Books We Love

Conscious Capitalism, Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business

by John Mackey & Raj Sisodia

 At once a bold defense and reimagining of capitalism and a blueprint for a new system for doing business, Conscious Capitalism is for anyone hoping to build a more cooperative, humane, and positive future.

Whole Foods Market cofounder John Mackey and professor and Conscious Capitalism, Inc. cofounder Raj Sisodia argue that both business and capitalism are inherently good, and they use some of today’s best-known and most successful companies to illustrate their point. From Southwest Airlines, UPS, and Tata to Costco, Panera, Google, the Container Store, and Amazon, today’s organizations are creating value for all stakeholders—including customers, employees, suppliers, investors, society, and the environment.

Read this book and you’ll better understand how four specific tenets—higher purpose, stakeholder integration, conscious leadership, and conscious culture and management—can help build strong businesses, move capitalism closer to its highest potential, and foster a more positive environment for all of us.

Firms of Endearment by: How World Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose

by Raj Sisodia

Today’s best companies get it. From retail to finance and industries in between, the organizations who recognize that doing good is good business are becoming the ultimate value creators. They’re changing their culture and generating every form of value that matters: emotional, experiential, social, and financial. And they’re doing it for all their stakeholders. Not because it’s simply politically correct, because it’s the only path to long-term competitive advantage.

These are the firms of endearment. Companies people love doing business with, working for and collaborating with as partners. Since the publication of the First Edition, the concept of corporate social responsibility has become embraced as a valid, important, and profitable business model. It is a trend that has transformed the workplace and corporate world.  This Second Edition updates the examples, cases, and applications from the original edition, giving readers insight into how this hallmark of the modern organization is practiced today.

Conscious Business:  How to Build Value through Values

by Fred Kofman

Consciousness is the main source of organizational greatness. Conscious business, explains Fred Kofman, means finding your passion and expressing your essential values through your work. Conscious Business presents breakthrough techniques to help you and the people in your company create a workplace founded in unconditional responsibility and unflinching integrity, anchored by authentic communication and impeccable commitments, and guided by right leadership. Here is a definitive resource for maximizing profit and potential in the workplace and beyond.

Reinventing Organizations

by Frederic Laloux

The way we manage organizations seems increasingly out of date. Deep inside, we  sense that more is possible. We long for soulful workplaces, for authenticity, community, passion, and purpose.

In this groundbreaking book, the author shows that every time, in the past, when humanity has shifted to a new stage of consciousness, it has achieved extraordinary breakthroughs in collaboration. A new shift in consciousness is currently underway. Could it help us invent a more soulful and purposeful way to run our businesses and nonprofits, schools and hospitals?

It’s Just Good Business:  The Emergence of Conscious Capitalism & the Practice of Working for Good

by  Jeff Klein

It’s Just Good Business provides a clear, concise and compelling introduction to the emerging Conscious Capitalism movement and to the practice of Working for Good. It’s Just Good Business is an inspiring and informative “quick read” filled with quotes, stories and pathways to action.

“This book is absolutely terrific! It is brief with minimal text and lots of graphics and quotes – an easy read on a relatively deep topic. I love the descriptions of companies that exemplify Conscious Capitalism!! And, I absolutely love the call to action sections in the latter part of the book!” ~ Scott McIntosh, MAC6, Angel Entrepreneur

The Great Game of Business

by Jack Stack

The Great Game of Business started a business revolution by introducing the world to open-book management, a new way of running a business that created unprecedented profit and employee engagement.
 
The revised and updated edition of The Great Game of Business lays out an entirely different way of running a company. It wasn’t dreamed up in an executive think tank or an Ivy League business school or around the conference table by big-time consultants. It was forged on the factory floors of the heartland by ordinary folks hoping to figure out how to save their jobs when their parent company, International Harvester, went down the tubes.

What these workers created was a revolutionary approach to management that has proven itself in every industry around the world for the past thirty years—an approach that is perhaps the last, best hope for reviving the American Dream.

Leadership and the New Science

by Margaret J. Wheatley

We live in a time of chaos, rich in potential for new possibilities. A new world is being born. We need new ideas, new ways of seeing, and new relationships to help us now. New science–the new discoveries in biology, chaos theory, and quantum physics that are changing our understanding of how the world works–offers this guidance. It describes a world where chaos is natural, where order exists “for free.” It displays the intricate webs of cooperation that connect us. It assures us that life seeks order, but uses messes to get there.

Leadership and the New Science is the bestselling, most acclaimed, and most influential guide to applying the new science to organizations and management. In it, Wheatley describes how the new science radically alters our understanding of the world, and how it can teach us to live and work well together in these chaotic times. It will teach you how to move with greater certainty and easier grace into the new forms of organizations and communities that are taking shape. You’ll learn that:

• Relationships are what matters–even at the subatomic level
• Life is a vast web of interconnections where cooperation and participation are required
• Chaos and change are the only route to transformation

In this expanded edition, Wheatley provides examples of how non-linear networks and self-organizing systems are flourishing in the modern world. In the midst of turbulence, Wheatley shows, we create work and lives rich in meaning.

The Living Organization: Transforming Business to Create Extraordinary Results

by Norman Wolfe

The pressure on CEOs and other leaders to create results, while balancing an increasing diversity of opposing demands, is reaching oppressive levels. New leaders sense the breakdown of our existing business. The framework that was used to guide their efforts no longer produces the same results.

First and foremost, The Living Organization deepens our understanding of how any living organization creates the results it desires. Norman Wolfe draws on decades of experience both leading and consulting with organizations to unravel the mystery of creating results. Based on scientific, philosophical and spiritual truths, The Living Organization® model explores how three distinct yet highly interdependent fields of energy influence and determine what results will and will not be created.

Most organizations fail because they focus only on activities and reduce organizations to simple machines of production, machines whose sole purpose is to produce money. But machines are, by their very nature, soulless and everything this paradigm touches turns soulless and lifeless. By contrast, The Living Organization brings life to an organization’s activity. It is energized by relationships, and brings meaning and purpose to activities. The Living Organization creates and is in harmony with its environment, growing and developing as it contributes to and enhances all members of its ecosystem.

The Living Organization teaches leaders how to succeed by consciously using all of the energy fields to create results. This essential tool is for all leaders who want to successfully navigate the varied dynamics impacting their organizations.

The Living Organization presents the foundation of a new business model and provides a new, more detailed map to navigate the complex business world of this century. This evolutionary perspective is a fresh way to understand how organizations develop, grow and evolve. It will challenge the way you think and interact.

Deeply personal, brimming with compelling stories from real-life challenges, and packed with powerful insights, tools, and practices, The Living Organization is a potent resource for aspiring, emerging, and seasoned business leaders alike.

Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution

by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins

On its first publication 10 years ago, Natural Capitalism rocked the world of business with its innovative new approach – an approach that fused ecological integrity with business acumen using the radical concept of natural capitalism. This 10th-anniversary edition features a new Introduction by Amory B. Lovins and Paul Hawken which updates the story to include the successes of the last decade. It clearly sets out the path that we must now take to ensure the future prosperity of our civilisation and our planet.

Working for Good:  Making a Difference While Making a Living

by Jeff Klein

The words “business” and “social change” may seem contradictory, but the fact is a successful business may be the most powerful force for positive change in the world today. In Working for Good, Jeff Klein, one of the visionaries and driving forces behind Spinning, Seeds of Change, Chi Running, and other forward-thinking brands presents a how-to guidebook for becoming a “conscious entrepreneur”–one who addresses social issues while running a profitable business based on integrity and self-actualization. Putting the tools of conscious business development firmly in our hands, Jeff Klein takes readers step by step through the five keys to Working for Good, showing how to:

• Express your humanity through full awareness and embodiment while engaging others with your work
• Establish purpose grounded in principles that sustain both your business and your virtues
• Generate rich experiences in and outside of work through a network of spirited connection and collaboration For anyone who has yearned to make a comfortable living in service of real social change, Jeff Klein offers an essential read that is at once deeply inspirational and wholly practical: Working for Good.

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion & Purpose

by Tony Hsieh

• Pay brand-new employees $2,000 to quit
• Make customer service the responsibility of the entire company-not just a department
• Focus on company culture as the #1 priority
• Apply research from the science of happiness to running a business
• Help employees grow-both personally and professionally
• Seek to change the world
• Oh, and make money too . . .

Sound crazy? It’s all standard operating procedure at Zappos, the online retailer that’s doing over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually. After debuting as the highest-ranking newcomer in Fortune magazine’s annual “Best Companies to Work For” list in 2009, Zappos was acquired by Amazon in a deal valued at over $1.2 billion on the day of closing.

In DELIVERING HAPPINESS, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh shares the different lessons he has learned in business and life, from starting a worm farm to running a pizza business, through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more. Fast-paced and down-to-earth, DELIVERING HAPPINESS shows how a very different kind of corporate culture is a powerful model for achieving success-and how by concentrating on the happiness of those around you, you can dramatically increase your own.

PEAK:  How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow

by Chip Conely

After fifteen years of rising to the pinnacle of the hospitality industry, Chip Conley’s company was suddenly undercapitalized and overexposed in the post-dot.com, post-9/11 economy. For relief and inspiration, Conley, the CEO and founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, turned to psychologist Abraham Maslow’s iconic Hierarchy of Needs. This book explores how Conley’s company “the second largest boutique hotelier in the world” overcame the storm that hit the travel industry by applying Maslow’s theory to what Conley identifies as the key Relationship Truths in business with Employees, Customers and Investors.

Part memoir, part theory, and part application, the book tells of Joie de Vivre’s remarkable transformation while providing real world examples from other companies and showing how readers can bring about similar changes in their work and personal lives. Conley explains how to understand the motivations of employees, customers, bosses, and investors, and use that understanding to foster better relationships and build an enduring and profitable corporate culture.

Spiritual Capital:  Wealth We Can Live

by Danah Zohar & Ian Marshall

Spiritual Capital presents a new vision of capitalist society that transcends the greed, materialism, and meaninglessness so rampant today. It offers an idea of wealth, profit, and capital that’s about more than simply money. “”Profit,”” under this system, would be not merely for private gain but would be used in part for public good. “”Wealth”” would be that which enriches the deeper aspects of our lives, gained by drawing upon our most fundamental purposes and highest motivations and finding a way to embed these in our work. “”Capital”” is amassed by serving – in corporate philosophy and practice – the pressing concerns of our world. The author’s dream of getting a critical mass of people and organizations to act for what’s right rather than for self-serving reasons. Ideally, spiritual capital would reflect a values-based business culture. Instead of emphasizing shareholder value, it would promote “”stakeholder value,”” where stakeholders include the whole human race and the planet itself.

The Purpose Economy

by Aaron Hurst

A series of shifts are happening in our economy: Millennials are trading in conventional career paths to launch tech start-ups, start small businesses that are rooted in local communities, or freelance their expertise. We are sharing everything, from bikes and cars, to extra rooms in our homes. We now create, buy and sell handcrafted products in our local communities with ease.

Globally recognized entrepreneur, founder of Taproot Foundation and CEO of Imperative, Aaron Hurst, argues in his latest book that while these developments seem unrelated at first, taken together they reveal a powerful pattern that points to purpose as the new driver of the American economy.

Like the Information Economy, which has driven innovation and economic growth until now, Hurst argues that our new economic era is driven by connecting people to their purpose. It’s an economy where value lies in establishing purpose for employees and customers through serving needs greater than their own, enabling personal growth and building community.   Based on interviews with thousands of entrepreneurs, Hurst shows this new era is already fueling demand for a whole host of products and services and transforming how millennials view their careers. A new breed of startups like Etsy, Zaarly, Tough Mudder, Kickstarter, and Airbnb are finding new ways to create value by connecting us with our local communities. At the same time, companies like Tesla and Whole Foods are making the march from just appealing to affluent buyers to becoming mainstream brands. Hurst calls these companies, along with the pioneering entrepreneurs who founded them, the Purpose Economy’s taste-makers.

This book is at once a personal memoir of Aaron Hurst’s own awakening as a purpose-driven entrepreneur, when he left a well-paying tech job in 2001 to launch Taproot, creating a pathway for millions of professionals and Fortune 500 companies to volunteer for nonprofits.  It’s also a blueprint for a new economic era that is transforming companies, markets and our careers to better serve people and the world.

The Shareholder Value Myth

by Lynn Stout

Executives, investors, and the business press routinely chant the mantra that corporations are required to “maximize shareholder value.” In this pathbreaking book, renowned corporate expert Lynn Stout debunks the myth that corporate law mandates shareholder primacy. Stout shows how shareholder value thinking endangers not only investors but the rest of us as well, leading managers to focus myopically on short-term earnings; discouraging investment and innovation; harming employees, customers, and communities; and causing companies to indulge in reckless, sociopathic, and irresponsible behaviors. And she looks at new models of corporate purpose that better serve the needs of investors, corporations, and society.

The Responsible Company: What We’ve Learned from Patagonia’s First 40 Years

by Yvon Chouinard

Yvon Chouinard, founder and owner of Patagonia, and Vincent Stanley, co-editor of its Footprint Chronicles, draw on the their 40 years’ experience at Patagonia – and knowledge of current efforts by other companies – to articulate the elements of responsible business for our time.

Patagonia, named by Fortune in 2007 as the coolest company on the planet, has earned a reputation as much for its ground-breaking environmental and social practices as for the quality of its clothes. In this exceptionally frank account, Chouinard and Stanley recount how the company and its culture gained the confidence, by step and misstep, to make its work progressively more responsible, and to ultimately share its discoveries with companies as large as Wal-Mart or as small as the corner bakery.

In plain, compelling prose, the authors describe the current impact of manufacturing and commerce on the planet’s natural systems and human communities, and how that impact now forces business to change its ways. The Responsible Company shows companies how to reduce the harm they cause, improve the quality of their business, and provide the kind of meaningful work everyone seeks. It concludes with specific, practical steps every business can undertake, as well as advice on what to do, in what order.

This is the first book to show companies how to thread their way through economic sea change and slow the drift toward ecological bankruptcy. Its advice is simple but powerful: reduce your environmental footprint (and its skyrocketing cost), make legitimate products that last, reclaim deep knowledge of your business and its supply chain to make the most of opportunities in the years to come, and earn the trust you’ll need by treating your workers, customers and communities with respect.

Screw Business as Usual

by Richard Branson

RICHARD BRANSON, one of the world’s most famous and admired business leaders, argues that it’s time to turn capitalism upside down-to shift our values from an exclusive focus on profit to also caring for people, communities and the planet

As he writes:
“It’s a vibrant and definite sea change from the way business was always done, when financial profit was a driving force. Today, people aren’t afraid to say, Screw business as usual!-and show they mean it.

“… this book isn’t just about fun and adventure and exceeding one’s wildest dreams. It’s a different kind of business book. It’s about revolution. My message is a simple one: business as usual isn’t working. In fact, business as usual is wrecking this planet. Resources are being used up; the air, the sea, the land are all heavily polluted. The poor are getting poorer. Many are dying of starvation or because they can’t afford a dollar a day for lifesaving medicine.

“But my message is not all doom and gloom. I will describe how I think business can help fix things and create a more prosperous world for everyone. I happen to believe in business because I believe that business is a force for good. By that I mean that doing good is good for business.

“Doing the right thing can be profitable. I will show how this works step by step in the following pages. It’s the core message of this book. I often say, ‘Have fun and the money will come.’ I still believe that, but now I am saying, ‘Do good, have fun and the money will come.'”