The Management Preacher - Speaks on Leadership and Management in Wales

FOOD FOR THOUGHT - QUOTATIONS AND QUESTIONS

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
Confucius 551- 479 BC

1. How do you know that you will love a job before you do it?
2. Is this statement true of you now? If not, why not?
3. Is this kind of “the world is your oyster” choice a reality in today’s world?
4. If you had complete freedom (without any constraints of location, income, skills, education) what job would you choose?
5. What steps (no matter how small) can you take now to make that dream a reality?

Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.
Fyodor Dostoevsky 1821 - 1881

1. What were the characteristics of the most meaningless job you have ever had?
2. Did it “drive you mad”, and what were the symptoms?
3. Did your work colleagues feel the same? If not, why not?
4. What did you do to escape?
5. Did you learn a lesson, or have your found yourself in other meaningless jobs? Why?

When work is a pleasure, life is a joy. When work is a duty, life is slavery.
Maxim Gorky 1868-1936

1. What were the characteristics of the work that has given you the greatest pleasure?
2. What was the impact on your life and your relationships?
3. Have you actively sought work that would repeat that pleasure? With what success?
4. Is “pleasurable work” just something for the lucky few, unattainable by the majority?
5. If you wanted to create an environment where “work is a pleasure”, what would you do?

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill 1874-1965

1. Does the concept of “giving” have any place in the world of work? If not, why not?
2. If so, what would the characteristics be?
3. When and where have you experienced “giving” in your life, inside or outside work?
4. How and where have you demonstrated “giving” in your life, inside or outside work?
5. How would you help the people you work with “make a life” and not just a living?

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
Albert Schweitzer 1875-1965

1. How would you define success?
2. Is the connection between happiness and success a pious hope, or grounded in reality?
3. What is the evidence you have found in your life for the truth in this statement?
4. In what circumstances might love of what you are doing lead to failure?
5. Can you help people to love what they are doing, and if so, how?

Human nature has been sold short. Man has a higher nature, just as ‘instinctoid’ as his lower nature, and this human nature includes the need for meaningful work, for responsibility, for creativeness, for being fair and just, for doing what is worthwhile, and for preferring to do it well.
Abraham Maslow 1908- 1970

1. Is this true in your experience?
2. Looking at your colleagues, do they prefer to do things well, or just to get by at an acceptable but not exemplary level? What does that tell you about them?
3. Are these qualities encouraged and applauded in your workplace? If not, why not?
4. If this is a “fact” of human nature, why do you think it is frequently ignored in the workplace?
5. What can you do to create a workplace that responds to each individual’s “higher nature”?

Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor, for a sort of life rather than a Monday to Friday sort of dying.
Studs Terkel 1912-2008

1. How do you define “daily meaning”?
2. How often you receive “recognition”?
3. How often do you give “recognition?
4. How you create a workplace that creates a sense of life, rather than the opposite?
5. What would “astonishment” look and feel like in your workplace?

Without work all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.
Albert Camus 1913-1960

1. If the first sentence is true, how would you define “work”?
2. Is “soulless” work the same as “meaningless” work?
3. What does “soul” mean in a work context?
4. How do you give work “soul”?
5. If “life stifles and dies”, what is left of you as a person?

What is it that you like doing? If you don’t like it, get out of it, because you’ll be lousy at it. You don’t have to stay with a job for the rest of your life, because if you don’t like it, you’ll never be successful at it.
Lee Iacocca 1924-

1. Answer the first question?
2. If you don’t like what you are doing, is “getting out” an option? If not, why not?
3. Is this a recipe for perpetual employment churn, rather than good working practice?
4. Does being successful at your job matter at all?
5. If you like a particular job, how do you know whether that means you are on the path to success?

You’ve got to love what you do to make things happen.
Philip Green 1952-

1. Is this true in your experience? What’s the evidence?
2. Can you be neutral about what you do, and still make things happen?
3. What does “loving what you do” feel like to you and look like to others?
4. Does this apply only to those in managerial positions, or to everybody?
5. Is emotional commitment always a prerequisite for practical achievement?

Unless organisations become more spiritual they cannot reap the benefits of the full and deep engagement of their employees, their so called most valuable resource. In the plainest terms, unless organisations not only acknowledge the soul but also attempt to deal directly with spiritual concerns they will not meet the challenges of the next millennium.
Mitroff and Denton 1999

1. What are “spiritual concerns” in your view?
2. What does “acknowledge the soul” mean in your experience?
3. What are the “challenges of the next millennium” that make “spiritual concerns” so important?
4. Does “spiritual” have a religious connotation, or can it be entirely secular?
5. As a manager, what does the “full and deep engagement” of your employees mean to you?

This age calls out for a new ‘spirit of management’. For us the concepts of spirit and soul are not merely add-on elements of a new philosophy of management. They are the very essence of such a philosophy or policy. No management effort can survive without them. We refuse to accept that whole organisations cannot learn ways to foster soul and spirituality in the workplace. We believe not only that they can but that they must.
Mitroff and Denton 1999

1. What do you think are characteristics of a new “spirit of management”?
2. What does “spirit” mean in a work context?
3. If you were setting out to “foster soul and spirituality” in your workplace, what would you do?
4. Does this make any sense to you at all? If not, why not?
5. What will happen if we don’t do what Mitroff and Denton are advocating?

It is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life, without meaningful work.
Jim Collins 2001

1. What are the ingredients of a “great” life?
2. If I can find “meaning” in things that you think are irrelevant or dull, is my life “great” in your eyes?
3. Is “great” a qualitative or a quantitative description?
4. Do you agree that work is an essential part of a meaningful life?
5. Is “meaningful work” defined in terms of meaning to the individual or in terms of the purpose of the work itself?

I have found that those who tend to have some sense of spirituality or moral compass to guide them tend to be more effective in their relationships with others at work. They seem to manage people better, to understand their work-life balance dilemmas, can empathise with their personal and work problems, are good listeners, and tend to be on ‘receive’ rather than transmit. They can understand why people might be resistant to change and help them overcome their concerns. They are more open and authentic as individuals and as a consequence get the most out of their people.
Professor Cary Cooper 2007

1. Do you agree, and on the basis of what evidence?
2. What sort of “moral compass” guides you?
3. Do you make any connection between a “moral compass” and a “sense of spirituality?
4. Is this “sense of spirituality or moral compass” something that is innate in some, and completely absent in others, or do we all have it in some measure?
5. If you find this “sense of spirituality”, how do you foster it?

Meaningful work is one of the most important things we can impart to children. Meaningful work is work that is autonomous. Work that is complex, that occupies your mind. And work where there is a relationship between effort and reward — for everything you put in, you get something out…
Malcolm Gladwell 2008

1. Autonomy, complexity and reward – are these the essential ingredients of meaningful work in your opinion? If not, why not?
2. Would you accept that work without these characteristics is “meaningless”?
3. Is this a ridiculously elitist view of work, that only the smallest minority enjoy?
4. Is this a model for the future of work in the new “knowledge economy”?
5. How would you define meaningful “reward”?

Companies must encourage communities of passion by allowing individuals to find a higher calling within their work lives, by helping to connect employees who share similar passions, and by better aligning the organisation’s objectives with the natural interests of its people.
Gary Hamel 2009

1. Is this a recipe an individualistic approach to work that will drive a coach and horses through traditional concepts of management and corporate planning?
2. Do you believe that this is the “future of management”?
3. What do you consider to be your “higher calling”?
4. How would you “connect employees who share similar passions” in your organisation, with what results?
5. How would you align your organisation’s objectives with “the natural interests” of your people?

(We) must find ways to infuse mundane business activities with deeper, soul-stirring ideals, such as honour, truth, love, justice and beauty. These timeless virtues have long inspired human beings to extraordinary accomplishment and can no longer be relegated to the fringes of management.
Gary Hamel 2009

1. Is it true that “honour, truth, love, justice and beauty” have been relegated to the fringes of management? If so, why?
2. What are the core values of your organisation?
3. Are these “timeless virtues” at odds with the nature and purpose of business life?
4. How would you foster and demonstrate “love and beauty” in your organisation?
5. If you believe this, what are you going to do about it?

Testimonials

“Christopher Ward’s original and unusual approach to management recognises the need for meaning in the workplace, and the role of spirituality in developing the individual while delivering the desired outcome for organisations. His thought-provoking approach to achieving success in the workplace will encourage his readers to discover more meaning and purpose in their careers.”

Antoinette Glynn, Sanford Career Management