A Simpler Way

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: SIMPLE THOUGHTS YIELD COMPLEX IMPLICATIONS
Review: Rarely do you read a text where you find yourself nodding almost nonstop, highlighting with wild abandon, and finally, feeling that somehow you and others will be transformed by its contents. Yet that is exactly what has happened to everyone I know who has read this book filled with provocative insights about the nature of life and organizations. A Simpler Way continues to guide us through the journey of no longer looking at the world as a machine, and most importantly, human beings as machines. We are asked to assume a perspective on life and organizations based less on control, order, and structure, and more on exploration, growth, and life. Try it on for size .... you won't want to take it off or put this book down

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.