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The Healing Organization: Awakening the Conscience of Business to Help Save the World
Recent evidence shows that, if done right, business can alleviate suffering and elevate joy in our lives--while still delivering extraordinary performance.
Employees, customers, investors--all want to do business with companies that have a positive impact on people, communities, and the environment. Even so, many in the business world remain skeptical of the idea that focusing on human flourishing makes you more profitable. And those who have believed in this notion are increasingly frustrated that businesses are losing an opportunity to influence the world in a positive way when they focus solely on making profits.
Raj Sisodia and Michael J. Gelb were inspired to write The Healing Organization because of the epidemic of unnecessary suffering connected with business. Through case studies of such companies as Appletree Answers, WD-40, and Chobani, the book shows how companies that have gone to great lengths to help their employees or solve a societal problem have also reaped both financial and societal rewards.
The Healing Organization advocates for the idea that done right, business can alleviate suffering and elevate joy in our lives--while still delivering extraordinary performance.
Employees, customers, investors--all want to do business with companies that have a positive impact on people, communities, and the environment. Even so, many in the business world remain skeptical of the idea that focusing on human flourishing makes you more profitable. And those who have believed in this notion are increasingly frustrated that businesses are losing an opportunity to influence the world in a positive way when they focus solely on making profits.
Raj Sisodia and Michael J. Gelb were inspired to write The Healing Organization because of the epidemic of unnecessary suffering connected with business. Through case studies of such companies as Appletree Answers, WD-40, and Chobani, the book shows how companies that have gone to great lengths to help their employees or solve a societal problem have also reaped both financial and societal rewards.
The Healing Organization advocates for the idea that done right, business can alleviate suffering and elevate joy in our lives--while still delivering extraordinary performance.
299 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 17, 2019
82 people are currently reading
477 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 14, 2023
Takeaways from reading the book:
Why did the authors write the book?
- Page 9: Raj wrote the book because for 2 reasons: He has a vision to 1) have the other side of the river near the village, in which his mother lives, return to being green and blue again, i.e. have the water restored to its pristine beauty, and 2) to return to the village, in which his father lives, and hear the birds sing again.
- Page 11: Michael dreams that we can create a new story of business based on awakened conscience, through which we can help save the world.
- Page 13: Raj and Michael want to alleviate unnecessary suffering caused by the way business is done. By suffering they mean physical suffering, financial suffering, emotional suffering and spiritual suffering.
What does healing mean?
- Page 29: The origin of the word "healing" comes from 1) the word "whole", which means healthy and undamaged, and 2) the word "holy", which means sacred and that, which cannot be violated.
- Pages 29 and 259: The purpose of healing is to alleviate suffering and elevate joy by serving the needs of all stakeholders - including employees, customers, communities and the environment.
- Page 259: Healing means recognizing and celebrating goodness, having an unshakable commitment to the truth and treating people beautifully.
- Page 259: In a healing organization, work and life are not separate, competing entities that need to be managed. When people have a sense of purpose, meaning and care in their work, work becomes a joyful experience.
- Page 259 (Epilogue): Healing organization oath: 1. First, do no harm. 2. Root out evil. 3. Love conquers all.
What are examples of healing organizations?
- Page 91: We all want to know that who we are and what we do matters. We all want to be treated with care and respect. We want to feel safe, and we want to know that our children will be alright. This is the gift that Bob Chairman, leader of www.barrywehmiller.com has given many people.
- Pages 105 - 111 and 259: People, who know Nand Kishore Chaudhary (NKC), leader of www.jaipurrugs.com, since childhood, say that he possesses a quality best described as innocence. Innocent people listen to their hearts. They have a beginner's mind, are humble, agile and empathize with other people. Becoming innocent is about leaving behind your ego, greed, wanting to prove yourself right, control, feeling inferior and feeling fear. Unlearning fear liberates natural compassion. People, who work for Jaipur Rugs, discovered that customers were willing to pay much more for rugs crafted by artisans than save money buying from enterprises that exploited slaves.
- Page 129: Greyston bakery www.greyston.org spends no money on recruiting. Instead, they spend more money on training and giving people higher wages. Anybody, who wants to work, simply adds their name to a list. They call it open hiring. The company trusts that people will make a good effort.
- Pages 137-145: People, who work for www.ellenfisher.com, are offered help to discover their values, find their purpose as well as learn to give and receive feedback. She created a culture where everyone can put their children and families ahead of their work demands. Ellen Fisher's mother blamed her husband, i.e. the father of Ellen Fisher, for the unhappiness that Ellen's mother experienced. To heal herself, Ellen Fischer started designing clothes. When Ellen Fisher married, she too blamed her husband for many things before getting divorced. Dancing around, which she loved to do when she was a child, helped Ellen Fischer to feel freedom and a sense of joy. Dancing around was a refuge for Eileen. It helped her to not only focus on what is in her head. Thereby, dancing around helped her grow, learn about and heal herself. This liberating experience also helped Ellen to express herself fully through clothing she was designing. Over 80% of the several hundred people, who work for www.ellenfisher.com are women.
- Page 153: Every manager, who works for www.appletreeanswers.com, asks this question to their colleagues every day: What action can I take now to make your experience as an employee better today than it was yesterday?
- Page 175: Important values of www.hillmannconsulting.com are honesty, integrity, kindness, caring and generosity. When people, who work for www.hillmannconsulting.com, find out that customers do not work in ethical ways, they stop working with them.
- Page 191: At www.consciouscompanymedia.com, a virtual team meeting starts by asking every person to share what he or she is grateful for right now. During the meeting, each person is asked to share any difficulties that he or she needs help to solve. The meeting ends by asking each person to share his or her personal purpose.
- Page 199: People, who work for www.jabian.com, work with customers who live in cities where they live. Thereby, consultants can be around their families and friends during the week.
- Page 221: Part of Danny Meyer's motivation to eliminate tipping from www.ushgnyc.com restaurants was to promote collaboration and reduce competition.
- Pages 234-242: With his colleagues at www.menloinnovations.com Richard Sheridan sought to alleviate the 2 main causes that people, who work in the IT industry, suffer: 1. Overwork and 2. Isolation. For example, they adhere strictly to 40 hour work weeks. Also, each developer works with a partner - rotating every five days to work with a new partner. In addition, people bring their babies and dogs into work environments - thereby helping people connect with their hearts and feel joy. The company has no managers. Teams make all decisions. All finances are open to everyone.
- Page 251: When Craig Boyan was named President of www.heb.com, Charles Butt, the son of the founder, told him: Pay people as much as you can, not as little as you can. The income gap between top and and bottom earners is too great for the nation's future stability.
- Page 259: People, who work for www.fifco.com, removed carbonated beverages from vending machines and school cafeterias. Also, they reduced the amount of sugar in beverages by up to 50% and reduced water consumption for every liter produced by more than 50%. They recycle almost 100% of bottles they sell and want to replace them with use of biopolymers instead of PET.
- Page 259: The purpose of www.hyatt.com is about caring. To strengthen caring, collaborations are being made in areas such as fitness solutions, spa solutions and healthy food solutions.
- Page 259: People, who work for www.costco.com, are paid twice as much as people, who work for the direct competitors of the company.
What else can we do to heal?
-Page 16: What if there leaders saying, Let's pay people, who work for this company, as much as possible?
- Page 24: Help create communities / organizations that are based on love and not on fear? In his classic work "The descent of man", Charles Darwin only mentioned the words "survival of the fittest" twice. He mentioned the word "love" 95 times. Empathy is the reason human beings have succeeded the way we have.
- Page 27: Help create environments that reduce stress? In the USA, stressful work environments are responsible for USD 180 billion of additional healthcare costs per year.
- Page 80: Take individual moral responsibility. Reward and promote heroic imagination and action.
- Page 80: Embrace, uplift and liberate people from the trauma they have long endured.
- Page 86: Think about that every person is someone's child. Then ask yourself: How can every person have the same love and care as his or her parents feel for her or him?
- Page 121: Communicate with people, for example over a cup of coffee.
- Page 169: Define a purpose. Doing that unifies management, employees and communities, drives ethical behavior and creates and essential check on actions that go against the best interests of stakeholders. A survey of millenials about the purpose of business shows that "improving society" is prioritized higher than "generating profit".
- Page 189: Develop yourself personally. Self-awareness, wellness and continuing personal development of the leaders sets the tone for a conscious culture.
- Page 205: Do small acts of kindness. For example, bring a person a piece of homed made apple pie.
- Page 259: Ask lots of questions.
Other research shared in the book?
- Page 20: People, who torment us - whether schoolyard bullies or incompetent managers - were most likely tormented by someone else.
- Page 60: In the 600 years leading up to the end of world war 2, European nations fought 1,200 wars with each other.
- Page 76: When seemingly good people turn evil, three elements are usually present: 1. Perceived anonymity. 2. The absence of a sense of personal responsibility. 3. Tacit approval or encouragement by authority figures.
- Page 259: When people are put in positions of power, they start talking more, start taking what they want for themselves, start ignoring what other people say or want, start ignoring how less powerful people react to their behaviour, start acting more rudely and start treating any situation or person as a means for satisfying their own needs.
- Page 259: When one customer wrote letters decrying every aspect of their operation from the no-assigned seating policy to the type of peanuts that were being served, South West Airlines leader wrote this note to the person: "Dear Mrs. Crabapple, we will miss you. Love, Herb."
Why did the authors write the book?
- Page 9: Raj wrote the book because for 2 reasons: He has a vision to 1) have the other side of the river near the village, in which his mother lives, return to being green and blue again, i.e. have the water restored to its pristine beauty, and 2) to return to the village, in which his father lives, and hear the birds sing again.
- Page 11: Michael dreams that we can create a new story of business based on awakened conscience, through which we can help save the world.
- Page 13: Raj and Michael want to alleviate unnecessary suffering caused by the way business is done. By suffering they mean physical suffering, financial suffering, emotional suffering and spiritual suffering.
What does healing mean?
- Page 29: The origin of the word "healing" comes from 1) the word "whole", which means healthy and undamaged, and 2) the word "holy", which means sacred and that, which cannot be violated.
- Pages 29 and 259: The purpose of healing is to alleviate suffering and elevate joy by serving the needs of all stakeholders - including employees, customers, communities and the environment.
- Page 259: Healing means recognizing and celebrating goodness, having an unshakable commitment to the truth and treating people beautifully.
- Page 259: In a healing organization, work and life are not separate, competing entities that need to be managed. When people have a sense of purpose, meaning and care in their work, work becomes a joyful experience.
- Page 259 (Epilogue): Healing organization oath: 1. First, do no harm. 2. Root out evil. 3. Love conquers all.
What are examples of healing organizations?
- Page 91: We all want to know that who we are and what we do matters. We all want to be treated with care and respect. We want to feel safe, and we want to know that our children will be alright. This is the gift that Bob Chairman, leader of www.barrywehmiller.com has given many people.
- Pages 105 - 111 and 259: People, who know Nand Kishore Chaudhary (NKC), leader of www.jaipurrugs.com, since childhood, say that he possesses a quality best described as innocence. Innocent people listen to their hearts. They have a beginner's mind, are humble, agile and empathize with other people. Becoming innocent is about leaving behind your ego, greed, wanting to prove yourself right, control, feeling inferior and feeling fear. Unlearning fear liberates natural compassion. People, who work for Jaipur Rugs, discovered that customers were willing to pay much more for rugs crafted by artisans than save money buying from enterprises that exploited slaves.
- Page 129: Greyston bakery www.greyston.org spends no money on recruiting. Instead, they spend more money on training and giving people higher wages. Anybody, who wants to work, simply adds their name to a list. They call it open hiring. The company trusts that people will make a good effort.
- Pages 137-145: People, who work for www.ellenfisher.com, are offered help to discover their values, find their purpose as well as learn to give and receive feedback. She created a culture where everyone can put their children and families ahead of their work demands. Ellen Fisher's mother blamed her husband, i.e. the father of Ellen Fisher, for the unhappiness that Ellen's mother experienced. To heal herself, Ellen Fischer started designing clothes. When Ellen Fisher married, she too blamed her husband for many things before getting divorced. Dancing around, which she loved to do when she was a child, helped Ellen Fischer to feel freedom and a sense of joy. Dancing around was a refuge for Eileen. It helped her to not only focus on what is in her head. Thereby, dancing around helped her grow, learn about and heal herself. This liberating experience also helped Ellen to express herself fully through clothing she was designing. Over 80% of the several hundred people, who work for www.ellenfisher.com are women.
- Page 153: Every manager, who works for www.appletreeanswers.com, asks this question to their colleagues every day: What action can I take now to make your experience as an employee better today than it was yesterday?
- Page 175: Important values of www.hillmannconsulting.com are honesty, integrity, kindness, caring and generosity. When people, who work for www.hillmannconsulting.com, find out that customers do not work in ethical ways, they stop working with them.
- Page 191: At www.consciouscompanymedia.com, a virtual team meeting starts by asking every person to share what he or she is grateful for right now. During the meeting, each person is asked to share any difficulties that he or she needs help to solve. The meeting ends by asking each person to share his or her personal purpose.
- Page 199: People, who work for www.jabian.com, work with customers who live in cities where they live. Thereby, consultants can be around their families and friends during the week.
- Page 221: Part of Danny Meyer's motivation to eliminate tipping from www.ushgnyc.com restaurants was to promote collaboration and reduce competition.
- Pages 234-242: With his colleagues at www.menloinnovations.com Richard Sheridan sought to alleviate the 2 main causes that people, who work in the IT industry, suffer: 1. Overwork and 2. Isolation. For example, they adhere strictly to 40 hour work weeks. Also, each developer works with a partner - rotating every five days to work with a new partner. In addition, people bring their babies and dogs into work environments - thereby helping people connect with their hearts and feel joy. The company has no managers. Teams make all decisions. All finances are open to everyone.
- Page 251: When Craig Boyan was named President of www.heb.com, Charles Butt, the son of the founder, told him: Pay people as much as you can, not as little as you can. The income gap between top and and bottom earners is too great for the nation's future stability.
- Page 259: People, who work for www.fifco.com, removed carbonated beverages from vending machines and school cafeterias. Also, they reduced the amount of sugar in beverages by up to 50% and reduced water consumption for every liter produced by more than 50%. They recycle almost 100% of bottles they sell and want to replace them with use of biopolymers instead of PET.
- Page 259: The purpose of www.hyatt.com is about caring. To strengthen caring, collaborations are being made in areas such as fitness solutions, spa solutions and healthy food solutions.
- Page 259: People, who work for www.costco.com, are paid twice as much as people, who work for the direct competitors of the company.
What else can we do to heal?
-Page 16: What if there leaders saying, Let's pay people, who work for this company, as much as possible?
- Page 24: Help create communities / organizations that are based on love and not on fear? In his classic work "The descent of man", Charles Darwin only mentioned the words "survival of the fittest" twice. He mentioned the word "love" 95 times. Empathy is the reason human beings have succeeded the way we have.
- Page 27: Help create environments that reduce stress? In the USA, stressful work environments are responsible for USD 180 billion of additional healthcare costs per year.
- Page 80: Take individual moral responsibility. Reward and promote heroic imagination and action.
- Page 80: Embrace, uplift and liberate people from the trauma they have long endured.
- Page 86: Think about that every person is someone's child. Then ask yourself: How can every person have the same love and care as his or her parents feel for her or him?
- Page 121: Communicate with people, for example over a cup of coffee.
- Page 169: Define a purpose. Doing that unifies management, employees and communities, drives ethical behavior and creates and essential check on actions that go against the best interests of stakeholders. A survey of millenials about the purpose of business shows that "improving society" is prioritized higher than "generating profit".
- Page 189: Develop yourself personally. Self-awareness, wellness and continuing personal development of the leaders sets the tone for a conscious culture.
- Page 205: Do small acts of kindness. For example, bring a person a piece of homed made apple pie.
- Page 259: Ask lots of questions.
Other research shared in the book?
- Page 20: People, who torment us - whether schoolyard bullies or incompetent managers - were most likely tormented by someone else.
- Page 60: In the 600 years leading up to the end of world war 2, European nations fought 1,200 wars with each other.
- Page 76: When seemingly good people turn evil, three elements are usually present: 1. Perceived anonymity. 2. The absence of a sense of personal responsibility. 3. Tacit approval or encouragement by authority figures.
- Page 259: When people are put in positions of power, they start talking more, start taking what they want for themselves, start ignoring what other people say or want, start ignoring how less powerful people react to their behaviour, start acting more rudely and start treating any situation or person as a means for satisfying their own needs.
- Page 259: When one customer wrote letters decrying every aspect of their operation from the no-assigned seating policy to the type of peanuts that were being served, South West Airlines leader wrote this note to the person: "Dear Mrs. Crabapple, we will miss you. Love, Herb."
July 14, 2020
Um dos livros mais inspiradores e transformadores que já li.
Aqui o autor nos ajuda a repensar a visão/objetivo atual que muitos possuem sobre as empresas: lucro a qualquer custo, seja burlando regras e normas, seja reduzindo custos com segurança do trabalho/benefícios, seja terceirizando serviços com fornecedores com ética duvidosa ou o que mais for necessário, desde que tenham lucro.
Apesar de muitas empresas ainda pensarem assim, o autor mostra que é possível fazer o bem pra todos (funcionários, diretores, acionistas, comunidade, família dos funcionários, planeta Terra, etc.) E AINDA SER UMA EMPRESA QUE GERA MUITO LUCRO.
Livro recheado de cases inspiradores e ideias surpreendentes que várias Healing Organizations criaram.
Exemplo da visão de uma das empresas citadas na livro:
"Não empregamos pessoas para fazer cupcake. Fazemos cupcake para empregar pessoas"
Aqui o autor nos ajuda a repensar a visão/objetivo atual que muitos possuem sobre as empresas: lucro a qualquer custo, seja burlando regras e normas, seja reduzindo custos com segurança do trabalho/benefícios, seja terceirizando serviços com fornecedores com ética duvidosa ou o que mais for necessário, desde que tenham lucro.
Apesar de muitas empresas ainda pensarem assim, o autor mostra que é possível fazer o bem pra todos (funcionários, diretores, acionistas, comunidade, família dos funcionários, planeta Terra, etc.) E AINDA SER UMA EMPRESA QUE GERA MUITO LUCRO.
Livro recheado de cases inspiradores e ideias surpreendentes que várias Healing Organizations criaram.
Exemplo da visão de uma das empresas citadas na livro:
"Não empregamos pessoas para fazer cupcake. Fazemos cupcake para empregar pessoas"
March 14, 2021
As some other books about the future work, this one brings tons of inspiring examples and it shows: it is all about people. People who want to be free and to enjoy the work.
July 31, 2022
Loved it! I wish more companies would be this way - maybe there’s hope for capitalism to become conscious.
June 1, 2024
Not as good as I had hoped. The first part and the last part were nice philosophies, and there were some legitimately good gems of specific examples for how to tactically operate a healing organization. Other times, it felt like an ad for that particular business without there being much real substance (the chapter on Hyatt felt this way).
July 5, 2021
Powerful and important concept, but the book contains just a few pages of substantive advice for how an organization might achieve this, and those limited pages contain only vague and basic information.
September 28, 2019
Great read for individuals at all levels in an organization. Corporate greed doesn’t have to be the only path.
November 22, 2020
Must ready for anyone interested in building an extraordinary company.
July 3, 2021
Un libro que debemos leer todos, especialmente aquellos que están en carreras de Liderazgo corporativo.
January 14, 2024
For class and was a really interesting read - great examples of businesses doing good in the world and a lot of the anecdotes were inspiring and I got choked up multiple times.
March 14, 2020
I'm reading The Healing Organization by Sisodia and Gelb and I knew from the start that the book was going to raise my hackles because it was touted as "conscious capitalism."
The tone of the book is absolutely gushing as they commend businesses that do social good...but...
In the very next sentence they write: "We emphasize that these businesses are more profitable because we believe that profit is a social good. It is socially irresponsible for a business to not be profitable; a free society cannot function without profitable businesses."
And I read the sentence above with despair in the pit of my stomach. What they are neglecting to say is that profit means growth. And growth means continued destruction of our environment no matter how much your business is at net zero. And to say that a free society cannot function without profit is a fundamental failure of the imagination. We certainly can and must imagine a society that is not dependent on profit and growth.
If we are to survive then everything must change. If this pandemic is teaching us anything then we must learn that an economic model based on growth is not the only possiblity. We must shift for now to an eco-entrepreneurship model in which our organizations' entire reason for being must be about regeneration and healing the Earth. The time for "feel-good" measures is long past,
The tone of the book is absolutely gushing as they commend businesses that do social good...but...
In the very next sentence they write: "We emphasize that these businesses are more profitable because we believe that profit is a social good. It is socially irresponsible for a business to not be profitable; a free society cannot function without profitable businesses."
And I read the sentence above with despair in the pit of my stomach. What they are neglecting to say is that profit means growth. And growth means continued destruction of our environment no matter how much your business is at net zero. And to say that a free society cannot function without profit is a fundamental failure of the imagination. We certainly can and must imagine a society that is not dependent on profit and growth.
If we are to survive then everything must change. If this pandemic is teaching us anything then we must learn that an economic model based on growth is not the only possiblity. We must shift for now to an eco-entrepreneurship model in which our organizations' entire reason for being must be about regeneration and healing the Earth. The time for "feel-good" measures is long past,
September 12, 2023
Esse livro me foi dado de presente pelo CEO de uma empresa de iogurte plant based, que possui como propósito ser uma empresa que Cura .
O livro combina bem teoria com vários exemplos práticos , apesar de ter ficado na dúvida se algumas empresas de encaixavam como empresas que Curam .
Talvez tivesse dado um 3.0 pelo livro , mas subi para 4.0 quando me dei conta que trabalhei em algumas empresas que adoecem e com líderes tóxicos.
Vale a leitura para refletirmos sobre como muitas startups , mais adoecem que Curam e para avaliarmos melhor que são nossos líderes de referência.
O livro combina bem teoria com vários exemplos práticos , apesar de ter ficado na dúvida se algumas empresas de encaixavam como empresas que Curam .
Talvez tivesse dado um 3.0 pelo livro , mas subi para 4.0 quando me dei conta que trabalhei em algumas empresas que adoecem e com líderes tóxicos.
Vale a leitura para refletirmos sobre como muitas startups , mais adoecem que Curam e para avaliarmos melhor que são nossos líderes de referência.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews