Confronting Our Freedom  ## Metadata - Author: [[Peter Block and Peter Koestenbaum]] | [[3. Resources/Authors/Peter Block and Peter Koestenbaum|Peter Block and Peter Koestenbaum]] - Full Title: Confronting Our Freedom - Category: #books - Kindle: [Open in Kindle](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTWLBTVB) - Document Tags: [[Faith]] ## Document Notes ## Highlights - While the discipline of philosophy has been developing for much of the last century and a half, it has not found its way into practical life, or into organizational life, and we need a deeper and more profound way of thinking about what we are doing. The philosophy has been present all along; hopefully the listening is more present. ([Location 454](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=454)) - We think that freedom is associated with doing what we want, feeling happy much of the time, and in general living an unburdened existence. A false mixture of liberty, license, and entitlement. ([Location 534](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=534)) - We also have a small way of thinking about accountability. We think that people want to escape from being accountable. We believe that accountability is something that must be imposed. ([Location 540](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=540)) - And as long as we think accountability is reluctantly chosen and thereby requires force to bring it into being, we are unintentionally creating a breeding ground for entitlement. ([Location 547](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=547)) - Philosophy takes a different stance. It holds leadership as a convener where each person is a participant in organized efforts. ([Location 618](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=618)) - “Once we have mustered the courage to understand, to accept, and to face fully the absolute existence of our freedom, we will discover that it can give us unequalled power to handle our fundamental problems. To accept and to understand one's free will is to have reached maturity, to have developed the capacity to live life fully. The word existentialist comes from this belief in the factual existence of our freedom.” — Peter Koestenbaum (1971) ([Location 628](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=628)) - Treating people as a freedom questions the conventional belief that people working in organizations are resources, human assets, talent acquisition targets—objects and products and effects of the culture and the leadership in which they operate. ([Location 642](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=642)) - “If we examine our actions and decisions introspectively, we discover they possess a unique and irreducible core which can be described by the phrase ‘free will.’ The existence of this unique quality described appropriately with the expression ‘free will’ is an unmistakable fact of our experience. “It is true, of course, that the fact of free will is vague, elusive, and perhaps unclear. However, its existence, its actual presence in experience is nevertheless certain. It is as vague and as certain as anxiety, joy, a toothache, and love. The action exists and manifests itself as a ubiquitous and important fact. The fact of free will is pervasive—we are never without it.” — Peter Koestenbaum (1971) ([Location 647](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=647)) - We hold managers responsible for the morale and productivity of their subordinates. We hold top management responsible for the culture and values they create for others to live in. Management and culture are cause, and employees are effect. Management and culture are subjects and employees are objects. Parents are cause and children are effects. ([Location 660](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=660)) - we would stop the mentality of buying and selling employees, talent acquisition, as if they were just another asset or commodity. Employees would become true partners, instead of partners in name only. We would acknowledge that employees are freely choosing to create this institution, freely choosing to perform well or poorly, freely choosing to blame management or the culture for their suffering. It does not mean that there are no negative consequences for poor performance. It is just that it may not make sense to have our concern for people not fulfilling their promises be the overriding concern for how we come together. ([Location 678](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=678)) - Accountability cannot be imposed or demanded; it occurs as an inevitable outgrowth of that freedom, for we account for what we choose and what we claim as our own agency in making things work. People do not resist change; they resist coercion. ([Location 732](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=732)) - As inevitably as the existence of our freedom, we are forced to experience and confront: Anxiety over the choices we have made as a result of our freedom and the uncertainty of tomorrow. Guilt from having said no to either ourselves (existential guilt) or others (neurotic guilt). “‘I‐could‐have‐acted‐otherwise’ structure. The affective, or feeling, recognition of that structure is called ‘guilt.’” — Peter Koestenbaum (1971) Death of others, first, and the anticipation of our own, next. Not just our personal condition, but the fact that institutions have a life expectancy. Evil, which exists because all persons are free, and it will not go away; it is not solvable. ([Location 737](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=737)) - these experiences are what give meaning, character, and texture to our lives; they are not negatives or failures that a healthy person should move beyond. ([Location 747](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=747)) - We want to apply philosophic insights to the world of productivity. The work world if you wish. This includes living in communities that support well‐being. We are interested in freedom and accountability at the center of organized effort. The organized world. ([Location 754](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=754)) - Facing our freedom, and the consequences of doing this, is really the hard work. The real work. Confronting those parts of work life that offer numerical certainty or the ability to accurately predict an outcome are really the softer aspects of our workplaces. We allow others to define reality for us when we accept the engineers’ and economists’ definition of what is real. ([Location 780](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=780)) - Our institutions have become a place where we are supported in our escape from freedom. And if we choose to escape from freedom, then we have abandoned any real chance for a culture of accountability. ([Location 850](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=850)) - There is a cost to an organization committed to the freedom of its members, and that is the anxiety and seeming unpredictability that this carries. ([Location 852](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=852)) - Sovereignty has a compelling ring to it. If we bring these ideas into an organizational setting, however, they appear more disruptive and radical. As dear as freedom might be to us personally, it is a subject rarely discussed in our institutions. ([Location 894](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=894)) - We are more likely to focus on ways that management needs to control and channel behavior in a caring, participative, and compassionate way. ([Location 898](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=898)) - engaging employees in constructing their own learning. Call them learning circles. Communities of practice. ([Location 918](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=918)) - some of the difficulty we have with talking about freedom stems from confusing it with liberty. ([Location 937](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=937)) - Liberty is the absence of oppression. ([Location 938](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=938)) - Liberty is a get‐out‐of‐jail card. ([Location 939](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=939)) - Our holding onto our belief in the rational, explainable nature of existence is a major reason that organizations have such a difficult time changing and adapting. ([Location 967](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=967)) - We begin to believe that all our actions have meaning and value only according to their effect, or their results. It leads us away from doing things for their own sake. We even mold our behavior into tactics that work. ([Location 978](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=978)) - It forces us to keep repeating the way of thinking and acting that brought us here. Covid interrupted all of this. It might bring us into a new social contract with our workplaces. ([Location 996](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=996)) - Deciding that I have created the world around me—and therefore I am the one to fix it—is the ultimate act of accountability. ([Location 1017](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1017)) - The challenge is to welcome and institutionalize the existence of freedom with as much enthusiasm as we have institutionalized the need for boundaries and the need for constraint. ([Location 1032](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1032)) - Of course, treat them well and build strong relationships, but end treating motivating subordinates as part of a job description. Human motivation is an individual decision, not an environmental consequence. ([Location 1039](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1039)) - People are also responsible for their own morale. ([Location 1047](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1047)) - Managers should stop asking for feedback from employees about how they could improve as managers. If you want to know how another human being feels about you, ask them. Individually, but not in a survey. Ask out of your own interest and desire to learn, not for the sake of your employees. ([Location 1056](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1056)) - Freedom and accountability call for the end of fixing each other. ([Location 1059](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1059)) - We would offer employees stock ownership because it seems right to us since they are actively creating the wealth of the organization, not because it will change their behavior. ([Location 1084](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1084)) - Leadership is the willingness to initiate the world, to involve ourselves and others in producing what did not exist before. It is the willingness to step into uncertainty. This is the exercise of freedom, which means that leadership includes the task of confronting other people with their freedom. ([Location 1157](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1157)) - Leaders do not exist to meet the expectations of followers. ([Location 1163](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1163)) - Employees have a deep sense of values and can be as trusted to live them out as fully as any trust we want to invest in our leaders. ([Location 1173](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1173)) - Those in power do have the responsibility of using that power with some grace. They need to take the idea of liberty seriously and work to eliminate oppressive controls. ([Location 1182](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1182)) - By saying “I had no choice” (and meaning it), we have chosen to betray our human nature. We have, in that sentence, freely chosen to resign from the human race and join the technocracy of machines or electronics. ([Location 1221](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1221)) - We usually don't attribute our caution to our own experience of anxiety; we are more likely to attribute cause to our bosses or to our subordinates, or to anyone who happens to be in our field of vision at the moment. ([Location 1270](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1270)) - “The ‘normal’ condition is to have much of the philosophic truth about us permanently repressed. The more this truth can be tolerated, the more authentic is the individual. Many individuals can tolerate little and would rather die than see it. Part of the problem is social bias against the seeing the world as it is. Ignorance of philosophy leads people to recoil in terror when philosophic truth becomes revealed.” — Peter Koestenbaum (1978) ([Location 1300](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1300)) - Our institutions use the need for speed and time and convenience as the argument for action. We feel that reflection, introspection, and inward thought take too long. If something cannot be done quickly, it is not worth doing—there is something wrong with it. ([Location 1310](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1310)) - We value speed over depth and action over insight. ([Location 1313](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1313)) - The problem was my response to the experience of being afraid or anxious—what existential philosophy would call my neurotic anxiety. ([Location 1334](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1334)) - At some point, though, the physical experience of the anxiety was attractive. I began to see it as water into which I needed to dive—realizing that the anxiety was an invitation to move toward those things I had tried to avoid. ([Location 1342](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1342)) - Most of us, in the face of anxiety, think we need to relocate. ([Location 1345](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1345)) - Note: Was Matt’s mom’s moves to avoid conflict, or to avoid anxiety? How are emotions connected in to all of this? What mannerisms have carried on? - language of philosophy, religion, and spirituality—while it is about real life and is based on the fact of who we are—is more like poetry than engineering speech in that it seeks those areas of life that are paradoxical and defy clear measurement. ([Location 1374](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1374)) - part of what characterizes high performers is their ability to accept anxiety, to use it as a source of motivation and energy. ([Location 1441](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1441)) - we have a sense of purpose, and we only know this when there is tension about the outcome and the recognition that something is on the line. It is difficult to imagine finding meaning in a purpose where nothing is at stake. ([Location 1449](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1449)) - A]nxiety is the experience of creativity. All creative acts—artistic, loving, scholarly, scientific, political, social, and so forth—are born of anxiety and made possible through anxiety. All great creative people have translated the experience of anxiety into the act and product of creation.” — Peter Koestenbaum (1978) ([Location 1466](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1466)) - If we treated anxiety as a friend, we might notice what situations generate our anxiety and ask ourselves whether it is the situation itself or our response to the situation that troubles us. ([Location 1482](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1482)) - self‐betrayal comes in the form of saying yes when we mean no. ([Location 1487](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1487)) - The common phrase “if you stand up you get shot” is our belief that saying no, or saying yes too loudly, is tantamount to an act of terrorism or mutiny, an assault against authority that is dangerous to the institution. ([Location 1498](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1498)) - Note: Is seeing a coworker who said yes loudly to organizing true change and was laid off hindering me from stepping into such a similar role? - If we choose to acknowledge that our freedom is at the heart of high performance and creating a better future and come to value anxiety and accountability as aspects of the air that we breathe, ([Location 1535](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1535)) - See anxiety as a friend. ([Location 1538](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1538)) - Stop protecting people from bad news, ([Location 1541](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1541)) - Judge our meetings and gatherings on how clearly our anxiety gets expressed. ([Location 1544](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1544)) - Keep in perspective all the effort to clearly define roles, to prescribe competencies, and to live according to plan. ([Location 1548](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1548)) - Stop oversight. ([Location 1553](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1553)) - Value spontaneity and vulnerability in dialogue. ([Location 1560](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1560)) - we confuse failure with defeat. ([Location 1632](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1632)) - The typical way we deal with failure and chaos is to problem solve and create programs. Initiate reform efforts. They are about better leadership, cultural change efforts to foster creativity, holding people accountable. ([Location 1647](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1647)) - We keep investing in projects long after we know they will not succeed. We position news of a failure in a way that people will feel good about it, and thus create cultures of unreality and conscious or unconscious distrust. We also deny our guilt and avoid taking responsibility for failures, thus triggering widespread and long‐term defensive reactions to events that could have been put to rest quickly if we could see them for what they were…simply failures. ([Location 1874](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1874)) - We have this belief that if you stand up you will get shot. We make the association between standing up—which really means to say no by publicly disagreeing with those in power—and extreme danger. We believe that the messenger will be shot, and therefore a refusal is equivalent to an act of suicide. This is not just in business, it is common in churches, hospitals, monasteries, and ashrams. ([Location 1907](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1907)) - Our unwillingness to say no is a denial of our limitations, a refusal to acknowledge our mortality and the fact that there are some things we cannot do. It also expresses our willingness to allow others to define reality for us. ([Location 1912](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1912)) - Declaring no is also the first act of reclaiming our freedom. It is deciding for ourselves what is real and possible and worth pursuing. ([Location 1914](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=1914)) - The philosophic insight distinguishes between two kinds of guilt: the existential guilt of betraying our own capacity to be fully ourselves and fully human, and the neurotic guilt of adapting ourselves to what we believe the world expects of us. ([Location 2039](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=2039)) - As employees, the moment we accept our freedom, we stop treating leaders and managers as if they were so important. We hope they are smart about the business we are in, but they are no longer the cause of our satisfaction or our performance. They just exist as partners or colleagues to be dealt with, as does all that comes toward us in life. My anxiety, my willingness to accept the fact that I am running out of time, my guilt for what possibilities I have not yet fulfilled, all belong to me and the subjective manner in which I have constructed or constituted my own experience. This is at the center of an alternative story I can live into. ([Location 2248](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=2248)) - accountability becomes the source of my own power. ([Location 2253](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=2253)) - the simple question of how an institution confronts people with their freedom and asks them to bring all of themselves to work would form the basis of a new conversation. This would begin a shift toward a liberating experience of membership. This brings questions of deeper purpose and community well‐being to the center of institutional life. ([Location 2294](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=2294)) - An absolutely basic principle of our freedom is that all healing occurs in relationships. ([Location 2380](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=2380)) - Authenticity often requires that we replace the suppressed premises by which we live. Transformation, in every case, puts aside our isolation. We need an encounter with other persons to affirm our humanity and sustain our intentions. ([Location 2382](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=2382)) - understanding freedom means nothing without understanding responsibility and accountability. ([Location 2428](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=2428)) - Responsibility means that every apparently minor choice is really a choice of grave and serious consequences, since each choice implies a complete definition of our nature and our world. ([Location 2429](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=2429)) - Responsibility is the fact each of us is free, accountability is the individual act of accepting and choosing that fact. ([Location 2430](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BTWLBTVB&location=2430))