|
The book is well cited, with many footnotes and references provided to the reader so a fair and balanced perspective can be reached. It contained a step-by-step guide to beginning change within a large organization, and tips on how any business can start to become more environmentally friendly.
It's not as heavy on the doom-and-gloom other works are, and while it won't keep you up at night it will certainly make you think. Although some are more practical than others, I think anyone would benefit from reading this book.
I'm a Supply Chain Management / Logistics consultant, so I bought this book to start to learn more about the impact large companies can have on the environment through their supply chains. Overall it is a fairly interesting book to read.
Of particular interest to myself was the Xerox case study, and the Coca Cola water usage study. As a beginning reference, it works well.
For this reason alone I was extremely pleased.
It took me some time to get through this book as it's large and full of information that I wanted to underline and refer back to, not possible for a library book. There are also many examples of people and organizations who are successfully applying these tools and achieving sustainable growth.This book is one to buy or join the Society for Organizational Learning [.]. Systems intelligence is a collective wisdom that allows us to honestly see the influence of mental models and from there the interdependencies, patterns and unintended consequences that impact our shared existence.
It provides well researched and diverse examples of how this can and is being done echoing Edison by exploring new ways of thinking. Denial is suggested as a even stronger force than unawareness as we must seek to honestly face the causes and effects of collapse, look outside the bubble that reinforces this denial and then move outside this bubble mentality.This book shows how a systems thinking approach can be utilized to relieve a non productive sense of overwhelming as it lays out the strategy and models for pursuing sustainability with natural, industrial and social systems and processes productively functioning in the inescapable mutuality that defines them. This book describes how institutions are key to creating a sustainable future and how the influence of individual actions within institutions and collectively can make it so.
These systems, that we each shape, must collaborate across boundaries to build our desired future. I was also thrilled to read herein about some of the groups I am working with, the US Green Building Council and the Zen Peacemakers citing their works toward a sustainable future as models of success and further affirming the complexity but possibility, reality and power of heading together toward due North. Tools from a leading organizational learning professional throughout aid in the realization that new thinking is required to solve the problems we face, in contrast to employing the same thinking that led us to where we are now.
Examples of how these new ways are working as manifested in meetings, conversations and the human brain allow the reader to further actual application.
They urge united action to solve major ecological problems before solutions become impossible. The Earth faces grave sustainability problems, including global warming. getAbstract recommends this enlightened book's informed focus on exactly how to improve the sustainability of life on the planet. They even note that businesses can save and earn money through environmentally sound products and policies. In this new book, experts Peter Senge, Bryan Smith, Nina Kruschwitz, Joe Laur and Sara Schley discuss how people, organizations and nations are coming together to bring about positive change. The authors demonstrate that sustainability issues are part of an interconnected global dilemma that affects everyone.
Almost. Cool organizational learning tools plus the Sustainable Value Framework. Building a business based on principles of sustainability is an ongoing process that depends on people, and on a particular set of people skills that are underdeveloped within most organizations today. The rest is to be filled in by you.working effectively with others.as you learn your way to your own unique solutions. This is all to the good, in my opinion, 'cause when it comes to steering companies in new directions, I've always found the "soft stuff" to be the most challenging. If you're in search of a formula for going green - a goofproof method for aligning business and environmental or social issues - your eyes'll likely light up when they reach this book's chapter on "Positioning for the Future and the Present." That's where the authors introduce the Sustainable Value Framework: a cool strategic planning tool that DuPont used to transform itself from "world's number one polluter" (in 1989) to number one on BusinessWeek's list of "The Top Green Companies" of 2005.
However, in the words of Harvard's Michael Porter (who has nothing directly to do with this book but who co-authored an article I recommend at the end): "Integrating business and social needs takes more than good intentions and strong leadership." To which I would add, it also takes more than the SVF. Is this the complete, can't-miss formula for success. Could your company use this SVF to accomplish something special, too. (One of my favorite parts of the book involves a made-up management team discussion that illustrates just how easily communications on the subject of going green can break down and stall).So. If that's your inclination, you'll find The Necessary Revolution both helpful and inspiring.*I also recommend you read Michael Porter's and Mark Kramer's article "Strategy & Society" (Harvard Business Review, December 2006). You might hope.
IT TOOK ME BY SURPRISE, I must say, that maybe forty percent of this book is about said skills and how they can be strengthened - based on the authors' work through the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) and with "business and non-business organizations all over the world collaborating for systemic change around core challenges such as food and water, energy, and material waste and toxicity." Chapters 12 through 24, in fact, revolve around tools and methods that've been used by individuals and groups to successfully see systems; collaborate across boundaries, and; adopt more creative orientations.
Through boundary-spanning collaborations, these groups and individuals are developing breakthrough solutions that hold the promise and potential of creating a sustainable world for both the current generation and beyond. Robert Malthus' essay on the principles of population, which was published in 1798, was one of the first writings to study the sobering relationship between an increasing population and finite natural resources. That's a message Soundview supports in its endorsement of this book. Whether or not you believe the growing data surrounding global warming; deforestation; and fossil fuel depletion the panel of authors encourage us to believe in being good stewards of the earth. While the discussion has since expanded well beyond basic Malthusian concepts regarding food supply, the clarion call to action continues to sound regarding the need for all of us to collaborate toward a sustainable world - and companies around the world are heeding that call. The Necessary Revolution reveals how individuals at all levels of diverse organizations are exchanging the "sustainability status quo" for creative partnerships resulting in the betterment of business, community and the environment.
|
