Meaning at

Work Anthology
Volume 1

By Jonathon Flaum
2
Meaning at Work Anthology
Volume I
 For Erin, my coworker, friend,
and co-conspirator in making work a practice of joy

4
 Contents

An Introduction  6

One Little Word Makes All the Difference  10

Modern Business Management Requires Time, Control - and Trust  12

Don’t Let the Voice of ‘Should’ Make Your Life More Stressful than need be  14

Human Aspect in Public’s Relationship with Corporations can be Fruitful 16

Learning to be a 'Nowhere Man' can Allow us to Embrace Opportunity  18

Thoreau’s Independence Day Lesson: Business plan must be realistic  22

Working from Scratch  24

Nothing Helps Improve the Corporate Culture Like Cooking a Meal  26

Learning to Single-task is Key to Respecting Yourself and Your Work  28

Grove Park Inn’s Stones Demonstrate the Strength of the Unique   30

A Trip to Alaska Shows that Nature is the Greatest Teacher  32

Involve Yourself in Whatever You’re Doing so You Can Find your Life’s Work  34

About Jonathon Flaum  37

 An Introduction

How do you move a mountain without picking it up?

This is not a question we can rationally answer. I’m not even
sure it is a rational question, yet here it arrived in my mind
as a description of the kind of work I have been engaged with
these past years. How do you move through modern day
business and not be moved by it? How do you not respond
to its demands, values, and expectations on its own terms
but instead create a new set of terms based on something
that feels more real, human, and useful? I don’t know is the
short answer. But the commentary on this “I don’t know” is
my body of work over the last five years of writing weekly
columns for the Asheville Citizen-Times newspaper in its
business section under the column name “meaning at work.”

Most modern workplaces ask us to be economically

productive but don’t care if we are spiritually stagnant or
crass. Most workplaces operate on fear rather than love
and count on people being driven to do their work on time
and without complaint because the fear of losing a job is so
great in our culture because it is connected to a mortgage, a
car payment, insurance payment, groceries, perhaps a pri-
vate school, just about everything. So the idea of doing what
is right over what is expected just is not done that often
because of the economic pressures an individual is under.
There is no true freedom in the modern workplace. Strongly
disagreeing with the modern day corporate CEO, a monarch
unfazed by the democratic revolution, and quite comfort-
able with absolute power, is not just a matter of principle.
It is a matter of will this interaction allow me to continue to
pay my mortgage and keep my children in that school they
need? This is untenable but this is the way it has become.

Under these conditions some workers respond with

nihilism – it’s just a job so let me do what I’m told get
my money, pay my bills, and try to put it out of my head
at night, on weekends, and on vacation. Some are com-
promisers – after all the CEO earned the right to have
that much control so it is my responsibility to do what I’m
told and if I do disagree once in a while and present my
6
case diplomatically I sometimes get heard. Others are
unethical and understand perfectly the cult of personal-
ity, the ego-driven decision making process, and the poli-
tics of ambition. These people play the system and want
to get the big prizes – the rewards of mainstream recog-
nition through money and position feel real to them and
inherently satisfying. They don’t question the game, and
feel that their ability to play it well makes them winners.

The above three choices are not appealing for us. But
there is another option; rarely taken though obvious. The
option is to simply be ourselves and behave as though we are
completely free and simultaneously completely responsible,
not to a boss, but to the work itself. We are free to bring
our best thinking to bear in relation to our work, do it in the
most efficient and mindful way possible and take care of our
emotional and spiritual needs as we take care of our eco-
nomic ones. In taking this road we calmly and directly dare
the boss working under one of the above three strategies to
recognize our humanity and either fire us for it and get on
with it or learn to respect us for it and stay out of the way of
serving the work and either get on board or get out of the way.

To take this road requires unflinching inner resolve

and a willingness to lose position if it means maintaining
integrity and decency. To do this requires constant train-
ing. To do this is a spiritual path that changes the shape
of reality not through argument or revolt but by behaving
in accord with the sacred – something untouchable. Others
see this in the modern corporation and want to run from
you, banish you, or learn from you. The activity of daily
practice is again and again to beat the path of the honest
way such that it is the only option left for us. When we are
on this path love triumphs fear and the inner command to
do what is right is a booming resonance compared with the
receding echo of doing what is expedient. Individuals must
do this if they want to raise wholehearted children, build
lasting communities, and protect and restore the earth.

These writings are a slice of my thoughts about

how we can do this and why we ought to try. I know the
individual can do it. But you will read here too about
how I thought a corporation itself might do it. There
was a time when I thought a corporation could be
changed from within; but I don’t think so now. The re-
liance on expedience to maintain vast stores of money
for executives and their Wall Street analyst counter-
parts is simply too great. I now think the corporation
will not change but will in fact one day fall as we know
it. Greed is unsustainable and so is abuse of power.

Individuals must save themselves by seeing their

own beauty and giving rise to their own will to create
a life of meaning. Institutions themselves are not people
and such mountains cannot be moved. But if we look deeply,
unflinchingly, we will see that these apparent mountains
are not real mountains. You will see that they are puffed
up layers piled high on unstable ground and that the inner
workings are separate and distinct bodies not interested
in keeping the whole together. And when we stop fearing
them and working for them to keep their illusion of power
alive they will simply fall and an apparent mountain will
return to ground. We have the choice to remain standing.

Jonathon Flaum

March 15, 2010

Asheville, North Carolina

8
 One Little Word Makes All the Difference

(June 27, 2007)

We tend to think in dualities at work. One that I hear

a lot is the notion of being self-centered or selfless at the of-
fice. I hear people arguing about this; and both sides making
good cases for their behavior. The self-centered camp makes
the argument that if they don’t take care of themselves, who
will? If they can’t say no to their supervisor, they will wind
up having to say no to their children. And that if they don’t
limit their meetings to 30 minutes at a time they will not
get any work done. This group understands the principle of
personal boundaries and is vigilant about protecting them.

The selfless group believes it is important to make

time for their colleagues – especially when the time is un-
scheduled and does not have a specific agenda. This group
also gains esteem by volunteering for work that others
rather not do. They also want to add value to the company
by sitting on committees that do not directly impact their
job function but can impact the company’s overall culture.

Both kinds of behavior seem important at different

times; the key is not to get stuck in one or the other. Some-
times we get attached to an idea of how we should be – a
posture that we identify with – and lose sight of what is
actually needed of us in each fresh moment. One of the an-
tidotes to getting stuck in the identity of self-centered or
selfless is to not accept either label. Instead of thinking in
terms of “self-centered” simply remove the word “self” and
experiment with just thinking in terms of being “centered.”

Being centered means you understand that each mo-

ment has its own needs and you practice responding to
those needs with a fresh mind, rather than a mind that
is wrapped up in notions of its own identity. For exam-
ple, you have a productive day in front of you in which
you plan to finish a report. You have a 20 minute meet-
ing scheduled with your assistant first and he comes
to you appearing overwhelmed. You innocuously ask,
10
“Are you OK?” Your assistant releases a torrent regard-
ing his care taking duties of his father with Alzheimer’s.

Being centered means you just respond with friend-

ship without thinking twice about it. Someone who is
stuck to his self-centered identity might respond perfunc-
torily, hoping it can be expedited quickly, while the per-
son attached to a selfless identity may respond by offer-
ing three weeks off of paid leave. But not being attached
to either identity, the centered person just listens; allow-
ing the moment to be what it needs to be without a desire
to “fix” it into something that links up with an identity.

This is an extreme case, but all day at work there

are little moments when we jump out of the present mo-
ment and retreat to behaviors that help protect and so-
lidify a position or idea that we identify with. Using the
mind as something that merely protests or acquiesces at
the first sign of decision is like trying to use a stove with-
out lighting it; there is no power to transform the raw
into the cooked. A centered mind comes to each moment
with vision; the kind of vision that transforms the poten-
tial conflict based on clinging to an identity into a fresh
meal of thought and behavior that nourishes self and other.
 Modern Business Management Requires Time,
Control - and Trust

(December 27, 2007)

Scientific management began in the late 1800s as

a way to control the effectiveness with which tasks were
done and the time it took to do them. Time was money,
and it had to be strictly parceled if it were to be useful.
Workers were seen as elements of the machine of pro-
duction, and these elements had to be “scientifically”
controlled in order to spend as little time and money as
possible and gain the maximum return in production.

This regimented process had no need for

trust. Time clocks, quotas and industrial engi-
neering took its place. Things like leadership, a
core philosophy and intuition were not needed.

Life has changed drastically since the advent of this

scientific management style. We live in a knowledge-based
economy with workers who, in Peter Drucker’s words, need
to be “treated as creative volunteers,” not as resources for
production. What is needed from workers today in terms of
creativity, innovation, decision-making skills and autono-
my just continues to grow. The assembly-line style of man-
agement has little place in this new world, yet its remnants
hang around and cause a dissonance between some managers
and those they are managing throughout corporate America.

The explicit element in factory-style manage-

ment was lack of trust in the worker - trust simply
was not considered necessary. Forming bonds of re-
lational trust may have been a side effect that hap-
pened by chance, but it was never something that man-
agers needed to cultivate in order to get the work done.

In today’s workplace, time, control and trust are still

three core elements of the anatomy of a task requested by a
manager. But rather than the purely functional relationship
between workers and managers of the industrial economy, we
now have more room for feelings of personal resentment to-
12
ward management if an environment is created that is overly
controlled, time is used as a weapon and trust is not present.

A manager creates such an environment by asking

for a task to be completed before it is actually needed. He
makes this request because he does not trust the worker
to get it done. The manager, because of this lack of trust,
micromanages the time allotted. Such a condition produces
mediocre work and a relational model that lacks trust and
has no grounds for building mutual respect and dignity.

Such a model of task assignment is not sustain-

able: A worker with choices will leave such a situa-
tion. Knowledge-based workers have had to learn to
manage their own time, be accountable to tasks and get
them done right without someone looking over their
shoulder. (Industrial workers could have done this as
well with a different management philosophy in place.)

The implicit element in the anatomy of a task assign-

ment that managers have rarely examined is trust. Some
managers are comfortable trusting their workers; many are
not. The reality is that without trust, a business cannot run.
Some of the best workers work from home and would never
keep 9-5 office hours in a cubicle down the hall from the boss’s
office. And in a knowledge-based economy as diverse as ours,
a manager no longer can understand every technical aspect
of the business or control the product the way he used to.

Managers today need to be leaders, teachers and facili-

tators of an environment of trust and cooperation. Tasks get
done on time in today’s business via trust - individual control
has to be let go in favor of interdependence. This could be fright-
ening for a manager schooled in the old texts of the science of
control. But this fear is an opening - a gate to walk through.
 Don’t Let the Voice of ‘Should’ Make Your Life
More Stressful than Need be

(March 19, 2007)

To work with a sense of freedom, connection and joy,

we have to stand up to the sense of urgency that makes
its daily assault on our peaceful rhythm of work. We are
often under the false impression that this sense of urgen-
cy is externally generated from e-mails, phone calls and
faxes at the behest of demanding bosses and eager cli-
ents. But I would argue that the greatest assault on our
own internal rhythm comes directly from our own minds.
Just because other people come at us with a sense of inter-
ruptive urgency doesn’t mean we have to become reactive
with it and play out their drama. It is our task to quietly but
consciously remind ourselves that others are accountable
for their own states of mind. Because someone feels stressed
and hopes to dissipate the feeling by extending the stress
to us, it doesn’t mean we have to accept it as our burden.
We can breathe deeply, center ourselves, and realize that
their stress belongs to them. If we are to be of use, we can
bring a refined calm to the situation. This takes practice.

It means giving up the habit of being reactive. It also

means giving up the habit of acting as though we exist to fix
the problems of others. A reactive state of mind is a trap, a sort
of treadmill that keeps us on the go of putting out fires and
never doing any deep thinking and reflection about our work.

We check things off of our to-do list (and others),

but we don’t engage with what the work means to us as
we do it. Such is the recipe for dissatisfaction and even-
tual burnout. We can stave off this cycle of meaningless
work by saying “No” to the habituated voice of “should.”
The internal voice goes something like this, “I’d like
to work on my own project until lunch, but I should re-
ally help Dave with his because he seems like he really
needs it.” Or, “I want to go out for a walk at lunch, clear
my mind and take in the spring day, but I should just eat
at my desk and work through or I’ll never get caught up.”

14
 The voice of “should” thinks it is always right. It thinks
it is the responsible one, the good one, the right one and the
pragmatic one. The voice of “should” thinks it is the adult.
It’s not. It’s just a task master without a sense of balance,
joy or generosity. It is this internal voice of “should” that
generates guilt, self-doubt and, at its most intense, self-
hatred. And it is a sneaky voice. It acts as though it is help-
ing you, keeping you out of trouble, keeping you organized
and on top of things while all the while it is beating you up.

The only remedy is to pay close attention to when this

voice is showing itself and stand up to it. You can just tell
this voice of “should” that you are more interested in doing
what gives you joy and what feels authentic for you and,
that by doing that, all that needs to be accomplished will
be accomplished. It requires trust. Trust of your own inter-
nal rhythm and just going with that without being stirred
by the voice of “should” that demands you do anything
else but be your truest and happiest self. Work need never
be something that crushes your spirit; when it feels that
way, just stop, breathe deeply, and come back to yourself.
 Human Aspect in Public’s Relationship with
Corporations can be Fruitful

(June 12, 2008)

Corporations have the legal status of individuals, yet

we don’t think of them that way. We don’t think of them as
having a soul and a conscience and an inherent goodness. We
think of corporations, for the most part, as cold bureaucratic
places where policies and procedures — rather than authen-
tic connection or spontaneous creativity — guide behavior.

Those working outside corporations think of them this

way, as do many people working inside this “system.” With
these expectations, we are rarely surprised when corporations
fail us — when these stewards of our health, ideas, transpor-
tation and food turn out not to be acting for the common good.

There was a time when the labor movement was

strong, and workers changed the face of the corporation
through protest. But in today’s era of global outsourcing,
downsizing and ballooning health care costs, labor is no
longer as powerful. There was a time when we thought we
could change the face of the corporation through boycott.
But in today’s dire economy, it is difficult to ask some-
one struggling with poverty to boycott a Wal-Mart — the
only place they may be able to afford the goods they need
— in favor of a smaller specialty store. There was a time
when revolution felt imminent, and it seemed corporations
might be abolished and replaced by government programs
that supported everyone’s basic needs. But we learned the
folly of giving a government too much centralized power.

It seems that we are stuck with corporations, so what

do we do with them to help them serve the common good
equitably and compassionately? The pioneer in leadership
thought, former AT&T executive and Harvard professor
Robert K. Greenleaf, suggested that we have to love the
corporation into reform. In his 1970 book “Servant Leader-
ship,” he wrote, “Businesses, despite their crassness,
occasional corruption and unloveliness, must be loved if
they are to serve us better. They are much too large a pres-
16
ence in the lives of all of us to have them in our midst and
not serve us better. But how, one may ask, can one love
this abstraction called the corporation? One doesn’t! One
loves only the people who are gathered to render the service
for which the corporation is enfranchised. The people are
the institution!” Greenleaf’s idea was to transform institu-
tions through the people who work within them. He advises
teaching workers about the profound power they have —
the power to hurt and to heal, to solve global problems or
to continue to create and worsen them. Greenleaf’s point
is that corporations have the economic resources, global
reach, government influence and the people to do amaz-
ing things. Why not help them by teaching them how much
more fascinating and rewarding it is to serve causes big-
ger than yourself? Greenleaf’s warning is that if we aban-
don corporations, they will abandon us. If we think they’re
corrupt, they will be corrupt, and if we think the people
inside them powerless to effect change, so they will be.

The idea is that we have to love institutions into

change. Like people, institutions rarely change by be-
ing beaten into it. Even if they change in the short
term, the resentment they carry is a long-term proposi-
tion, and they will strike back the first chance they get.

My group’s work is devoted to “corporate contempla-

tion,” and people ask us what that means. At its most basic,
it is about confronting institutional structures with human-
ity and showing our plain face to institutions, in the hope
they will meet us and show their faces back to us. From this
human meeting, we can contemplate who we really are and
begin to behave as if we are in relationship with employ-
ees, customers and a larger society that needs our best ser-
vice. It is our practice to remind those working within large
corporations that they have the power to create meaning-
ful and sustainable contexts for scores of people — if they
dare. And we must dare them, remembering always that we
can’t scold someone into magnanimous behavior, we must
love them into it in spite of every flaw and “unloveliness.”
Learning to be a 'Nowhere Man' Can Allow Us to
Embrace Opportunity

(March 1, 2009)

In 1965 John Lennon was working on completing

the songs for the Beatles' latest album, “Rubber Soul.”

He felt utterly dry when his old tricks in phras-

ing a new song were escaping him. He finally stopped
and gave up. But as legend has it, his unconscious did
not give up. The conscious will surrendered its pow-
er to a larger consciousness, one not dictated by goal.

Lennon's five hours between giving up and receiving

the song in “one full gulp” were spent “doing nothing,” and
“Nowhere Man” was born. It was the first Beatles song to deal
with the existential. It was a song that changed them and us:

Doesn't have a point of view

Knows not where he's going to

Isn't he a bit like you and me?

Nowhere man, please listen

You don't know what you're missing

Nowhere man, the world is at your command.

In today's economy there a lot of nowhere men (and

women) being born every day.

To lose a job in this culture is like losing one's

identity. It is like stepping out of the skin of our com-
fort, our role. This can be frightening. For a long-
time veteran of a single company, it can be downright
terrifying — not just financially, but existentially.

But I would like to offer another view, based in part

on Lennon's insistence, “You don't know what you're miss-
18
ing … the world is at your command.” And at a deeper level,
this view is based on Thich Nhat Hanh's (a Vietnamese Zen
Master and poet) interpretation of Rinzai's (a ninth century
Chinese Zen Master) idea of the “businessless person.” Hanh
presents the ideas in his book “Nothing to Do; Nowhere to Go.”

In our contemporary business culture, to be a “no-

where man” is suspect. We measure ourselves on how
busy we are, how productive and how “connected.”

When the buzz of busyness stops and we lose the

nexus that helped to create, sustain and manage our
external face to the world — our job — we feel as if we
are falling. How can we look at this fall as an opportuni-
ty rather than an end? When the feeling of falling com-
mences, we can consciously stop the impulse to “save” our-
selves through frantically trying to create a new external
role/identity overnight. We can choose to feel the experi-
ence of what it is to be a “nowhere man” and not panic.

We can use the gap of time to become more inti-

mately acquainted with the man under the skin of exter-
nal projection. Like a snake, we can experience not sim-
ply the death of our old skins but the birth of new ones.

We have to trust that dynamic experience is al-

ways in operation and that cycles are in play with us
just as in the natural world. An end of one thing always
marks the beginning of another, if we pay attention.

But to meet this opportunity we mustn't panic or

grasp. We have to practice allowing feelings of anxiety and
pain to be there without acting on them. Just feel them
until they fade and some new feeling begins to emerge.
Being afraid of anxiety is a sure way to prolong it; feel it
completely and it will eventually pass. Once you do, you
can begin to feel the internal depth that you have and see
how you want to manifest it in your next external role.

As Lennon himself experienced, “Nowhere man, the

world is at your command.” It is at your command pre-
cisely because you no longer have to be stuck by a com-
pany, job or context. You are now free to create your own.

Freedom is frightening at first blush, and when not

chosen it can feel like a burden. But going deeper and seeing
a job loss another way is an opportunity for growth, evolu-
tion and internal power. The fruits of this practice will ex-
tend far beyond this economic downturn. They will extend to
all of life, where loss is inevitable and as human beings it is
demanded of us that we learn how to work skillfully with it.

20
“No one can do this practice for us; we have to do
it by ourselves. The only test of whether we are
doing it is our lives.”

-- Charlotte Joko Beck

 Thoreau’s Independence Day lesson: Business
plan must be realistic
(July 5, 2006)

July 4, 1845, is the day Henry David Thoreau moved

into his cabin at Walden Pond. He stayed for two years
and two months working through what it was to bur-
row into his solitude. He planted a bean field, learned
all there was to know about the ponds and the his-
tory of the steps that walked before his. Independence
Day 161 years ago was, for Thoreau, a digging-in. It was
the mark of a man determined to not just think about
what something might be like, but to live the thing.

Thoreau said, “As a single footstep will not make

a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a
pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we
walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we
must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish
to dominate our lives.” To make an impression on our-
selves we have to do a thing repeatedly. We have to get
over the awkwardness of beginning and the idealization of
what might be and simply experience things as they are.

This daily repetition is what we know of as work, and

nothing will substitute for it when it comes to inspiring
assuredness. And this is what Thoreau wanted — to feel
a sense of assuredness in the woods, to handle the ax just
so, identify the plants like old friends and know the birds
by their calls. He used work to become part of the world.
How do we use work? This is a question that I think is a wor-
thy one to ask just after Independence Day. What is work for?

At some level, work is about transformation. Trans-

forming thought into action, plan into reality. And in walking
this path we discover how we work and how the world works.
Growing a garden is a great idea, and the
plan can look incredibly promising on paper.

But it is only when you begin to dig that you dis-

cover your willingness to make the plan live. And
even after your vegetables come up out of the dirt,
22
the leaves often show up with slugs on them — slugs
that you never drew up in your plan but neverthe-
less have made a home in what is now your real garden.

I spoke to an investor not along ago who said he knows

that any business is going to “get into trouble” because con-
tingencies always show up. It is just the nature of the differ-
ence between a business plan and real life. This investor told
me that his core determination for investing money is not
the idea, but the people charged with carrying out the idea.

Can those people repetitively manage the prob-

lems and mishaps that the real world heaps on us?
Do they have the character to work through the un-
planned with diligence and care? If they don’t, they
will never discover the true nature of their business.

A business is not born in the writing of a plan. It is

born in its interaction with reality. I would argue that we
work so we can adapt our dreams into livable realities. If
businesses cannot adapt they die, just as things in nature do.
 Working from Scratch

(December 11, 2008 )

I was out for breakfast the other morning and while

coloring on the table with my kids noticed these words: “this
is a scratch kitchen.” Something was really being made back
there; something authentically its own. A body can live on that
kind of care and concern. How would a mind live on this kind of
concern? What would it be like to live your life “from scratch?”

In reality, it is from scratch. We were born from ba-

sic ingredients and grew in the most loving oven there is
from nothing into something original. And we stay living
from scratch for a long while as children - pretending and
building identities and worlds from nothing save the raw
ingredients of some safety pins, fabric, a blanket, a pile
of stones, or other objects we imbue with the spark of cre-
ation. But in time we are taught formulas about how to live,
behave, think, and speak. We are given processed ingredi-
ents and instant solutions that short circuit our ability and
freedom to live from scratch. We begin to look for the ready-
made answers rather than exploring the untidy questions.
We think that certain ingredients go together while others
do not. Our minds develop a taste for processed thinking
and instant reactions. We forget what it is to feel, contem-
plate, and dream our life anew. We forget what it is to fall
back into our raw ingredients so that we may be re-shaped
and re-discovered with a bit of energy, play, and the sim-
ple desire to continue to become what we have yet to be.

But it is hard to live from scratch. It feels easier to

say “I am this” or “I am that.” But to define ourselves this
way feels artificial; like we are placing a period where an
ellipsis ought to be. It is like being turned into something
finished; something that cannot be returned to its basic
ingredients and be re-made from scratch into something
else. But we are more mysterious than this if we will al-
low for it. In I and Thou Martin Buber writes: “The con-
centration and fusion into a whole being can never be ac-
complished by me, can never be accomplished without me.
I require a You to become; becoming I, I say You. All ac-
24
tual life is encounter.” Life is always shaping us is we re-
main open. Joy is shaping us, as is suffering, as is loss
and fear and love above all. We are being shaped and we
are shaping, we are mixing ingredients - our own and oth-
ers - and creating...if we allow for it. If we don’t substi-
tute the instant responses and reactions that we learned
were good enough to replace our authentic voice and action.

If we want to live in a real way we must toss out what

is instant and come back to what is whole, raw, and being
forever re-made and re-imagined into something nourish-
ing, interesting, imperfect, and daring. How do we do this
in the workplace? How do we take the time to create some-
thing that comes from our encounter with the unknown?
We have to trust our ingredients, our tools,
and our context for using them and then give
ourselves over to what has yet to be done.
 Nothing Helps Improve the Corporate Culture
Like Cooking a Meal

(May 2, 2007)

Why is it important for the leaders of a corpo-

ration to learn how to make bread together? Why is
it essential that they learn how to cook a nourishing
meal, set the table properly, enjoy one another’s com-
pany during the meal and do the dishes afterward?

If I were talking about a corporation whose pri-

mary market was the restaurant business or some
other function of the hospitality industry, this would
make perfect sense - corporate leaders being in
touch with the roles their front-line workers play.

But I’m not just talking about these industries; I’m

talking about any leadership team from any industry. Too
often these leadership teams make decisions about how
work should be done, but they don’t actually roll up their
sleeves and do it. They spend too much of their time evalu-
ating, judging and assessing and not enough time working
and playing. Because of this, they have a tendency to lose
touch with the pulse of what is happening on the ground of
the company, and they lose access to their creative mind.

This state of affairs is nobody’s fault per se; it is sim-

ply the cultural norm that has become an accepted standard
practice of corporate leadership. This has to change now.
The current state of affairs leaves front-line workers feel-
ing alienated, judged and too often afraid to exercise their
creativity spontaneously on the job. Too many talented em-
ployees suffer the “big brother” syndrome - fearing their
individualism and courage will offend the invisible eye of
“corporate.” Corporate culture can’t afford this anymore,
not only because it causes people unnecessary unhappi-
ness but also because it is a revenue killer in today’s econ-
omy - innovation is impossible in such an environment.
So why, as an antidote to this culture of control and nev-
er-ending evaluation, do I ask teams to come together
and cook for a few days? Because I want them to roll up
26
their sleeves and remember what it feels like to work to-
gether, coordinate the timing of a project and communi-
cate for the sake of the project and not for the sake of ego-
inflated evaluation of subordinates. And because I want
them to take the time to enjoy the fruit of their labor.

Baking bread is particularly appropriate be-

cause it teaches leaders that certain things take
time to mature. It has to be worked then left alone to
breathe on its own. Bread baking is the perfect les-
son for the micromanager on how helpful it is to let go
and allow people to evolve without constant meddling.

Leadership teams that engage in these activi-

ties while periodically living together for a few days at
a time throughout the year can learn teamwork and hu-
mility and rediscover the joy of work for work’s sake. The
working of a kitchen translates well to the running of a
company: Cooks are responsible for the well-being of oth-
ers; their hands must always remain clean; they have to
learn to work under pressure and remain innovative.

Finally, they have to understand how a vari-

ety of ingredients go together and that certain dishes
can’t be rushed. Getting leadership teams cooking to-
gether is not a miracle cure for corporate cultures in cri-
sis, but it’s a start. There was a time when the expres-
sion “too many cooks in the kitchen” made sense, but
nowadays, I say we can use all the cooks we can get.
 Learning to Single-task is Key to Respecting
Yourself and Your Work

(May 15, 2008)

Abraham Lincoln once said if he was given eight hours to

chop down a tree, he would spend six hours sharpening his ax.

How we use time in the workplace determines the

quality of our efforts and the quality of our being. Our be-
ing lives in time, and therefore how we use the passing
hours shapes our thoughts, our emotional state and our re-
lationship to the world around us. When we imagine that
our task is separate from us - and that our doing of it is
just something to get done and not a piece of time that we
live once and never again - we do an injustice to this being.

In his comment on chopping down a tree, Lincoln in-

dicates the necessity of contemplating an action before the
action is taken. In so doing, three things will be served: The
ax will not be ruined, Lincoln’s effort will not be in vain, and
the tree will not be butchered. Lincoln is showing respect for
himself, his tools and the entity to be interacted with. Time
is the container through which such meaningful and pur-
poseful interaction will be carried out. Time, Lincoln shows,
is not an enemy to beat but rather a friend to embrace.

It is this way still for many traditional artisans here

in Appalachia who make their living at a forge, a loom, a
potter’s wheel, a lathe or some other tool of creation. For
the majority of us both here and beyond, however, the way
of work is a multitasking gauntlet of meeting, checking, re-
checking, meeting, doing and rechecking some more. We are
in the habit of interrupting ourselves at those very moments
when we could give over to time and become one with it.

Study upon study lately has made one thing clear:

Multitasking does not make us more productive in the long
term. It numbs our minds, stifles our creativity and separates
us from the natural rhythm we biologically (and spiritually)
crave. Yet we continue to do it because of the pressures we feel.

28
 Business practices have not yet changed, even
though many people are aware of the futility of multi-
tasking. People know that calmly considering what to
do before doing it makes sense. They know that if they
wish to keep their concentration while working on a proj-
ect, it is foolish to pick up the phone or check e-mail.

Yet we do it anyway because we are afraid -

afraid we’ll miss something, afraid that our boss-
es believe we get paid only to act, not to think. We are
afraid that to swim in the current of time rather than
against it means that we somehow are not working.

All of these feelings are normal vestiges of a busi-

ness culture that got its start with a time clock and an
assembly line. But that way of working no longer ap-
plies to most of us. We know in a deeper part of our-
selves that to do one thing at a time with our full at-
tention is right for us, right for our tools, right for the
people we are interacting with and right for our business.

Given this state of affairs, we have to learn to tol-

erate our own fear and anxiety. We must tolerate that it
feels awkward at first to swim with the current of time
and not against it. Tolerate that it may make you anx-
ious to meditate for 20 minutes in the morning when you
have “a hundred things to get done.” Tolerate that it may
feel scary at first to take a 30-minute walk at lunch, cell
phone off, so you can clear your mind and reconnect with
the world outside before engaging the afternoon’s tasks.

Eventually that awkwardness, fear and anxiety will

give way, and in its place will be time - as neutral, forgiving
and willing to make a friend of you as it always has been.
 Grove Park Inn’s Stones Demonstrate the
Strength of the Unique

(May 30, 2007)

There are a lot of nice places to play golf, and there

are beautiful spas all over the country. There is good food,
fine restaurants, great service and an interesting histo-
ry in an array of hotels that serve corporate culture. The
Grove Park Inn is not the only one that has all of the above,
which are extras. The soul of the place, the thing that in-
spires awe, is its stones. Taken locally, they each pres-
ent the same face to the world that they did when they
were in nature. The side of the stone that was showing
itself to the world then is the side that is showing now.
But more importantly, not a single stone was cut to cre-
ate the interlocking structure. The right stones had to be
found and placed. Each stone was seen to be perfect so long
as the perfect place was found for it to settle in and live.

A building that is built this way has a life; an organic

reality that transcends any future manipulative purpose
that is ever imposed on it. The stones are pure — perfect in
their odd shapes and formidable weight. The stones honor
the dictum carved into one of their small white brethren
on the side of the large fireplace that is no longer lit — it
is Thoreau’s call to “be not simply good; be good for some-
thing.” And the stones are good for something; simply by
the nature of being their full selves, uncut and unformed.

This is the reason, for me, to bring a corporate retreat

to the Grove Park Inn; not for the amenities, which are
great but can be found in other places, too. What separates
the Grove Park from the rest is the truth of its uncut stones.
So much time is spent in corporate settings on “improv-
ing people’s deficits” — changing them into a mold that
is believed to be better than what they naturally are. I
don’t subscribe to this, and I believe such a philosophy
to be detrimental. Self-improvement makes the assump-
tion that one understands what is happening with the
self and that “improvement” would be a benevolent act.

30
 Unfortunately though, this “improvement” is often
foisted upon someone who has not been given permission to
engage in self-discovery. Discovery is inherently different
from improvement. Discovery is a journey into the unknown,
into mysteries, into what is naturally occurring within.

Discovery of a stone’s shape and essence affords it a

special place in the walls of the Grove Park Inn — it is taken
whole — its flaws and imperfections treated as gifts that help
create a structure. Trying to “improve” these stones would
have created a common structure, not an extraordinary one.

It is the same with people. When we discover our

true nature (flaws and all) we can find our place in the
world, take that place, and serve something greater than
ourselves. If we are merely trying to “improve,” we miss
the natural gift that we are. When people are allowed to
discover what is beautiful about them and then are al-
lowed to position themselves uncut into a larger meaning-
ful framework — something extraordinary is born. The
stones of the Grove Park Inn are living examples of this,
and if we listen to the stones, we can hear them telling
us their story, uncut and unencumbered. And we can take
inspiration and courage from this story and add our own.
 A Trip to Alaska Shows that Nature is the
Greatest Teacher
(August 21, 2008)

I’ve been in Alaska since the beginning of Au-

gust and will stay until the end of the month.

In Denali National Park, I was amazed by the number

of grizzly bears I saw. I watched a mother bear scratch her
back on a tree for a while; her cub looked on and then tried
the same thing. I saw a gray wolf. I saw many moose, cari-
bou, some Dall sheep and a fox. I saw Denali (Mount McKin-
ley) twice, which is rare given the usual cloud cover around
the 20,320-foot mountain, the highest in North America.
Around the Kenai Peninsula, I saw glaciers “calving” -
large chunks of ice falling off into the sea. I saw humpback
whales, orcas, sea lions, seals and puffins. One night I was
paddling a sea kayak in the fjords as the sun set and the
moon rose and I felt as though I was dreaming - the clarity
of the mountains, the huge open sky and the absolute quiet.

My wife and I had wanted to come up here for about

15 years, and I had wanted to come up alone even before
that. We worked some summers in Montana instead and
put Alaska on hold until now. We all have things that
need to be done in order to fulfill certain parts of our
personal stories. Alaska fell into this category for me,
and being here with my family is an indescribable gift.

There are many stories of people who came to Alas-

ka with a vision of life bigger than what the lower 48
could contain. Alaska defies expectations. It’s a land of
extremes - in beauty, isolation, dark, light, riches, pov-
erty, greed and giving. The wildness of the landscapes
and of the creatures that inhabit them - animal and per-
son alike - are immediate. Things up here are too raw,
vast and unpredictable ever to be fully conquered by man.
Remnants of his attempts and failures are everywhere.

Our cabin is near a place north of Anchor-

age called Hatcher Pass, the site of a now-abandoned
32
gold mine. The area has some of the most beautiful
mountains and streams I have ever felt. It’s a great
place to hike around - wide open, green, with views of
higher snow capped mountains in the near distance.

One day we got to talking to a group traveling together.

It turns out they were 15 students about to enter their first
year of business school at the University of Michigan. We
spoke to them at Hatcher Pass and then bumped into them
again at Denali, bonding and being enveloped by the beauty.

Before these students take their first gradu-

ate-level business course, they will have seen a griz-
zly bear in the wild, a humpback whale, a light-filled
day of snowcapped mountains in every direction,
golden eagles overhead and moose on the hillside.

This beauty will go with them into their strategy class-

es, their marketing classes and especially their leadership
classes. The appreciation of beauty safeguards us from a life
of nihilism. Beauty silently asks us to serve it, to be nourished
by it and to share it with those we know and those we don’t.

Natural beauty is a great teacher - not just

for Muir and Thoreau and the radical individualist,
but for society, culture and particularly for the peo-
ple who will run the corporations that we hold in trust.
 Involve Yourself in Whatever You’re Doing so
You Can Find Your Life’s Work

(June 14, 2006)

The Dhammapada, one of the oldest Bud-

dhist scriptures, says that “your work is to find
your work and, once you do, to give your all to it.”

Some people know they want to be doctors or bass

players from the time they are 14. But for the rest of us, it
is a much longer search. And as we search for that ultimate
thing that feels like “our work,” we will go through many jobs.

It is those jobs and the effort we give to them that will

lead us to the work that we feel we were born to do. Every cir-
cumstance we find ourselves in has something to teach us. All
the people we find ourselves surrounded by have something
to teach us. By giving you all to whatever work you are doing
at the moment, you may find the work you weremeant to do.

Work is a journey, not a final destination. If we are

always after the final destination, we will miss the jour-
ney of discovery that creates that direction. The direc-
tion is a process — it is not a place we can just leap to,
skipping over all the hard or boring parts. A useful way
to understand this process of getting to “our work” is to
examine how artists do it. They don’t write or paint the
masterpiece that they feel most defines them all at once,
but they rather steadily work at pieces of the puzzle of
their own development. I think, for example, of the ear-
ly 20th-century German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who
spent time working as a secretary for the sculptor August
Rodin in Paris. Did Rilke feel that his work was to be a
secretary? Or even a sculptor? No. But he threw himself
completely into his work and studied Rodin’s every move.

It was watching Rodin work with clay each day like

a “workman” that taught Rilke about work — that art was
not just about inspiration. It was also by studying Rodin’s
reverence for real “things” that led Rilke to discover a new
34
way of writing poems that led to a breakthrough work called
the “New Poems” from which he went on to really discov-
er his art and its meaning. Rilke did all of this because
he completely dedicated himself to his job of the moment.

We discover who we are through an all-out engagement

with the world around us. It is only in allowing ourselves
to be shaped by our circumstances that we can grow into
something that we never would have expected. It is often
this unexpected organic discovery that turns out to be our
work. What we thought at the beginning of the journey,
for most of us, probably won’t be true
in the middle or the near the end.

What this example and thousands of others like

it teach us is that it is in the effort of fully committing
ourselves to the work that is in front of us that gets us
where we need to go. Meaning does not exist in a vacu-
um. It shows up in the course of working through those
very things that we often think of as getting in our way.
36
 About Jonathon Flaum

Jonathon Flaum is a writer and Zen practitioner. He

is the author of three books and over sixty articles about
creating and sustaining a meaningful and compassionate
workplace. He facilitates workshops and leads retreats
as the director of the WriteMind Institute for Corporate
Contemplation. He holds an M.A. in religious studies from
the Florida State University and an M.F.A in playwrit-
ing from the University of Southern California. He loves a
good joke and a slice of New York-style pizza.

books by Jonathon Flaum

LEADERSHIP
How the Red Wolf Found Its Howl:
The Internal Journey to Leadership

INNOVATION
How the Paper Fish Learned to Swim:
A Fable About Inspiring Creativity and Bringing New
Ideas to Life

MULTI-GENERATIONAL WORKPLACE
The 100-Mile Walk:
A Father and Son on a Quest to Find the Essence of
Leadership
co-writtern with Sander Flaum

blog

workasrefuge.wordpress.com

...an ongoing story of human life and work.

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