Chapter 5: Promoting Corporate Development

C H A P T E R 5

Promoting Corporate Development

R.W. "Buck" Montgomery, Jr., wanted to turn around his Detroit-based chemical manufacturing company, the H.A. Montgomery Company.

"The company had been in business for over 40 years," Buck recalls. "It had gotten into a routine, a rut of old-time management, and it was difficult to get the people to see new thinking. That was in 1983, and at the time the U.S. automotive industry was in a great slump, stalled by imports from Japan and Germany.

"We needed a new approach to everything -- a new attitude, new thinking, new energy to revitalize the company and get it to take off again."

Buck and his staff attended numerous seminars and courses.

"We would go to weekend or week-long seminars, and we'd return with these huge books, and we'd still be plagued with the same problems. We'd forget what we learned, or we didn't have time to restudy what we'd learned, due to the demands of the job, and so we just went back to our old routine.

"I was looking for a tool that my employees could utilize every day, that would allow them to change their thinking, allow them to have more energy, be more creative on their own, and use more of their potential on the job. I found Transcendental Meditation to be the tool that would work."

Buck sat down with his senior staff and came up with a plan. First, Transcendental Meditation would be offered at company expense to anyone interested among the managers. They would meditate twice a day for 6 months. They would be asked, on a monthly basis, to write progress reports, pro or con, on what they thought of the program and how it was affecting them in their daily life -- both at the office and at home. Then they would decide if the program would go company-wide.

"After 6 months there was 100% agreement among that management group to offer the program throughout the company," Buck says. "Transcendental Meditation was then introduced into research, manufacturing, sales, marketing, and administration."

Buck encouraged his managers and employees to meditate at least once a day -- in the morning or in the late afternoon -- on company time at the plant.

"Productivity improved dramatically," Buck says. "Absenteeism decreased drastically, as did sick days and injuries. The creativity of our research department went up, sales increased 120% in 2 years, and profitability went up 520%."

In 1987 Buck sold the company and retired. He now spends his time with his family and consults with companies that are looking for new avenues for success. He is often asked to speak on the success of the Transcendental Meditation program at the former H.A. Montgomery Company to executives who are interested in repeating that success in their own firms.

"The individual is the most important resource a business has," Buck says. "You've got to improve the capacity and capabilities of the individual. If you take a tired individual, or one who is not motivated or who doesn't feel he has any creativity, no matter what tools you put in his hands, it's a waste of time. First you have to improve the individual, increase his potential; then you can give him other tools to work with. The only program that I know that will do that is Transcendental Meditation. The small amount of money it costs today will be of immeasurable benefit to the company on the profitability line and on a morale line -- and everything else you can imagine. This is success."

U.S. business is being crippled by stress. Up to $200 billion is lost -- wasted, actually -- each year due to stress in the work place, according to a 1993 report by the United Nations International Labor Organization.

Worse yet, research indicates that none of the programs for stress reduction/personal development widely in use in business and industry today provide a solution to the problem. Despite intensive efforts to curb the impact of stress in the work place, medical care utilization costs continue to escalate, and job performance, productivity, and employee turnover rates continue to suffer.

"In this era of increased competition and downsizing, businesses have asked people to do more and more work in less and less time," says Gerald Swanson, Ph.D., Professor of Management at Maharishi International University, who has introduced Transcendental Meditation in several U.S. corporations and has written a book, Enlightened Management, on the use of the technique in business. "This puts more stress on the employees and leaves them burned out and unable to have a good time with their families.

"Today most people in business are looking for some way to re-establish the balance between home and work. They are torn between the need to maintain their financial stability and security and the need to come home and nurture their family. This is especially true now that there is such a large number of two-career marriages and single-parent families. Both the mom and the dad are being called upon to be bread winners and still provide that nurturing value to their family.

"How can you do that unless you have some way of not being overwhelmed by the stress of working? The only way to do that is to have a stronger, more resilient physiology.

"We know from research and experiences in business that that's precisely how people feel when they practice Transcendental Meditation," Dr. Swanson says.

A Cost-Effective Solution to Job Stress

In the past 36 years, Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation has been learned by tens of thousands of business professionals. The technique has also been offered company-wide to executives, managers, and employees in hundreds of large corporations and small businesses throughout the world.

Scientific research in several of these business settings has found that Transcendental Meditation offers a cost-effective solution to problems caused by job stress. The research shows that sickness, absenteeism, and health care utilization decrease; productivity and job satisfaction improve; and relationships between co-workers and supervisors improve.

Transcendental Meditation in a Fortune 100 Company

For example, a study published in the scientific journal Anxiety, Stress and Coping in December 1993 found significant benefits of Transcendental Meditation in stress reduction, health, and employee development, in two companies.

Managers and employees in a large manufacturing plant of a Midwest Fortune 100 company and in a smaller Pennsylvania sales distribution company learned the technique.

After 3 months employees who learned Transcendental Meditation were compared to a control group of non-meditating employees who worked at similar job sites, held similar job positions, and had similar demographics (age, education, etc.) and similar personality characteristics, before the study began.

Researchers found that compared to controls, the Transcendental Meditation group had significantly

Less anxiety, job tension, insomnia, and fatigue
Reduced cigarette and hard liquor use
Improved health and fewer health complaints
Enhanced effectiveness, job satisfaction, and work/personal relationships

The research showed that the effects of Transcendental Meditation on anxiety, alcohol and cigarette use, and in enhancing personal development, were much larger than for other forms of meditation and relaxation found in previous studies.

Worry over the negative impact of rising job stress led employees at the Puritan-Bennett Corporation, the world's leading maker of respiratory care products, to ask the company to address the problem.

"We researched the best stress-reduction/personal development programs," says Mary Martha Stevens, Ph.D., Manager of Health and Wellness at Puritan-Bennett. "We decided on Transcendental Meditation for three reasons: The technique had the most research supporting it; the best follow-up of any program of its type; and clearly from what I had discovered, it was the easiest, most practical, and most effective technique for busy individuals to use."

Puritan-Bennett offered the Transcendental Meditation Corporate Development Program at its corporate headquarters in Kansas City in August 1993. Sixty-six managers and employees and ten spouses learned the technique during the program's first phase. Instruction was held on company time, as was a complete 4-month follow-up program. For those with work schedule problems, instruction was also held after hours.

The benefits were immediate, according to Dr. Stevens. After just a few days, managers reported that they felt more relaxed and less anxious, were thinking more clearly, and were able to organize themselves better and accomplish much more.

Diana Trompeter is payroll supervisor for the Puritan Group at Puritan-Bennett. She has been with the company for 13 years. Diana learned Transcendental Meditation because she had been under extreme stress from the death of her mother and increasing pressures at work. After 4 weeks of practicing the technique, Diana wrote a letter to Dr. Stevens, assessing her progress:

"In the beginning I wasn't sure what TM would do for me, and when I shared the idea with my staff, they had doubts, too. I decided to try it, and it is one of my best decisions.

"TM immediately changed things for me. I became calm and clear-minded after my first session, and it works as well for me now, 4 weeks later, as it did that first day. TM is one of the few things that is truly effortless and yet you can see the benefit.

"My employees have commented on the difference in me and in other meditators they often work with. Of all the good benefits the company has offered us through the years, this is by far the most beneficial for me. I feel better, more confident about my decisions, and most important, I feel a peace and calm that seems to get me through the most difficult times.

"Thank you for introducing TM to us, and I would like to see it offered to all our employees."

Ten months after learning the technique, Diana reported that the benefits were continuing to grow.

"Transcendental Meditation has produced a calmness and serenity in me that allows me to deal with my job and the people around me in a much more pleasant and efficient manner. Nothing outside of me has changed. The job pressures are still there; the problems are still there. Transcendental Meditation is simply a way of letting me handle my own life better so that I am better at dealing with those outside pressures. It is the best thing I have ever done."

In the project design a research component was included to evaluate objectively the effects of the program on 38 meditating executives compared with 38 matched controls. The findings: Over a 3-month period, the meditators reduced psychological and physical symptoms of stress, reduced total blood cholesterol, gained vitality, and enhanced mental health and well-being.

Dr. Stevens said that Puritan-Bennett was very satisfied with the results and that she strongly recommends Transcendental Meditation to other companies. "If you want your employees to eliminate stress and not just cope with it -- which is what companies spend a great deal of time doing today -- then having them learn Transcendental Meditation is the best way to do it."

The following charts are just a few of the research studies on the effects of Transcendental Meditation for improving productivity and relationships, reducing stress, and promoting health, on the job.

Increased Productivity
Improved Relations at Work
Increased Relaxation and Decreased Stress
Improved Health and More Positive Health Habits

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