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Humanize the language of business

“The noblest human ideals must become the noblest business ideals.”

The goals of management are usually described using words like “efficiency,” “advantage,” “value,” “superiority,” “focus,” and “differentiation.” Important as these objectives are, they lack the power to rouse human hearts. To create organizations that are almost human in their capacity to adapt, innovate, and engage, management pioneers must find ways to infuse even the most mundane business activities with deeper, soul-stirring ideals and to develop an authentically homegrown vocabulary for communicating their ambitions. How you talk reflects how you think (and how your organization works). If you want to inspire people to extraordinary accomplishment, the language of honor, truth, love, justice, and beauty can no longer be relegated to the fringes of management discourse and action.

32 Stories
87 Hacks
4 Barriers

Humanize the language of business

“The noblest human ideals must become the noblest business ideals.”

The goals of management are usually described using words like “efficiency,” “advantage,” “value,” “superiority,” “focus,” and “differentiation.” Important as these objectives are, they lack the power to rouse human hearts. To create organizations that are almost human in their capacity to adapt, innovate, and engage, management pioneers must find ways to infuse even the most mundane business activities with deeper, soul-stirring ideals and to develop an authentically homegrown vocabulary for communicating their ambitions. How you talk reflects how you think (and how your organization works). If you want to inspire people to extraordinary accomplishment, the language of honor, truth, love, justice, and beauty can no longer be relegated to the fringes of management discourse and action.

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Trying to change company culture to one where talent development occurs informally and daily, Accenture developed the 30 Day Challenge: a social experiment using blogging, where 8650 people volunteere
Story by Clare Norman on July 4, 2011
A new legal currency tracks with how hard you work to enrich society. The harder you demonstrably work on that, the less anything else costs you.
Hack by Malcolm Ryder on March 30, 2012
Business is a socially manufactured series of behaviors and processes.  Current business practices, guided by capitalist ideologies, which focus on short term profit maximizing approaches and exp
Hack by Catherine Poulter on April 27, 2012
'What's in it for me?' - an uncomfortable question sometimes, but always a real concern for individuals.
We have been asked to look for a way to change capitalism so it is Principled, Patient and Socially Accountable.
Hack by Anthony Blom on May 6, 2012
How come people will take to the streets for what they believe in but find it hard to take to the streets that take them to work?  They don't like work.  Employee engagement is one of the mo
Hack by Pamela Hackett on May 31, 2010
Engagement is the new black! Employee engagement is the hot topic in the modern business world.  This is due to the popularisation of engagement by many leading business development
Hack by Karen O'Brien on September 28, 2012
The major barrier to expansion of leadership capacity within organizations and beyond is common sense and meaning of words/terms 'leadership' and ‘leader’, obsolete but dominating paradigm that ‘leade
Hack by Oleg Derevianko on July 11, 2013
I have never tried to define a bureaucrat, even thought I have encountered many over my career. Now, I think I have a definition of how it feels when you meet one.
Story by Jim McGriff, Jr. on August 26, 2015

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