A Simpler Way

Rating:
Summary: A book with which to launch an exploration
Review:

A Simpler Way is a beautiful object as well as being a lovely book. It's engaging cover photo, the texture of the paper, the size of the pages, the open and clean use of white space. And Wheatley has taken a major step forward in her philosophy and her life since Leadership and the New Science. This book is more exploratory, more tentative, and at the same time even more convincing than her earlier effort.

More than being an uplifting book, more than being an effective business book, more than all of this, it is a book which raises tantalizing new questions, awakens a creative opportunity, and whets an appetite for learning more.

It is a book which helped me reawaken a curiosity and a thirst for further exploration that I haven't indulged in too long a time. From A Simpler Way, I have read several books about the New Sciences. I began with Dancing Wu Li Masters, and was thoroughly charmed. Then the Tao of Physics, which built a little more around the ideas from Wu Li Masters. And then Turbulent Mirror. And then Synchronicity and the Inner Path of Leadership. And then Bohm. And more and more more. From biology to botany to chaos to quantum physics to buisness organization to leadership. The philosophy of science. The vast amounts of knowledge in these books has allowed me to open up whole new perspectives on my life... my personal life, my spiritual life, my home life, my work life.

But it started, for me, with A Simpler Way. And I am the richer for it.

Rating:
Summary: Superb for understanding True Self
Review: A Wonderful book that is clear and comprehensible in understanding our invisible life supporting and self organizing forces that manifest our world and reality. The greatest understanding of why we can trust and work with life's creative forces vs. trying to control them. It simply brings to our conscious awareness self-evident truths.

Rating:
Summary: Worth "reading"
Review: I found this book hard to "read" but easy to own and "flip" through. The book gives us a good organizational view of systems theory and explores some of the most basic concepts of human and non-human organization. It has many photographs which are nice but not entirely related. The ideas are solid but not as well "organized" as they could be. I found myself wanting deeper explanations. But, in general, its a great coffee table style book that is fun to pick up and read a short bit, piece by piece.

Rating:
Summary: Essential reading
Review: It's late on a Sunday night and I've just finished reading "A Simpler Way" for the second time. It's one of those books that repays multiple readings as you delve deeper into what the authors are saying. It may be the best book I've ever read about creativity and organizational change, and I've read a bunch of 'em. It may change your life, if you let it. It's not "too New Age" at all - it's firmly grounded in the latest thinking in biology and other sciences. Basically, it says we are too controlled by inaccurate images of the world - specifically, the Darwinist belief in the "struggle" to survive and the machine metaphor. These two ways of looking at the world have predominated for decades now, and have percolated down into our lives, so that we think that such things as struggle, fierce competition, control, planning, rigidity, coercion, and so on, are the ways life is, and are the ways to organize our lives. WRONG, say the authors. The world actually is very different from what the Darwinists and the machine-as-metaphor people have said. According to the latest and best studies of evolution, biology, physics, nature, etc., the world is a lot more interested in cooperation, connections, synergy, alliances, freedom, etc., than we thought, and we can, if we're brave enough, allow THESE images of the world to pervade our lives and our companies.

Rating:
Summary: Complex Dynamical Systems Theory for Managers
Review: It's late on a Sunday night and I've just finished reading "A Simpler Way" for the second time. It's one of those books that repays multiple readings as you delve deeper into what the authors are saying. It may be the best book I've ever read about creativity and organizational change, and I've read a bunch of 'em. It may change your life, if you let it. It's not "too New Age" at all - it's firmly grounded in the latest thinking in biology and other sciences. Basically, it says we are too controlled by inaccurate images of the world - specifically, the Darwinist belief in the "struggle" to survive and the machine metaphor. These two ways of looking at the world have predominated for decades now, and have percolated down into our lives, so that we think that such things as struggle, fierce competition, control, planning, rigidity, coercion, and so on, are the ways life is, and are the ways to organize our lives. WRONG, say the authors. The world actually is very different from what the Darwinists and the machine-as-metaphor people have said. According to the latest and best studies of evolution, biology, physics, nature, etc., the world is a lot more interested in cooperation, connections, synergy, alliances, freedom, etc., than we thought, and we can, if we're brave enough, allow THESE images of the world to pervade our lives and our companies.

Rating:
Summary: A Good Read!
Review: This beautiful work appeals to the part of you that is creative and artistic, the part that is always searching for new ways to look at the world. The book begins with a poem. The themes that follow - play, organization, self, emergence - each spin from the poem. The authors, Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers, weave in their bold, thought-provoking views on how life seeks to organize and diversify itself out of chaos. They explore scientific concepts by Charles Darwin, Carl Sagan and other scientists, interspersing quotes from mystics and philosophers. This is an excellent book, the kind you might keep on your desk to share or on your night stand for inspiration. The loose, circular writing elegantly expresses both philosophical and scientific ideas about organization. It is soulful without being too wishy-washy. ... .

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful and Simple Way to introduce the Complex(ity)
Review: This book is special for two reasons: #1 the book itself is beautiful in graphics, typography and shape, #2 the text pleasantly guides the novice into the realm of the subject of complexity.
This is the book I always advice to those who want to 'get into' the subject.