The cathedral within by Bill Shore is about charity. Bill Shore is the founder and executive director of Share Our Strength, an organization that supports anti-hunger and anti-poverty efforts worldwide.
This book strengthened my conviction, that giving is important. Giving something to your community or your world confirms your identity, it strengthens your spirit and creates meaning for both individuals and organizations.
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How about an MBTI test that only takes a couple of minutes? I tried it, and in just four questions it figured out that I’m an ENFP. I’ve tried other MBTI tests that had a lot more questions, and they gave the same result. Try it.
The fifth discipline by Peter Senge is probably the most influential book on learning organizations. It laid the theoretical groundwork for creating learning organizations by defining five essential skills: Systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision and team learning.
The Fifth discipline fieldbook follows up on the theory, and offers a wealth of methods and tools to strenghten the practice of the disciplines. It also contains lots of case stories from many different companies.
I’ve heard it often: What get’s measured get’s done. It’s especially popular among proponents of Balanced Scorecards and similar management tools.
I think it’s wrong. Click more and I’ll tell you why I think so.
Well first of all, what does the statement mean? Most often it’s used as a reason to measure performance in your organization, so it has several meanings:
1: If you want to make sure that something is done, you need to measure it.
2: You can adequately measure results
3: You can know the state of your organization through measurements
I disagree. It’s not that measurements in an organization are superfluous – it’s just never the whole truth.
Here’s why I disagree with the statement:
If you only accept the results that you can measure (and most people who tout the statement do), then the statement becomes a tautology and thus is meaningless. It then says in effect that “What get’s measured is what we have measured”. So (and this is pretty funny) this statement only makes sense, if you accept the existence of non-measured results.
And this is the whole point: In all organizations, much of the work done and much of the value created is unmeasured and maybe even unmeasureable. Let’s say a person has a great day, and spreads a good mood in his department. Can you measure that? No! Is it important? Certainly! It can have a significant impact on that departments productivity.
Let’s say a project comes in on time and on budget. You can (and probably will measure that, as well you should). Maybe that project cost one of the key workers her marriage. Will that be measured? No! Is it important? Well, when she resigns in three months, it will be!
So what get’s measured is not what get’s done. There’s so much else being done that has huge impact on your organization, which will never be measured. We must learn to live with this!
When and how do people change? And when do they get stuck in situations and problems that seem hopeless? This is the focus of this book, Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution.
The book is based on the authors’ experiences with brief therapy. Unlike traditional psychotherapy, which tries to uncover the “deeper” causes of problems, brief therapy focuses on solving peoples current problems. Why spend years of therapy going back to the hypothetical root cause of some problem, when what you really need to do, is get rid of the issue now. And even IF you find the cause of the problem, you still haven’t solved it.
The authors claim to have helped 80% of their clients in 4 sessions or less!
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The naked ape is a classic. It’s about humans, but it’s written by a zoologist, who treats us as just another type of ape.
The premise is this: If you took the skin of one of each species of primate and examined them closely, there’s one that would stick out – the human. We’re not covered in hair, hence the naked ape. He then goes on to describe the myriad ways in which we resemble apes, physically, psycologically, socially, sexually, etc. It’s brilliant stuff.
It reminds me of a question asked in Douglas Coupland’s Generation X: What animal would you be, if you were an animal? Answer: You already are an animal.
Systems thinking is the key to understanding many of the problems that we face today as individuals and organizations. Peter Senge defined it as one of five key disciplines necessary to create a learning organization, but systems thinking is useful far beyond that.
This book, subtitled “Essential skills for creativity and problem solving”, is a thorough introduction to the field.
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Check out this quote from an article in Fast Company:
A nine-month study of 80 executives found that those who worked out regularly improved their fitness by 22% and demonstrated a 70% improvement in their ability to make complex decisions as compared with non-exercisers.
A couple of days ago, there was a doctor on TV talking about the health benefits of regular exercise. The danish state will allow doctors to prescribe exercise the way they describe medication. Among others, exercise is good against heart disease, colon cancer and osteoporosis. The more you exercise, the more it works and here’s the clincher: There are NO negative side effects of exercise.
Any medicine out there (and I do mean ANY) has side effects. Exercise doesn’t. In a time where doctors warn that so many things can be bad for you, I think that’s kinda interesting. So exercise already!
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