Step Back: How to Bring the Art of Reflection into Your Busy Life
Joseph L. Badaracco
Harvard Business Review Press (2010)

Here are “practical everyday ways of reflecting that help you work better and live better”

I have read all of Joseph Badaracco’s previous books and reviewed most of them. Also, he graciously agreed to an interview. Of all the highly renowned business thinkers who are also superb classroom teachers, no one surpasses him in terms of making seemingly ordinary subjects extraordinarily interesting. Reflection, for example. His mind reminds me of a Swiss Army knife. Combine that with highly developed empathy and you have at least some idea of why I think so highly of him and his work.

As he explains, his latest book “emerged from a long and extensive research effort that focused on two basic questions. We often hear that we should spend more time reflecting, and we sometimes give versions of this advice to others. But what is reflection? And how can busy men and women find time to do it?”

In Step Back, Badaracco shares his responses to those two questions in the form of thoughts and feelings he developed by his own rigorous as well as casual reflection, and, on what others shared with him while interviewed during extensive research.  (Check out his Notes and Bibliography, Pages 133-153.) Here are three reasons why I think most people will find Step Back valuable (if not invaluable) to their personal growth and professional development.

First, Badaracco focuses on four principles (often called design principles) that can guide and inform the efforts of those who wish to embrace the art and science of reflection.

Also, he shares what he found most interesting and especially valuable during interviews when others shared with him their own thoughts and feelings about reflection and, especially about the two aforementioned questions.

Finally, Badaracco allows his reader remarkably generous flexibility with regard to how to select the most appropriate material in the book’s narrative and then apply it thoughtfully to their own needs, interests, concerns, and aspirations.

As I worked my way through Step Back, I was reminded of several passages in another book, Silence: In the Age of Noise, in which Erling Kagge “explores the silence around us, the silence within us, and the silence we must create.” He explains why silence is essential to our sanity and happiness — “and how it can open doors to wonder and gratitude.” He concludes, “The most important thing, however, is not what I believe., but that we each discover our own way.”

Joseph Badaracco and Erling Kagge are among those who have helped me to find mine. My journey continues into a future more uncertain than at any prior time I can recall. Silence and reflection will no doubt be even more difficult…and much more important.

Sva marga: follow your own path.