movement to return to their faith's spiritual and ethical roots. Their leader was an obscure farmer's son who has been described by one historian as "the noblest exemplar of simple living ever produced in America." His name? John Woolman. Woolman is now largely forgotten, but in his own time he was a powerful force who did far more than wear plain, undyed clothes. After setting himself up as a cloth merchant in 1743 to gain a subsistence living, he soon had a dilemma: his business was much too successful. He felt he was making too much money at other people's expense. In a move not likely to be recommended at Harvard Business School, he decided to reduce his pro... posted on Mar 14 2014 (43,741 reads)

the planet, new technologies and business models are decentralizing power and placing it in the hands of communities and individuals.  "We are seeing technology-driven networks replacing bureacratically-driven hierarchies," says VC and futurist Fred Wilson, speaking on what to expect in the next ten years. View the entire 25-minute video below (it's worth it!) and then check out the 21 innovations below. Here are 21 innovations that will help make it happen: 1. Open Garden Decentralized technology will become mainstream in 2014, according to the Open Garden Foundation, a San Francisco-based startup ded... posted on Apr 7 2014 (184,196 reads)

received there. Roughly 600 people have completed the quiz so far (which is one-third the number of people who usually complete our quizzes by this point in its lifespan—an interesting finding in and of itself). About thirty percent said they were from outside of the United States; the rest were scattered across the U.S., with the biggest representation in the West Coast and Midwest. Also, though the respondents hailed from diverse organizations, nearly half worked in a for-profit business office. Here’s what we learned about how Greater Good readers see and experience gratitude in their organizations. The type of organization predicted how much gratitude people per... posted on Mar 31 2014 (17,701 reads)

so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making better decisions on a daily basis. Almost every habit that you have — good or bad — is the result of many small decisions over time. And yet, how easily we forget this when we want to make a change. So often we convince ourselves that change is only meaningful if there is some large, visible outcome associated with it. Whether it is losing weight, building a business, traveling the world or any other goal, we often put pressure on ourselves to make some earth-shattering improvement that everyone will talk about. Meanwhile, improving by just 1 percent i... posted on Apr 4 2014 (82,276 reads)

you wasted less time and got more done? Welcome to the club. So why is it, then, when we mean well and are focused on the task at hand, we can still manage to get bogged down by things like emails and weekly reports? The key to being productive is knowing your priorities, notes Robert Pozen, a senior lecturer of business administration at Harvard Business School. He's also the former president of Fidelity and executive chairman of MFS Investment Management, author of "Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours," and teaches courses on maximizing personal productivity. Being "productive means getting a lot done relative... posted on Jun 11 2014 (50,392 reads)

Business Simplicity: Simplicity means that a new kind of economy is growing in the world, with healthy and sustainable products and services of all kinds (home-building materials, energy systems, food pro­duction, transportation). As the need for a sustainable infrastructure in developing nations is being com­bined with the need to retrofit and redesign the homes, cities, workplaces, and transportation systems of developed nations, it is generating an enormous wave of green business innovation and employment. 7. Civic Simplicity: Simplicity means that living more lightly and sustainably on the Earth requires changes in every area of public life — from public tra... posted on Apr 29 2014 (19,758 reads)

sure what to do if my food ran out. I canceled two scheduled dinners, knowing they were way beyond my budget.” Then there is the popular TV show, Undercover Boss, which inconspicuously plants senior executives in entry-level positions within their own companies to gain a firsthand perspective on how they function from the bottom up. Stripped of cufflinks and chauffeurs, the “worker-bosses” peer behind the curtain of the c-suite into the dirty underbelly of their business. They emerge endowed with a unique purview to effectively evolve and grow their companies. As The Wall Street Journal reported, the stocks of all the public companies that have appeared on th... posted on Jun 18 2014 (19,805 reads)

really easy to avoid doing the work at all. The only way to be consistent enough to make a masterpiece is to give yourself permission to create junk along the way. The Schedule is the System During a conversation about writing, my friend Sarah Peck looked at me and said, “A lot of people never get around to writing because they are always wondering when they are going to write next.” You could say the same thing about working out, starting a business, creating art, and building most habits. The schedule is the system that makes your goals a reality. If you don’t set a schedule for yourself, then your only option is to rely on motiva... posted on Oct 13 2014 (22,121 reads)

researchers found that those participants who experienced a relationship threat and then watched their favorite TV show were actually buffered against the blow to self-esteem, negative mood, and feelings of rejection. It pays to have friends on TV. 5. Watching blurs the lines between self and other, merging the watcher and the watched. From micro video security cameras (“less than one inch square”) to The Rich Kids of Beverly Hills, watching is now someone’s business plan. Eyeball-hungry producers especially want to blur the boundaries between the game of reality TV and the illusion of living real lives. The result: Watch culture alters not only our se... posted on Sep 11 2014 (34,008 reads)

the moment has come that someone else seems to need the word more, they pass the key forward. And then they go back to The Giving Keys site and tell their story. ©The Giving Keys The Giving Keys began receiving stories from people who’d given keys and people who’d received keys. Keys have circulated through all different walks of life from people in chemotherapy wards fighting cancer to college students setting out on their own for the first time. But the business, which began out of complete happenstance, has evolved into something bigger than its founder could have ever even imagined. L.A.-based singer-songwriter and actress Caitlin Crosby grew up... posted on Nov 30 2014 (19,538 reads)

growth is natural and it’s normal for tasks and ideas to creep into your life, but full growth and optimal living requires pruning. We All Need to Cut Good Branches I like the rose bush analogy because it brings up something that is often lost in most conversations about productivity and simplicity: if you want to reach your full potential, you have to cut out ideas and tasks that are good, but not great. In my experience, this is really hard to do. If you’re building a business, maybe you have 3 product lines that are profitable. Your business might grow by 5x if you focus on all three, but which product line will grow by 500x if you put all of your energy into it? ... posted on Dec 11 2014 (29,544 reads)

all is not rosy in learning from nature about new medicines. This is a viper from Brazil, the venom of which was studied at the Universidade de São Paulo here. It was later developed into ACE inhibitors. This is a frontline treatment for hypertension. Hypertension causes over 10 percent of all deaths on the planet every day. This is a $4 billion industry based on venom from a Brazilian snake, and the Brazilians did not get a nickel. This is not an acceptable way of doing business. The rainforest has been called the greatest expression of life on Earth. There's a saying in Suriname that I dearly love: "The rainforests hold answers to questions we have yet t... posted on Jan 24 2015 (34,555 reads)

the last few years, ‘empathy’ has taken over my life. The fascination with human understanding has become a deep running passion as the result of many long hours of research, countless exhilarating discussions, and increasing experimentations seeking new ways to apply empathy in business, education, social programs, and public policy. At first it was extremely challenging to grasp, with a holistic view of empathy covering fields as diverse as neuroscience, anthropology, philosophy, biology, psychology and innovation (to name a few). Adding to my beginner’s confusion was a lack of coherent definition for empathy – the term has almost as many descri... posted on Feb 23 2015 (28,195 reads)

if we measured wealth in terms of life, and how well we serve it? David Korten began his professional life as a professor at the Harvard Business School on a mission to lift struggling people in Third World nations out of poverty by sharing the secrets of U.S. business success. Yet, after a couple of decades in which he applied his organizational development strategies in places as far-flung as Ethiopia, Nicaragua, and the Philippines, Korten underwent a change of heart. In 1995, he wrote the bestseller When Corporations Rule the World, followed by a series of books that helped birth the movement known as the New Economy, a call to replace transnational corporate domination w... posted on Mar 31 2015 (18,318 reads)

And Gitanjali, who never set out to be a teacher, began bringing books. Other women noticed and joined in, and soon their children came. At home at night, she shared her experiences on social media, and over time volunteers began to show up. Three years later, Kat-Katha has 120 volunteers and is working with the women of all seventy-seven brothels on G.B Road. Gitanjali speaks of all this matter-of-factly, marveling at the serendipity of events. Someone donated book-binding machines, a business donated used paper, and they began to teach the women how to bind and craft notebooks. The children began to see themselves as artists and revealed an uncanny ability to attract the help they... posted on Jun 30 2015 (10,491 reads)

does empathy look like in action, and how can you incorporate into your business model? Last week saw the Ashoka Change Week host the Ashoka Support Network Global Summit, with social enterprises from around the world sharing their stories of how develop empathy in business... Empathy - the ability to understand and share the feelings of others, is a key skill for entrepreneurs that want to create impact. Without this foundational skill, we will hurt people and disrupt institutions. Everyone needs the empathic skill in order to adapt, make good decisions, collaborate effectively and thrive. Research in cognitive neuroscience has shown a strong correlation ... posted on May 26 2015 (17,956 reads)

a year. "Spinning is challenging," says Luebbermann, "it can take years to learn but the process is very rewarding." "In order to have the wool hold together, it needs to be twisted together. Once it twists together, it grabs hold and is strong," explains Luebbermann. "It's the spinning that's the magic." "Spinning has a natural rhythm to it," explains Marlie de Swart, Luebbermann's longtime business partner, "it is very meditative." Spinning raw sheep's wool into yarn. Mimi Luebbermann and her business partner Marlie de Swart have start... posted on May 15 2015 (10,998 reads)

opened up his own construction company in the building, calling it Carpenter’s Place. But a strange thing happened just a couple of months in: A local café closed and left a destitute homeless population without a gathering place. Barsema remembered what it was like to be homeless and at the end of his rope. He’d faced a series of challenges early in life—he’d lost everything after a struggle with alcoholism cost him his marriage, his home, and his real estate business. That led him to a mountaintop in Alaska, where he meant to commit suicide. His parents took him in and helped him rebuild. Remembering this, Barsema immediately set aside a room at Carpen... posted on Jun 4 2015 (14,338 reads)

When I get those calls about performance, that's one thing. How do you make a change? I'm also looking to see what is shaping the person's ability to contribute, to do something beyond themselves. Maybe the real question is, I look at life and say there's two master lessons. One is: there's the science of achievement, which almost everyone here has mastered amazingly. "How do you take the invisible and make it visible," How do you make your dreams happen? Your business, your contribution to society, money -- whatever, your body, your family. 3:23    The other lesson that is rarely mastered is the art of fulfillment. Because science is easy... posted on Aug 4 2015 (17,809 reads)

having dinners, we started a book club, I was invited to the Green Diamond walks in the woods, and always every encounter was full of discussion. We mused about the future of the company, what revisions could occur, what the public needed to know, what problems needed solving. Neal expressed great interest in my ideas. He listened enthusiastically and his intrinsic desire to explore the unknown was very clear. He never once seemed unavailable, never like a fat-cat businessman, but a true seeker, an open-hearted wonderer. 10. We created a shared language. We developed themes to talk about each time we saw one another: Grief, Activism, Poetry, ... posted on Sep 8 2015 (16,145 reads)