Backing Down the Ladder
Backing Down
the Ladder
By Andy Fleming
- A reflective journey through work and life. Andy Fleming’s poetry explores the tension between ambition, identity, and the deeper search for meaning beyond traditional measures of success.
- Insights from a former corporate climber. Drawing on years in the organizational world, the poems reflect a personal shift from climbing the ladder to pursuing a more grounded and authentic path.
- Humor, honesty, and compassion. The collection blends wit with heartfelt reflection, offering readers both perspective and companionship as they navigate their own questions about work, purpose, and growth.
- An invitation to live and work from the center. Through vivid imagery and thoughtful language, the poems encourage readers to reconnect with what truly matters and to pursue a life and career that allow both people and organizations to flourish.
About
Backing Down the Ladder offers original poetry by a former corporate climber who now helps to create organizational cultures where both humans and business flourish. It is a book of poetry for those who want to live and work more deeply from their own center, even if it means backing down the ladder. Fleming offers humorous, heartfelt, and profound poetry that draws on his self-examination and on observations of the organizational world and beyond. “Consulting and poetry are linked,” he says, “because both require that you look down into the essence of something and find or create language to describe what you see. In both domains, I try to offer an insight, image, or framework, as well as companionship, for anyone looking for a pathway toward flourishing in this world.”
Reviews
“Andy writes rich, heartfelt poetry on behalf of all of us who are wrestling with the profound challenges we encounter in the second half of life. When I feel disconnected from my heart and life, his poems bring me home again.”
Jan Smith, Founder and President, Center for Authentic Leadership, Atlanta, Georgia
“These poems are laced with ironic humor yet never without compassion. Straight from the belly, the reader is led on a deepening trail of transformation. They are a story of a man growing down.”
Laurent A. Parks Daloz & Sharon Daloz Parks, Co-authors of Common Fire: Leading Lives Of Commitment In A Complex World
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