Rating: 
Summary: Dialogue vs. Discussion. Two-way vs. One-way.
Review: A great read to help you understand what Socrates did on a continuous basis-true communication leading to indepth understanding. I got many Aha's from the book, but two major points that stand out are (1) democracy ended with the vote, and (2) in a discussion, if your not talking you are "reloading". The take-aways are that we in most cases are not focused on coming to closure and fully understanding an issue or problem. We hold our own views without listening to the facts or assumptions surrounding another individuals view. We don't go to the deeper levels of understanding. This leads to false assumptions being made-which in most cases leads to some type of conflict. Should be mandatory reading for anyone desiring to be a true leader!
Rating:
Summary: Dialogue vs. Discussion. Two-way vs. One-way.
Review: A great read to help you understand what Socrates did on a continuous basis-true communication leading to indepth understanding. I got many Aha's from the book, but two major points that stand out are (1) democracy ended with the vote, and (2) in a discussion, if your not talking you are "reloading". The take-aways are that we in most cases are not focused on coming to closure and fully understanding an issue or problem. We hold our own views without listening to the facts or assumptions surrounding another individuals view. We don't go to the deeper levels of understanding. This leads to false assumptions being made-which in most cases leads to some type of conflict. Should be mandatory reading for anyone desiring to be a true leader!
Rating: 
Summary: So, he had a spell checker, now to get an editor!!
Review: A wonderful, challenging read -- made especially challenging for the lack of editing.The man can think, knows his stuff, and presents important ideas. But this man is not a crafter of high prose. If Senge had done a little consulting on smoothly flowing prose rather than the intro, it would have been better. Having had my quibble, I do appreciate the book and its insights which are many.
Rating:
Summary: So, he had a spell checker, now to get an editor!!
Review: A wonderful, challenging read -- made especially challenging for the lack of editing. The man can think, knows his stuff, and presents important ideas. But this man is not a crafter of high prose. If Senge had done a little consulting on smoothly flowing prose rather than the intro, it would have been better. Having had my quibble, I do appreciate the book and its insights which are many.
Rating: 
Summary: It is pie-in-the-sky
Review: As long as organizations are primarily run by cold-war management style with modernized command and control via antiquated measurement systems faking empowerment, the entire 'dialogue' is a moot argument. This book is yet another... People are only as good as they are measured and percieved. The architecture of the organization along with its aesthetics, structure and internal/external measurement systems requires open evaluation for any dialog to persist. Rhetoric, game strategy and positioning do not mix with dialogue. They are mutually exclusive, unless 'dialogue' itself is a rhetorical stance -- a hypocritical position. This book is attempting to aesthetize the wrong dialogue.
Rating:
Summary: "Must reading" for fast paced business leaders!
Review: Communication, or the lack of it, seems to be the biggest challenge of the 21st Century. Meetings are often a waste of time, because people are not thinking together. The author says not thinking together is just sharing memories and prejudices. This book will be a communication handbook for many leaders in 2000+.
Rating: 
Summary: Endorsements and the date you can obtain this book...
Review: Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together will be available September 14, 1999, though can be ordered now through Amazon. Here are some early comments about the book: There is no more important art for humans to master than that of dialogue. Bill Isaacs unpacks the process for us and illustrates it with powerful stories and insights. Masterful!" William Ury Co-author, Getting to YES, author, Getting Past No In this timely and provocative book, Bill Isaacs provides us with sage and practical guideline for one of the essential elements of true partnership: learning how to talk together in honest and effective ways. This is an important contribution to businesses and other organizations. Riane Eisler, author of The Chalice & The Blade, Sacred Pleasure, and Tomorrow's Children Finally! Dialogue provides an intellectual and practical framework for understanding the way we work together -- or fail to. It should be on the shelf of every organization that spends time in meetings, whether in a corporate conference room, city hall, or Capitol Hill. MARK GERZON, Principal facilitator for the Bipartisan Congressional Retreats and author of A House Divided: Six Belief Systems Struggling for America's Soul. Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together is must reading for all managers, politicians and diplomats. Particularly where different cultures or sub-cultures are involved, Dialogue is not only an option, it is a necessity if any inter-cultural understanding is ever to arise in this complex multi-cultural world. This book is a brilliant and much needed exposition of a crucial topic. Edgar H. Schein, Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus, MIT Sloan School of Management I have been waiting for this book! Bill Isaacs is today's leading thinker and practitioner of Dialogue. His book will change the way we think, talk, and relate. The seeds are here to change the world. Danah Zohar, author, The Quantum Self, The Quantum Society, and Rewiring the Corporate Brain
Rating:
Summary: Communications is so much more than words...
Review: Dialogue; traced to its Greek roots is a flow of meaning, an ability to take many different issues and opinions to a table and create something completely new out of the process. Communication is the center of our culture as human beings, yet we rarely make time for true communication in our society today. As a person that feels as if there is something missing in the conversations I hold in my life and in my career I found this book to be very insightful. I gained an understanding of my frustrations, some skills to apply, and a look at the direction in which I want to go in the future. As it is a complex book that applies to every part of my life (and yours!) I have chosen to simply include a few of my favorite quotes. "Respect also means honoring people's boundries to the point of protecting them. If you respect someone, you do not intrude. At the same time, if you respect someone, you do not withhold yourself or distance yourself from them. I have heard many people claim they were respecting someone by leaving them alone, when in fact they were simpley distancing themselves from something they did not want to deal with. When we respect someone, we accept that they have thinks to teach us."..."Treat the person next to you as a teacher. What is it that they have to teach you that you do not now know? Listening to them in this way, you discover things that might surprise you."..."Respect is, in this sense, looking for what is highest and best in a person and treating them as a mystery that you can never fully comprehend. They are a part of the whole, and, in a very particular sense, a part of us." - PP 114-117 "Every conversation has its own acoustics. Each one takes place in an environment that has both physical, or external, dimensions as well as internal, or mental and emotional, dimensions. There is, in other words, an invisible architecture to the container. Most such structures are made for discussion, for thinking alone. We have very few designed for thinking together, for dialogue." - P 247 This is my favorite quote in the entire book, I see it in my relationships with the world each and every day: "The Internet can be seen as the attempt of your literate and isolated culture to somehow return to community. People seem to imagine that if we are all digitally connected, then we would all be in touch, and the great malaise of the age - the isolation, pace, disconnection that many of us feel - would be allayed. But so far the digital revolution is giving us connection but not contact"..."one simple touch of a human hand could far exceed all the impact of all the digital libraries in the land." - PP 388-389
Rating:
Summary: Interactive Humanity
Review: Dialogue According to the subtitle, Isaacs provides "a pioneering approach to communicating in business and in life." This he does with insight and eloquence. There is a great need for what this book provides, especially now as organizations are (finally) beginning to appreciate the importance of supporting (indeed nourishing) the personal as well as the professional development of their "human capital" The word "dialogue" denotes conversation between two or more persons. Moreover, the original meaning of the word "conversation" is to turn around, to transform; later, the word's meaning evolved to "living, dwelling, and associating with others." Today, most of us think of conversation as "talk." Some of us think of it as a "lost art." Isaacs obviously has both words clearly in mind as he introduces his "pioneering approach." His purpose is to explain HOW effective dialogue, dialogue which is "about a shared inquiry, a way of thinking and reflecting together", can increase and enhance human dignity and understanding. How important is face-to-face communication? My own opinion is that it is more important now than ever before. However, again my opinion, the quality of face-to-face communication has rapidly deteriorated in this age of high-speed electronic "connectivity." Isaacs' book is organized into five "Parts": What Is Dialogue; Building Capacity for New Behavior (ie listening, respecting, suspending, and voicing); Predictive Intuition; Architecture of the Invisible; and Widening the Circle. several For me, one of the most important of Isaacs' themes is so obvious, so simple: Show your respect for others by listening carefully to what they say. Dialogue worthy of the name is based on mutual respect. Hence the importance of attitude. Dialogue worthy of the name requires mastery of certain skills which can be taught. Isaacs provides all manner of practical suggestions as to HOW (a) to establish the proper attitude within any organization and (b) to strengthen the specific skills needed to sustain that attitude. Near the end of his brilliant book, Isaacs observes: "Dialogue enables a 'free flow of meaning,' which has the potential of transforming the power relationships among the people concerned. As this free flow emerges, it becomes quite apparent that no one person owns this flow and that no one can legislate it. People can learn to embody it, and in a sense serve it. This is perhaps the most significant shift possible in dialogue: that power is no longer the province of a person in a role, or any single individual, but at the level of alignment an individual or group has with Life itself." If the comments expressed in this brief excerpt speak to your own needs and/or the needs of your organization, you don't need my endorsement. You already know what to do: Buy the book.
Rating:
Summary: Bad take on an interesting subject
Review: I gave up on this book about 50 pages from the end. It seemed like the more I read, the more tedious it became until it felt like masochism to continue. I think a previous reviewer made a definite understatement by saying that this book needs an editor. Quite honestly, I have rarely encountered a book so disorganized as this one. It seems like the author has a hard time telling apart the essential from the superfluous, and so he indulges in endless anectdotes that contain little more than truisms, presents complex concepts with long, drawn-out prose when they could have been more efficiently communicated with tables and graphs, and repeats the same ideas again and again using slightly different wording. I wonder if this book was meant as advertising for the author's services, because otherwise it would have been about a fifth as long and would have suggested procedures and excercises allowing the reader to learn and apply dialogue from his own experience, not the author's. I hope there will be other, more successful attempts to apply David Bohm's and Peter Senge's theories to the field of organizational dialogue.
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