freedom, brother/sisterhood, and spiritual values.
His life purpose was to contribute in a meaningful way toward that destiny. By the time he died on Valentine’s Day, 2005, he had created and contributed a legacy of written works and lived experience that affected the lives of many in affirming and healing ways. That legacy continues to grow through the efforts of those who were fortunate enough to be part of it.
Dorothy L. Lenz
George SanFacon
November 2008
[1] C. E. Bottum, Jr. and Dorothy L. Lenz, Within Your Reach: The Message of Jesus Revealed in the Beatitudes (2002).
[2] C. E. Bottum, Jr., Ron Ghormley and other members of the T&B Family, “Turning Liabilities into Assets (2001), 4.
[3] C. E. Bottum, Jr. “The Application of the Sermon on the Mount to the Operation of Today’s Corporation: A Case Study” (1984), 4.
[4]As developed by Human Synergistics, Inc.
[5] C. E. Bottum, Jr. “The Kingdom Is Within Your Reach: Beatitudes in Business?” (Talk given in Toronto, 1996), 4.
[6] C. E . Bottum, Jr. “The Kingdom Is Within Your Reach: Beatitudes in Business?” (Talk given in Toronto, 1996), 14.
[7] C. E. Bottum, Jr. “Ethics in Business” (Talk given at Ecumenical Men’s Breakfast, May 4, 1978), 4.
[8] C. E. Bottum, Jr. Interview (2003).
[9] Robert K. Greenleaf. The Institution as Servant (1978).
[10] C. E. Bottum, Jr. with Dorothy Lenz. A New Approach to Capital (2001), 4.
[11] C. E. Bottum, Jr. with Dorothy Lenz. A New Approach to Capital (2001).
[12] Carl Rieser. The Trusteed Corporation: A Case Study of the Townsend & Bottum Family of Companies (Self-published manuscript, January 1988), 2.
[13] C. E . Bottum, Jr. “Ethics in Business” (Talk given at Ecumenical Men’s Breakfast, May 4, 1978), 1.
[14] Carl Rieser. “Insights into Servant-Leadership” (1985), 7. Unpublished manuscript.
[15] George SanFacon
[16] C. E. Bottum, Jr. and Dorothy L. Lenz, Within Your Reach: The Message of Jesus Revealed in the Beatitudes (2002), 16.
[17] C. E. Bottum, Jr. Within Your Reach: The Message of Jesus Revealed in the Beatitudes (1985), iii.
