The Answer To How Is Yes: Acting on what matters by Peter Block: I can’t keep this book out of my mind. While half of it is devoted to organizational change, the first half of the book is a call to ask the profound questions of life and allow those questions to guide our actions. This is not a guide to the spiritual search, but is filled with clues about how we limit our potential. One of the chief ways is to focus on “how” questions whenever we begin to consider change. How do you do it? How much does it cost? How long will it take? Considered too early, those questions derail our initiative and are symptomatic of fear.
“What is the question that, if you had the answer, would set you free?” is what Block calls the mother of all questions. I think that spiritual seekers often fail to keep that question in front of their mind. The question will differ from person to person and change over time, but its remembrance has the power to keep us from waivering even in the darkest night of the soul.
Lest I create the wrong impression, Peter Block doesn’t talk about the spiritual search in The Answer To How Is Yes, but those are the sort of realizations his book inspires. It’s a book about human nature, how we thwart ourselves, and organizational nature, our wrong assumptions about the source of power and freedom in our workplace lives. As a lover of the spiritual fully engaged in the world of work, I recommend it on both counts.