Two nurses on a Buurtzorg team found themselves pondering the fact that elderly people, when they fall, often break their hips. Hip replacements are routine surgery, but patients don't always recover the same autonomy. Could Buurtzorg play a role in preventing its older patients from falling down? The two nurses experimented and created a partnership with a physiotherapist and an occupational therapist from their neighborhood. They advised patients on small changes they could bring to their home interiors, and changes of habits that would minimize risks of falling down. Other teams showed interest, and the approach, now called Buurtzorg +, has spread throughout the country.

The two nurses sensed a need, and with the power of self-management acted upon it. Self-management helped the idea to spread. Any team interested in Buurtzorg + can sign up for a training event that teaches them the basics of how the concept works and how to create such a partnership in their neighborhood.^[9].

Early on in his tenure as CEO, Jean-François Zobrist invited all the factory employees to a meeting to figure out the organization's raison d'être. The soul searching was prompted by a proposed order that came out of the blue from a French car manufacturer. Could they, within a year, supply not only a gear fork, but a full gearbox? This single order would be larger than all of FAVI's existing business. Many people thought it was too risky. Zobrist felt the decision could not be made without inquiring into the purpose of the organization. In keeping with his style, he involved the whole company, in meetings with subgroups of 15 people at a time on Friday afternoons. He showed up at the meeting with no agenda and no process; he trusted that his colleagues would somehow self-organize in these meetings, reconvening every Friday if needed, until they had answered this most fundamental question: what is our purpose?

After much discussion, when the obvious but superficial ideas had been discarded, the answer emerged with clarity. FAVI has two reasons for existence, two fundamental purposes: the first is to provide meaningful work in the area of Hallencourt, a rural area in northern France where good work is rare; the second is to give and receive love from clients.

At FAVI, love, a word rarely heard in the world of business, has taken on real meaning. Operators don't just send products to their clients, they send products into which they have put their heart. A few years ago, around Christmas time, an operator at FAVI molded excess brass into a few small figurines of Santa and of reindeers. He added the figurines into the boxes of finished products, rather like kids put a message in a bottle they throw out to sea, imagining that someone, somewhere, would find it. Other operators have since picked up on the idea and at random times of the year add brass figurines into their shipments, as little tokens of love to their counterparts working on assembly lines at Volkswagen or Volvo, who will find the figurines when they unpack the boxes. ^[10].

Tami Simon, the founder of Sounds True, has found that spiritual practices have helped her develop her intuitive capacities, which she believes serves her well in her business:

"Intuition is basically my entire existence," Tami states. She studies with a meditation teacher named Reggie Ray. Reggie's teacher taught him how to "read the signs" and Reggie passed these teachings on to Tami. "It's an art form and an indigenous survival skill. If you were on a hunt, you would watch for the tracks. That's how we pick projects. We read the signs. How many people are talking about it? How many requests do we get for a particular author? And what are our inner feelings about the project? That's very important, too." The company "reads the signs" for internal issues as well. … One exercise that Tami finds useful for tapping into inspiration is a visualization exercise. She describes the process: "You visualize yourself going into the center of the Earth to tap into fresh waters and bring them to the surface. It's weird; totally new ideas just emerge. The visualization calms down the chatty mind and creates the space for vision to come forward." ^[11].