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An honest company
Imagine a company that practices total, uncompromising honesty in their advertising. If they have a great product they’ll say so. And if they’re trying to sell you something mediocre, they’ll tell you that too. They might actively warn you along the lines of “Don’t expect good service from these people” or “The product here is nothing to write home about”, or even “If you have any complaints talk to Benny. If he breaks down crying, ignore it, it’s just a trick he uses.”
Do you think a company like that could possibly survive?
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More books
I’m almost through with the last batch of books, so I’ve ordered some more. Here’s a list of what I will be enjoying soon:
Business titles:
The Customer Comes Second: Put Your People First and Watch ’em Kick Butt (Revised)
The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning
The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism
Getting Past No: Negotiating with Difficult People
Action Learning: A Practitioner’s Guide
The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-era Organizations
Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination
Freedom and Accountability at Work
Nuts!: Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal SuccessPsychology:
Flow: The Classic Work on How to Achieve Happiness
Playful Approaches to Serious Problems: Narrative Therapy with Children and Their Families
Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway: How to Turn Your Fear and Indecision into Confidence
Loving What Is: How Four Questions Can Change Your LifeAssorted science:
The Web of Life: A New Synthesis of Mind and Matter
Chaos: Making a New Science
Wittgenstein’s Poker: The Story of a Ten Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers
What Just Happened?Science fiction:
To Hold Infinity
Dark Light: Engines of Light Book 2 (Engines of Light)
Engine City (Engines of Light)
Redemption Ark (Gollancz S.F.)
Misspent Youth
Eight Skilled GentlemenAnd of course some music to listen to while reading:
Serve Chilled Vol.1
Astor Piazzolla & The Golden Age of Tango
Melody A.M.
Another Late Night – Zero 7The order should arrive in a week or so, I can’t wait to get started! Reviews will appear continuously.
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There is no either/or
I’m currently reading Ken Wilbers book No Boundary. The book states, that the boundaries we perceive in the world, are only products of our perception, and not really a part of the world.
Every time we divide the world into us and them, good and evil, right and wrong, guilty and innocent we’re creating divisions in our minds that are not part of the world itself. Thus, we increasingly see the world as it is not – which can hardly be a good thing.
This got me thinking about all the either/or thinking that I do, and that I see in others. And I have yet to find a single example of a valid either/or proposition. Let me explain.
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Book review: The dance of change
Whew!
I’ve finally finished Peter Senge’s trilogy on learning organizations. After The fifth discipline and The fifth discipline fieldbook, comes The dance of change: The Challenges of Sustaining Momentum in a Learning Organisation.
The first book lays the theoretical foundation, and introduces the five disciplines which Peter Senge believes are the key to creating learning organizations. They are personal mastery, systems thinking, shared vision, team learning and mental models. The second book contains practical tips on how to implement each of the five disciplines. By now we’re already past the 1000-page mark.
The dance of change brings the tally up another 550 pages, and deals with the challenges that all change initiatives in organizations meet. The link between change and learning permeates the book. You can’t turn an organization into a learning organization without changing. Conversely, any strategic change in a company, that doesn’t contain learning in some form is probably doomed. So change is learning and learning is change.
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How to teach
I find myself coming back to learning again and again these days. Some people say that planning is learning. Some say that change is learning and learning is change. Some say that the meaning of life itself is to learn. I’ve used learning as one of 6 core values that changes a good job into a great job in my new project, projekt arbejdsglæde.
So if learning is so important, then teaching must be equally important, so here’s an article with some good tips on how to teach. And we’re all teachers to some extent, especially leaders.
It’s great stuff. I especially like the deep respect for the student/pupil. I’m thinking that you can’t really teach anybody anything. You can create a situation that allows people to learn – which can be vastly different.
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The rest is … silence
There’s a very important talent, a discipline, that is almost totally ignored these days: Silence and solitude.
We’re talkers. We speak, argue, discuss, put forth. We seem to express ourselves mostly by what we do and say, and we measure others by the same yardstick. But there is a value in silence and solitude that I think we’re forgetting. Being alone with your own thoughts allows you to learn something about yourself and your current situation that you might miss if you’re always talking and doing.
I hade the privilege of trying 48 hours of silence last year, and it was a beatiful and terrifying experience. Two days with no TV, nothing to read, noone to talk to, no phones, no internet, no nothing. Or actually nothing but nothing. Two days with plenty of time to slow down and discover what went on inside my head.
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Happy new year!
Happy new year, I’m off to a party.
I hope that 2003 will be the year where we get exactly what we need – instead of what we want or think we want or think we need.
I wish you good fortune, peace and lots of fun.
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Quote
People don’t burn out because they’re trying to solve problems. People burn out because they’ve been trying to solve the same problem over and over and over.
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Coping with paradox
I was net-researching the concept of paradox, when I discovered this article from the CEO Refresher, which describes how you can (and should) embrace paradox in business. Excellent stuff!
Teasers:
Living with paradox may not be comfortable or easy, but it reflects a significant understanding of how ?things? really work.
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Any over-determined behaviour produces its opposite… An awareness of the polarities and paradox can move the action forward positively.