Customer Reviews

The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

On a first reading, I was amazed at Briskin's ability to articulate the key issues and dilemmas that plague the workplace and those in it - amazed, because his ability to "name" what's going on had an accuracy and depth that is unmatched by anything else I've read. It's the second reading, however, that struck the deepest chords for me. I was caught off guard with the relevance of these issues to my own personal experience, my eyes opening up to how I myself had "sold out" unwittingly to these dominant forces of control, at the cost of my own soul. Fortunately, the author didn't just leave me hanging, but offered some alternative ways of thinking about work, about my "stance" toward my job and toward others, about what truly matters to me, and about more creative ways of being. In a nutshell, the book opened up my mind as well as my heart.

I stumbled onto this book at a bookstore and was fascinated by the picture of foggy mountains on the cover of a business book. I have read some of the typical leadership-type books, and this ain't one of them -- it's much better! The author made me realize that the struggles, frustrations, pain and discomfort of working in a big corporation are normal. I didn't really want to hear that, but he tells me that to find meaning in my work, I have no choice but to embrace those struggles. The good news is, he said, I don't have to stuff my feelings down a hole. Now, just to make my boss understand that..

A philospher recently wrote "the art of the future will be the work of the collective." It's clear that today's corporate structure has a long way to go before it could be called art. The typical company is not a particularly meaningful, soulful, or enduring place. Somehow there has to be a merging of the corporate need for profit with the individual need for meaning. In The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace, Alan Briskin takes on the often contradictary nature of these twin needs. It raises a deep and difficult set of questions. Briskin doesn't minimize them by offering quick technical fixes, but rather he offers something far more important: the insight and understanding needed to begin honestly approaching them. As a result, Briskin may have also begun the long process of elevating corporate structure to that of collective art form.

Parts of this book are as well written and as insightful as anything I've ever read. If you've spent any time in a corporate structure, you will see a reflection of your own situation in these pages. Layered on top of that reflection are insights from the fields of philosophy, literature, psychology, physics, management and the wisdom traditions of the world. All of which help us to understand, and to live with, the ambiguities we all face. This book will challenge you to ask yourself some important questions. I highly recommend it.

Dean Ottati - Author of The Runner and the Path

The book has three main sections: Defining the concept and history of Soul; Highlighted history on our work culture; and, how we deal with Soul to make our working world better. The first section was interesting, but perhaps a little philosophical for me. He did use some nice personal story examples to make his points. By itself, the second section would score a 7-star. For this section alone, I would recommend the book. He starts his history trek in the mid 1800's with the advent of the railroad, which presents the first introduction of strict time and scheduling on our society. He continues by discussing the industrial revolution and focusing on important figures such as Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, and Fredrick Taylor, the `Father of Scientific Management'. Additionally, he discusses the works of Elton Mayo and how his finding in human resources ultimately resulted in another control factor for companies. In his final section, Briskin discusses how we as individuals and organizations can learn from our history and begin our journey towards coherence and wholeness. He believes that concerns with communication are often used to describe various barriers within organizations. He is trying to tie the book together and help us pave new ground, but his attempt is too typical and idealistic. Like many 'change' books, he focuses too much on idealistic and not enough on realistic, which renders his suggestions as weak, or even naive. I would have been happier if he left out his attempts to make this a complete book ("we can change by understanding our past") and stuck with his great historical facts and philosophical factors in defining organizational life.

People need creativity, fantasy, passion and caring, argues Alan Briskin, and when they're deprived of those things at work, there's trouble ahead. Briskin's book works well as a study in modern-day alienation. Tracing the loss of soul at work to scientific engineering, he summarizes various research findings that will seem like old college friends to those with business degrees. But the book sags when it sets forth into the land of the soul, where Briskin gets fuzzy, unfocused, repetitious and just plain hard to understand. In addition, he never actually gets around to telling us how to get soul back at work. Nevertheless, we [...] recommend this book to managers, employees and students with a desire to look deeper into the balance of hard work and personal satisfaction, and the patience to wade through the sometimes trite.

The book has three main sections: Defining the concept and history of Soul; Highlighted history on our work culture; and, how we deal with Soul to make our working world better. The first section was interesting, but perhaps a little philosophical for me. He did use some nice personal story examples to make his points. By itself, the second section would score a 7-star. For this section alone, I would recommend the book. He starts his history trek in the mid 1800's with the advent of the railroad, which presents the first introduction of strict time and scheduling on our society. He continues by discussing the industrial revolution and focusing on important figures such as Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, and Fredrick Taylor, the `Father of Scientific Management'. Additionally, he discusses the works of Elton Mayo and how his finding in human resources ultimately resulted in another control factor for companies. In his final section, Briskin discusses how we as individuals and organizations can learn from our history and begin our journey towards coherence and wholeness. He believes that concerns with communication are often used to describe various barriers within organizations. He is trying to tie the book together and help us pave new ground, but his attempt is too typical and idealistic. Like many 'change' books, he focuses too much on idealistic and not enough on realistic, which renders his suggestions as weak, or even naive. I would have been happier if he left out his attempts to make this a complete book ("we can change by understanding our past") and stuck with his great historical facts and philosophical factors in defining organizational life.

This is a typical New Age business book. It has a high spiritual gloss, is individualistically oriented (overlooking truly workable ways of changing organizations and essentially blaming individual workers for not being able to accomodate abusive systems personally by developing soul).

This book is a fooler for the average working person. By this I mean that it sounds great but leads nowhere for the average worker. It may even make you feel inadequate.

There are very specific ways to change organizations to result in shared power for all workers. These social technologies are well known, difficult to install, and deprive top managers of power they crave---that's why these technologies are seldom used...because they are effective! Top managers don't want to give up power or take responsibility for creating collaborative systems. So books like this one which confuse the issues that are really involved in changing organizations are typical of New Age managerial manuals.

Publishers of these kinds of management books make big bucks at the expense of the average worker. Such management books assure managers that the problems in the organization don't require rigorous, disciplined behavioral change. Worker dissatisfaction (and 80% of workers are dissatisfied in poll after poll) can be attributed to "loss of soul"....yet one more mystification.