Meaningful Work: A Quest to Do Great Business, Find Your Calling, a Hardcover – 14 November 2017

Great book but discover a torn page in the middle. Incidentally, this was a replacement piece. The first one came with handwritten notes inside

excellent service , excellent book

“Meaningful Work” gave me a direction and a purpose. While I find my work to be meaningful, the day to day of it was losing meaning for me.As I read the book, I identified with the struggle that started this journey for Shawn, the author. He revealed how he created the meaning in his life that was missing at the end of his career as a defense attorney. He started something else, not a career, but a “vocation”. That term has significance and means more than work. He describes this in the book and offers advice on how to find it.Several things spoke to me and have created changes in my life in a short time.I realized that as a part owner of a small business, the stuff to create purpose and meaning was right in front of me. There is a whole community of people and their families that are directly affected by the direction we take as a business. Shawn had a deep sense of this as his business was starting and built it feeling and knowing this. That may not be how our business was built, but it does not mean that we cannot change it with this in mind. He gives guidance on how he did it and how others can as well.I sat in two meetings over the last two days and found myself repeating many of the things he details in the book.The first meeting was one with the leaders in our organization trying to determine filter out the main goals we wanted to achieve over the next 1-3 years. It started with a SWOT analysis. These are the types of meetings that were making work lose meaning for me.This time, however, as I read through the SWOT from our employees, I could see a theme. Many of the weaknesses could be explained by people who viewed their jobs as work with no sense of vocation.If we created a community (or sense of “kinship” as Shawn calls it) at work centered around a vocation and service, if we adopted the “open book” principles, if we went back to just talking to everyone around us with “gemba walks” instead of thinking about using surveys almost all of those weaknesses would be addressed. I know this would not be a panacea, and there will always be issues to work on, but if we could do these things, the atmosphere that we work on these issues would be a better one.The second meeting brought up an issue about how we should negotiate terms on a particular venture. In essence, it was about how much profit should we pursue on the venture. The thought paradigm that Shawn mentions many have is “as much as you can”. But, he talks about how important getting the “right price” or a “fair price” is in the practice of the brothers at Assumption Abbey and I took it to heart as we discussed the issue at the meeting. This is not an altruisitic concept, but rather a sustainability concept.I look forward to where this takes me and our small business and am glad this book came to me when it did.

I've bought the book because I'm starting up my own chocolate company. The book provides very tangible ideas on how to create a vocation for your business idea and person. It also explains in a great way what the challenges are in the chocolate making world and how to make the best out of it. Most of all I like the insights he provides in the revenu sharing model and how to work together with farmers that you rely on and how they rely on you, and that its all about trust and relationships to grow your mutual business. It is really helping me setting up our own business in the best way possible.

Decent read, a little dry at times.