In its most recent issue (March 23-30), Business Week offers “Game-Changing Ideas for Business” with an impressive array of examples of companies using both well-established and new ideas to improve their performance.
The cover calls it “Managing Smarter” – underscoring the well-ingrained tendency of managers to seek solutions in the arena in which they are most comfortable, i.e., in the mind.
Yet Einstein advised, “No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it. We must learn to see the world anew.”
The business world is dominated by the mental dimension, yet business success is not just about “knowledge” workers, “intellectual” capital, “learning organizations” – or even “managing smarter”. Sure, those ingredients are necessary and important, but they are no longer enough to guarantee success. Another ingredient is increasingly needed – namely the Heart!
Successful business (and leadership) involves Meaning, Purpose, Ethics, Courage, and Caring Relationships with employees and customers, all of which are qualities of Heart. Without this dimension, employees flounder, customers walk and companies lose their way, contributing to just the mess we’re in.
Now would be a great time to put Heart back into the business model, and to encourage CEOs and their management teams to create “Noble Enterprises” that recognize and utilize heart energies in the service of customers, employees – and shareholders. Then we will have truly “Changed the Game” – for the good of all participants!
For more about the Noble Enterprise “business model” and leadership approach, and the book by the same name, go to http://www.noblebusinesssolutions.com/NobleEnterpriseBook.html