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.
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