Nothing Personal, Just Business: A Guided Journey Into Organizational Darkness

The most impressive (business)book I red last year (2006). Not so much for the rather provocative parallel Stein draws between the Holocaust and the way employees are treated during downsizing. But mostly for the way he is able to give words to his own emotional reactions as result of his "provacative" statement. For instance how he became a second Howard Stein after a nurse-educator said she did not recognize him drawing this parallel. Stein writes: "I "saw" and "heard" echoes of my mother in her, and in the current interaction: how could I be her son, and still think or act that way? In this reverie, I recognized foreignness to myself in myself. [..] I simply let it unfold, and continued to listen and to observe. I wanted to give her (and us) more room. As if out of the air, she began to speak." Reading this vignette had a fysical effect on me and made me aware that reverie is something you can use as a consultant when emotions are high.