Synopsis
Building on Wheatley's trailblazing Leadership and the New Science, this book examines the impact of the Evolutionary Paradigm, a theory generated by modern biology and physics, on our notions about work, organization, and change. Crafting engaging metaphors with literature, spiritual teachings, and personal experiences, Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers guide readers toward a simpler and more experiential way of viewing and structuring their endeavors based on Evolutionary tenets. 40 photos.
Reviews
Addressing readers who perceive their lives as nearly unmanageable, the authors, business consultants and cofounders of the Berkana Institute, elegantly suggest a new way to view endeavor. Are we governed by static images of the world as a great machine, they ask, or do we see the world as an ever-changing, creative, living organism? The authors present material from myriad academic disciplines to shore up their fundamental propositions that the universe is a creative experience, that life self-organizes, that organizations are living systems. Even light bulbs "have exhibited a breathtaking tendency to self-organize when wired together with other bulbs," the authors observe. Organizing, they maintain, is a "deep impulse" and not one just found in living beings. Self-organizing calls us to partner with the world's creative forces, for life, Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers aver, has the capacity to invent itself. The advice here is more inspirational than particular or hands-on. It represents a vigorous, path-breaking application of findings from the cutting edge of science to inner questions about how to live a life, however, and so should find a ready readership among those who cotton to Chopra, Capra and the like. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A Simpler Way is nothing less than a generous gift from the authors.... In an evocative, almost poetic, style they lead us with thought, care, and great gentleness, through a philosophy which observes life as always moving toward organization, and organization as ultimately affirming of life itself.
If you care about authentic change and want your faith in human systems affirmed, drop everything and read this book.
Wheatley's Leadership and the New Science was named "management book of the year" by Industry Week for 1992. The book took such an unusual approach to organizational management that it was classed by catalogers with general science rather than management theory. In it, Wheatley argued that in the past management attempted to make parts of the whole work together; he called this approach the Newtonian method. Wheatley advocates instead a quantum theory approach, which assumes that organizations are chaotic. In this new book, Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers expand on those ideas. The two are partners at their own consulting firm, and both are leaders at the Berkana Institute in Sundance, Utah. They propose that leaders follow nature, that nature manages itself and is self-organizing, and that play is an important part of this organizing tendency. They challenge the Darwinian view of nature based on competition and disclaim management by fear. Expect demand from self-help and business readers. David Rouse
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