Grow Your Personal Capital: What You Know, Who You Know and How to Use It

To the author of this overwrought business/self-help manifesto, augmenting one's human capital means unleashing the full range of psychic resources--creativity, sociability, emotion,""inner wisdom""--that are indispensable to modern""knowledge workers."" Owen (Creating Top Flight Teams) draws on psychologists from Jung to Maslow (with a little quantum mechanics and chaos theory thrown in) to argue that human capital can only be tapped by nurturing""the whole human being"" in a workplace where employees find""purpose, meaning and belonging,"" express""authentic emotion"" and cultivate ecstatic""flow experiences."" Although""rigid management processes"" are an important obstacle, this is not a management program. Judging from the oral histories Owens recounts, the book is aimed at high-level managers with indefinable jobs (""my role is troubleshooter, with a large people aspect to it"") who drift from company to company seeking self-actualization. The focus is therefore on individual rather than institutional change, to be achieved through self-exploratory""exercises"" including meditation, dream-journaling, art projects (""when you have finished, sit cross-legged on the floor and tell yourself the collage is you"") and vast, Proustian writing assignments (""starting with your earliest memories, describe all your experiences... up to today"") with impossible deadlines (""allow at least an hour""). Veering between mystical dilation (""we are all connected in a field of energy"") and pop-psychology truisms""when we deny our feelings... we are at risk of losing control"") this mish-mash of half-digested ideas will bring little return on investment.