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Work as a Spiritual Practice

Because the focus of my work has often been on the role of the human heart and spirit in good work, I have read most of the contemporary books that purport to be on the subject of meaning in the workplace. Many of them are just intellectually emaciated vehicles for various types of executive poetry. Those that aim at a mainstream corporate audience understandably shy away from some central questions of work and values. How do you find equanimity if, deep in your heart, you are not comfortable with the outcomes of your work? Unless you are on a path toward changing those outcomes, I don't think you will find any peace, only the illusion of peace that comes from denial. While Lewis Richmond's Work as a Spiritual Practice doesn't hit people in the face with this question of Right Action, there's no doubt in my mind that the world would be a very different place if even a small proportion of our business leaders followed some of its practices. It's my belief that the nonprofit sector is particularly suited to these ideas, especially those practical tools offered in the book for facing failure, control, stress, scarcity, and gratitude. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is facing difficult times in their work or seeking a sense of the sacred in the workplace. A little mindfulness will work wonders. Posted: 12/26/05; 4:11:27 PM #

Working Virtually: The Challenges of Virtual Teams

I have probably read twenty or thirty mediocre books on distributed work over the last ten years. It seemed for a while that everyone who had something banal to say on the subject would get published with dotcom fury and buzzword laden titles. In that context, my love affair with Idea Group Publishing (this time under their CyberTech imprint) continues with my reading of Working Virtually, by Robert Jones, Robert Oyung, and Lise Pace. This book is clearly the result of thoughtful experience. Distributed work has become a reality around the world in its post-hype period and this book documents that reality in ways that are directly applicable in practice. I found several chapters worth the effort of careful study, including How Teams Work Virtually (which addressed skills, tools, and mixed media of communication), the Virtual Team Maturity Curve, Managing a Virtual team, and Applying Tools for Maximum Impact. Posted: 12/26/05; 2:05:31 PM #

Envisioning Information

Edward Tufte's Envisioning Information is a classic in its field, as are its precursor and successor volumes. I have slowly been learning to give myself the time to work on good diagrams and illustrations for my lectures, workshops, and articles. I enjoy the work immensely and there can be tremendous payoff for my audiences if I get it right, but there isn't the numerical satisfaction of a word count at the end of the day. But I am always reassured about my investment when I return to Tufte. I find that deadly text based slides are still too common at the conferences I attend and I wish most presenters would simply do without. But if you must have slides, consider three or four well developed images rather than thirty or forty bullet points. In this book, I recommend the section on Color and Information, for those of you who are wondering if your use of color is undermining your message. Because I am often trying to explain processes and dynamic systems, I suspect I'll be spending a lot of time in the coming months studying the chapter on Narratives of Space and Time. Posted: 12/26/05; 1:51:17 PM #