>>> I would like to distribute a list of suggested
>>> reading and I would like to get suggestions from all of you. If you had to
>>> suggest one book for reading what would it be?
Of the books I have reviewed recently, I would put three linked books near
the top of my list. This is an extract from a review of one of them, that
refers to the others as well:
"Quinn, R.E. Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within.
There are a lot of books available that cover personal change and
leadership. This is a well written and practical one of its kind, that
brings together concepts from Scott Peck, Argyris, Greenleaf and others,
in a straightforward examination of 'deep change' within organisations
from the perspective of the individual.
"Deep Change" is the term that Quinn uses to describe the shift from
behaviours and a view of change as an external process, which I seek to
control and from which I can stand back, to full entry into the continuing
change process, recognising that I am part of a wider process, which I can
influence but not control. "Deep change .... is major in scope,
discontinuous with the past and generally irreversible ... [it] distorts
existing patterns of action and involves taking risks. Deep change means
surrendering control."
One of the reasons that I was impressed with the book is that I read it
immediately after reviewing Carr's Choice, Chance and Organizational
Change and the two are highly complementary. In fact those two and
Moore's The Death of Competition form a kind of trilogy, moving from a
focus on the individual to a focus within the organisation to a focus on
business strategy in an ecology of organisations. Quinn does not
explicitly use an ecological analogy as the other two authors do, but his
opening discussion of 'deep change or slow death' exactly echoes Carr's
more systemic treatment of the dangers of entropy, the value of
understanding the organisation as a complex adaptive system and the
implications for the behaviour of individuals. Quinn in effect takes up
that issue with a focus on individuals generally and those with a
leadership role in particular."
Bill Godfrey
Bill Godfrey & Associates Pty Ltd
8 Reibey Place, Curtin, ACT 2605, Australia
Tel: (61) 6 282 2256
Fax: (61) 6 282 2447
email: bgodfrey@ozemail.com.au
BookWatch site: http://webtrax.com.au/BB/BookWatch.bbd
--Bill Godfrey <bgodfrey@ozemail.com.au>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>