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What is great work?
Magnum opus – from the Latin, meaning ‘great work.’ But just what is great work? The term is used in various spiritual traditions as well as in some classical and contemporary business literature; search online and you’ll find a wealth of ‘great work’ references, from transformation to alchemy, all related to the power or process of turning something (or someone) ordinary into something extraordinary.
International coach and Great Work promoter Michael Bungay Stanier (visit his great website at www.boxofcrayons.biz) draws on the work of Milton Glaser in his article Are you doing Great Work? Or merely Good Work?
where he explores the distinctions between great work, good work, and
bad work. Others have offered equally compelling descriptions.
When we talk of great work, “work” refers to all that we do, not just
what we are paid to do. Naturally, it includes the organized structures
we loosely group together and call “the workplace.” But work also
includes what we do in our homes, with our children, with friends, and
our engagements in our communities.
At WorkLife Design, we help people create a great work life in whatever
sphere they choose to focus: designated leaders want to cultivate it in
their organizations; teams want to cultivate it to help fuel their
achievements; individuals want to explore and create it within diverse
aspects of their lives.
As
Stanier describes, great work brings both “exhilaration and terror.”
It’s a place of deep fun, delight and, yes, uncertainty. Great work
goes beyond instrumental purposes and functions and delves deeply into
imagination and possibility.
Where good work (which is
where perhaps most of us spend our time) values safety and reliability,
great work values risk, exploration, even positive deviance.
Doing good work, we’re using our skills, earning a paycheck,
showing up (physically and/or mentally) pretty regularly. Great work
doesn’t simply use our skills but honors those skills, experience, and
passion in an authentic and meaningful way.
Good work often leads to a sense of the mundane in our lives, a feeling
of “what the heck am I doing here?” It typically values efficiency and
conformity, and in the process fails to bring out our very best. It’s
comfortable but uninspiring.
Unchecked, we can easily slide into bad work, finding ourselves living our lives in a toxic work space.
Great work, however, inspires (even as it sometimes frightens us). It
energizes us in a holistic way and leads us to chase the answers to
“What if . . . ?” It’s not an easy place to be. But when we’re there,
we truly feel truly human, truly alive. And able to live right out loud.
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