Conscious Business Kofman

Question: Discuss about theConscious Businessfor Kofman. Answer: Introduction and Thesis In the first chapter of How to Build Value through Values, Fred Kofman forms the base for the significance of the conscious beings in any business. This chapter emphasizes upon the focus on the book, which is great leadership. Conscious Business is the being aware about the actions of an individual, in addition to their habits, over the organization and the environment. A conscious business is governed by those who are aware about their strengths and weaknesses and who can conduct the business in an inspiring and engaging manner (Matthies, 2012). This chapter relates to our course as it elucidates upon what factors can contribute to our, as well as, the betterment of the organization we join in future. Moreover, it also helps us in understanding the factors which are needed for an effective transition from a mere employee to a manager. This chapter also explains how the human behavior influences the whole atmosphere, which is the overall outcome of this course. Kofman has defined the various aspects which affect the consciousness of a human being and the manner in which these affect their behavior. He has defined the factors which drive the conscious in a human. He has also highlighted the factors which can result in conscious employees, conscious managers, and conscious leadership (Kofman, 2013). This has been done to show how such factors could result in the transformation of a person from being a follower, to an effective leader. By highlighting the negated factors, which pull down the effective leadership, he has successfully highlighted the significance of conscious business. Main Points Consciousness is the first key point elucidated by Kofman. According to this, consciousness was the ability of being aware of both the inner and outer worlds, which not only allows the individual to adapt to the environment but also to promote their lives. He has emphasized on both self-awareness and other awareness. Highlighting the business as being a key part of the lives of the people, he depicted the need of doing the business in a conscious manner (Kofman, 2013). The next key point discussed in this chapter was the seven qualities which differentiate between conscious and unconscious employees. These seven were a mix of attributes, interpersonal skills and emotional mastery. He also acknowledged the easy of understanding but the difficulty in the implementation of these. By giving the examples of a conscious employees conduct and the conduct of unconscious employee, he highlighted the difference in their productivity and outlook while conducting the businesses. He also quoted Mihaly Czikszentmihaly, to emphasize upon the same. In the same manner, he discussed the qualities of a conscious manager (Kofman, 2013). Another point discussed in this chapter was traits of a conscious leadership. He viewed that for the management of a team in an effective manner, it was necessary that it had great leadership. He showed that great leaders earned the respect and trust of their subordinates, as a result of which the goals set by the leader for such subordinates are attained with minimum efforts. Kofman also explained the Conscious Culture, which is based on the beliefs and expectations on how the things are to be done. The development of such conscious culture helps not only in achieving the goals and fulfillment of mission, but also in the execution of the strategies (Kofman, 2013). Author Fred Kofman is the President and the co-founder of Axialent. He is an extraordinary teacher who has awakened the people to act with courage, responsibility and integrity. His ideas are a unique combination of philosophical depth, along with their practical applicability. He has not only created, but has also taught a number of programs in organizational effectiveness, team learning, leadership, personal mastery and has provided coaching to over 15,000 participants. He has a huge client base, including the giants like General Motors, Yahoo!, Shell and Microsoft. He as a Ph.D from University of California at Berkely in economics and has been distinguished there as an outstanding instructor (Amazon, 2017). Fred has also worked as an assistant professor at Sloan School of Management of MIT of the Management Accounting and Control Systems. There, he was awarded as the Teacher of the Year in 1992. He has various other associations, with other prominent personalities too. His work has been published several times in different publications and these include Econometrica, Management Science, The Fifth Discipline Field Book, and The Journal of Organizational Dynamics. He also is the author of an audio program Conscious Business and the author of trilogy Metamanagement (Google Books, 2013). Personal Evaluation The key point that interested me in this entire chapter was the identification of unconscious attitudes. There have been many books and articles on what is supposed to be the correct attitude or behavior or of an individual working in business atmosphere, but seldom has a discussion been carried on the unconscious attitudes. Kofman has identified how the blaming attitude and selfishness of an individual affects the attitude of a person at the workplace. Being a person who is not as qualified as Kofman was, I do not have the authority to judge if the chapter was well written or not, but I can definitely point out that the chapter covered the ideas of the author in a conclusive manner. Moreover, as he quoted a number of examples in the text, the explanation became clearer. It is also worth mentioning that the topic was covered in detail and all the aspects, and even more, were covered in this chapter. However, I did find, that at times, the text was one sided. Even though Kofman has highlighted the examples of conscious and unconscious behavior but in the business world, the attitudes and behavior are influenced by the circumstances in which an individual works, and these are very complex. Such complex scenarios often give away with the demarcations between conscious and unconscious behavior. Conclusion Overall, the chapter was successful in establishing the link between the conscious behaviors of an individual to its impact over the business. And so, Kofman was successful in accomplishing his purpose. He not only showed evidence over how the attitude of an individual impacts the business, but also highlighted the key factors which could be attributed to conscious and unconscious behavior. Due to the lucid manner in which he explained the concept, I would defiantly recommend this piece to the other students. References Amazon. (2017). Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Value Paperback Import, 17 Jul 2014. Retrieved from: https://www.amazon.in/Conscious-Business-Build-Value-Through/dp/1622032020 Google Books. (2013). Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Values. Retrieved from: https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Conscious_Business.html?id=5e1JnwEACAAJredir_esc=y Kofman, F. (2013). Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Values. Louisville: Sounds True. Matthies, P. (2012). What is Conscious Business?. Retrieved from: https://www.consciousbusinessinstitute.com/whatis.html