After my recent extended illness, I was surprisingly shocked to reemerge into organizational life in its broadest terms. Frequently, I engaged in the organizational lives of my students, my friends, my colleagues, and my own workplace.

Everywhere I looked, I found:
• Unhappy customers who, after making frustrating attempts to obtain decent products or service, simply walked away because of their dissatisfaction.
• Organizational leaders who were disappointed in the performance of the people who worked for them.
• Workers who felt overwhelmed with unclear goals to achieve and tasks to perform with unreasonable expectations and deadlines, no clear processes to follow, and no resources to help them.
• Colleagues in different parts of organizations who were at odds with one another because of competitive and seemingly divergent goals, competition to obtain scarce resources, and a need to make their colleagues look bad so they wouldn’t be the one to get fired.
• Managers who were frustrated by the lack of good ideas.
• Employees at middle and lower organizational levels who had shut down after years of trying to get a good idea approved, only to have it rejected for no rational reason.

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