Page 13 - How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win

PREFACE

younger we assumed this question would be well resolved by
the time we were 30, but it has lingered into our children’s
30s. Is meaning found in taking vacations, learning, giving,
serving our neighbors, or building a business? The answer
can be yes to each of these. And it can also be no. People
find meaning in many places and activities, but for us and
many we know, meaning itself is not optional. It is the object
of a nearly universal search. Work is a nearly universal set-
ting for engaging in this quest.
The problems we face as a consultant and a psycholo-
gist, the experiences we have had through serving others,
and our personal meaning journey have occupied our think-
ing for a long time. As we tried to figure out what meaning
means, why it matters, and how to develop it, we realized we
had embarked on a complicated journey. Wendy has taught
and supervised psychology graduate students, run workshops
on personal abundance, consulted for a variety of organiza-
tions, and written books on forgiving ourselves and changing
our mind-set. Dave has coached and trained countless exec-
utives and HR professionals on how to diagnose and build
organizational capabilities and deliver value to customers,
writing more than 20 books on these topics. In each of these
forums, we interviewed people to find out how they interpret
the sources of potential meaning in their lives. We asked
flight attendants, janitorial workers, bus drivers, homemak-
ers, and executives what they liked about their jobs and what
gave meaning to their personal and professional lives. We
looked for underlying patterns of individual and organiza-
tional meaning and success. We also went to our respective
literatures for research and theory on meaning and living
well. Many thoughtful people in many fields of inquiry have

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