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The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback) (Paperback)
by Peter Block
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Author: Peter Block
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers; 1 edition
Pub. in: October, 2003
ISBN: 1576752712
Pages: 194
Measurements: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA01650
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-1576752715
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Peter Block is an author, consultant and speaker who helped initiate the interest in empowerment and whose work now centers on ways to bring service and accountability to organizations and communities.
He is the author of three best selling books: Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used, Second Edition (1999), The Empowered Manager: Positive Political Skills at Work (1987), and Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest (1993). His most recent book, Flawless Consulting Fieldbook & Companion: A Guide to Understanding Your Expertise , was released in November 2000.
Block has joined with the Association for Quality and Participation to create The School for Managing & Leading Change. This unique program takes place over several months and is attended by teams from the public and private sector too learn how to redesign their workplace. (For information on the School, call 800-733-3310.)
Block is a partner in Designed Learning, a training company that offers consulting skills workshops. These workshops were designed by Block to build the skills outlined in his Flawless Consulting books.
He has received several national awards for outstanding contribution in the field of training and development. He serves on the Boards of Directors of the Association for Quality and Participation and Connecticut Public TV and Radio, and the Advisory Council for Zefer Corporation.
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From publisher
People keep asking "How?" as a defense against living their life, says best-selling author Peter Block. In this witty, insightful award-winning book, Block shows that many standard solutions and improvement efforts, reinforced by most of the literature, keep people paralyzed. Here he places the "how to" craze in perspective and teaches individuals, workers, and managers ways to act on what they know. This in turn allows them to reclaim their freedom and capacity to create the kind of world they want to live in. Block’s "elements of choice" - the characteristic of a new workplace and a new world based on more positive values - include self-mentoring, investing in relationships, accepting the unpredictability of life, and realizing that the individual prospers only when the community does.
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We are drowning in our materialism and turning ourselves into instruments of effectiveness. This culture is defined by its pragmatism. The question "How?" has pre-empted questions of "Why?" We have adopted expediency as a value and this diminishes questions of
- Purpose
- Will
- Freedom
- Forgiveness
- Accountability for the whole
The engineer has replaced the artist.
Speed has replaced depth.
Automation has replaced relationship.
Barter has replaced desire
This explains why we are unable tact on what we know. Why our toolkit is always on our mind, even though the tools remain essentially unused. Plus the language is dominated by the engineering mind. Tools, implementation, feedback, information management, and son.
Elements of Choice
If purpose, will, freedom and accountability were in the foreground, we would:
1. Care for the well being of the institution, independent of whether it has earned it or of its treatment of us or others
2. Find our own teachers, mentor ourselves
3. View our boss as a struggling human being, no more able to walk their talk than we are
4. See the workplace as a place for our continuing education. Learn how to run a business. The mindset of local economy is essential to democracy. As Jefferson dreamed, we become economically literate. Know the economics, budget, costs, revenue of everything that we touch.
5. Decide to support the successful learning of our peers. Be accountable tour peers. Commit to their care and learning. Be their mentor. See their weaknesses as an opportunity for you to learn forgiveness.
6. Accept the unpredictability of the situation we are in. The workplace is a mystery. Who knows how long we will be there
7. Forget our ambition. Abandon exit strategies. We are not going to get rich or promoted, and if we did, we would be miserable. Our salary is now peaking and is on its way down.
8. We will prosper only if the institution and the community prosper. Even then we will never get our fair share of the spoils.
9. We invest in relationships. More human than electronic. Every meeting is an occasion for connection. Any decisions made are a bonus. Most of the things we think we decide get changed anyway.
10. We make promises, not set goals, timelines and milestones. Milestones have meaning as a memory, after they are passed. They are not a purpose. We deliver on our promises. The clarity of our promise is the key. When others disappoint us and fail their side of the bargain, let it go. Get off it. We avoid a life of barter. Maybe the others had something more important to do than to meet our expectations.
11. Realize that none else is going to change. They are good the way they are. If change is going to happen, it will be us. We blink first. Shift our own thinking, do it for our own sake, not as a hidden bargain which is designed to control the actions of others. Gandhi, "If blood be spilled, let it be ours."
12. Accept that most human problems have no real solution. No new policy, legislation, management or leader declaration is going to make a difference. The struggle is the solution. Justice and progress will always happen locally and spontaneously. All the attempts to take things to scale and structurally improve the social system have cost us as much as they have gained. Religion and its commandments has a spotted history. Only in our own unit, neighborhood, only as a result of our own actions with those in the immediate vicinity will the world shift.
13. Stop seeking hope in the eyes and words of people in power. They are trapped by the expectations and wishes of those below. What you sought in them can only be found in the mirror. Hope is to be offered, not requested.
14. Results are not the point. Every victory carries the seeds of its own defeat. Each triumph must be paid for, purchased at a cost higher than we had in mind. This is the nature of a calling. Only the nuns know this, for they married God with no possibility of wealth or power, living in a patriarchal world and still choosing it.
15. Where does the power lie. Why have we so mistaken its existence in a position, why do we need it legitimated by those around us. Power is in the purpose
Peter Block presents a model that teaches us to live each day as if we were an elected official. Lousy pay, poor food, safe return doubtful. Attacked for no good reason, asked to solve problems that others should be solving themselves, recallable at a moments notice, caught in a structure that once worked but is now obsolete.
Democracy is an intention of self governance. We need to bring democracy into the experience of our own daily lives. Manage our bodies democratically. Our family is the testing ground of equity and justice. Democracy is a political system based on dialogue, where the conversation is the solution. No spectators allowed. All players. Each of us is on the line at the end of the game, with the outcome riding on our own efforts. The boys game of standing at the line, counting down to the end of game. 5,4,3,2,1... All that is required is that we act and not be paralyzed by the result. |
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| View all 5 comments |
Dennis W. Bakke(MSL quoted), USA
<2009-01-20 00:00>
Once again the best writer on life in the workplace turns conventions on its head. Substituting the why and what questions for the how questions should help all of us experience the freedom, success, growth, love, fun, and beauty in the workplace. |
Kathleen D. Dannemiller (MSL quoted), USA
<2009-01-20 00:00>
Amazing! Just when I need to open myself to new ways of thinking, Peter Block opens up the next compelling image...the very path I need to explore next. Thank you, Peter, for the questions, paradox, confrontation and ultimately ‘answers’ that keep me alive and growing. |
Margaret Wheatley (MSL quoted), USA
<2009-01-20 00:00>
This is the most important book Block has ever written, and we need to take him seriously (although he is, as always, quite witty.) If enough people say ‘Yes’ to the teachings in this book, we'll be able to stop floundering toward the future and create lives and work that are meaningful contributions to each other and to the future. Please say ‘yes.’ |
Peter Koestenbaum Philosopher (MSL quoted), USA
<2009-01-20 00:00>
This is a journey of self-discovery much like the Inward Morning of Thoreau and in spirit not unlike the Confessions of Saint Augustine and Jean-Jacques Rousseau—cast in the contemporary mold of organizational culture. [Block’s] charm lies in his engaging style, seducing you to listen, mesmerized, as did the Sultan to Scheherazade. Here are the brilliant and sensitive ruminations of a wanderer on a journey in search for his voice, only to discover that it is the voice of everyman and everywoman speaking through him. |
View all 5 comments |
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