You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help small men up by tearing big men down. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage-earner up by pulling the wage-payer down. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot establish sound social security on borrowed money. You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

Abraham Lincoln – Former President of the United States

We need to remember that it is man’s right to expand his horizons and to develop himself – in so doing, he contributes to his family, his community, his country and also to humanity.

There are a lot of vested interests in the world who probably don’t understand or want to understand the tone of Lincoln’s piece and pursue their own agendas to (often) the detriment of those they are purporting to help.  This is a sad thing but one we, as human beings, need to be aware of and take action against where we see it.

Honour and encourage greatness and assist everyone around you be the best they can be.

We’ve just had the privilege of doing some initial work with Jeremy Scrivens of The Emotional Economy at Work. Jeremy is currently (we believe) the only person in Australia who takes his customers through a process called Appreciative Inquiry.

Appreciative Inquiry is all about focussing not on what has gone wrong in the business or where your problems are, but more about working out what was going on when things went right. With a background in the “rational” analysis work including TQM, Six Sigma and the like, Jeremy has a deep understanding of the things that make business work really well. It’ not about process improvement and incremental cost reductions – it’s about creating an alignment of the business and your people such that goals and strengths are built on and focussed to provide exceptional results.

Jeremy has given us permission to link to his website and we encourage you to read his whitepapers which are available on that website.

From our perspective, the process of Appreciate Inquiry makes intuitive good sense.  Rather than the process being one of attrition of “bad things”, it is more about the celebration and encouragement (leadiong to systemisation) of “good things” that are done in the business.  By having the focus on when things were going at their best, people think about what was happening at that time and what made things go so well.  This then gets mapped and becomes part of the business – it’s replicated and works to give your people the environment in to which they can grow and excel.  This should be the ideal scenario for any business as it will deliver consistently superb results.

We encourage you to have a look at the website.