How Work Works: The Subtle Science of Getting Ahead Without Losing Yourself
Michelle P. King
Harper Business/An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishing (October 2023)

“What got you here won’t get you there.”  Marshall Goldsmith

I agree with Goldsmith. In fact, I take his insight deeper and suggest that what got you here won’t even allow you to remain here, however and wherever “here” and “there” are defined. This is true of individuals as well as of organizations. The business world today is more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than at any prior time that I can recall.

In 1859, Charles Darwin observed, “It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able to adapt to and to adjust best to the changing environment in which it finds itself.” In Future Shock (first published in 1970), Alvin Toffler asserts, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Michelle King provides an abundance of valuable information, insights, and counsel that can prepare her reader to master  four separate but related –indeed interdependent–practices: building and noueriashing relationships, closing (if not eliminating) the self-awareness gap, mapping informal networks, and “reading the air” (i.e. measuring the nature and extent of feeling safe, respected, and connected “when you feel valued for who you [really] are.”

These are among the passagEs of greatest interest and value to me to me, also listed to suggest the scope of King’s coverage:

o Purpose of reading the air (Pages xxvi-xxix)
o Reading the air and informal advancement (xxxiv-xxxv, 42-44, 74-77, and 117-118)
o The Five Myths of Belonging (5-18)
o Belonging and trust (27-33)
o How Workplaces Work: TheFour Informal Systems That Matter Most (33-42)

o Organizational awareness (39-40, 79-84, and 100-104)
o The Case for a New Networking Strategy (48-53)
o Map Your Network: The Five Practices (57-72)
o Mind the Self-Awareness Gap: Why Reading the Air Matters (84-90)
o Self-awareness gap and informal information sharing (90-103)

o Perspective-taking (96-100)
o Ideal worker behaviors (111-112, 118-119, and 126-127)
o Learning to Read the Air: The Three Practices (116-127)
o Your Number One Job (137-141)
o Put Paying It Forward Into (Practice (161-164)

With regard to this book’s subtitle (“The Subtle Science of Getting Ahead Without Losing Yourself”), it is eminently appropriate. Michelle King fervently believes that almost anyone can accelerate their personal growth and professional development without compromising their integrity. She wrote this book in order to explain HOW to do that.

These are among her concluding thoughts:

“As workplaces continue to change, we get to chart our course — the [begin italics] set of our sail [end italics] –what gives us meaning at work. Today we are less concerned with finding a path to the top of an organizational hierarchy and more concerned with finding the path to greater meaning in the workplace, and by extension life itself.”

Here are two suggestions to keep in mind while reading How Work Works: Highlight key passages, and, record your comments, questions, action steps (preferably with deadlines), page references, and lessons you have learned as well as your responses to the questions posed within the narrative. These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will facilitate, indeed expedite frequent reviews of key material later.