Practice Management

Got Heart?

By Dan Hull

In the course of history many more people have died for their drink and their dope than have died for their religion or their country. The craving for ethyl alcohol and the opiates has been stronger, in these millions, than the love of God, of home, of children; even of life.... Why should such multitudes of men and women be so ready to sacrifice themselves for a cause so utterly hopeless and in ways so painful and so profoundly humiliating?

--Aldous Huxley, "Drugs That Shape Men's Minds", The Saturday Evening Post, October 18, 1958

Huxley on realigning passions. Heart. Somewhere, deep inside, most humans have Heart. But our company hasn't seen much Heart in the workplace these days; too many people of all ages seem to have given up on their lives and standards. We are mailing it in.

In the past 15 years or so, efforts to "humanize" education and the workplace (the great Ken Blanchard and Steve Covey and their followers are not the men for this moment, folks)--those efforts now peak at the worst possible time for the West--have only made matters worse. We have tried to dumb things down, and make them easier and less complex than they really are.

Yanks are famous for Heart, Achievement and Doing Things Right Under Pressure and in Adverse Situations. Heart. Where is it? Maybe America's detractors were right. Did most Yanks lose their Fighting Mojo?

Full post as published by What About Clients? on September 15, 2009 (boomark / email).