‘The Virtuosa Organisation: the importance of virtues for a successful business’ is a timely call for sanity and balance as critical virtues are explained in a way that leads to a focused personal and business life.
“The tipping points to chaos and disconnect in our inner and external environments are at an all-time high. This book explores and shows the possibilities for calm effective, grounded-ness in social interaction, productivity, and for emotional and spiritual intelligence. It enables leaders to keep an eye on the ball and keep the ball in play.
The Virtuosa Organisation is a wake-up call that ushers in virtuous business organisations where there are no damaging disconnects between stated vision, values and actions.”
The book includes:
1.   Choosing and prioritising values
2.   How are you living your personal values
3.   Are we a congruent organisation?
4.   Using anecdote circles to find out what shape your business is in
5.   Personal mindfulness checklist
6.   Do we have organisational blind-spots?
7.   Journaling
8.   What shadow-side factors should we be aware of in our organisation?
9.   How Integrated are we as an Organisation?
10.   The seeds of love
11.   Ethical behaviour
12.   Putting balance into the balance scorecard
13.   Readiness for the journey
EXTRACTS FROM LAUNCH TALK
Our book The Virtuosa Organisation, is about people in organisations developing love for themselves, others, communities and nature. It provides a framework of possibility for business.
A possibility that counters a downward spiral of pollution, degradation, waste, corruption, greed, a widening gap between the rich and the hungry and escalating harm to the planet (and in the process sustainable profits).
Every day we read about disconnects that happen between the stated values, ethics and social responsibilities of business and what actually happens in practice – often followed by avoidance, denial, blame-shifting, rationalisations.
Yet business is uniquely poised to make a positive, significant difference without being forced to comply to emerging legislation and pressures.
In recent times there have been some encouraging developments. A few examples:
Bereket textiles in Turkey are profiting from the use of a benevolent leadership model based on 13th century Islam principles that bring together all the components of the separate fields of study that have become known as ethical, spiritual, authentic and servant leadership.
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in the USA who demonstrated over a 20 years period the benefits of conscientious capitalism, based on radically different views of wealth, time and the interconnectedness of all things.
The Buurtzorg neighbourhood nursing care system in the Netherlands, performing at a vastly higher level because of the adoption of a holistic world view, being virtues-based, catering for the ‘whole person’ and embracing non-dualistic thinking when contemplating profit, planet and people.
More and more studies showing that virtuous organisations have the potential to perform better at a number of levels. Incidentally, Professor Kim Cameron, one such researcher, who heads up the Centre for Positive Organisations at the University of Michigan, sends these well wishes: “I believe that you and your co-authors will have a very important impact on business and leadership”.
Imagery, metaphor and stories are used throughout to convey information and insights, enhance readability, and to aid memory recall
WHAT: The Virtuosa Organisation: the importance of virtues for a successful business by Graham Williams, Dorian Haarhoff & Peter Fox
ISBN 978-1-86922-503-2
ORDERS: Hard copy orders Ι E orders@knowres.co.za  Ι Electronic orders
