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Conscious Business
How to Build Value Through Values
Conscious Business (2006) pushes beyond conventional measures of success to show you how to create a dynamic organization based on core human values. You’ll learn why companies that empower employees to align their work with the values they hold dear are the companies that succeed in today’s marketplace.
- People looking to make work more fulfilling
- CEOs and managers wanting to create space for values in their organizations
- Entrepreneurs who value more enlightened measures of success
Fred Kofman is the president and cofounder of consulting firm Axialent. He also wrote the book Metamanagement, and was in 1992 the “teacher of the year” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management.
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Conscious Business
How to Build Value Through Values
- Read in 15 minutes
- Audio & text available
- Contains 9 key ideas
Synopsis
Conscious Business (2006) pushes beyond conventional measures of success to show you how to create a dynamic organization based on core human values. You’ll learn why companies that empower employees to align their work with the values they hold dear are the companies that succeed in today’s marketplace.
Key idea 1 of 9
Becoming a conscious company is your key to greater business success.
In Good to Great, author Jim Collins shows how the most successful companies are the ones that strive for more than financial success, as they’re motivated by higher values.
But how is it exactly that values could create a successful company?
Many successful businesses are powered by conscious employees. They take responsibility for their actions and know how to communicate constructively, without compromising their core values.
Unconscious employees, on the other hand, tend to undermine a business as they often blame others for problems and see themselves as the victim. They aren’t self-aware, and thus are not able to act according to higher values.
This is why managers should make it a priority to hire conscious employees.
Yet if you want to build a truly conscious business, you can’t stop here. You must also cultivate a balance among the impersonal, the interpersonal and the personal dimensions of your company.
The impersonal is the “it,” things like shareholder value, productivity and other technical considerations inherent to any business.
The interpersonal is the “we,” or the relationships among different people within your company.
And the personal, of course, is the “I,” relating to each individual’s happiness and desire for meaningful work and a mindful life.
Yet instead of creating a harmonious relationship among these three, most managers tend to focus entirely on “it,” the impersonal elements of a business.
When a company neglects its human elements (the interpersonal and the personal), business is a mindless activity, in which failure or success hinges only on managing arbitrary technical matters.
In a conscious business, however, harmony exists among the three core dimensions.
So how do you create a business built on harmony and core values? Read on!
Key ideas in this title
- Becoming a conscious company is your key to greater business success.
- Taking responsibility for your actions is the first step toward building a conscious business.
- To safeguard your integrity, try to focus more on process than on outcomes.
- Everyone sees the world differently; we should recognize, respect and learn from these differences.
- Say what you mean and establish common ground with your conversational partner.
- Handle conflicts properly – don’t deny or avoid them – with constructive negotiation.
- To run a successful conscious business, learn how to better control your emotions.
- A conscious business is filled with self-aware people who are concerned for the team’s well-being.
- Final summary
