Life and Work: A Manager's Search for Meaning

The author of Love and Profit explores how a successful manager can experience a full life and find a correct balance between commitment to work and commitment to loved ones and self. 75,000 first printing.

Autry, the recently retired president of the Meredith Magazine Group and author of Love and Profit: The Art of Caring Leadership , uses essays, letters and poems to confront substantive issues in this solid study whose central question is, "How can I keep my life and work properly integrated?" He looks at such issues as the recent upswing of spirituality and the possible impact on the business world. His musings about the American business landscape are perspicacious: "We rarely get the easy choices--wrong versus right, good versus evil--that seem so apparent to those who are not engaged in management every day." Instead, managers confront "pedestrian" issues of compensation systems, motivation and perceived discrimination that often debilitate employees and society. This is not, however, an excuse for exploiting others, Autry argues. His observations about synergy, education, homosexuals and sex are provocative.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Autry (Love and Profit, 1991) is back in the saddle again, astride different--if by no means fresh--hobbyhorses. Now retired from the presidency of Meredith's Magazine Group (a position that allowed him to extol trendy, vaguely New Age management precepts), the author has moved on to address larger matters, including life its own self, in another mawkish amalgam of short-take commentary and banal verse. In deadly earnest fashion (which suggests that, if he were a monarch, Autry would very much like to be known as James the Good), the erstwhile executive offers scattershot counsel on integrating one's personal and professional lives, among other things, in letters to fictive offspring. He also touches without dwelling on such issues as what business can (or can't) do to help solve socioeconomic problems, the putatively excessive compensation of top corporate officers, the responsibilities of stewardship, dealing with loss, encouraging a sense of community in varied milieus, health care's costs, and the ubiquity of pop culture. Nor does Autry neglect to provide sanctimonious apologias for his former insensitivity to the aspirations of women, members of ethnic minorities, the disabled, and others who qualify in one way or another as disadvantaged. In some cases, the author's unexceptionable sensibilities yield decidedly loopy results. At one point, for instance, he argues that the optically challenged should reflect whether they could do their jobs without the ``assistive technology'' afforded by eyeglasses. Featherweight inspirational fare for those who find Og Mandino too demanding. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Retirement isn't necessarily a four-letter word (so to speak). Ask Autry, once president of a major magazine publishing group, who follows his Love and Profit (1992) with another amalgam of advice. Much less focused than his first book, this one reads like Fulghum on business; stories and modern-day fables are here replaced by letters to various relatives, poems, and musings on work and personal incidents. Topics that make his top 10 list of things to discuss include the hidden insecurity of top businesspeople, gay rights, debunking the "one big happy family" company myth, partnerships between schools and for-profit institutions, moonlighting employees, and women in the workforce. His feelings are almost tangible; the most emotional passages concern disabilities in general and, his nine-year-old autistic son specifically. For those who think CEOs and other corporate bigwigs have no heart--and for those so titled who are searching for new meanings in a new world. Barbara Jacobs

From the author of Love and Profit ( LJ 1/91) comes this collection of poetry, prose, and letters that explores the challenges of managing in the Nineties. Autry now strives to assist harried managers with balancing work and life, commitments to self and to others. The anecdotes and letters, written to Autry's three children, as well as fictitious "conglomerate" characters, provide the structure here. Topics covered include managing and leading, relationships in work, community issues, love and marriage, and parenthood. Autry struggles to blend principles with his personal testaments and ends up all over the place, without any coherent theme for these random thoughts. For more substance, look to the North Star in this genre, Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (S. & S., 1989) and Principle-Centered Leadership ( LJ 11/1/91), and buy this title only on demand.
- Dale Farris, Groves, Tex.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.