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Freedom and Accountability at Work: Applying Philosophic Insight to the Real World

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Koestenbaum and Block have put together a book that is head and shoulders above anything I have read in the leadership domain in a long time. This is a book with deep penetrating messages that go to the very heart of what it means to be a human being and to bring our authentic selves to the workplace. It's obvious that Koestenbaum has played a major role in Block's philosophical underpinnings as a management consultant. The two scholars share a special bond and admiration for one another that make for a special book.

The book is organized into four parts with Block introducing each part followed by chapters that are adaptations of Koestenbaum's 1970's writings on existential philosophy. Then Block wraps up each part with implications for the workplace in general and for leadership in particular. What makes this book so special is its attention to the fundamental issues of human existence: freedom (free will) and accountability (responsibility) (Part I), anxiety (Part II), death and evil (Part III), and guilt (Part IV). The concepts are integrated into what they call "philosophic insight" that make for fully human organizations. Koestenbaum concludes the book with a summation, reminiscence, and glossary.

This is a book that spoke to me on both a personal level and as a professional educator. The insights are profound and get to the core issues of leadership. My hunch is it will be a classic. This is a book I will savor and read over and over again for many years to come. I will recommend it to others, as I am doing now, every chance I get.

This book is tough sledding, and it is not for everybody. However, if you are willing to work your way through it, authors Koestenbaum and Block offer a few terrific and hugely powerful insights.

Freedom and Accountability is a curious and rare piece of writing - existentialist philosophy applied to the world of work. The authors are concerned with issues such as choice and free will, accountability and responsibility, and what it means to be an authentic human being - critical issues as the industrial era hierarchical workplace evolves into something new.

Plus - here's the gem - they assert that it is only by acknowledging and internalizing the fragility of life, and the immediacy and totality of death - that one finally stops wasting one's time, ceases doing things which do not matter, and becomes truly empowered.

And here's an interesting idea: they further assert that anxiety - that near-universal feeling most of us seek to avoid - is really the stuff that makes us feel alive, and it is a direct result of our exercise of free will. The only people without anxiety are either doing nothing important - taking no risks, or are totally repressed.

This book resonated with my own work as an executive coach, speaker and strategist,. And I liked it a lot. I find it helpful to read words which express my own thoughts with greater clarity than I had previously.

These ideas may also feel familiar to students of Landmark Education and Werner Erhardt - they have similar roots in the writings of philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.

This is not your typical book on management or leadership. If you are familiar with the previous works of these two authors you will know they intended it to be dramatically different. They succeeded well with Freedom and Accountability at Work. Peter Block starts this journey by writing the introduction. His task is to create a context by which his colleague's writings can be used to understand the dynamics of the modern workplace. Many of the concepts and ideas found in Freedom and Accountability at Work are taken from two previous books written by Koestenbaum. Both The Vitality of Death and The New Image of the Person were written by Koestenbaum in the `70s. These two philosophical books are at the heart of this new publication. This book is written on the premise that it is time to bring philosophy into the world of business by helping others find answers to their questions about the real purpose of work. It includes ways to bring ethical and spiritual values into the workplace.

Block encapsulates this thought when he writes, "Philosophy is really about a universal form of leadership and the possibility open to each person to shape or create an environment that supports the pursuit of meaning and purpose, rather than our current obsession with financial security and material wealth." Freedom and Accountability at Work provides discerning and near tangible ideas about anxiety, freedom, suffering and death. The authors maintain that viewing the purpose of work from the lens of a philosopher can provide a unique shift in mental perception. They believe that by rising above the mental traps that typically ensnare us, we can make our work places more humane and experience the accountability and real freedom we all want. The authors also provide potential solutions to those whose are presently struggling with personal suffering and depression. They encourage the reader to engage in this profound degree of change that will help one to overcome the cynicism that comes from superficial change. It is their contention that leaders need to ask these deeper philosophical questions to become better role models today and to acquire the enabling vision to lead tomorrow.

This book is a collaborative work by a philosophy professor (Koestenbaum) and a management consultant (Block) that examines an array of philosophical and psychological subjects and ties them to the role of leadership and the nature and experience of work. At its core, it is about what it means to be human in the real world. The purpose of the book is to explore the ideas of existential philosophy, and associated ideas in psychology, in the context of everyday life, particularly at work. It covers such topics as freedom, anxiety, death and evil, and links these to how we think and act. The main theme is what it means to be free and the linkage to accountability. This is not your typical book about work or management. It is about the way each of us encounters the world, experiences living, and defines ourselves. It has deep implications for personal transformation and our interaction with reality. The book is intellectually challenging, mind-expanding, and very thought-provoking, providing fundamental implications for managing people, guidance, counselling, and personal growth.

Freedom and Accountability at Work, by Peter Koestenbaum and Peter Block, applies existentialist philosophy to workplace issues, reaching some profound and perhaps surprising conclusions. The mention of "existentialist philosophy" makes the book sound abstruse, but it is actually concrete and experience-based. The authors make three main points.

1. Humans are free; their acts are acts of choice. With this understanding, we realize that "employees do not have to be motivated" and "rewards do not explain and drive behavior." (pp. 104 and 105) But people often try to hide or escape from their freedom, because freedom entails responsibility, which leads to anxiety and guilt. A manager might then choose to (sensitively) confront employees with the fact of their freedom.

2. "Negative" experiences or emotions are what give meaning to life. For example:

- Anxiety is not an aberration or something to be avoided: it is an integral part of the life of a complete human being. Humans are free to choose, but they cannot be certain that they have made the right choices, and therefore they experience anxiety. Anxiety tells us that something important is at stake, and if we felt no anxiety our lives would have no meaning.

- Guilt is inevitable, as everyone--sometimes--makes choices that are inconsistent with their own values. Neurotic guilt is not inevitable but arises when people violate a set of social values that they cannot comply with.

- We must experience death: the death of others, and the anticipation of our own death. In work settings, failures, firings, and organizational collapse are experienced as symbolic deaths. It is hard for people to accept that organizations and their own positions have finite lives, so they expect leaders to disguise these facts through confident posturing and language.

- We must experience evil. It is through our response to evil (which may take the form of
ignorance, weakness, injustice, etc.) that we discover purpose and destiny.

3. Through our freedom, we create the world that we live in; this creative power is what it means to be created in God's image. But it is uncomfortable to recognize our responsibility: "We institutionally deny the fact that each of us--though our actions and our view of the world--is creating the organization and the leadership we are so fond of complaining about. Deciding that I have created the world around me--and therefore I am the one to fix it--is the ultimate act of accountability." (p. 26)

The use of philosophical terms makes this book challenging, at times, but the exposition is first rate.

I have learned from this book! I have learned about Existential Philosophy, human beings and myself. I have affirmed my belief in freedom, human potential and the Grace of God but this book has nothing to do with religion. I have affirmed my belief in my power and responsibility to shape the world. I have learned much about the human condition. I have helped others with the knowledge that anxiety (of the existential kind as opposed to the neurotic kind, the latter being the denial of anxiety) is actually a positive state since if acknowledged it can lead one to a rebirth. I have utilized the information in this book to face conflict in relationships by bringing them into the transcendental realm where we all have a stake. I have realized that failure or the threat of death, in the form of rejection or job loss is not a threat; no one can threaten you with the inevitable. I have affirmed that I can be an idealist while being realistic.

There is much to be explored in this depth of writing; it is a heavy book both in weight and content but by reading it, you can become stronger. There are some parts of this book after first read that I admit I don't quite understand or maybe I am preventing the understanding; I will read this book again. I will continue to explore the depths of my being to bring meaning to my life and hopefully the lives of others. This is how I feel about this book; read it and discover how you feel!

Organizations and work environments are often more focused on how to control and predict behavior than how to understand it, but Freedom And Accountability At Work: Applying Philosophic Insight To The Real World provides a different focus on the leadership and workplace role which blends a philosophical examination of behaviors and skills with keys to applying such thoughts to effective management. Chapters include a healthy dose of psychology as they consider these issues.