Peak Book Review
PEAK
How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow
By Chip Conley
(Revised and Updated) Copyright 2017
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Hoboken, New Jersey
Review Written by Evelyn Neis
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Chip Conley advises organizations to review and consider changing their traditional management and business practices in order to remain relevant in the 21st century.
Real Value Documentary Review
Real Value Documentary
Directed by: Jesse Borkowski
Nothing Underground, 2015, www.realvaluefilm.com
This film does a great job highlighting creative ways for organizations to build both sustainable profits and sustainable practices for society.
Firms of Endearment Book Review
Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose
By: Rajendra S. Sisodia, Jagdish N. Sheth, and the Estate of David Wolfe
Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey – Copyright 2014
Review Written by Evelyn Neis
This book shares the business practices of 28 companies (public and private) that have made a conscious choice to go beyond a shareholder/profit only focus to one that includes appreciating the relationship of their business to all its stakeholders equally.
Doughnut Economics Book Review
7 Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist
By: Kate Raworth
Chelsea Green Publishing White River Junction, Vermont – Copyright 2017
Review Written by Evelyn Neis
Kate Raworth is an English Economist and has been on the advisory boards of many institutions throughout the world. She has BA’s in politics, philosophy and economics, and an MSc in Economics for Development from Oxford University.
What are you Measuring?
In March of 1968, Robert Kennedy gave a speech at the University of Kansas in which he included a powerful illumination regarding GNP that succinctly advances a line of thinking that we all should still be considering 50 years later.
Links to: Full speech transcript, Excerpt in Audio Form
“….Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product – if we judge the United States of America by that – that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”
The specific problems and concerns of today may not exactly mirror those spoken of in 1960, but the themes and parallels are no doubt present. Our modern landscape has ushered in new challenges like life-threatening climate change, vast income inequality, hostile cultural divisiveness, and a grim public health picture. At the national level, the common gauges of success and prosperity today are tied to measurements like GDP, crime rates and unemployment levels. It is great to see positive “scores” in those areas, but just as Robert Kennedy points out – they don’t tell the whole story.
Everybody Matters (The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family)
By: Bob Chapman, CEO of Barry-Wehmiller and Raj Sisodia, coauthor of Conscious Capitalism
Published by Portfolio/Penguin, New York, New York | Copyright 2015
Review Author: Evelyn Neis
If you are getting ready to become an entrepreneur, have recently started a business, represent leadership in an existing business- large or small, this book is full of practical suggestions and wisdom on how to grow and maintain a thriving organization.
If you are an employee participant of any of the above-listed types of organizations, this book provides practical information and wisdom on how you may be able to improve your role within the operation or help you decide if it’s time to consider moving on in order to find a position that more closely aligns with your career goals and desired work environment.
Banking on Intelligence
There is no shortage of content on the web espousing predictions about how Artificial Intelligence will re-shape the workplace and our societies as a whole in the coming years. You would be hard pressed to find many businesses that didn’t adopt their operating practices with the emergence of desktop computing, the Internet or mobile services.
Book Review: The Purpose Project (a handbook for bringing meaning to life at work) by Carolyn Tate
Conscious Capitalism is a philosophy about capitalism that reflects the potential of businesses to make a positive impact on the world. They do this through cultivating four tenets within their businesses: Higher Purpose, Stakeholder Orientation, Conscious Leadership, and Conscious Culture. Carolyn Tate is a founding member of Conscious Capitalism Australia.
Adapt or Fall Behind
A few years ago my family had to say farewell to a pediatric practice that was the only one my children had known since birth. The wife ran the business side of the practice and the husband was the M.D. He was one of those rare people who found the perfect vocation to match natural born traits with developed capabilities.