Conscious Business: How to Build Value through Values by Fred Kofman

Many companies today strive to remunerate their shareholders and employees, while at the same time, they are desperate to save costs, enhance the quality of the products, and improve the customer experience. However, in their quest to reach these goals, companies often overlook the power of values. In Fred Kofman’s book, Conscious Business: How to Build Value through Values, Kofman proposes a practical framework for business leaders to use values to create healthy, motivated, and successful organizations that are capable of sustainable growth.

Kofman explains that values should serve as a business’s guiding principles, rather than simply as hollow words. By informing the goals, decisions, and strategies of the business, values can become tools, rather than mere concepts. The focus becomes profits with integrity, as opposed to simply maximizing profits.

Kofman proposes three main principles for conscious business. The first is adopting a conscious perspective, which means looking at the business as a whole, and striving to see the whole picture. The second principle is creating a culture of care, in which people value and nurture each other and collaborate to reach their goals. Finally, the third principle is creating an ethical system that takes values and morals into account when making decisions.

The author suggests a few tactics to infuse conscious business practices into an organization. These steps include engaging in meaningful conversations and creating an inspiring shared vision. He also provides frameworks to help guide businesses in their decision-making. The first framework is the Decider Framework, which helps the decision-makers to understand the core values of the organization, and consider whether the proposed solution will honor them. The second is the Value Exchange Framework, which helps business leaders recognize the exchange of values that should occur between the business, customers, employees, and shareholders.

Kofman stresses the importance of having transparent conversations about values and how decisions are made. He furthers emphasizes that leadership teams must remain open-minded and respect each other’s views.

In summary, Fred Kofman’s book, Conscious Business: How to Build Value through Values, provides a practical guide to using values as tools to achieve business success. Through using three principles, adopting a conscious perspective, creating a culture of care, and forming an ethical system, companies can ensure they are values-driven, while at the same time, balancing profitability and sustainability. The book also provides useful frameworks and advice on how to make values-driven decisions and hold meaningful conversations about business values. Business leaders should seriously consider the ideas presented in Conscious Business when looking to create successful organizations and better the customer experience.