"...questions that are more related to empathy [are] really, very often, are the questions that people have been waiting their whole lives to be asked. ....The key point was empathy because everybody in their lives is really waiting for people to ask them questions, so that they can be truthful about who they are and how they became what they are, and I commend that to you, even if you're not doing interviews. Just be that way with your friends and particularly the older members of your family."
12/12/09
The Art of the Interview
Soft Power
"It's not the country with the biggest army that wins, it's the country with the best story that wins."
12/10/09
Whole Foods and Conscious Capitalism
Here is a good Fast Company article about the struggle of companies to do good profitably. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, had some interesting thoughts:
"For those companies aspiring to become Conscious Capitalists, Mackey says there are four ways to get there. They can pursue one of four ideals -- the good, the true, the beautiful, or the heroic -- or any of them in combination. "Plato said the good, the true, and the beautiful, and I added on the heroic," ...In Mackey's eyes, Whole Foods itself pursues both the good and the heroic. And the nation's largest seller of natural and organic foods does boast many noble practices: Nonexecutive employees hold 96% of the company's stock options; 5% of the company's after-tax profits are given to charity every year; no executive can make more than 19 times the employee average; and after much criticism from activists, it has shunned purchasing meat from factory farms. "The rule is not conflict of interests -- it's harmony of interests," says Mackey, who reduced his salary to a dollar in 2007 (he still owns about $36 million in stock). "The leader needs to manage the enterprise in a way that you're creating synergies rather than trade-offs -- that's the art of conscious leadership."
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