The Challenge to Be and Not to Do

Introduction

It’s Time to Reclaim Our Right to Be Human

The strongest force in the universe is a human being living consistently with his identity.

—Tony Robbins

I’d like to blame industrialization for the problems we see in our struggle to be human. The modern workplace began with the clunk, clack of the machines of our Victorian brethren. First, there was the development of noisy, smelly steam engines and factories, which destroyed the livelihood of the artisans and then there was the push for efficiency through design. Taylor (1911) bought us ‘scientific management’ but this was just the beginning of a cacophony of management approaches that have scourged the workplace focused on the machinations of what we do and how efficiently we do things. ...