These are books and audio recordings I have found inspirational and helpful in the past several years. There are Amazon.com links for those items available through Amazon.com. Please let me know of your favorites and new discoveries that are not listed.

The Answer to How is Yes

Editorial Review
From Booklist
The new approach to change management that is presented here will completely flummox control freaks. Block posits a refreshing series of truths that, if adopted, will transform workplaces into journeys of meaning. The best-selling author of Flawless Consulting (1981) and Stewardship (1993) insists that we ask the wrong question about accomplishing the important things in our lives, particularly in our place of employment. We too often ask "How?" which focuses too closely on the practical way of getting something done and is actually a subconscious expression of society's emphasis on control of people, time, and cost. Instead, our concentration should be focused on "Why?" In other words, we need to pay attention to what really matters to us personally, from heart-felt commitments in our private lives to the creation of projects in the workplace. To be able to act on what matters, explains Block, we must reclaim specific qualities, such as intimacy and idealism. Then we can tackle purposeful work as if we were social architects seeking engagement and change. Provocative and stimulating reading. Barbara Jacobs

Book Description
Modern culture’s worship of "how-to" pragmatism has turned us into instruments of efficiency and commerce—but we’re doing more and more about things that mean less and less. We constantly ask how? but rarely why? We use how as a defense—instead of acting on what we know to be of importance, we wait until we’ve attended one more workshop, read one more book, gotten one more degree. Asking how keeps us safe—instead of being led by our hearts into uncharted territory, we keep our heads down and stick to the map. But we are gaining the world and losing our souls. In The Answer to How Is Yes, Block places the "how-to" craze in perspective and presents a guide to the difficult and life-granting journey of bringing what we know is of personal value into an indifferent or even hostile corporate and cultural landscape. He raises our awareness of the trade-offs we’ve made in the name of practicality and expediency, and offers hope for a way of life in which we’re motivated not by what "works," but by the things that truly matter in life—idealism, relationship, intimacy, and engagement. In his classic book Stewardship, Block showed how to free our organizations from stifling, control-obsessed bureaucracy and redesign them so that they are governed by the ideals of service, responsibility, accountability, and meaning. In The Answer to How Is Yes (inspired by a chapter in Stewardship), Block helps us realize similar ideals in our individual lives. Block offers a new way of thinking about our actions that helps free us from being controlled by the bombardment of messages about how we should live and act. He inspires us to say yes to our ideals and aspirations.

Janet McCallen

I resisted the first part of this book, because Block uses it to convince the reader of a worldview that I was already convinced of. However, ultimately I found the entire book so meaningful that I typed up much of what I had highlighted in the book, and will happily share it – though not as a substitute for reading the book, but as a study guide. Excerpts (for PDF of excerpts from The Answer to How is Yes).

These are books and audio recordings I have found inspirational and helpful in the past several years. There are Amazon.com links for those items available through Amazon.com. Please let me know of your favorites and new discoveries that are not listed.

The Answer to How is Yes

Last modified: 12/30/05