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THE NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER!
Before you ask, "Why aren't my employees working harder?" . . . ask yourself, "Why are my employees working?"
PRAISE FOR THE WHY OF WORK:
“This book may well be held up as a game-changer in the world of work.” -- Edge magazine/International Leadership and Management
"Will help managers create a sense of purpose among employees, motivating them and inspiring them to break out to do more." -- Publishers Weekly
"Principled, timely, and engaging, The Why of Work teaches that building a culture of abundance and common purpose is essential to organizational success." -- Stephen R. Covey, bestselling author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
"Will have a major impact on how individuals shape their attitude to work, how organizations create abundant cultures, and how leaders turn personal meaning into public good." -- Jigmi Y. Thinley, Prime Minister of Bhutan
"The Why of Work shows a better, different way to build and lead organizations. It is an insightful guide to how leaders can infuse meaning into their organizations."-- Jeffrey Pfeffer, Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business and author of Power: Why Some People Have It—and Others Don't
"This book brings the question 'why' to the place in which we spend most of our adult lives, giving us insightful tools to help make a meaningful difference in people's lives." -- Don Hall, Jr., president and CEO, Hallmark Cards, Inc.
"This is a must read for anyone who works, leads others at work, or works to build a supportive environment." -- Beverly Kaye, founder/CEO, Career Systems International, and coauthor of Love 'Em or Lose 'Em: Getting Good People to Stay
"Breaks new ground . . . . Going beyond competence and commitment to create abundance at work could be the next frontier for leaders." -- Paul Humphries, EVP Human Resources, Flextronics
"The Why of Work opens the door to significant employee engagement. The alignment between company values and those of customers and communities can indeed give employees a sense of purpose while delivering great results to customers!" -- Paula S. Larson, Chief HR Officer, Invesys
"Blackstone has proved that finding superior leaders produces superior results. Dave Ulrich has brought this thinking to a new level at Blackstone. Every private equity investor and senior manager must read this book." -- James Quella, Senior Operating Partner, The Blackstone Group
According to studies, we all work for the same thing--and it's not just money. It's meaning. Through our work, we seek a sense of purpose, contribution, connection, value, and hope. Digging down to the meaning of work taps our resilience in hard times and our passion in good times. That's the simple but profound premise behind this groundbreaking book by renowned management expert Dave Ulrich and psychologist Wendy Ulrich. They've talked to thousands of people--from rank-and-file workers to clients and customers to top-level executives--and synthesized major disciplines to identify the "why" behind our most successful experiences.
Using the model of the "abundant organization," they provide you with the "how" to create meaning and value in your own workplace. Learn how to:
- Ask the seven questions that drive abundance
- Understand the needs of your customers and staff
- Personalize the work to motivate your employees
- Build and grow your business in any economy
By following the Ulrichs' step-by-step guidelines, you will set off a chain reaction of positive and enduring effects. Employees who find meaning in their work are more competent, committed, and eager to contribute—and their contribution will result in increased customer commitment, which delivers a winning performance on the bottom line.
The Why of Work includes targeted checklists, questionnaires, and other useful tools to help you turn aspirations into action. Using the proven principles of abundance, you can coordinate your needs with those of your employers, your employees, and your customers--and create a vision that resonates for years to come. When you understand why we work, you know how to succeed.
DAVE ULRICH, PH.D., is a professor of business at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, and cofounder of The RBL Group. He has written 23 books that cover topics in HR, leadership, and organization; he serves on the Board of Directors for Herman Miller and the Board of Trustees of Southern Virginia University; and he is a Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources.
WENDY ULRICH, PH.D., M.B.A., has been a practicing psychologist for over 20 years. She is the founder of Sixteen Stones Center for Growth, which offers seminar-retreats on creating abundance and meaning, and she has authored two books on personal change.
About the Author
Dave Ulrich's work passion has been how to build organization capabilities (systems, processes, cultures) that create value to multiple stakeholders, then to help leaders build intangible value in organizations. Working with over half of the Fortune 200 and with companies throughout the world, he provides seminars, writes books, and coaches leaders to build sustainable organizations by turning customer and investor expectations into personal and organizational actions. He helps leaders move beyond employee engagement to helping employees find real meaning from work. He is a professor of business at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and co-founder of The RBL Group. He has written 15 books covering topics in HR and Leadership; is currently on the Board of Directors for Herman Miller; is a Fellow in the National Academy of Human Resources; and is on the Board of Trustees of Southern Virginia University.
Wendy Ulrich, Ph.D., has been a psychologist in private practice in Michigan for over twenty years. She is founder of Sixteen Stones Center for Growth in Utah, offering seminar-retreats on abundance. Their work with organizations and individuals intersects at helping people find meaning at work. Dave works to rethink and redefine how organizations work and Wendy works to help individuals rethink and redefine their own lives. At the same time, they are committed to the importance of the organization's responsibility to shareholders and investors as they respond to external conditions.
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1. What am I known for?
2. Where am I going?
3. Whom do I travel with?
4. How do I build a positive work environment?
5. What challenges interest me?
6. How do I respond to disposability and change?
7. What delights me?
They devote a separate chapter to each of these seven questions, focusing on real-world situations in which various people address the given issues each query raises. Perhaps your initial responses to the questions have begun to suggest what you would like to change. Perhaps they have evoked others. For example, which of the seven are the easiest for you to answer? Which are the most difficult? Is the answer to any one of them of greater importance to you than any others?
In the Preface, the Ulrichs explain what they hope their book will accomplish. They seem wholeheartedly committed to helping their reader to add substantial value in all areas of her or his own life (notably family, career, and community), and also to help their reader help others to do so. There are frequent references to meaning or the absence thereof. The Ulrichs share their thoughts and feelings about both the "why" and the "how" of meaning at work. "The why refers to the human search for meaning that finds its way into our offices and factories, a search that motivates, inspires, and defines us. The how gets us into the practicalities of how leaders facilitate that search personally and among their employees." Purpose gives both meaning and value to such initiatives. The Ulrichs characterize human beings as "meaning-making machines" who seek and often find inherent value in making sense of life.
Such meaning also has market value because "meaningful work solves real problems, contributes real benefits, and thus adds real value to customers and investors." In this context, the Ulrichs introduce their concept of the "abundant organization" and identify its dominant characteristics: "a work setting in which individuals coordinate their aspirations and actions to create meaning for themselves, value for stakeholders, and hope for humanity at large"; an organization that "has enough and to spare of the things that matter most": creativity, hope, resilience, determination, resourcefulness, and leadership; a profitable enterprise that concentrates on opportunities, potentialities, synergies, and fulfillment of a diversity of human needs and experiences; and especially when times are tough, a social as well as economic forces that can "bring order, integrity, and purpose out of chaos and disintegration."
An abundant organization gives meaning to everyone involved by offering a spiritual as well as physical environment within which to thrive as human beings; their contributions, in turn, create a decisive competitive advantage for the organization while increasing and enhancing its market as well as its social value.
In the final chapter and then in the Apppendix, the Ulrichs share their thoughts and feelings about the implications of the seven principles as well as actions of abundant organizations that they proposed in the first nine chapters. Once again they stress the importance of identifying and then resolving the root causes of both organizational and individual dysfunctionality and deterioration rather than merely respond to its symptoms. Once again, they reassert that the underlying cause of many (most?) problems in the workplace is a "deficit" of both meaning and purpose.
To become and then remain "abundant," an organization must help its people to leverage their strengths and serve their core values, meanwhile doing so with their career objectives in proper alignment with their organization's strategic objectives. That is the "Why" of their relationship. In this brilliant book, Dave and Wendy Ulrich also provide leaders with the "How," the information and counsel they need, to create an abundance of purpose and meaning both for themselves and for everyone else involved, at all levels and in all areas of the enterprise they share.
The Ulrich's have a damn good stab at making yet another business case for why to consider the why. In this regard they're keeping company with many of the major research houses that have come to the same conclusion.They point, as others do, to the market value of intangibles and the track record of business leaders who value soft skills. The trouble is, the market is saturated with studies making the same case. So why are employee engagement levels still at record low levels? Well, clearly, boardrooms, in the main, are still saying one thing and doing another, safe in the knowledge that it's an employer's market "like it or lump it". Will this book change that "dog in a manger" mentality? It may help... a bit. Even if the revolution has to come one leader at a time, that, at least, has to be a good thing.
The most impactful business case for their core thesis that people and businesses are more effective when they understand the why of work comes well into the book, when David shares an anecdote about the banking crisis and counter-capitalist bailout process. When asked his opinion he does point to the elephant in the room namely the glaring absence of actions to address the root cause of the problem: "If the holes are not fixed or people's lives are not put in order, bailouts accomplish little". Wise words indeed. But again, who is really listening? David makes the link between individual behaviour, corporate culture, work and home life. Yet all of the political talk is obsessed with structural and legislative changes.
This book implies that creating a culture in which leaders think as hard about the "how" as they do the "what"; where people create rather than exploit relationships and where colleagues examine their own motivation, values and style as well as the qualities of others can collectively be a route to addressing the root causes of the economic malaise. I can't agree more.
Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl sums this cause and effect relationship up (as he tends to), much more effectively with a single poignant phrase, when quoting Nietzsche "He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how". The worry is that the current focus remains firmly on the suffering rather than enabling and on the "bearing" rather than re-framing and re-focusing the why. And unfortunately, the choice quotes the Ulrichs have selected to illustrate their points are a deal more engaging than the consultancy speak they sometimes use to describe their own methodology. But that shouldn't detract from the core message.
I recently happened upon two choice quotes during the course of my workaday consultancy that illustrate why. The first is from a CEO:
"I have plenty of emotional intelligence...I just choose to ignore that voice most of the time".
The second is from an HR director who confided privately:
"The mistake many people make is that when I say "I understand" they somehow hear "I care".
I think we can all see the dilemma the Ulrichs faced when they wrote a book which is at odds with the prevailing short-termism typifying these times. While I would like to see more of their philosophy role-modelled in the style and structure of their writing, the reader will be left in no doubt that leaders would do well to read this and soak it up attentively and with some quiet humility. Let's face it, few business and political leaders have too much to be arrogant about right now and could, quite frankly, do with all the help they can get.
1. What am I known for?
2. Where am I going?
3. Whom do I travel with?
4. How do I build a positive work environment?
5. What challenges interest me?
6. How do I respond to disposability and change?
7. What delights me?
They devote a separate chapter to each of these seven questions, focusing on real-world situations in which various people address the given issues each query raises. Perhaps your initial responses to the questions have begun to suggest what you would like to change. Perhaps they have evoked others. For example, which of the seven are the easiest for you to answer? Which are the most difficult? Is the answer to any one of them of greater importance to you than any others?
In the Preface, the Ulrichs explain what they hope their book will accomplish. They seem wholeheartedly committed to helping their reader to add substantial value in all areas of her or his own life (notably family, career, and community), and also to help their reader help others to do so. There are frequent references to meaning or the absence thereof. The Ulrichs share their thoughts and feelings about both the "why" and the "how" of meaning at work. "The why refers to the human search for meaning that finds its way into our offices and factories, a search that motivates, inspires, and defines us. The how gets us into the practicalities of how leaders facilitate that search personally and among their employees." Purpose gives both meaning and value to such initiatives. The Ulrichs characterize human beings as "meaning-making machines" who seek and often find inherent value in making sense of life.
Such meaning also has market value because "meaningful work solves real problems, contributes real benefits, and thus adds real value to customers and investors." In this context, the Ulrichs introduce their concept of the "abundant organization" and identify its dominant characteristics: "a work setting in which individuals coordinate their aspirations and actions to create meaning for themselves, value for stakeholders, and hope for humanity at large"; an organization that "has enough and to spare of the things that matter most": creativity, hope, resilience, determination, resourcefulness, and leadership; a profitable enterprise that concentrates on opportunities, potentialities, synergies, and fulfillment of a diversity of human needs and experiences; and especially when times are tough, a social as well as economic forces that can "bring order, integrity, and purpose out of chaos and disintegration."
An abundant organization gives meaning to everyone involved by offering a spiritual as well as physical environment within which to thrive as human beings; their contributions, in turn, create a decisive competitive advantage for the organization while increasing and enhancing its market as well as its social value.
In the final chapter and then in the Apppendix, the Ulrichs share their thoughts and feelings about the implications of the seven principles as well as actions of abundant organizations that they proposed in the first nine chapters. Once again they stress the importance of identifying and then resolving the root causes of both organizational and individual dysfunctionality and deterioration rather than merely respond to its symptoms. Once again, they reassert that the underlying cause of many (most?) problems in the workplace is a "deficit" of both meaning and purpose.
To become and then remain "abundant," an organization must help its people to leverage their strengths and serve their core values, meanwhile doing so with their career objectives in proper alignment with their organization's strategic objectives. That is the "Why" of their relationship. In this brilliant book, Dave and Wendy Ulrich also provide leaders with the "How," the information and counsel they need, to create an abundance of purpose and meaning both for themselves and for everyone else involved, at all levels and in all areas of the enterprise they share.
Sheryl Dawson
COO, Total Career Success, Inc.
Co-Author, Job Search: The Total System (3rd Ed)
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