The Answer to How Is Yes : Acting on What Matters

People keep asking ""How?"" as a defense against living their life, says best-selling author Peter Block. In this witty, insightful award-winning book, Block shows that many standard solutions and improvement efforts, reinforced by most of the literature, keep people paralyzed. Here he places the ""how to"" craze in perspective and teaches individuals, workers, and managers ways to act on what they know. This in turn allows them to reclaim their freedom and capacity to create the kind of world they want to live in. Block's ""elements of choice"" - the characteristic of a new workplace and a new world based on more positive values - include self-mentoring, investing in relationships, accepting the unpredictability of life, and realizing that the individual prospers only when the community does. 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? and still struggle to find purpose and act on what matters. Instead of acting on what we know to be of importance, we wait for bosses to change, we seek the latest fad, we invest in 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 rules. But we are gaining the world and losing our souls. Peter Block puts 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, intimacy, depth and engagement.

In this witty, award-winning book, Block shows that many standard solutions and improvement efforts keep people paralyzed instead of empowering them to create the kind of world they want to live in.

Soundview Executive Book Summaries

Peter Block presents a useful guide through the challenging task of taking what is of personal value into an indifferent or often hostile corporate and cultural world. By raising awareness of the trade-offs we make for the sake of work and practicality, he offers hope for those who want more of what matters in life from the workplace, like idealism, intimacy, depth and engagement. His insights into organizational culture confront the role of leaders and managers, and redefine the purpose of work. Copyright (c) 2002 Soundview Executive Book Summaries

Annotation People keep asking "How?" as a defense against living their life, says best-selling author Peter Block. In this witty, insightful award-winning book, Block shows that many standard solutions and improvement efforts, reinforced by most of the literature, keep people paralyzed. Here he places the "how to" craze in perspective and teaches individuals, workers, and managers ways to act on what they know. This in turn allows them to reclaim their freedom and capacity to create the kind of world they want to live in. Block's "elements of choice"--The characteristic of a new workplace and a new world based on more positive values - include self-mentoring, investing in relationships, accepting the unpredictability of life, and realizing that the individual prospers only when the community does Personal growth in and out of the workplace has long been hampered by the constant question "how?" In The Answer to How Is Yes, Peter Block teaches readers how to act on what they know and reclaim their freedom and capacity to create a world they want to live in. He shows how to reject tendencies toward passivity and blame in favor of choosing accountability and demanding a more compelling purpose from work and life. The book also emphasizes the need to shift the paradigm from the self-help/bootstrap/make-a-million craze toward something larger and more generous and, in the end, more satisfying. -- From the publisher A guide to personal growth teaches readers how to reclaim their freedom and creativity, revealing the secret to fashioning a life with meaning.