This is a book about people in organisations developing love for themselves, others, communities and nature. It offers an opportunity to see afresh, to envisage courageously and to position yourself differently. To bring hearts, minds and wills to bear on the world around us. The life we live inside our organisations influences every other part of our lives.
Here is a way to embrace the philosophy and practice of becoming a virtuous organisation and giving a dazzling performance. The book helps you to define where you are in your current experience of your organisation, and how you can shift things within yourself and around you.
This is more than an adaptive or compliance process. It is about necessary, compelling and radical change and the authors show how it can, and has been done:
- Seeing the need.
- Arriving at the right values.
- Aligning individual and organisation values
- Determining appropriate behaviour indicators.
- Entrenching the values so that they become spontaneously lived virtues
The mind-set, methods and techniques used during the process are important in each of these steps, especially the last where precious few have succeeded. Virtues drawn from the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci, and which span all cultures and generations, illustrate what is possible.
The book includes:
- Choosing and prioritising values
- How are you living your personal values
- Are we a congruent organisation?
- Using anecdote circles to find out what shape your business is in
- Personal mindfulness checklist
- Do we have organisational blind-spots?
- Journaling
- What shadow-side factors should we be aware of in our organisation?
- How Integrated are we as an Organisation?
- The seeds of love
- Ethical behaviour
- Putting balance into the balance scorecard
- Readiness for the journey
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Graham Williams, CMC, B.Com Hons, B.A. is
a certified management consultant, thought leader, speaker, and author
who has worked in a large number of countries and sectors around the
world. An essential component of his ‘motivational fingerprint’ and
forte is to overcome severe organisational blockages by installing
creative, healing solutions – from concept to implementation. He focuses
on the use of narrative, anecdote and metaphor as critical contributors
to successful business interventions. He wrote Centre-ing Customer
Satisfaction, Revelling in Transition and Reflections for 3H Leaders and
The Halo and the Noose: The Power of Story Listening in Business Life.
Dorian Haarhoff, D Phil English Literature University of York,
England is a poet, facilitator, speaker, mentor, narrative
practitioner, and author. He has held academic posts in Namibia, South
Africa, Canada and the USA. Dorian is the author of The Writer’s Voice: a
workbook for writers in Africa and several poetry anthologies. He has
successfully transitioned from the academic to the business world, and
with Graham co-authored The Halo and the Noose and Story Matters @ Work.
Peter Fox. B.A. (Hons), Dipl. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy [SAIP].
Peter majors in spiritual direction and mentoring, and is a workshop
facilitator, life coach, palliative care educator, pastoral and grief
therapist, Presbyterian Minister and author. He also does trauma
debriefing. He recently resigned after 17 years looking after the
spiritual care side of St. Luke’s Hospice, and runs a private
counselling practice. Peter co-authored Dying: a practical guide for the
Journey.
