How to Balance Power and Love. Adam Kahane’s book Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change (Berrett-Koehler, 2010) opens with a quote from one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous speeches, his last presidential speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “Power without love,” said King, “is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.” This is a concept that business leaders need to understand, because in times of crisis (and afterward), the people of an enterprise are put under a great deal of stress. Many people in major corporations today are still wondering if they will lose their jobs. A system that follows only the impulses of compassion and solidarity (which Kahane calls love) will lose its competitiveness; a system that follows only the impulses of resolve and purposefulness (which he calls power) will sacrifice its people heedlessly and risk its capability for growth and recovery.
Kahane is a partner in the small global consulting firm Reos Partners. HTTP Error 400. What Does it Mean To Practice Conscious Capitalism? | Values Journal.
Systems Thinking. The Connected Company. The connected company. Many thanks to Thomas Vander Wal for the many conversations that inspired this post. The average life expectancy of a human being in the 21st century is about 67 years. Do you know what the average life expectancy for a company is? Surprisingly short, it turns out. In a recent talk, John Hagel pointed out that the average life expectancy of a company in the S&P 500 has dropped precipitously, from 75 years (in 1937) to 15 years in a more recent study.
I believe that many of these companies are collapsing under their own weight. The statistics back up this assumption. This “3/2 law” of employee productivity, along with the death rate for large companies, is pretty scary stuff. I believe we can. Historically, we have thought of companies as machines, and we have designed them like we design machines. 1. A car is a perfect example of machine design. This kind of rebuilding goes by many names, including re-organization, reengineering, right-sizing, flattening and so on. 1. Start small. Building Better Businesses By Closing The Happiness Gap. If two magnets are separated by too much distance, they won’t have any impact on each other.
But, if something helps move them a bit closer, they will gravitate towards each other and connect. Technology can be used in a similar way. It can connect you to other people, skills, tools, and trigger new ways of thinking and working; it can create an "assisted serendipity. " More than ever, products and companies help connect us to people and information. Because today, we have more access than ever, but unfortunately, we are still largely unhappy: 80% of people dislike what they do for a living. One way to do this is to build companies that have a structural alignment of personal interests and skills, with the mission of the company. This is where technology can help.
Addressing the disengagement crisis is as much a health initiative as a work initiative. Biomimicry 3.8. Biomimicry 3.8. AskNature. What is AskNature? Imagine 3.8 billion years of design brilliance available for free, at the moment of creation, to any sustainability innovator in the world. Imagine nature's most elegant ideas organized by design and engineering function, so you can enter “remove salt from water” and see how mangroves, penguins, and shorebirds desalinate without fossil fuels. Now imagine you can meet the people who have studied these organisms, and together you can create the next great bio-inspired solution. That’s the idea behind AskNature, the online inspiration source for the Biomimicry community.
Think of it as your home habitat—whether you’re a biologist who wants to share what you know about an amazing organism, or a designer, architect, engineer, or chemist looking for planet-friendly solutions. AskNature is where biology and design cross-pollinate, so bio-inspired breakthroughs can be born. Visit AskNature.org. Organizational Structure | The Four Lenses Strategic Framework. A social enterprise may be structured as a department, program or profit center within a nonprofit and lack legal definition from its parent organization. It may also be a subsidiary of its nonprofit parent, registered either as a for-profit or nonprofit.
Many organizations use a mix of different structures simultaneously. The following diagrams illustrate the social enterprise structure vis-à-vis its relationship to the parent organization. Structured Internally Social enterprise is structured as a department or profit center within the parent organization. Any of the operational models can be structured internally within the parent organization; however, embedded and integrated social enterprises are the most common forms using this structure. Structured as a Separate Entity Social enterprise is structured as a separate legal entity, either a for-profit or a nonprofit. Structured as the Same Entity Embedded social enterprises are the most common form using this structure. Biomimicry: A Tool for Innovation. Survey on Global Environmental Issues : Survey Results - The Asahi Glass Foundation. Blue Planet Prize Laureates' UNEP Paper - The Asahi Glass Foundation.
The Blue Planet Prize laureates jointly presented a paper titled "Environment and Development Challenges: The Imperative to Act" at the 12th UNEP Governing Council meeting in the year 2012 when the Prize celebrates its twentieth anniversary. Joint Paper by the Blue Planet Prize LaureatesEnvironment and Development Challenges: The Imperative to Act At the 12th UNEP Governing Council meeting held in Nairobi, Kenya on 20 February 2012, Blue Planet Prize laureates represented by Dr.
Robert Watson presented a paper titled "Environment and Development Challenges : The Imperative to Act. " In the side event following the Governing Council meeting, Dr. Watson and two other laureates participated in a discussion meeting with others present. Key Messages of the Joint Paper Announced Prior to the presentation at UNEP from 8 to 10 February, 14 Blue Planet Prize laureates including the first winner Dr. Conscious Business and Entrepreneurship. Speaker(s): John Mackey, CEO, Whole Foods Published: March 08, 2010 Download 48 minutes, 22.1mb, recorded 2010-01-26 Social entrepreneurship may well be giving business a good name.
In this University podcast, John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, advocates for "conscious business” that is in service not just to the profit margin but also to helping others, striving for excellence, fulfilling a higher purpose, and changing and improving the world. Speaking as part of the View from the Top Lecture Series to an audience of Stanford MBA students, Mackey discusses his own company’s growing pains and his embrace of the social entrepreneurship paradigm. John Mackey opened a small health food store in Austin, Texas, in 1978, which in 1980 merged with another local natural foods store to form the foundation on which Whole Foods Market was born. Resources Credits: Mike Seifried Marguerite Rigoglioso Ash Jafari. What is Biomimicry? Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a new discipline that studies nature's best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems.
Studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell is an example. I think of it as "innovation inspired by nature. " The core idea is that nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers. They have found what works, what is appropriate, and most important, what lasts here on Earth. Like the viceroy butterfly imitating the monarch, we humans are imitating the best adapted organisms in our habitat. The conscious emulation of life's genius is a survival strategy for the human race, a path to a sustainable future. Looking at Nature as Model, Measure, and Mentor If we want to consciously emulate nature's genius, we need to look at nature differently.
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