Good Work When Excellence and Ethics Meet BY HOWARD GARDNER, MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI, AND WILLIAM DAMON How can you do good work in an age of relentless market forces and lightning-fast technology By considering three basic issues your profession’s mission, its standards or best practices and your own identity. Although this book focuses mainly on examples from the fields of genetics and journalism, its insights can be applied to a number of professions buffeted by changing times. The authors have also continued their effort to identify individuals and institutions that exemplify good work on their website www.goodwork.org Type I Insight: What do you do if you wake up in the morning and dread going to work, because the daily routine no longer satisfies your standards Start groups or forums with others in your industry or outside it to reach beyond your current area of influence Work with existing organizations to confirm your profession’s values or develop new guidelines Take a stand. It can be risky, sure, but leaving a job for ethical reasons need not involve abandoning your professional goals. Outliers: The Story of Success BY MALCOLM GLADWELL With a series of compelling and gracefully told stories, Gladwell deftly takes a hammer to the idea of the “self-made man Success is more complicated, he says. High achievers—from young Canadian hockey players to Bill Gates to the Beatles—are often the products of hidden advantages of culture, timing, demographics, and luck that helped them become masters in their fields. Reading this book will lead you to reevaluate your own path. More important, it will make you wonder how much human potential we’re losing when so many people are denied these advantages. Type I Insight: It is not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine-to-five. It’s whether our work fulfills us. If I offered you a choice between being an architect fora year and working in a tollbooth everyday for the rest of your life fora year, which would you take I’m guessing the former, because there is complexity, autonomy, and a relationship between effort and reward in doing creative work, and that’s worth more to most of us than money.”
