Dov Seidman photo

Dov Seidman

DOV Seidman’s professional career has focused on how companies and their people can operate in both a principled and profitable way. He is the founder and CEO of LRN. Since 1994, LRN has helped hundreds of companies simul¬taneously navigate complex legal and regulatory environ¬ments and foster eth¬ical cultures. In 2008, LRN acquired environmental innovation firm GreenOrder. Today, LRN operates globally and reaches, works with, and helps shape winning organizational cultures inspired by sus¬tainable values in hundreds of companies with over 20 million people working in more than 100 countries around the world. Fortune magazine called Dov the “hottest advisor on the corporate virtue circuit” and he was also named one of the “Top 60 Global Thinkers of the Last Decade” by the Economic Times. Dov became the exclusive corporate sponsor of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity Prize in Ethics in 2008. He is a Harvard Law School graduate who also earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in moral philosophy from UCLA and a BA with honors in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford University.


“A leadership disposition guides you to take the path of most resistance and turn it into the path of least resistance.”
Dov Seidman
Read more
“If you are trying to bring about a better future, you must eery day go someplace you have not been before, to the point of no return. What happens every time you go to the point of no return? You push past your limits and open up new terrains of possibility. Each challenge accepted leads to greater ability when you confront the next.”
Dov Seidman
Read more
“The key ingredient to progress, to getting ahead, is to leave a foundation behind.”
Dov Seidman
Read more
“Self-governing cultures both inspire alignment and eject elements that don't fit in.”
Dov Seidman
Read more
“The rationales for centralized, to-down decision making - control, direction, and compliance - melts away when individuals are tightly aligned with the company's values and goals, accountable for their actions, and self-regulated.”
Dov Seidman
Read more
“Human beings are natural problem solvers and enjoy the challenge of puzzles. We will always invent new loopholes, and no rule can govern all the cracks.”
Dov Seidman
Read more
“Despite the best of intentions, people create rules variously and often in reaction to behaviors deemed unacceptable to the larger goals of the group. That is why we often find ourselves revising the rules when new conditions reveal their loopholes.”
Dov Seidman
Read more
“In a rule-based society, we often choose efficiency over value, but, while rules-based governance systems may often serve well the values of fairness and representation, their seeming efficiency hides a deep and important flaw: We often rely on rules when they are not, in fact, the most efficient or effective solution to getting the result that we desire.”
Dov Seidman
Read more
“Zen Buddhist scholar Daisetz T. Suzuki said, "If one really wishes to be master of an art, technical knowledge of it is not enough. One has to transcend technique so that the art becomes an "artless art" growing out of the Unconscious.”
Dov Seidman
Read more
“So what exactly is HOW? For many, business and life has always been about the pursuit of What: “What do we do? What’s on the agenda? What do we need to accomplish?” Whats are commodities; they are easily duplicated or reverse-engineered and delivered faster and at a lower cost by someone else. How is a philosophy. It's a way of thinking about individual and organizational behavior. And How we do what we do – our behavior – has become today’s greatest source of our advantage. In this world, How is no longer a question, but the answer to what ails us as people, institutions, companies, nations. How we behave, how we consume, how we build trust in our relationships and how we relate to others provides us with the power to not just survive, but thrive and endure.”
Dov Seidman
Read more
“How can HOW help us repair our faltering global economy? Only by getting our "hows" right can we ensure that we are sustainable. This can only be achieved when we are rooted in, and inspired by, sustainable values. The global economic meltdown supplied a perfect, but painful, example of how sustainability cannot be guided by situational values. The economic crash occurred because too many financial companies became disconnected from fundamental values and long-term sustainable thinking. Instead of nurturing sustainable collaborations, banks, lenders, borrowers and shareholders pursued short-term relationships founded on situational values. More than ever we need to get out of this cycle of crises and build long-term success and deep human connections so that we achieve enduring significance in today's globally interconnected world.”
Dov Seidman
Read more
“Why is your HOW message today more timely than ever? All progress now depends on How. We have entered the Era of Behavior. Of course our behavior has always mattered, but in today’s world, it matters more than ever and in ways it never has before. We live in a more connected and interdependent world. Yet we tend to speak about the world in amoral terms. The single most profound implication of an increasingly interconnected world is that it has rendered us ethically, if not morally, interdependent.”
Dov Seidman
Read more