MYTHS TO WORK BY
For many years now, I have been a cheerful interloper in the grand theatre of organisational life. I’ve been the fellow in the corner with a notepad, a friendly ear, and a perpetually raised eyebrow, watching the great human drama unfold. I have sat in on the solemn rituals of strategic planning, where futures are mapped out with the geometric certainty of a battle plan. I have been embedded with project teams, those little platoons of hope and caffeine, and observed every conceivable flavour of leadership, from the truly magnificent to the unintentionally comedic. I have seen corporate cultures shift with the slow, tectonic grind of a glacier and witnessed successes so dazzling they felt like a conjuring trick, alongside dysfunctions so baffling they could make a saint despair. And through it all, a question, quiet as a mouse in the wainscoting, has persistently nibbled at the edges of my professional certainty. Beyond the spreadsheets, the flowcharts, and the algorithms that promise us a clockwork universe, what is the ghost in the machine? What is the invisible force that truly animates our working lives?
It is the grandest of puzzles, is it not? You see an initiative, a veritable Napoleon of a plan, perfectly logical and armoured in data, march confidently onto the field only to meet a strange, silent wall of human inertia and quietly expire. Then you witness another, a scrappy, patched-together notion that looks destined for the bin, suddenly catch fire, igniting a passion that carries it to a glorious, unforeseen victory. Why is it that one leader can utter a few simple words and inspire a level of loyalty that would make kings weep with envy, while another, equally brilliant and armed with the very same MBA-approved phrases, can’t seem to inspire anyone to pass the salt? And the cultures, oh, the cultures! Why do some workplaces hum with a creative energy that makes you feel more alive just by walking through the door, while others, despite the glossy brochures and philanthropic mission statements, feel like waiting rooms for the human spirit?
The usual explanations, have always struck me as beautifully constructed ships, expertly rigged and chartered, that nevertheless seem to sail determinedly around the most interesting island on the map. The venerable texts of management science and organisational psychology can describe the rigging and the hull with breathtaking precision. They give us the “what” of the structures and the “how” of the systems, but they often miss the “why” of the sea itself - the unseen currents of shared belief, the deep tides of emotion, and the sudden squalls of irrationality that can toss even the most formidable vessel onto the rocks. There was always a missing dimension, a language of the heart that the crisp dialect of metrics and models simply could not speak.
This missing layer, this secret garden of the soul, remained tantalisingly out of view until immersing myself in the work of a wise old mapmaker, the great Joseph Campbell. His revelation, so simple and yet so profound, was that myths are not the childish fables of a pre-scientific age but are, in fact, the very blueprints of our inner lives. They are the timeless, recurring stories that give us our bearings, that frame our understanding of the world, and that guide us through the thickets of our own psychological growth. They are the operating system of the human spirit, and it turns out this software is running, often silently and unseen, in every corner of our modern world.
With Campbell as a guide, you begin to see it everywhere. These ancient patterns, these deep human hungers for meaning, for narrative, and for a connection to something larger than our own fleeting existence, are not left at the office door. They are the very heart of the matter. The modern corporation, for all its sleek glass and technological sheen, is at its core a living, breathing mythological system. It has its own Genesis story, told and retold about the founders in their fabled garage. It has its pantheon of heroes and cautionary tales of villains. It has its sacred rituals, from the weekly all-hands meeting to the annual awards ceremony, and it has its guiding cosmology, often called a “vision statement”, that tells everyone where they are in the universe and what it all means.
To see our workplaces from this perspective is not to abandon reason, but to enrich it. It is to finally possess a map that shows both the highways and the ley lines. Campbell’s ideas, particularly the four functions of myth he so brilliantly identified, act as a decoder ring for the often-baffling behaviour of organisations. The universal pattern of the Hero’s Journey provides a far more humane and resonant way to understand the ordeals of career development or the terrifying upheaval of organisational change, reframing them as quests for transformation rather than mere operational adjustments. The idea of archetypes illuminates the recurring roles we instinctively play in our teams, and most crucially, the concept of the collective shadow helps us understand and heal the toxic patterns that so often fester in the dark, unacknowledged corners of a company’s culture.
This book, then, is an invitation. It is an invitation to look beyond the org chart and the quarterly report to see the invisible architecture of meaning that holds the entire enterprise together. My aim is not to tear down the valuable scaffolding of management theory but to complement it, to flood the starkly lit rooms of rationality with the warm, complex, and sometimes contradictory light of human nature. It is a gentle attempt to reintegrate the soul into our understanding of the systems where we spend so much of our precious time.
My fondest hope is that this exploration will offer you a fresh perspective, whether you are a leader trying to build a more resilient and humane organisation, a manager hoping to truly connect with your team, or an individual navigating your own quest for a working life that feels less like a chore and more like a calling. It is a journey into the heart of what makes us human, especially when we are at work.