In Life and Work Autry addresses the emerging central questions
facing all working people as they try to find their way amid the increasing
pressures of downsizing and competition:
"How
can I find the balance in life and work?"
Expressed
another way, the question is: "How can I keep my life and
work integrated?" Autry's answers, conveyed in essays, poems,
and letters to his children, bring fresh insight to issues as vital
and diverse as leadership and how to teach it, strategic alliances and
how to create a "whole partnership", the breakdown of civility and community,
and the seductions of success and how to avoid them. There
are ideas and observations about business's destructive fads, about
executive pay and the future of capitalism.
The
heart of Life and Work may well be its forthright approach
to some of the thorniest and most troublesome challenges in management
and life: romance and sexual tensions between men and women at work,
accommodation of workers with disabilities, the difficulties of marriage
between two working professionals, job stress and how it raises the
cost of health care.
Though
this book takes a broad view of life and work, Autry's
insights are always true to his considerable experience as a businessperson.
He is able to reach to the deepest place in our hearts and minds
to help us overcome pain, live in the present, and celebrate the
generosity of spirit that reveals itself in the exquisite balance of how
we choose to live and what we choose to do. |