Ben Bag Bag used to say: Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it. Look into it, get gray and old over it. Stir not from it, for you can have no better rule than it.
Ben Heh Heh used to say: According to the effort is the reward.

Translation adapted from Soncino and shechem.org

This shiur for Chapter 1 introduces and frames the whole book.  Each of the 11 chapters begins with a shiur, literally “lesson,” a study in Jewish text.  The book’s shiurim (plural) attempt to go beyond the teaching of familiar motivational lessons, to offer academically serious, fresh scholarship that specifically introduces the subject matter for each chapter.  For example the shiur for Chapter 4, “Governing Documents,” discusses the documentary chain of Jewish tradition, while the shiur for Chapter 8, “Project Management,” considers the surprisingly many ways in which Nehemiah’s efforts met contemporary criteria for good project management.  The shiur for Chapter 10 introduces the concept of knowledge management by connecting anthropologist Mary Katherine Bateson’s idea of a learning spiral with the organizational learning spiral of management theorists Nonaka Ikujiro and Takeuchi Hirotaka.  From the shiurim in Growth through Governance, you can expect consistently substantial, creative, detailed applications of Jewish text to the specific subject matter of responsible governance.

This is why I chose to introduce the book’s shiurim with the Mishnah’s idea that “everything is in it.”  Each chapter is tied so closely to its shiur, while introducing important and substantial concepts in governance, that the whole chapter — contemporary practices and all — could be read as a commentary on the chapter’s shiur.  In that way, the whole book becomes part of the genre of Jewish text study.