Ari's Writing

Ari's Writing

Another Deep Look at How We Can Continue to Enhance Our Cultural Soils

This is the third segment in what has become a four-part series on the subject of regenerating our organizational cultures. You can find the first part, as well as the second segment, in the resource library. Throughout this series, I’ve shared my metaphorical model where culture is the “soil” in which people, products, and processes are growing. All […]

Organizational Culture

Enhancing and Restoring Our Cultural Soil

Last week I wrote a bunch about the importance of organizational culture—how much difference it makes to be part of a healthy culture versus an unhealthy one, and my metaphorical context of imagining organizational culture as the soil in which we’re working. This week I’ll begin to share my list of things we can do to […]

Organizational Culture

The Importance of Organizational Culture

Over the past 20 or 30 years, organizational culture has become one of the most common topics of leadership discussion. Everyone seems to agree that it’s important. But, as Buffalo Springfield sang back in the late ’60s, “What it is ain’t exactly clear.” Progressive business writer Frederic Laloux says, “Culture is how things get done […]

Managing Ourselves

One Life and Three Sisters

In his lovely new book, A Little Devil in America, Hanif Abdurraqib writes, “There are moments when I question what I am taking in with my eyes and ears, and if it is vibrating at the same pitch as what everyone else is taking in with their eyes.” I can relate. For better or for worse, […]

Ari's Writing

An Imperfect Look at Natural Law #19

John O’Donohue wrote, “The primary world that each of us has to do with is the world that is invisible, that is the interior world within us.” He reminds us, “No one else sees your life in the way that you do.” Here’s a glimpse at a small snippet of mine: I really like working […]

Ari's Writing

Honoring the Awesome in Every Person We Meet

Last week I shared my learning about Natural Law #18—“Everything is naturally related and interconnected”—and how important it is for us to create as many connections across all parts of our companies as we possibly can. Our long-term organizational health and our alignment with nature likely depends on it. More positive connections across the organization […]

Ari's Writing

Natural Law #18

Dr. Vivek Murthy wrote in his book Together: “The more I studied the seesaw relationship between loneliness and togetherness, the more convinced I became of the great power of human connection. So many problems we face as a society… are worsened by loneliness and disconnection. Building a more connected world holds the key to solving these […]

Ari's Writing

Starting to Share the Next Set of Natural Laws

About 25 years ago my partner Paul started talking about the idea of Natural Laws of Business; laws that—like gravity—were simply true. All thriving businesses, he suggested, were living in harmony with those Natural Laws. About a decade later I took Paul’s concept and fleshed it out further in Part 1, Secret #1: “The Twelve Natural Laws […]

Ari's Writing

Hope Is in the Air—How Do We Keep It There?

A year ago, on Tuesday March 10 of 2020, we hosted our annual Jelly Bean Jump Up dinner at the Roadhouse to raise money for Safehouse Center. Anxiety was in the air around news of COVID-19, but the dinner went well anyway. I breathed a small sigh of relief that evening, but the relief, as you […]

Ari's Writing

The Powerful Impact of Positive Energy

Over all these years, I’ve been fortunate to connect—either directly, or indirectly through their books and teachings—with so many terrifically creative thinkers. People who have impacted my worldviews in meaningful ways, and given me insights that led to significant shifts in beliefs. Each has taught me new tools and approaches that have helped enormously in […]

Organizational Culture

How the Spirit of Generosity Can Help Renew Our Organizational Ecosystem

In “Working Through Hard Times,” the Introduction is an essay I wrote back at the beginning of the pandemic, called “Things Fall Apart.” As we approach the one year mark of the arrival of COVID-19, I’m imagining the inverse. Sometimes things come together, often with an unexpected elegance. My belief is that by gently and consistently calling forward […]

Organizational Culture

Shifting a Culture “from V to A”

In the spirit of picking up the phone that I wrote about in “Working Through Hard Times,” I dialed the number of a friend the other evening. She’s an amazing leader who lives halfway across the country. Someone who is humble, focused, and persistently positive in her leadership. She has vision, she’s grounded, and determined […]