Work Has Lost Its Poetry!

Work has lost its poetry

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© September 2000


"There is no truer and more abiding happiness than the knowledge that one is free to go on doing, the best work one can do, in the kind one likes best, and that this work is absorbed by a steady market and thus supports one’s own life. Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work and in that work does what he wants to do."

Robin G. Collingwood (1889 – 1943)
English philosopher and historian




Something is missing from work. Although seasoned executives and professionals recognize this absence, it is apparent that they don’t know what it is or what to do about it.

In Corporate Sin: Leaderless Leaders and Dissonant Workers (AuthorHouse 2000), I claim that work has lost its poetry. The quality of work is instead comparable to that of a dime store novel. A book cannot restore the poetry. It can measure the loss and possibly point out how it might be retrieved by thinking differently on purpose. The first step, however, is recognizing that the problem exists.

The spirit is being driven out of work. Work is no longer fun. Work is no longer good for the soul. Elbert Hubbard puts it plainly, “Folks who never do any more than they get paid for, never get paid for any more than they do."

Many workers today are predisposed to do only enough to get by. They are disgruntled because much of what they do could be classified as “the non-doing doing of non-thing things.” Such work includes reports prepared that are never read; countless meetings that are scheduled because they always have been, even though there is no subject pending for discussion; training sessions that are part of the current fad on training, and even manning jobs that have lost their relevance, such as menial administrative positions.

Nothing is really work, however, unless you would rather be doing something else. We make work drudgery. Work becomes a chore when we see it as such. People don’t break down from hard work. People break down from worry and procrastination about work. Contributing to this dilemma is the fact that workers have been programmed to be non-confrontational.

Conflict has been treated as something to be avoided when conflict is as natural as breathing, and conflict, that is managed conflict, is the glue that holds a company to its purpose. An organization in perfect harmony has little poetry and even less creative verve. It is moving towards the necessity for life support.

Ever notice that creative people such as painters, poets, writers, dramatists, scholars, teachers, researchers, musicians, and people in other creative fields live surprisingly long lives? This is in no small measure due to the fact that if work is not treated as creatively as play, it will lead to stress, burnout and, ultimately, a moral and physical collapse. Indeed, people with angst about how they make their living are more likely to dissipate, retreating into drugs, gambling or other self-destructive alternatives. A long and useful life is not one devoid of stress or pain or struggle, but one that uses managed stress and pain and struggle to its purposes, as artists do.

Societies rise and fall on how their people treat work, and how they work themselves through their doubt to confident thinking and creative living. George Cortelyou puts it this way, “The greatest asset of any nation is the spirit of its people, and the greatest danger that can menace any nation is the breakdown of that spirit, the will to win and the courage to work.”

You don’t have to be a history buff to know that societies have collapsed and crumbled when their people had too much idle time, became too self-indulgent, and retreated into self-denial. They were in fact the problem. It was not their work. It was the absence of work that drove them to distraction.

The way you work, and your attitude towards what you do, spills over into what you are, and how you behave in society. You are not a separate entity from your work. You are your work. Chances are you don’t know what to do with yourself when you’re not working, so you fill the void with white noise. We have a lot of “white noise” today, when legitimate tools are treated as toys such as computers, cell phones, and other electronic wonders; when people can’t handle aloneness or silence; when people have to be constantly on the move like mad chickens.

Former president Calvin Coolidge, known more for his reticence than his opinions, had this to say about work, “All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work. Work is not a curse; it is the prerogative of intelligence, the only means to manhood, and the measure of civilization."

St. Edmund of Canterbury was right when he said, “Work as though you would live forever; but live as though you would die today.”

English critic John Ruskin, who died just as the twentieth century was beginning, said, “The moment a man can really do his work, he becomes speechless about it; all words are idle to him; all theories. All good work is essentially done without hesitation; without difficulty, without boasting.”

Imagine how Ruskin would feel today when people equate the importance of their work on how much they make, as if economic security is any gauge of emotional security in terms of work.

Corporate Sin: Leaderless Leadership and Dissonant Workers (2000) was written in the midst of such cynicism.

Corporate corruption had reached new heights of pecuniary with CEOs making as much as four hundred times that of ordinary everyday workers. In obscene and malicious cynicism, several senior executives raided corporate coffers because they could. On the other hand, the best-educated workforce in the history of civilization retreated into passive behaviors and calumny. Consequently, in a typical working day, such workers would spend forty to fifty percent of their working hours doing personal business or socializing.

So, Corporate Sin: Leaderless Leadership and Dissonant Workers was and still is not a one-sided portrait of work, workers or the workplace, but further evidence that work has lost its poetry.

From my background, first as a chemist, and then as an industrial and organizational development psychologist, it has been my goal to outline the steps necessary to move workers and managers on to the same page in order to get off the same dime.

What I see is not unique to me. The difference is that my career is not at stake. Those in the system would likely be punished for saying what is here. Ironically, talking to managers, they see the problem that of workers, especially professionals. Talking to workers, mainly professionals, they see the problem that of managers. The reality is that managers and workers are sinning and their sins are killing the company’s spirit and robbing it of its poetry.

Using the approach of a chemist, I examine work, workers, and the workplace with the objectivity of a chemist while placing the onus equally on managers and workers alike to shape up.

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