Additional problems are the offspring of poor decisions. When inquiry and advocacy are combined, the goal is no longer 'to win the argument', but to find the best argument.

Business and human endeavors are systems...we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system. And wonder why our deepest problems never get solved.

An accurate, insightful view of current reality is as important as a clear vision.

Businesses and other human endeavors are also systems. They, too, are bound by invisible fabrics of interrelated actions, which often take years to fully play out their effects on each other. Since we are part of that lacework ourselves, it's doubly hard to see the whole pattern of change. Instead we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system, and wonder why our deepest problems never seem to get resolved.

Most of us at one time or another have been part of a great 'team', a group of people who functioned together in an extraordinary way-who trusted one another, who complemented each other's strengths and compensated for each other's limitations, who had common goals that were larger than an individual's goals, and who produced extraordinary results ... the team that became great didn't start off great-it learned how to produce extraordinary results.

Business has a way of talking about how to create value, which is in some way isn't bad... We just need to start thinking about if the value we want to create is consistent with all social and environmental well being.

We often spend so much time coping with problems along our path that we forget why we are on that path in the first place. The result is that we only have a dim, or even inaccurate, view of what's really important to us.