The Notebook

Posts tagged ‘Workplace’


Reading Mindfully: Philip Levine’s “What Work Is”

February 3, 2017  |  

Reading Mindfully: Philip Levine’s “What Work Is”

Philip Levine was born Detroit, Michigan in 1928 and was raised and educated in the city. After graduating from Wayne State University, Levine worked for both Chevrolet and Cadillac where he gathered material for his future poems. Levine went on to teach at Columbia, Princeton and the University of California at Berkeley. He was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States for 2011–2012. Levine’s poem “What Work Is,” published in 1991, is a musing on the purpose of work. What does work mean to you?

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How Fragile Social Networks Harm Us at Work

October 25, 2016  |  

How Fragile Social Networks Harm Us at Work

Social connections at work are good – a well-networked organization is a stronger, more efficient organization. Much evidence exists to support this idea, both on this blog and beyond. But a recent working article from Harvard and the University of North Carolina takes these insights even deeper: fragile social connections – those which can be easily dropped – may actually harm both organizations and the people who work for them.

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Understanding Others’ Lives: Required Reading, November 20, 2015

November 20, 2015  |  

Understanding Others’ Lives: Required Reading, November 20, 2015

In the wake of last week’s massacres, we’re all thinking about how we can work to understand each other a little better, how we can overcome and appreciate difference. As Gianpiero Petriglieri writes for the Harvard Business Review, “Fostering civilization means cultivating our curiosity to recognize substantive difference, and our commitment to respect them – within and between groups.” And as novelist Jennine Capó Crucet reminds us, a good book “gives the reader a chance to see what it feels like to be someone else for a little while. And so, in doing that, it shapes a sensory experience that inspires compassion and empathy.”

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