The Answer to How Is Yes Acting on What Matters

People keep asking "How?" as a defense against living their life, says best-selling author Peter Block. In this witty, insightful award-winning book, Block shows that many standard solutions and improvement efforts, reinforced by most of the literature, keep people paralyzed. Here he places the "how to" craze in perspective and teaches individuals, workers, and managers ways to act on what they know. This in turn allows them to reclaim their freedom and capacity to create the kind of world they want to live in. Block's "elements of choice" - the characteristic of a new workplace and a new world based on more positive values - include self-mentoring, investing in relationships, accepting the unpredictability of life, and realizing that the individual prospers only when the community does.

Peter Block is an author, speaker, and a partner in Designed Learning, a training company that offers consulting skills workshops. He is the author of three bestselling books: Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used, The Empowered Manager: Positive Political Skills at Work, and Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest. His most recent book is Flawless Consulting Fieldbook & Companion: A Guide to Understanding Your Expertise.

Introduction: Acting on What Matters

Part 1: The question
1. How Is the Wrong Question
2. Yes Is the Right Question
3. Defenses Against Acting

Part 2: Three qualities
4. Recapturing the Idealism of Youth
5. Sustaining the Touch of Intimacy .
6. Enduring the Depth of Philosophy

Part 3: The requirements
7. Claiming Full Citizenship
8. Home School Yourself
9. Your Boss Doesn't Have What You Want
10. Oh, by the Way...You Have to Give Up Your Ambition
11. Care for the Whole (Whether It Deserves It or Not)

Part 4: Social architecture
12. The Instrumental Imperative
13. The Archetypes of Instrumentality and Desire
14. The Role of the Social Architect
15. It’s a Mystery to Me
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author
About Designed Learning