TRANSFORMING SYSTEMS (HB)

By the turn of the millennium,
the dominant idea was that not only should the business of business be only
business, but countries, governments and civil society organizations should
also be run on principles of business. Soon, the realization that, while
economies had been growing, systemic problems of social inequality and
environmental unsustainability were becoming intolerable, led to the
Sustainable Development Goals, which all countries signed up to achieve. A
new toolkit is required to attain these goals that go beyond the precepts of
good business management and prevalent best practices in government as well
as civil society organizations. In Transforming Systems, Arun Maira stresses
that a new toolkit has to be founded on disciplines of systems thinking,
ethical reasoning and deep listening. It should focus more on concepts of
governance of networks, rather than the management of organizations. Diverse
points of view must be heard and valued, not smothered beneath
technology-driven quantitative data analysis. Maira brings the wealth of his
knowledge and experience to highlight the uncertainty of our future that is
bound to change dynamically, and points out how we can cope with the changes.
He insists that the most useful life skill for young people is to learn how
to be lifelong learners, sensitive to their own evolution within an evolving
system.