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I have a plethora of books, and like most interesting people I have a very unusual mix on my nightstand -- everything from the latest women's magazine, to a zen guide for marketing, to intriguing novels that keep me up at night, plus a few more. I thought I'd share them with you.

Have you ever seen an office that look as if it had gone through the spin cycle of the washing machine, or perhaps a dump truck backed up and dropped its load.?

How can a person get any work done with such clutter? Winning The Fight Between You And Your Desk by Jeffrey J. Mayer shows you how to take a desk that looks like a toxic waste dump, and transform it into one that resembles the flight deck of an aircraft carrier.

The Business of Self-Definition
Ann Packer's novel The Dive from Clausen's Pier has a theme oddly resonant with another book, Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie. What on earth do these two books have in common? Summer has arrived in the northern hemisphere, and there's no better season for retreating onto a beach, hammock, or lounge chair with good ideas.

The plot of The Dive from Clausen's Pier revolves around the choices made by the main character, a 23-year old woman named Carrie Bell, after her fiancé is paralyzed after diving into shallow water. MacKenzie's book is a manual for maintaining sanity, spontaneity and flexibility in the midst of corporate pressures to conform. One is a young writer's first novel; the other a non-fiction secular sermon from a businessman in mid-life. Both books reveal something about the difference between being defined by our circumstances and our choices and being a person who defines circumstances and choices for him or herself. The gap between these two ways of being in the world is immense, and has implications for life, work,
love--for everything we touch and everything that touches us.

As I root around for an example, I realize that this gap addresses a primary breakdown I observe in how many of my clients and participants approach their businesses. That is, they tend to accept definitions of success, marketing,
management, and performance improvement that were written by other people in other times. My work is to help them examine these ready-made definitions, challenge them and reframe them in terms that are more authentic, strategic, and  and realistic, terms that reflect a commitment to show up, serve, and prosper.

What old definitions are you living or working by?

Gordon MacKenzie's book, Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide
to Surviving with Grace, has an appeal. It is charmingly illustrated, and it bursts the bubble of illusion that says that creative folks involved with a corporation have to abandon their initiative and originality or fail to thrive. Not true, as MacKenzie demonstrates with vignettes recounting his antic path at Hallmark, the greeting card giant.

If you work in a large organization, or if you care about people who do, this gem is a must-read.

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