David Whyte is an English poet who lives in the US, and uses poetry in his work in organisational development. In his own words, "This book explores the possibility of being at home in the world, melding soul life with work life, the inner ocean of longing and belonging with the outer ground of strategy and organisational control". He argues that soul has been pushed away and ignored, and that a split has developed between work and soul, and that this is the cause of much unhappiness.
Whyte uses poems and stories to delve into the darker sides of organisations. For example, Beowulf is a story about a monster who lives down at the bottom of a lake, and who is successfully killed, only to be replaced by his even more monstrous mother. It is a metaphor for the journey to the unconscious to face the dark unknown side of ourselves. "Our deeper struggles are in effect our greatest spiritual and creative assets and the door to whatever creativity we might possess".
This is a book very much in the mould of the mythopoetic menswork: Robert Bly, Michael Meade, Richard Olivier et al. It is a complex book, with no simple recipes on "How to make your organisation soulful in 5 simple steps". This is to be expected, because soul work is not like that. This surely makes it unlike most books in organisational development or management. It talks about holding the tension between opposites, for example "In the corporation of today we must make a timeless home between the fierce heat of innovation and the cool winds of consolidation." "Fire in the Earth" is a chapter about creativity. "Fire in the Voice" is about speaking out at work. One chapter deals with complexity itself. It begins with the image of a swirling flock of starlings which haunted the poet Coleridge all his life. Another deals with the soul at mid-life. It begins with a story about a shopkeeper who, aged thirty, finds a corpse on the doorstep of his shop.
The Heart Aroused uses the great wealth of poet imagery to take the reader on a mythic journey through the corporate world. The effect is felt accordingly: not so much in the mind, rather in feelings. This is path-breaking and much needed work. It makes a strong claim for integration: integration of people's souls with their work; and integration of organisations with the much greater world outside them.
The final chapter, entitled "The Soul of the World: Towards an Ecological Imagination" points to a "...core delusion at the centre of our struggles in all organisations. A core delusion that narrows our sense of self and ignores the greater world beyond the organisation.... Trying to ignore this greater world, we forge a small identity held within the narrow corridors of the building in which we work. Rather than breathing life and vitality into work from the greater perspective which is our birthright, we allow our dreams and desires to be constricted and replaced by those of the organisation and then wonder why it has such a stranglehold on our lives." This chapter talks about the need to acknowledge that the world also has a soul, and the need to recognise, and work with, the cycles of nature, which include darkness as well as light, death as well as life.
What does an organisation with soul look like? "A new organisation that honours the soul and the soul of the world would be a learning organisation, it would be as much concerned with what it serves as what it is... It would be an organisation willing to ask deeply radical questions about whether its products are actually necessary. A soul-based organisation would have Zen Master Suzuki Roshi's quality of beginner's mind."
This book is very exciting. To my mind it contains the seeds of a new era of corporate life where work begins to find its proper place in the great scheme of life.
Steve Banks
Copyright © Achilles Heel Collective
