[Ailist] If you had one wish...Compassion

[Roger Davies]

Hi Olen,

Because we are directed by our vision of the future we tend to notice things
that support our point of view. Ever since I managed to resolve good
business as being based on compassion I have found many books, web sites,
and so on that support this. They don't always use the word compassion. Some
use 'Freedom based workplace' or 'High performance work environment' but
they all follow the same premise of treating people as if they were adults,
respecting them, listening to them, allowing them to do their job and
mutually gaining the best of what they can be. There are ever growing
mountains of evidence that this is beneficial but yet it seems so remote
from where many commercial businesses are headed. Why is that?

Most business will say that people are their greatest asset and yet have
huge control structures which they impose on this greatest of assets. Human
beings never respond well to control as is documented throughout history. I
liken the prevalence of these control systems as being like owning a sports
car but only driving it a 30 miles an hour because you think you'll lose
control if you go any faster. 

I guess my question is how do we get business leaders to see what's right in
front of them? That's the direction of your question 'what do we do with all
that wonderful data?'. It's out there but where is the forum where it will
become noticed and acted upon. Does anyone have any thoughts?

Roger

-----Original Message-----
From: ailist-bounces at lists.business.utah.edu
[mailto:ailist-bounces at lists.business.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Olen Jones
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 6:42 PM
To: ailist at lists.business.utah.edu
Subject: RE: [Ailist] If you had one wish...Compassion

Nick, Roger, et al,

I LIKE this idea.  Why not cast the net as wide as possible and put it out
everywhere.  Maybe we could use the "social media", like MySpace, Facebook,
LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.  We could create a Compassion page and then start
inviting everyone to join in the conversation.  I know there are lots of
other social media, and I'll bet in the listserve membership we have the
folks with the expertise in each one to help get it started.
The question, then, would be what do we do with all that wonderful data?
Would we want to collect it all from the various social media sources and
publish it somewhere?  Is there some graduate student who would be
interested in using it as the basis for a Master's thesis or Doctoral
dissertation?


Olen Jones, Community Relations
National Community Renaissance
National CORE
9065 Haven Avenue, Suite 100
Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91730
(909) 483-2444 Ext. 122
(909) 483-2448 Fax
ojones at nationalcore.org
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---------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:32:01 -0000
From: "Nick Heap" <nick at nickheap.co.uk>
Subject: RE: [Ailist] If you had one wish...Compassion
To: "Roger Davies" <rdavies at rtpcompany.com>,	"Appreciative Inquiry"
	<ailist at lists.business.utah.edu>
Message-ID: <ONEAJPNGPGLGNFCJABAAEEOBDGAA.nick at nickheap.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="us-ascii"

Dear Roger and All

It occurs to me that, in principle, you could run a worldwide appreciative
inquiry into "Compassion". Imagine people asking each other questions and
telling each other stories about when they have given and received
compassion and what that felt like. As positive questions lead to change,
just doing having these conversations would make a difference.

This might even lead to Appreciative Inquiry and appreciative thinking
becoming known and used in the mainstream of life. It would nice to read
about appreciative thinking and work in the popular media and on TV. It
might encourage more positive thinking and action. We have a lot of good
media in Britain, but also far too much negative and cynical stuff.

Any thoughts about how we might go about either of these things?

We could start by sharing our own stories via this list, I suppose.

Best wishes,

Nick

Web: www.nickheap.co.uk




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