Most of us are looking for a deeper sense of meaning in our work. It is that search that author Mark Bryan addresses in The Artist's Way at Work (William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1998).

The driving force behind "The Artist's Way at Work" is how to bring our strengths and spirit of innovation to our workplace.

"We can add value to a company," Bryan said in a phone interview from his office in Los Angeles. "What's an idea worth? Everything is an idea before it's a product."

Bryan, a Harvard-trained educator who has developed products for several Fortune 500 companies and one of the five "Change Your Life" experts featured on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," also specializes in organizational behavior. "Corporations are groups of people -- not an 'it' but an 'us'" Bryan said. "If we're restless and unhappy, we're not working optimally. A happy employee is a more productive employee."

Bryan proposes that if we want to change our worklives for the better, we have to start with changing ourselves.

"At an individual level, we're an employee of one," he said. "As an employee, I'm managing myself, giving myself training, and supporting myself with downtime and challenging work." When we as employees take control of our work, Bryan asserts, "the employer gains loyalty even as the corporate world fragments."

The Artist's Way at Work can start this process by taking us through a twelve-week program of self-directed exercises or "tools," as Bryan calls them, to connect with our values, history, and integrity and apply them to our work.

"These tools build our will over time, like a 24-hour feedback loop," said Bryan, who emphasizes daily journal writing as the most critical exercise. "Our thoughts and ideas rise to the surface, and keep things cooking internally. Then we'll hit pay dirt." This kind of self-talk, or "learned optimism" he stresses, leads to positive changes. "It's a step-by-step methodology for individuals to realize their dreams."

The book's tools also provide a means to examine group dynamics at our job, the identity issues we grapple with daily, and perhaps most importantly, how we assume, or don't assume, power within the group.

Bryan has seen the benefits of the program up close; after teaching the workshop all over the country, he feels that in a sense, it's been "proven in the trenches." He added, "Our students have been the source of information. It's been like a 'rolling lab.'"

Bryan reports that the book has been well received. Last month, he was invited to speak to 500 AT&T executives, and he's gotten e-mail from South America to South Africa. "And they're waiting for a translation in Japan," he said.

And though The Artist's Way at Work tools are designed for individuals, Bryan has observed their application at a corporate level. Earlier this year, Lucent Technologies retained him to teach the program to their Financial Leadership Development Group. "I think it's been effective for them," Bryan said.

"What I'm proudest of is that people say it's had a profound effect on them, that 'this book changed my life.' I say to them, 'no, you changed your life.'"

But while individuals are embracing new ways of thinking, Bryan emphasizes that organizations have a long way to go. "So far, change efforts at the corporate level have failed," he said. "We haven't given the individual a safe environment to rethink these group issues. And the corporate world is neglecting the reality that the real incentive to work isn't money."

Bryan related that his own career and work has "run the gamut." As an entrepreneur, he invented a host of products, and along the way discovered the eye-opening difference between marketing and producing.

"The very real lesson, which I learned personally, is that you can sell a lot more than you can make," he said. "I know what it's like to sell a million dollars worth of a product, and I know what it's like to lose it all."

He compares his own experience to one of his favorite Chinese proverbs. "Life is like a ball of twine. You can throw it in a general direction, but you can't be sure how it's going to unwind."

One direction he's aimed for in the last 10 years is to approach his career with an attitude of service.

"We need to remember that any kind of business is providing a service. In my experience, everything I've done just to be 'rich and famous' I've failed at," Bryan said. "But everything I've done out of a sense of service has been successful."