Running any business day-in and day-out can bring active contemplation to a halt. The pace of work stays at such a staggering speed, leaving you inspired, exhausted, and bewildered.

With such demands on your time, it’s hard to make sense of life and work, and even harder to extract wisdom out of the many experiences that constitute a workday.

The gift of having a weekly column–and then further editing those columns into a book–is the gift of an examined work life. Work transforms into an articulated and contemplative experience, lessons learned in the trenches and crystallized through the alchemy of the writing process.

Distilling these insights into something worth sharing transmutes the dross doldrums of a common workday into valuable tales from the trenches.

So, I want to thank the Daily News for the weekly speed bump and for the gift of a reason to reflect.

It is my hope that you find these columns inspiring, provocative, and that they help you overcome blocks and hurdles that prevent you and your organization from reaching its potential.

The case studies, methods, and frameworks for exploring new ways of discovering new value can give you the tools for transforming your organization and placing it in a prime position to thrive.

More powerful, I hope, and more important, these tales and tips are intended to transmit courage and risk taking, the two scarcest soft skills in the professional world.

If anything triggers new actions, new thoughts, and new behaviors and shakes up anything out-of-date with the increasing rate of the dynamic marketplace, embrace it. If inspiration takes you to new places, go with an open mind. If any story sparks a sense of purpose, a renewed personal mission, or passion, honor it.

The gift here is seeing that the professional world can birth humanity’s next great phase, the human-to-human era. In this emerging age, you don’t need to create or sell things people don’t need. Rather, you can befriend people and help them solve problems with new products, services, and experiences.

There is a calling inherent in taking this challenge—and that is that you will take personal responsibility for making the world a better place through your work—and you won’t settle until you see evidence of this fact happening.

Here are the stepping stones, the path of the past eight-plus years, collected into a book. Hope you enjoy and end up amazing yourself: http://www.amazon.com/dp/193694667X/ref=dra_a_rv_ff_fx_xx_P2000_1000?tag=dradisplay-20&ascsubtag=f4a89a36346254047369b9b728d09e4b_S.