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 (10,492 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 (14,339 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)

an orphanage school near his home village, but he felt his destiny was to expand his mission in a larger way. Meanwhile Jeff was dealing with several other issues. An award-winning woodshop teacher, Jeff had gone on to become an internationally known designer/maker of fine, hand-crafted furniture. He had also gained recognition for his JD Lohr School of Woodworking near Philadelphia. Between furniture commissions and working through the waiting list of students for his school, Jeff's business schedule would have provided more than enough excitement for most healthy young men. Jeff, however, was also battling serious health issues. In recent years he'd survived a near fatal hea... posted on Sep 13 2015 (12,853 reads)

tend to have slightly lower levels of self-compassion than men, even while they tend to be more caring, empathetic, and giving toward others. Perhaps this isn’t so surprising, given that women are socialized to be caregivers—selflessly to open their hearts to their husbands, children, friends, and elderly parents—but aren’t taught to care for themselves. While the feminist revolution helped expand the roles available to women, and we now see more female leaders in business and politics than ever before, the idea that women should be selfless caregivers hasn’t really gone away. It’s just that women are now supposed to be successful at their careers i... posted on Oct 19 2015 (29,584 reads)

a quarter century ago, at a gathering in Phoenix, Arizona, John W. Gardner delivered a speech that may be one of the most quietly influential speeches in the history of American business — a text that has been photocopied, passed along, underlined, and linked to by senior executives in some of the most important companies and organizations in the world. I wonder, though, how many of these leaders (and the business world more broadly) have truly embraced the lessons he shared that day. Gardner, who died in 2002 at the age of 89, was a legendary public intellectual and civic reformer — a celebrated Stanford professor, an architect of the Great Society under Lyndon Johnson... posted on Jan 13 2016 (16,352 reads)

country. Pauline Tangiora New Zealand Maori elder Pauline Tangiora is a lifelong peacemaker. She is a justice of the peace, a member of the Earth Council, and vice president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Aotearoa. Her work with several NGOs and international organisations seeking peace and respect of indigenous peoples has led her to becoming one of the pioneers of Rising Women Rising World movement. Helena Morrissey Helena Morrissey is a British businesswoman and mother of nine who is helping to change the face of British boardrooms. As the CEO of Newton Investment, she became to founder of the 30% Club, a movement which wants to see women ma... posted on Mar 4 2016 (17,836 reads)

(many more people could be listed), so some of it may feel specific to race. However, these rules apply beyond the identity of race; in fact, these rules only exist in the dynamic of intersections. Below are ten counterproductive behaviors that people who want to do “good” commit and must actively work to correct: 1. Quick to marginalize someone else’s experience. I was walking through a hotel lobby with colleagues. We were headed to a conference social, wearing business attire. There were quite a few conference attendees roaming around the lobby area at that time, all wearing business attire as well. It was a fairly loud, mingling setting. An older white wom... posted on Mar 18 2016 (40,076 reads)

am a Muslim by faith, originally from Pakistan. I ran a computer sales business for 12 years, but after the dot-com bust, business started slowing down. Then 9-11 happened and completely changed my life. I decided I was not going to be a victim and sit at home and cry. That was when my community activism began. Fremont, California where I live is an extremely diverse community. I felt I needed to educate people about who I am, by doing what my faith teaches me. In the Muslim faith, we are taught from childhood to know our neighbors in 40 homes within our radius, to make sure everyone is doing well, has food on the table. These are the values we grow up with. I started small &ndash... posted on May 10 2016 (16,126 reads)

now. Students who learn nature’s principles in gardens and serve their communities through civic participation become more engaged in their studies and score better in diverse subjects, including science, reading and writing, and independent thinking. Designing buildings to conserve energy and water can save enough money to convince finance-minded school boards. Going green helps competitive independent schools to attract students and local communities to attract residents and business. Students and staff members who eat better meals and spend their days in buildings with better air quality are absent less often, report higher satisfaction, and perform better. Schools becom... posted on May 21 2016 (15,606 reads)

how to deal with media, how to deal with other children about media. So we started having potluck dinners and reading things together, and talking to each other. This started in 1996-’97 and the nonprofit grew out of those exchanges, alongside the children’s center, which grew to include pre-school aged children during the day and classes in theater and crafts after school. The non-profit was formalized in 2000. The “umbrella” name is Ariadne’s Children; we do business as Healthy Media Choices.      Then one day this pivotal moment came when we were making bread, six little children and me around a table—we made bread frequently—... posted on Jul 11 2016 (21,403 reads)

lead] us to behave, in our worst moments, like impulsive, out-of-control sociopaths.” The way out of the paradox, he says, is using “power that is given to us by others...” Reflecting on this, I shared the following story at that week’s Awakin Circle I attend in the bay area: In the early 1990s I was excited to land a job as a principal with a prestigious training and consulting firm in Silicon Valley. We delivered leadership programs to management teams in business and government. We were excited about our work and thought of ourselves as having two agendas. The explicit, obvious one: to help organizations accomplish their mission by improving leadershi... posted on Aug 19 2016 (15,076 reads)

raise his daughter. When his mom passed away two years later, Miles says he became more determined than ever to create a healthy environment for his family. “I’m all she has, and she’s all I have,” he said. “I had to build a whole new relationship with my daughter, while building a whole new life for myself.” It wasn’t until October 2015, nearly a decade after he got out of prison, that a cousin told Miles about Lancaster Food Company, a local business that hires people who have difficulty finding jobs. This includes people with language barriers and disabilities—but the company focuses on hiring formerly incarcerated people. Hopin... posted on Jan 9 2017 (10,311 reads)