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The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace

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The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace

Berrett-Koehler,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

A riff on soul that’s more Karl Marx than James Brown.

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Editorial Rating

5

Qualities

  • Well Structured
  • Overview

Recommendation

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, getabstract.com recommends 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.

Summary

The Need for Soul in the Workplace

There is a basic contradiction built into the modern workplace. The outer organization of work processes, which includes corporate objectives and managerial structures, works in opposition to the inner organization of people, which includes their emotions, attitudes, thoughts, and even the cooperative spirit the outer organization wants to foster.

To move into the future, organizations must straddle these two worlds and discover something new. This does not require using a particular program or technique, or embracing some strange, mystical belief system. Rather, it means that everyone should be more self-aware and more attentive to the voices of the inner soul, which are concerned with qualities like meaning, memory, beauty, fragility, divinity, wildness and union.

To reconcile the human soul and the organization, build a bridge. On one side are the personal, subjective, and unconscious elements that make up the individual experience. On the other side are the organization’s demands for rationality, efficiency, and personal sacrifice. When the two sides fit together, you will feel a sense of harmony and balance. However, if...

About the Author

Alan Briskin founded and owns Alan Briskin & Associates, an Oakland, California, organizational development consulting firm. He developed some of his ideas about organizational life when he worked with prison inmates and disturbed adolescents. His clients have included firms involved in many industries. He also consults with other management consultants about change, leadership and learning. He received his M.A. and Ph.D., in organizational psychology from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California in 1984.

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