The Authentic Organization

Help Me Choose the Most Compelling Material

Michael Gilbert — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 04:31:34 +0000

Thank you very much for the resources on authentic work that you suggested to me, in email and in the comments of my recent request. Now I have another favor to ask of you. I’m planning on pulling together and submitting a proposal for this book soon. (And yes, I will post it all here [...]

Help Me Compile a Reading List on Authentic Work?

Michael Gilbert — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:45:48 +0000

I’ve been in a cull-de-sac for much of the first half of this year in regard to my book The Authentic Organization. I had a breakthrough of sorts in the last few weeks, which involves a slight broadening of focus, a likely change of working title, a revised outline, and a request to my readers [...]

Good Fences: On Boundaries, Agency, and Wholeness in Work Life

Michael Gilbert — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 20:19:48 +0000

Imagine this scenario: You receive an unexpected inheritance that enables you to quit the job that has eaten up so much of your time, get some well-deserved rest, and then spend the time you previously dedicated to the job (and commuting to the job and recovering from the job) on your kids and your art. [...]

Why Work-Life Balance is Bad Idea

Michael Gilbert — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 02:32:25 +0000

Although I am firmly allied with the mission and spirit of all the professionals and organizations who use the term “work-life balance” as something to strive for, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s fundamentally flawed, a dangerous trap, an all-around bad idea. Superficially Sensible The concept is enormously popular – over 10 million results [...]

Chapter Outline of the Book

Michael Gilbert — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 19:57:29 +0000

After a lengthy break from the book caused by calamaties not worth describing here, I am back with the first draft of a high level outline of the book. It’s full of abstractions, of course, as something with one paragraph per chapter is likely to be. But something resembling a vision for the book is [...]

Fast Company Reduces Authenticity to a Brand Experience

Michael Gilbert — Mon, 28 May 2007 16:31:30 +0000

Maybe I shouldn’t read Fast Company, but I do. I also read sites that reduce complex ideas into a series of bulleted “hacks” and mainstream news sites that can’t seem to step even a millimeter outside the guiding tropes of our very painful times. If it’s just an occasional craving for outrage, then I can [...]

Narrow Self-Image in Civil Society Organizations

Michael Gilbert — Thu, 17 May 2007 05:57:35 +0000

It is sometimes said that a narrow self-image prevented the wealthy American railroad companies from investing in automobiles and airplanes in the first half of the twentieth century. They saw themselves as being in the railway business, rather than in the transportation business. Thus, by the middle of the century, the modes of transportation that [...]

Mindless Behavior in Organizations

Michael Gilbert — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 05:42:59 +0000

Imagine you receive a conventionally formatted memo at work, the contents of which read “Please return this memo immediately” along with instructions on where to do so. Because you are right this moment reading a post about mindless behavior in organizations, you probably think that you would see the memo as some sort of joke. [...]

The Poison of Faux Realism

Michael Gilbert — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 20:46:45 +0000

As I see it, social and personal change comes about through an honest and transparent commitment to two sides of an endless contradiction: The world as it is and the world as we wish it were. We can’t trade one for the other. We have to embrace both in order to make change. That is [...]

Transparency about Salaries

Michael Gilbert — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 21:35:14 +0000

I learned how to behave properly at an adult dinner table at a pretty young age. But when I moved to the United States at the age of 13, I discovered that some American families have very different rules of conversation than those I had become familiar with in Europe. All the topics that I [...]