In 1993, William and Kathleen Lundin (pronounced lun-DEEN), business consultants, educators and community activists from Chicago, published The Healing Manager, one of a series of books they wrote during a prominent career working with business groups large and small on management, teamwork, productivity, and all-around organizational health.  The Lundins trademarked a process they called Total Quality Relationships (TQR), which emphasized emotion-based relationships between employees as the key to organizational health and wealth.

The Lundins’ daughter, Carey, a TV and documentary producer (Citizen Kate)in Chicago, read my book recently and got in touch to tell me how many parallels she sees between her parents’ work and GameChangers.  She sent me a copy of The Healing Manager.  I’ve been reading it intermittently, and the more of it I read, the more, I am reminded of a favorite saying of, Derek Miller, one of my improv teachers.  “The story is always happening,” he says,  “before we’re here and after we’re gone.  We’re here to participate in it for awhile.”  Derek is talking about improv performances, but his words could apply to the work we do, or to life itself.  The depth of Derek’s saying really hits home when I read the The Healing Manager.

Ideas about working together collaboratively, of setting ego aside for the good of the community, of honoring everyone’s contributions and developing ‘quality relationships’ with one another–these are nothing new.  They’ve existed since the first six cave dwellers gave themselves a team name (Sabre Teeth?  Fire Monkeys?  Uggtopuss?) and assigned themselves roles and rules for hunting together. (more…)