Richard Whitely, bestselling author of The Customer Driven Company, is a successful entrepreneur and public speaker who also practices shamanic healing in Boston, Massachusetts. He believes that this combination of ancient wisdom and tools for transformation is desperately needed in the corporate world where fear holds many employees in its grip. Of course, at the heart of this discontent are real and imagined lay-offs and restructuring initiatives for the sake of the bottom line. The result: employees still there company survivors have to do more work than ever. In addition, few CEOs have developed a management style that addresses these raw and omnipresent fears.
The Corporate Shaman is a lively and engaging business fable about the dire straits of PRIMETEC, a midsize company technology company hat is in deep trouble (actually, a composite of many real organizations). Leon King, the CEO, is upset with his staff and is constantly blaming them for the troubles. Power struggles are going on among John, a veteran sales professional; Helen, the vice president of human resources; Frank, the chief financial officer; Mark, the head of operations; and Maria, the vice-president of marketing.
Jason Hand, who calls himself an Executive Coach, sees that PRIMETEC has lost its soul or spirit, the animating force that made it such an exciting place to work when it started. Convinced that shamanism can bring balance and balm to the company and its employees, he convinces Mark to take a shamanic journey, retrieve the spirit of a power animal, and listen to the voice of this inner healer. Then Hand achieves a breakthrough with Leon King, who opens himself up to his own ancestral healer.
In primal cultures, shamans often explore uncharted territories and overcome daunting obstacles to bring back messages of hope and renewal to individuals and communities. Whiteley's fable is a preview of shamanism's possible venues in the twenty-first century.
