Beyond Leadership: Balancing Economics, Ethics and Ecology, Revised Edition

From Vision to Action

Learning: the departure

The hero with a thousand faces, with all his mythological overtones, may appear as somewhat fanciful to the hardened realists amongst you. For some 20 years now a British philosopher and psychologist, with strong Indian connections, Kevin Kingsland, has been developing an approach to business and to life which turns the mythologies of antiquity into everyday realities. While Kevin has worked with thousands of students in Britain, in India, and in America, running programs on personal communication, we have been applying this “vision to action” approach to businesses small and large in America, in Europe, in India, and in Southern Africa (Lessem, 1980).

The call to adventure: the first physical step

Kingland's vision-to-action approach, like Jacob's Ladder linking heaven with earth, spans the complete spectrum of human endeavor. We learn in business and in life by ascending, as it were, Jacob's Ladder step by step, thus following the path of the hero. That, if you like, is the heroic departure. The “call to adventure” represents the first and physical step. Without activity there is no learning. The newborn babe learns about life through physical challenge and response. When learning ceases to be an adventure it loses its primordial aspect.

The role of protector: making a social connection

The role of the protector symbolizes the supportive part to be played by a mother figure, a caring teacher, or “comrades in adversity.” Without a ...