Restoring the Soul of Business

Staying Human in the Age of Data

By: Rishad Tobaccowala

Narrated by: Tom Parks

Businesses great and small, from old-fashioned bricks-and-mortars to cutting-edge start-ups, are moving into uncharted territory as they determine how to most effectively move from an analog past to a digital future. How can you make sure not to leave human instinct behind?

Businesses are increasingly leaving behind traditional meetings in favor of virtual ones, transitioning from surveys and studies to analytics and algorithms. But here is a startling and often unacknowledged truth: the promise of digital transformation can only be realized when we find a way to balance it with the promise of people. In the end, it’s people and dreams that matter, and companies must never forget the soul that drives them.

Restoring the Soul of Business provides practical tools and techniques that every organization can and should implement, and challenges listeners to move forward with the kind of balance that catalyzes transformation and produces one great success after another:

• Understand how to unleash the significant benefit that can by realized by combining emotion and data, human and machine, analog and digital.
• Spot the warning signs of data-blinded companies: cold cultures with little human interaction, poor innovation stemming from stifled employees not encouraged to contribute ideas or insights, and poor customer service due to automated, robotic processes that cause frustration and hurt the brand.
• Explore how organizations of various sizes and from different industries, from Walmart and IBM to Starbucks and Domino’s to Netflix and Google, have successfully reoriented their thinking on how to fuse technology and humanity.
• Gain skills to become an expert in connections critical to growth and success, including the connection between being creative and using technology, between succeeding today and thriving tomorrow, and between leveraging networks and creating new ideas and approaches.

Everyone working in an organization will find penetrating observations and guidance about how and why establishing the proper balance between human intuition and creativity and data-driven insights can lead to increased revenue, profitability, retention - and even joy - in their careers and business.

©2020 Rishad Tobaccowala (P)2020 HarperCollins Leadership

Critic reviews

"This is a book of wisdom. A book that should be passed down with compassion, care, and grace from CEOs to their teams and from parents to their children. It is not a business book; it is a book full of hope and optimism about the beauty and possibility of the future - tethered to technology but anchored in the 'Soul' with empathy and compassion. I loved this book, and am so grateful that Rishad chose to share his brilliance and insights with all of us." (Mark Achler, managing director, MATH Venture Partners)

"We are living in extraordinary times. While our digitally connected world creates remarkable opportunities for businesses, employees are facing tremendous stress from a wide range of sources - a contentious global political climate, concern for the environment, regular reports of mass shootings and natural disasters, the impact of economic inequality, and how the emergence of artificial intelligence will impact our lives and livelihoods, to name just a few. In an era of such broad-based disruption, Rishad Tobaccowala's Restoring the Soul of Business and its higher-order thinking on improving the balance of our business communities, enhancing the humanity and generosity of our workplaces, and prioritizing EQ over data in decision-making makes this book essential reading for today's executives." (David Carey, chairman, Hearst Magazines)

"A brilliant synthesis by Rishad on how to bring balance to human elements and technology usage in managing a modern enterprise. A must-read for everyone for both personal and professional development and satisfaction." (Alok Choudhary, Henry and Isabelle Dever professor, EECS Department; professor, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University)

Fantastic Read

Grateful to Rishad Tobaccowala for having shared his brilliant knowledge & observations. Congratulations and thank you!!

Read before AI transformer into a fairytale

We are taught life is short but we dismiss that possibility. As we chronicle our lives by technology and hardware improvements we should not forget to keep our focus on the software... love and passion that truly makes us a worthy being to ourselves and humanity.

The best business book I've read this year

Probably the 10th book on business I have read this year and this is by far the most impactful read to date. Rishad has a way of distilling the information, using analogous examples and then recapping everything at the end of the chapter. I would highly recommend!

When story meets spreadsheet

This was a great book about the importance of both embracing technology and what makes us human- deep connections, empathy, etc. The winners of the next 20 years will be the companies that do both!

Love it!

everyone talks about the future with machine learning and AI.. Rishad reminds us the importance of human first approach to the future. Great book.