Customer Reviews

Reclaiming Higher Ground: Building Organizations That Inspire the Soul

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Reclaiming Higher Ground uses words and proposes ideas that are radical to the business environment of today. The old language is motivation, team, service excellence, strategies, service excellence. Reclaiming Higher Ground proposes mastery, chemistry, grace, soul and sanctuary. These are truly step changes for the better in business, or even family, today. The concepts in this book are breaking through barriers that have not even been created yet.

Reclaiming Higher Ground encourages us to dance to a more personal heartbeat, leading to a deeper professional, and perhaps more importantly, personal achievement and satisfaction.

This is a book that will guide us into the next decade. Lance Secretan points out the dangers of what he calls corporate anorexia and provides us with the guideposts to a healthier leadership style based on values and vision that will bring inspiration back into people's work.

Reclaiming Higher Ground

Executive Summary - Critique

Reclaiming Higher Ground seeks to take a holistic approach towards motivating employees in the workplace. According to the theories set forth within this book, organizations that seek to motivate employees through the distribution of extrinsic rewards can only hope to capture about 5-10 % of an employees potential. Only after an organization gains a deeper understanding of the values that "motivate the soul" in a highly individualistic manner can the organization, as well as, achieve their real potential and capture the some of the remaining 90-95% of human potential.

The books fundamental beliefs, although very novel when taken all together, appear to be sound and grounded in existing motivation, leadership, team, and organizational paradigms. The manner in which an organization actually goes about the task of identifying intrinsic rewards that are meaningful and to apply them in highly individualistic way causes some difficulty for the practitioner. Clearly, the soul cannot be ignored once at work and the work place is a powerful institution in which to motivate the individual in "soulful" ways. The practicality of implementation in a real and meaningful way is left to the reader to determine.

- We would recommend this book to certain individuals with reservation, probably only to those at the self-actualization stage of Maslow's hierarchy. "Feelers" may appreciate this book more than "thinkers." - We liked the book because it had great ideas and was easy to read. - On the other hand, we disliked the book because the author was very subjective, and he failed to present an action plan for readers to utilize his ideas or test his "values bicycle" model. We felt that his model might worked in non-profit organizations where there were fewer conflicts between profits and employee needs, or start-up companies where the culture was newly shaped.

I was excited when I heard about this book, and very disappointed when I actually read it. Broad statements, including, on pages 33-34, "Sara Lee's . . . shareholders, who have been receiving annual returns of over 20 percent . . ." For how long? He speaks disparagingly of reengineering, TQM, etc., yet his own solution is no different.

Very disappointing.