I'm continuing to enjoy David Boyle's excellent book, Authenticity. (See earlier blog here).

What Boyle is consistently good at is showing how elusive a quality authenticity is. This is not an easy, idealistic rant but a thoughtful exploration of the challenge of achieving authenticity when business often seeks to find it and exploit it.

"The recognition by business that we need to lead authentic lives at work is in start contrast to the 'mind control' tendency in business training - reducing processes to numbers, reducing creativity to formulae and best practice. Or worse still 'internal branding'... helping people to be authentic can turn into brain-washing extremely fast."

Boyle also wrote The Tyranny of Numbers so it's easy to understand - and resonate with - his suspicions of how fanatical measurement drives out human sensibility in business.
posted by Johnnie M, 9:33 AM  permalink