“How can I influence others without moral compromise?” There are a number of easy cheats to convince people to follow your leadership (carrots and sticks) or to buy your product or join your cause (incentives), but eventually those things always fail. Why? Because they’re disingenuous. They don’t tap into people’s passions. They don’t move the heart. And without that happening, whatever impact you have is fleeting at best.
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Title: Rework
Authors: Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson
Publisher: Crown Business (2010)
We have a problem in the business world, one that is becoming increasingly apparent with each passing year. The “rules” of work haven’t really changed since the early 20th century. The last significant change was the advent of the 40-hour work week, which was intended to protect employees from being overworked by their employers.
Over the last 100 years, we’ve moved away from an industrial economy into an informational one, but the rules haven’t moved with it. Where we work, how we work and when we work… the status quo has gone unchallenged for far too long.
The rules need to change.
Authors (and founders of 37signals) Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson get this. They know things need to change, and they want to show you how in their new book, Rework.
Rework is a series of essays encouraging you to rethink how you work. Covering topics such as start-ups, marketing, meetings, planning, hiring and more, this book will be a breath of fresh air for some—and a slap in the face for others.
Provoking a Reaction—By Having an Opinion
Fried and Hansson don’t shy away from speaking their minds in this book. They’re out to provoke a reaction. And they succeed spectacularly. A few standout examples:
Staying late to put in extra hours—
Not only is this workaholism unnecessary, it’s stupid. Working more doesn’t mean you care more or get more done. It just means you work more. . . Workaholics aren’t heroes. They don’t save the day, they just use it up. The real hero is already home because she figured out a faster way to get things done. [pp. 25, 26]
On mission statements— Continue Reading…
Photo by Jonathan Ruchti
A discussion that’s come up recently with some friends has been the idea of “finishing well.”
When someone says, “I want to finish well,” I wonder how often they mean “I want to build a monument to my accomplishments”? This is probably because I’m naturally a bit pessimistic.
I guess the question that’s been coming to mind is—is that really what we’re called to do?
Do we want to “finish well” and try to protect our idea of what our legacy should be—and in the process see it crumble all around us?
Do we hold so tightly to our ideas of what we think our place in history should be that we fail to see it slipping through our fingers?
Do we spend so much time thinking of the perfect exit strategy that we don’t consider how we can prepare those coming after us?
Is that what we want our legacy to be?
Paul knew what it meant to finish well. He wrote to Timothy,
I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. . . . [A]lways be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. (2 Tim 4:1-2,5-8)
Undeniably Paul speaks here of finishing well. “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith,” he writes. He persevered until the end.
But how do we know that he’s done all this? Continue Reading…
