Giving Compass' Take:

• Writing for Stanford Social Innovation Review, Jonathan C. Lewis discusses his book "The Unfinished Social Entrepreneur," which aims to power up your social justice career with self reflection.

• It's always worth considering that our work — and our personalities — are never fully complete. That helps us strive to do better. How can we learn to view our world from different perspectives?

• Here are more life-changing books that every social entrepreneur should read.

Whenever and wherever I travel, I take myself with me. When I’m planning a new social venture, I think like myself. When confronted with a new idea, I filter it through my preconceived preferences, proclivities and phobias. What choice do I really have? “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken,” quipped Oscar Wilde.

When I arrive in a faraway township (or in an equally unfamiliar, culturally-different, racially-segregated neighborhood a few blocks away from my house), I’m a captive of observer bias. “We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are,” tartly noted the novelist Anais Nin. Healthcare professionals are likely to perceive a community’s condition in terms of adequate or inadequate healthcare systems; engineers see a need for paved roads and irrigation pipes; internet geeks enthuse about apps and mobile money; economists thrive on economic opportunity plans.

Insofar as social entrepreneurs are committed to community-based, systemic change in this messed-up world, there’s a better way. You and I can tap into local wisdom by asking, “Teach us how, or if, we might be helpful.”

Read the full article about "The Unfinished Social Entrepreneur" by Jonathan C. Lewis at Stanford Social Innovation Review.