| | |  | Energy Efficiency | Home » » The Necessary Revolution: How individuals and organizations are working together to create a sustainable world. | | | | | | | Description: | | Imagine a world in which the excess energy from one business would be used to heat another. Where buildings need less and less energy around the world, and where “regenerative” commercial buildings – ones that create more energy than they use – are being designed. A world in which environmentally sound products and processes would be more cost-effective than wasteful ones. A world in which corporations such as Costco, Nike, BP, and countless others are forming partnerships with environmental and social justice organizations to ensure better stewardship of the earth and better livelihoods in the developing world. Now, stop imagining – that world is already emerging.
A revolution is underway in today’s organizations. As Peter Senge and his co-authors reveal in The Necessary Revolution, companies around the world are boldly leading the change from dead-end “business as usual” tactics to transformative strategies that are essential for creating a flourishing, sustainable world. There is a long way to go, but the era of denial has ended. Today’s most innovative leaders are recognizing that for the sake of our companies and our world, we must implement revolutionary—not just incremental—changes in the way we live and work.
Brimming with inspiring stories from individuals and organizations tackling social and environmental problems around the globe, THE NECESSARY REVOLUTION reveals how ordinary people at every level are transforming their businesses and communities. By working collaboratively across boundaries, they are exploring and putting into place unprecedented solutions that move beyond just being “less bad” to creating pathways that will enable us to flourish in an increasingly interdependent world. Among the stories in these pages are the evolution of Sweden’s “Green Zone,” Alcoa’s water use reduction goals, GE’s ecoimagination initiative, and Seventh Generation’s decision to shift some of their advertising to youth-led social change programs.
At its heart, THE NECESSARY REVOLUTION contains a wealth of strategies that individuals and organizations can use — specific tools and ways of thinking — to help us build the confidence and competence to respond effectively to the greatest challenge of our time. It is an essential guidebook for all of us who recognize the need to act and work together—now—to create a sustainable world, both for ourselves and for the generations to follow. | | | Features: | |
• ISBN13: 9780385519014
• Condition: New
• Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Peter M. Senge | | Hardcover:
| 416 pages | | Publisher:
| Doubleday Publishing | | Publication Date:
| June 10, 2008 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 038551901X | | Package Length:
| 9.3 inches | | Package Width:
| 6.1 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.4 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.7 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 11 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Good beginning referenceSep 05, 2009
I'm a Supply Chain Management / Logistics consultant, so I bought this book to start to learn more about the impact large companies can have on the environment through their supply chains. As a beginning reference, it works well. The book is well cited, with many footnotes and references provided to the reader so a fair and balanced perspective can be reached. For this reason alone I was extremely pleased.
Overall it is a fairly interesting book to read. It contained a step-by-step guide to beginning change within a large organization, and tips on how any business can start to become more environmentally friendly. Although some are more practical than others, I think anyone would benefit from reading this book. It's not as heavy on the doom-and-gloom other works are, and while it won't keep you up at night it will certainly make you think. Of particular interest to myself was the Xerox case study, and the Coca Cola water usage study.
A Necessary Read!Aug 08, 2009
This book describes how institutions are key to creating a sustainable future and how the influence of individual actions within institutions and collectively can make it so. It provides well researched and diverse examples of how this can and is being done echoing Edison by exploring new ways of thinking. Tools from a leading organizational learning professional throughout aid in the realization that new thinking is required to solve the problems we face, in contrast to employing the same thinking that led us to where we are now. Examples of how these new ways are working as manifested in meetings, conversations and the human brain allow the reader to further actual application. Denial is suggested as a even stronger force than unawareness as we must seek to honestly face the causes and effects of collapse, look outside the bubble that reinforces this denial and then move outside this bubble mentality.
This book shows how a systems thinking approach can be utilized to relieve a non productive sense of overwhelming as it lays out the strategy and models for pursuing sustainability with natural, industrial and social systems and processes productively functioning in the inescapable mutuality that defines them. These systems, that we each shape, must collaborate across boundaries to build our desired future. Systems intelligence is a collective wisdom that allows us to honestly see the influence of mental models and from there the interdependencies, patterns and unintended consequences that impact our shared existence. There are also many examples of people and organizations who are successfully applying these tools and achieving sustainable growth.
This book is one to buy or join the Society for Organizational Learning [...] It took me some time to get through this book as it's large and full of information that I wanted to underline and refer back to, not possible for a library book! I was also thrilled to read herein about some of the groups I am working with, the US Green Building Council and the Zen Peacemakers citing their works toward a sustainable future as models of success and further affirming the complexity but possibility, reality and power of heading together toward due North.
Enlightened prescription for sustainabilityMay 27, 2009
The Earth faces grave sustainability problems, including global warming. In this new book, experts Peter Senge, Bryan Smith, Nina Kruschwitz, Joe Laur and Sara Schley discuss how people, organizations and nations are coming together to bring about positive change. The authors demonstrate that sustainability issues are part of an interconnected global dilemma that affects everyone. They urge united action to solve major ecological problems before solutions become impossible. They even note that businesses can save and earn money through environmentally sound products and policies. getAbstract recommends this enlightened book's informed focus on exactly how to improve the sustainability of life on the planet.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
The Almost-Formula For Going GreenMay 11, 2009
If you're in search of a formula for going green - a goofproof method for aligning business and environmental or social issues - your eyes'll likely light up when they reach this book's chapter on "Positioning for the Future and the Present." That's where the authors introduce the Sustainable Value Framework: a cool strategic planning tool that DuPont used to transform itself from "world's number one polluter" (in 1989) to number one on BusinessWeek's list of "The Top Green Companies" of 2005.
Could your company use this SVF to accomplish something special, too?
You might hope.
However, in the words of Harvard's Michael Porter (who has nothing directly to do with this book but who co-authored an article I recommend at the end): "Integrating business and social needs takes more than good intentions and strong leadership." To which I would add, it also takes more than the SVF.
Building a business based on principles of sustainability is an ongoing process that depends on people, and on a particular set of people skills that are underdeveloped within most organizations today.
IT TOOK ME BY SURPRISE, I must say, that maybe forty percent of this book is about said skills and how they can be strengthened - based on the authors' work through the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) and with "business and non-business organizations all over the world collaborating for systemic change around core challenges such as food and water, energy, and material waste and toxicity." Chapters 12 through 24, in fact, revolve around tools and methods that've been used by individuals and groups to successfully see systems; collaborate across boundaries, and; adopt more creative orientations.
This is all to the good, in my opinion, 'cause when it comes to steering companies in new directions, I've always found the "soft stuff" to be the most challenging. (One of my favorite parts of the book involves a made-up management team discussion that illustrates just how easily communications on the subject of going green can break down and stall.)
So. Cool organizational learning tools plus the Sustainable Value Framework. Is this the complete, can't-miss formula for success? Almost. The rest is to be filled in by you...working effectively with others...as you learn your way to your own unique solutions. If that's your inclination, you'll find The Necessary Revolution both helpful and inspiring.
*I also recommend you read Michael Porter's and Mark Kramer's article "Strategy & Society" (Harvard Business Review, December 2006).
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Focus on Earth first....sustainable profits will followJan 27, 2009
Robert Malthus' essay on the principles of population, which was published in 1798, was one of the first writings to study the sobering relationship between an increasing population and finite natural resources. While the discussion has since expanded well beyond basic Malthusian concepts regarding food supply, the clarion call to action continues to sound regarding the need for all of us to collaborate toward a sustainable world - and companies around the world are heeding that call. The Necessary Revolution reveals how individuals at all levels of diverse organizations are exchanging the "sustainability status quo" for creative partnerships resulting in the betterment of business, community and the environment. Through boundary-spanning collaborations, these groups and individuals are developing breakthrough solutions that hold the promise and potential of creating a sustainable world for both the current generation and beyond. Whether or not you believe the growing data surrounding global warming; deforestation; and fossil fuel depletion the panel of authors encourage us to believe in being good stewards of the earth. That's a message Soundview supports in its endorsement of this book.
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