The Way Were Working Isnt Working, Tony Schwartz
The Way Were Working Isnt Working, Tony Schwartz
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The Way We're Working Isn't Working
The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance

Author: Tony Schwartz, Jean Gomes

Narrator: Tony Schwartz

Abridged: 6 hr 16 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/18/2010


Synopsis

This book was previously titled, Be Excellent at Anything.

The Way We're Working Isn't Working is one of those rare books with the power to profoundly transform the way we work and live.

Demand is exceeding our capacity. The ethic of "more, bigger, faster" exacts a series of silent but pernicious costs at work, undermining our energy, focus, creativity, and passion. Nearly 75 percent of employees around the world feel disengaged at work every day. The Way We're Working Isn't Working offers a groundbreaking approach to reenergizing our lives so we’re both more satisfied and more productive—on the job and off.

By integrating multidisciplinary findings from the science of high performance, Tony Schwartz, coauthor of the #1 bestselling The Power of Full Engagement, makes a persuasive case that we’re neglecting the four core needs that energize great performance: sustainability (physical); security (emotional); self-expression (mental); and significance (spiritual). Rather than running like computers at high speeds for long periods, we’re at our best when we pulse rhythmically between expending and regularly renewing energy across each of our four needs.

Organizations undermine sustainable high performance by forever seeking to get more out of their people. Instead they should seek systematically to meet their four core needs so they’re freed, fueled, and inspired to bring the best of themselves to work every day.

Drawing on extensive work with an extra-ordinary range of organizations, among them Google, Ford, Sony, Ernst & Young, Shell, IBM, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Cleveland Clinic, Schwartz creates a road map for a new way of working. At the individual level, he explains how we can build specific rituals into our daily schedules to balance intense effort with regular renewal; offset emotionally draining experiences with practices that fuel resilience; move between a narrow focus on urgent demands and more strategic, creative thinking; and balance a short-term focus on immediate results with a values-driven commitment to serving the greater good. At the organizational level, he outlines new policies, practices, and cultural messages that Schwartz’s client companies have adopted.

The Way We're Working Isn't Working offers individuals, leaders, and organizations a highly practical, proven set of strategies to better manage the relentlessly rising demands we all face in an increasingly complex world.

About Tony Schwartz

Tony Schwartz is the founder and president of The Energy Project, a consulting group that works with a number of Fortune 500 companies, including American Express, Credit Suisse, Ford, General Motors, Gillette, Master Card, and Sony.  He was a reporter for the New York Times, an associate editor at Newsweek, and a staff writer for New York Magazine and Esquire and a columnist for Fast Company.  He co-authored the #1 worldwide bestseller The Art of the Deal with Donald Trump, and after that wrote What Really Matters.  He co-authored the #1 New York Times bestseller The Power of Full Engagement with Jim Loehr.  

About Jean Gomes

Jean Gomes is Managing Director of DPA, a London-based management consultancy specializing in leadership and culture change. For the past 20 years, he has been advising companies like Coca-Cola, Pfizer, Cable & Wireless, Sun Microsystems, Sony, ICL, The Home Office, Nokia and Intel in the US, Japan and Europe. He is also Chairman of The Energy Project Europe. 


Reviews

Goodreads review by Nathanael on April 20, 2012

This book makes so much sense - it's frustrating that these principles aren't understood widely and incorporated into our lives and culture. The concept is actually similar to another book I recently read - Mood Mapping - where various states are explained in four-quadrant graphs. Physical, emotiona......more

Goodreads review by Girish on December 18, 2024

4.5 Sometimes what makes a book good or great is sheer timing. Good books have a way of finding you when you need them the most. Mostly I'm grateful simply because it made me realise the absolute tumultuousness I sometimes feel in my job that I dearly love is completely normal. And that's a very lib......more

Goodreads review by Uwe on January 10, 2011

Generally, I record my book reviews on Goodreads but this book by Tony Schwartz was so close to the core mission of BatesHook that I wanted to share it with a wier audience. The basic premise of the book is: The furious activity to accomplish more with less exacts a series of silent costs: less capac......more

Goodreads review by Florin on July 30, 2018

Good book, describing inner needs to excel. From physical needs(which were pretty un-exciting to read) to the emotional and spiritual , which is the part this book excel. I Listened this book twice , guess I really liked it :-)......more

Goodreads review by Sean on May 09, 2014

No career automatically provides a purpose, but no job precludes our finding a purpose in it either. It isn't the role we fill that prompts a sense of purpose but how we choose to approach whatever work we do. The bigger the reservoir of value of value and well-being, the less emotionally vulnerable......more