How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: What Do You Really Want . . . and What Will You Do to Keep from Getting It? 1

Part One: The Internal Languages: Building the New Machine 11

1 From the Language of Complaint to the Language of Commitment 13

2 From the Language of Blame to the Language of Personal Responsibility 33

3 From the Language of New Year's Resolutions to the Language of Competing Commitments: Diagnosing the Immunity to Change 47

4 From the Language of Big Assumptions That Hold Us to the Language of Assumptions We Hold: Disturbing the Immunity to Change 67

Part Two: The Social Languages: Maintaining and Upgrading the Machine 89

5 From the Language of Prizes and Praising to the Language of Ongoing Regard 91

6 From the Language of Rules and Policies to the Language of Public Agreement 103

7 From the Language of Constructive Criticism to the Language of Deconstructive Criticism 121

Part Three: Carrying on the Work 147

8 Running the Internal Languages 149

9 Running the Social Languages 187

Epilogue: Toward the Transformation Highway: Transcending the Limits of the Information Age 229

The Authors 235

Index 237