Book
When No Thing Works: A Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse
By Norma Kawelokū Wong Rōshi
2024 · North Atlantic Books

Book and audiobook available at https://www.normawong.com/

Why we recommend it

This book reframes crisis as a threshold, an in-between, to step through by sharing, remembering, and changing together. Zen teacher and Indigenous Hawaiian leader Norma Kawelokū Wong offers a way of being and becoming in the midst of a world that feels like it’s accelerating beyond our grasp.

For those working in cultural institutions who are being asked to compromise their values, her framework of collective care and interdependence can help understand events in more interconnected ways, and look farther past the horizon. Each chapter provides and expands a space to pause, ponder, plan, and maybe “act more abundantly”.

Find a free guide to deepen practice in relation to the book. Developed by the Collective Acceleration community.

Good for those who hope to make sense of the collective acceleration we are living through. Museum professionals will also find lessons relevant to a more grounded approach to leading and caring for their teams and communities.

Themes connected to an empathetic practice: empathetic leadership, shared purpose, community engagement, strategic practice, resilience, interdependent thriving