• Winner of the 2001 Breakthrough Business Book of the Year award from Independent Publisher

• Written by the author of the bestselling books Flawless Consulting (more than 500,000 copies sold), The Empowered Manager (more than 250,000 copies sold), and Stewardship (more than 160,000 copies sold)

• Shows how our obsession with tools and techniques actually prevents us from doing things we believe in

• Identifies what is required of us to not only know what matters but to act on that knowledge

Modern culture’s worship of “how-to” pragmatism has turned us into instruments of efficiency and commerce—but we’re doing more and more about things that mean less and less. We constantly ask “how? and still struggle to find purpose and act on what matters. Instead of acting on what we know to be of importance, we wait for bosses to change, we seek the latest fad, we invest in one more degree. Asking how keeps us safe—instead of being led by our hearts into uncharted territory, we keep our heads down and stick to the rules. But we are gaining the world and losing our souls.

Peter Block puts the “how-to” craze in perspective and presents a guide to the difficult and life-granting journey of bringing what we know is of personal value into an indifferent or even hostile corporate and cultural landscape. He raises our awareness of the trade-offs we’ve made in the name of practicality and expediency, and offers hope for a way of life in which we’re motivated not by what “works,” but by the things that truly matter in life—idealism, intimacy, depth and engagement.