Honest to Greatness – Peter Kozodoy

Honest to Greatness is a book written by Peter Kozodoy and published in 2020. It is a practical guide to using honesty to achieve massive success.

The book explores how the world’s greatest leaders use honesty to build strong relationships, create successful businesses, and develop a satisfying life. It provides readers with tips and strategies for utilizing honesty in their own lives, as well as inspiring stories from some of the world’s most successful people.

Conscious Capitalism

Lying is not new; throughout the ages, we’ve consistently struggled with the balance between advancement at all costs and virtuous behavior. Now, in our newly transparent world, the pendulum is swinging back to what used to reside at the heart of free-market enterprise when the idea originated. Organizations like Conscious Capitalism are paving the way for how to do honest-to-greatness business in the twenty-first century.

To check if your organization is embracing a conscious way of doing business, consider the four pillars of Conscious Capitalism to see where you stack up.

Effective Honesty for Managers and Frontline Employees

1. Build strong relationships and understanding within your team to identify what motivates them and to reinforce the organization’s values.
2. Assemble a diverse coalition of high-integrity leaders to make a strong, data-backed case for honesty and gain organizational buy-in.
3. Use data to test accessible hypotheses and gather feedback, especially from current customers, to make positive changes, and use a data-driven method and persuasive tactics to effectively communicate with decision-makers at the right time.

Higher Purpose

While making money is essential for the vitality and sustainability of a business, it is not the only or even the most important reason a business exists. Conscious businesses focus on their purpose beyond profit.

By focusing on its deeper purpose, a conscious business inspires, engages, and energizes its stakeholders. Employees, customers, and others trust and even love companies that have an inspiring purpose.

The Hourglass of Honesty

If honesty is universally effective, we must have a method for applying it universally.

Honesty can take on many different meanings in life and business. It can mean true, candid, direct, transparent, authentic, and more.

There are three very specific levels of honesty that any organization can use to innovate and dominate.

Stakeholder Orientation

Unlike some businesses that believe they only exist to maximize return on investment for their shareholders, conscious businesses focus on their whole business ecosystem, creating and optimizing value for all their stakeholders, understanding that strong and engaged stakeholders lead to a healthy, sustainable, resilient business.

They recognize that without employees, customers, suppliers, funders, supportive communities, and a life-sustaining ecosystem, there is no business. Conscious business is a win-win-win proposition, which includes a healthy return to shareholders.

The Three levels

To innovate and dominate, organizations can use three levels of honesty: community, others, and self.

• The first level involves understanding the world around you and how society’s beliefs and habits are changing.
• The second level involves being honest with and about the people in your personal and professional life, including colleagues and clients.
• The third level requires self-awareness and exploring your own biases, fears, hopes, dreams, and beliefs.

By being honest at each level, you can gain new insights and approach problems in a fresh way.

Conscious Leadership and Culture

Conscious Leadership: Conscious leaders focus on “we” rather than “me.” They inspire, foster transformation, and bring out the best in those around them. They understand that their role is to serve the purpose of the organization, support the people within the organization, and create value for all the organization’s stakeholders. They recognize the integral role of culture and purposefully cultivate a conscious culture of trust and care.

Conscious Culture: A conscious culture fosters love, care, and inclusiveness and builds trust among the company’s team members and all its other stakeholders. Conscious culture is an energizing and unifying force that truly brings a conscious business to life.

Giving Power to the People Will Make You Rich

Honesty isn’t a cost; it’s an investment that will drive better products, experiences, sales, marketing, finance, culture, and more.

Consumers buy things when they believe the products they’re purchasing hold more value than the money they’re paying. When consumers have bad information, they make bad choices—choices that they wouldn’t make if they had better information about the value of what they’re buying.

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