Keith Vines & Bill deMooy

The official launch date for Saving The World At Work (the followup to the best-selling business books Love Is The Killer App and The Likeability Factor) came the day after Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2008.

The world suddenly looked at businesses in a completely different light, and while Saving The World At Work made a strong case for better corporate social responsibility and sustainability initiatives (and was eventually named one of the top 30 business books of 2008 by Executive Soundview), the world had changed forever.

It has been an interesting few years (as in a "may you live in interesting times" kind of way). The financial crisis, mortgage debacle and global economic meltdown (coupled with wars, uprisings, earthquakes, tsunamis and other major planetary crises) have forced many people interested in business to think differently.

One of the more interesting changes is a movement toward a "humanization" of business. The idea is that businesses are made up of real people and, in a hyper-connected world where we're all just a tweet, Facebook status update or text message away from one another, perhaps we should leverage the new social media to not just drive more business revenue but to create more personal, human and authentic lives.

Don't panic, we're not talking about communism 2.0.

This concept of the humanization of business in a technology-driven world is at the core of Sanders' latest (and fourth) business book, Today We Are Rich (Tyndale House Publishers).

"There is a huge shift happening in our world and business today," says Sanders. "What drives all of this is a paradigm shift in our collective conscience where we've moved as a society from independence to interdependence.

"So, it's almost like this huge movement from 'I am brand' to 'the Dalai Lama' . I'm using extremes here," he laughs. "Traditionally business was built on the idea that as an entrepreneur you follow your passion, and as a business person, you create a profit. This was the long-standing working model of capitalism, but the shift has occurred and the Internet drives it, current events drive it, and there have been a lot of teachable moments driving it.

"Now, what people seem to be responsive to is driving toward purpose, developing a passion for purposeful work, achieving significance and letting profits only be the thing that lets us judge the success on 'keep the lights open' and 'make the investors happy' type of metrics.

"Those traditional metrics have become the means, but it's not the end.

"I'm seeing this shift and the good news is that it's happening in the field. Dan Pink writes about this in his latest book, Drive. Purpose is the thing that gets people to stay engaged at work and drives the most innovation in organizations. When we come to work we need to be human, we need to engage in the law of reciprocity at work, trust people more to give back on our investments and think much further out than 90 days.

"On top of that, we need to do what our kids do: march to the beat of something bigger than all of us."

While it's easy to transpose the work of Sanders as this generation's Dale Carnegie or Napoleon Hill, he does not seem to be saying "think and grow rich," but rather, "think and grow."

Because of the Internet, we have many more inputs, thoughts and pieces of content and the ability to publish ideas everywhere for free.

Who would have believed all this technology would lead us not to a dark, cold basement, but to a place where technology brings people, ideas and businesses closer to one another?

It's not just Sanders or Pink leading this evolution. The last business books by leading management thinker/doer Seth Godin, titled Linchpin and Poke The Box, also focus on this topic. Your standard self-improvement business books have become a call-to-arms for people to think of their day-today work as their art, and to leverage social media to connect and build global ties and opportunities.

Chris Brogan (one of the most celebrated bloggers and co-author, with fellow Montrealer Julien Smith, of the bestseller Trust Agents) has a newly minted business, appropriately called Human Business Works, which is attempting to put "relationships and people first. Human business cares about the lifespan of the business relationship and not simply transactions. We define human business as sustainable, relationship-minded work."

We spend the majority of our waking days at work. Lehman Brothers be damned; maybe we should put some energy into saving (or at least, connecting) the world at work.

Mitch Joel is president of Twist Image and author of the best-selling book Six Pixels of Separation.