Do you believe that organizations are more than disposable means to ends? That their purpose, like yours and mine, goes beyond their ability to generate a profit? Do you believe that organizations, including your own, are capable of – no, responsible for contributing to the common good? So do we.
Overview
Now more than ever it is critical that the performance of our organizations be measured no longer by a single bottom line, but rather by multiple bottom lines that together more fully reflect the health and effect of our organizations on the world around us. For more than 15 years, STW has been working with organizations and their leaders to strengthen the connection between explicit organizational core values and the way an organization engages real day-to-day challenges. We work with organizations to build capacity at all levels for leaders and employees to serve one another in ways that make a difference within their organization and in the world around them.
The (things) in Seeing (things) Whole
Our work with organizations is grounded by paying attention to “things” – the web of everyday practical details, pressures, necessities and opportunities – that are part of life as it really is. Work that doesn’t connect with this reality will be of little use, so we begin again by seeing things, organizationally this time, as they really are. And then we invite organizations to venture in directions that are in some ways quite risky: we invite them to begin the gnarly and painstaking work of connecting this day-to-day reality with their aspirations, values, and beliefs. That’s where both the real challenge and the real possibility lie, around the alignment of the real and the ideal.
STW Round Tables
Several years ago, at the request of some of our client organizations, STW launched its first Round Table linking leadership teams of organizations committed to the integration of moral deliberation, spiritual imagination, and organizational life. Round Tables are geographically based, with gatherings taking place on a rotating basis in one another’s business settings. In each instance, the host organization presents a real-time, unresolved challenge it is facing, and participants serve as temporary trustees who work for half a day with the hosts on this dilemma. Currently there are Round Tables in the Greater Boston Area and in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota.
5 Ways To Get Started With Your Organization
- download and read STW’s Three-Fold Model of Organizational Life
- have a conversation with a leader whose organization has worked with STW. Contact us if you would like us to set you up for a conversation.
- check out an STW Temporary Trustee Process. Contact us if you’re interested if you’d like to explore ways of sitting in on a temporary trustee process.
- attend STW’s Annual Fall Conference. For information about this year’s conference …
- if you’re especially interested in the intersection of spirituality, religion, and organizational life, you might want to learn more about our Theology of Institutions effort. For information about STW’s effort to develop a practical theology of institutions …