My book reviews. Fiction, non-fiction and mainly business literature. These are all excellent books, ’cause I never review the books I don’t like.
This book is Harrison Owens second book about Open Space, and it contains stories of how he arrived at the concept of Open Space, and of how it has helped and transformed various organizations.
Also, the book touches on time, or rather on our perception of it. All we really have is now. The past is over, the future hasn’t yet begun. But how long is that now? A week? A year? An instant?
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When you make room for play at work, great things happen. They discovered this at Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle. Selling fish can be hard, boring and repetitious, and a few years back they had very little fun doing it.
And then they changed that. Today they have a lot more fun, give their customers a better experience and sell a lot more fish. This has been documented in a film and accompanying book called “Fish!” and in an additional book in the series called Fish Tales, which contains some great, true stories of organizations at play.
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Margaret Wheatley has written another beautiful book, and this time the topic is conversation. Meg (as she’s known) believes strongly in the power of conversation and dialogue to bring people together and to promote individual and shared development.
She starts the book by explaining her reasons for writing it, and by explaining her view on conversation.
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This book by Margaret Wheatley is without a doubt the most beautiful and unconventional business-related book I’ve ever read. It conveys it’s message not only through prose, but also in poems and photographs.
And the message itself is simple and beautiful, namely that:
There is a simpler way to organize human endeavour. It requires a new way of being in the world. It requires being in the world without fear. Being in the world with play and creativity. Seeking after what’s possible. Being willing to learn and to be surprised.
So what is this simpler way?
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“Inner Skiing” is an excellent account of how learning occurs, but this time it’s not at work, it’s out on the ski slopes.
As every skier knows, skiing can be a wonderful experience, when you’re in flow, your skis obey your every command and you zoom down the mountainside. And every skier knows the flip side: When your skis won’t do anything you ask them to, every other skier on the mountain seems to deliberately get in your way, and you spend more time falling than skiing.
What determines the experience you will get? How do you you move from one to the other?
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So, why on earth am I reading a book about child therapy? First of all, therapy is all about change. You have a problem, you need to change, therapy is one potential tool, and therapy contains many potentially useful methods for promoting change. And one of the biggest challenges facing organizations today is the need for constant change. It’s almost a clich? to say it, but it remains true.
Secondly, I discovered the concept of narrative therapy on the net, while netresearching therapy, and it seemed really interesting for a number of reasons.
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Everybody knows the state of Flow. Flow is when you’re engrossed in doing something. You may forget time and place. You may forget to eat or sleep. You’re doing what you’re doing, and your entire attention is focused on that.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote a book about it back in 1990, based on many years of research into happiness. And the book is excellent. No other book I’ve read discusses human happiness (and unhappiness) so clearly and fluidly.
So what is it that makes us happy?
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Writer Tracy Kidder won a Pulitzer prize in 1982 for The soul of a new machine. It’s the true story of a team of engineers at Data General who are designing the next generation of micro-computer.
I first read the book ten years ago, while I was still at university, and while it’s still an excellent read, my perspective on the story has changed completely.
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Stephen Denning was faced with a task, which I do not envy him: He was charged with implementing knowledge management in huge and very conservative organization (the World Bank) which so far had not considered itself in the knowledge business.
This book is the story of how he did it – using stories. He found that whenever he used “traditional” presentations to present the idea of knowledge management and the changes necessary to implement it, he got nowhere. People were skeptical. However, when he used stories to convey the message, people’s attitudes changed, and they became much more positive.
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This book, subtitled “Turn on the People in Any Organization”, is a really quick read, but it contains some pretty good ideas nevertheless.
The whole book is a a story of an iron plant in America, that’s in deep trouble. Profits are down, and the employees are hostile towards the new CEO that’s just been hired.
The CEO talks to an indian, and learns the spirit of the squirrel, the way of the beaver and the gift of the goose.
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