Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Dan’s Biz Bookshelf: Love as a Business Strategy

Love as a Business Strategy: Resilience, Belonging & Success

Mohammad F. Anwar, Frank E. Danna, Jeffrey F. Ma, Christopher J. Pitre have written this interesting book, which has a simple message that’s perfect for the holidays: We are all better together. If we can look out for each other, and we keep one another’s interest at heart, we will all succeed in the end.

Sure, some of you will think that this a good basic premise for doing business, but realistically this message needs to be said repeatedly because some companies just don’t get it.

If business is always between people, then the need for caring for those people with whom we do business is a true prerequisite for doing business.

I know that some of us get a little squeamish when the word “love” is used in a business context (I do too) but in reality, the word in this case means: caring for each other, looking out for each other, and treating others as we want to be treated. It’s that Golden Rule thing again.

The authors state that in the end, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Culture is defined as “the emotional environment you create and for behaviors that build it.” Culture is the way we think and view the world on a completely corporate level. As always, culture—either good or bad—starts at the top. In a company, leaders who bring a good sense of cooperative loving culture show it will permeate the feelings on the entire company.

The authors list the Six Pillars of Love.

• Inclusion: Include everyone, treat everyone equally
• Empathy: Not only walking in someone else’s shoes but honestly feeling what it is like as well
• Vulnerability: Having to courage to trust someone else. Putting your well-being in their hands
• Trust: Expecting that everyone will perform and act in your best interest as well as their own
• Empowerment: Allowing others do perform by taking barriers out of their way and letting them have the authority to do the right thing
• Forgiveness: Looking past peoples’ mistakes when they make them, helping them to learn and get better for making those mistakes

This book is filled with good advice which is particularly well-timed for the holidays and this pandemic era where we will all have to work well together to survive. This was a very interesting read.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group. 

Love as a Business Strategy: Resilience, Belonging & Success

Authors: Mohammad F. Anwar, Frank E. Danna, Jeffrey F. Ma, Christopher J. Pitre

Copyright 2015

Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing

Price $15.99

Pages: 336