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Community for Spirit
Business
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Business has labored under the misconception that its
purpose is to "make money". Actually, "making money"
is the outcome the producer or supplier enjoys when it focuses on the
essential purpose of business, which is "to exchange usefulness for
mutual benefit". The producer provides a useful, beneficial product
or service and is reciprocally compensated with money. For a company,
focusing on this essential purpose not only ensures income, it creates a
unified company culture. People know the purpose of their job, their
individual contribution to "providing unique usefulness" to the
external market and their relationship to each other - an integrated
system in which people find work meaningful.
Books
These books deal with the changing view of "business" itself.
 | Meaning - The Secret of Being Alive - Cliff
Havener
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"integrative" view of reality and its conflict with the
traditional "normative" view, it draws many examples of
both what is and what could be from the world of business,
essentially redefining "business" itself.
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| The New Pioneers - Tom Petzinger
| In this book, Tom Petzinger provides concrete examples of the
emerging new "integrative" view of business.
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| Built
to Last - James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras
| Although they never used systems terminology, Collins and Porras
provided convincing documentation of the superior effectiveness of
"integrative" businesses compared to their far more
numerous and less successful "normative" counterparts.
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| The Economy of Nature - William Ashworth
| William Ashworth provides a stirring comparison of natural
systems to business which illustrates that, although we've denied
it for centuries, even business works best when modeled on living
systems. |
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These books focus on the organization's culture and meaningful
work.
| 22 Keys to Creating a Meaningful Workplace - Tom Terez
| Tom's book is a wonderful, practical guide for creating meaning
in the workplace - the key to attracting and holding the most
talented people
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The Manager's Pocket Guide to Systems Thinking and Learning -
Stephen Haines
| This is only one of Stephen Haines books which apply
systems thinking to business organizations. Its unique value is
"to help organizations move beyond an environment of
crisis management, while developing a living organizational design
that accommodates and integrates ongoing change." Haines
shows managers how to take their organizations from chaos and
complexity to elegant simplicity by applying the natural laws of
living systems.
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| The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook - Peter Senge, Art Kleiner and
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| The Dance of Change - Peter Senge, Art Kleiner and others
| These two books are extensions of Peter Senge's The Fifth
Discipline. They provide detailed explanations of the ins and outs
of "the learning organization". A true "learning
organization", by the way, is equivalent to an open, adaptive
natural system - a founding perspective often overlooked or not
comprehended.
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| The Power of Collaborative Leadership - Bert Frydman, Iva Wilson,
JoAnne Wyer
| Written by people who have lived through the creation of a
"learning organization", this book divulges the very
real and practical lessons they learned - or, "why creating
an open, adaptive, integrative system where a closed, mechanistic,
normative one has always existed is so unbelievably
difficult". |
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Links
| The Centre for Strategic Management
| The Centre for Strategic Management is probably the premier
source for applying systems thinking to business and creating the
open, adaptive and vastly more successful, enduring companies than
has ever been possible under the traditional "normative"
view of reality.
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| Meaningful Workplace
| This is the site of Tom Terez, author of 22 Keys to Creating
a Meaningful Workplace. It contains articles, updates and
extensions of Tom's original work.
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| Cluetrain
| A wonderfully irreverent site dedicated to "the end of
business-as-usual". That pretty much says it all.
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| The Petzinger Report
| This is Tom Petzinger's site. He goes into much greater detail
about systems (complexity theory) than he did in his book and he
provides a thought provoking newsletter.
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| PeopleSystemsPotential
| This is the site of one organizational development practitioner
who applies the integrative perspective to companies. In her own
words: "You may have a wonderful product or service, but
unless you have great people skills, the ability to see the big
picture, the knack for being innovative and the consciousness for
aligning what is good for you with what is good for all,
eventually, you and your business will suffer." |
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