When work becomes a religious experience
THE WAY WE’RE WORKING ISN’T WORKING
BY TONY SCHWARTZ, JEAN GOMES AND CATHERINE MCCARTHY, £12.99
THE title might sounds a bit like the election poster from 1979 that proclaimed “Britain isn’t working”, but this book is American through and through. It reached number two on the New York Times Best Sellers List, which suggests that it addresses a need – perhaps this is the point of the business cycle when people start believing that corporate life can change for the better.
The book begins from the premise that work in the modern corporation is not very satisfying, that the “time-for-money” exchange does not engage the whole human being. Or as the authors put it: “The relentless urgency that characterises most corporate cultures undermines thoughtful deliberation, creativity, engagement and sustainable high performance”.
The solution? Corporations should change so that people are rewarded for the “value” they create, not what they get done, and the job of businesses should be to “fuel spiritual energy”. Which sounds more to me like a church than a going concern. We should move to a new way of working, which “requires an evolutionary shift in the centre of gravity of our lives, from ‘me’ to ‘us’.” Much is made of the four “emotional quadrants”, amusingly introduced via a cross-like diagram.
Leaders are “chief energy officers”, who should “refuel the energy” of the people they manage. Excuse me while I start speaking in tongues and foaming at the mouth. It’s like Peter Drucker meets the Moonies.
Thankfully, though, the road to this promised land is actually rather simple. A large part of the book is devoted to telling us that sleep, rest, exercise and eating well are good for you. Most of the information in TWWWIW is pretty commonsense stuff. If you love your work, we are told, you will enjoy it more.
I actually found the premise of the book baffling. Do people really expect work to satisfy all their needs and desires? If so, they seem to have fundamentally misunderstood what work is under capitalism: an exchange of time for money. Perhaps it’s an American thing.
“Human being have made extraordinary advances in science, medicine and technology, but we’ve devoted remarkably little attention to understanding our inner world,” write the authors at one point. Go tell that to Proust.
This book is aimed at just those people who have devoted remarkably little attention to understanding their inner world. They are unlikely to find themselves any more enlightened after reading it.