Rating: 
Summary: This book will challenge your Newtonian view of reality.
Review: Provocative and insightful, however the author perhaps puts too much confidence in evolution all the while pestering our Newtonian linear and clockwork view of the universe. Her grasp and application of quantum physics related to organizational systemic management is worth pondering. One would wish she had made more connections to leadership and organizational culture and behavior. But then, I will re-read this more than once to get the "picture" she is trying to paint. I am attempting to apply her work to pastoral and church ministry and have God in the equation. I think she has discovered God's quantum designs centered in relationships and order in the universe made by Himself, the clockmaker.
Rating:
Summary: Not for the faint-of-heart. It could change your thinking.
Review: Read from a businessman's perspective, this book illuminates some of the basic issues that creative firms have with business organization.Anyone who runs their business on a "need to know" basis will have considerable difficulty getting their minds around the larger ideas that are discussed here. The author's parallels to our real-world experience gave me confidence that she was on the right track. These ideas could change the way you spawn creative thinking in your firm.
Rating: 
Summary: A Book of the Organizational Context of the Next Milenium
Review: The new change in millennium which we will soon be experiencing, will be with out a doubt an era of organizational transition that will break with established ways of thinking and behavior with in the organization. This change will mark the end of the "mecanisista" way of thinking and the arrival of the new organization.
Margareth Wheatley in her book "Leadership and the new science" offers new ways to perceive the new organizational dimensions that we might have imagined but have not reflected enough upon them. Ms. Wheatley is with out a doubt a pioneer of the XXI century's organization who help us to experience these little known dimensions in the context of the new organization.
This fast pace book has short but profound descriptions of the transcendental stages that science has gone through in the XXth Century. It describes how the principles of Quantum Theory, Cybernetics, and Chaos Theory among others have secure a place in the new organizational context. It does not try to create a new truth but provide new adequate models to interpret our new reality.
There are no magic formulas in this book to focus on the customer, or reduce costs or even know how for continuos improvements. This book however will provide the spark for deep reflection on the basics for the new organization. It is about the new rules to play in a rapid changing environment through "administracion inteligente", that develops in a nonlinear world. It is about the communication that must take place internally between all relevant parties to adapt to the ever changing requirements of the business climate. A business climate that is ever more competitive and that --- changes the rules of the natural selection at a faster pace.
Wheatly talks about living organizations capable of self-direct when they are free from the excessive controls that tight them. This new vision of the future organization underlines the importance of the focused participation of every part of the organization. Only then will it be able to exec
Rating:
Summary: The Newtonian Organization in the Quantum Age
Review: The thing I don't like about Meg Wheatley's book is its bland title. The heading of Chapter Two of the book would have been a more meaningful and accurate title: "Newtonian Organizations in a Quantum Age." Wheatley says that many of our models and metaphors about effective management are explicitly or implicitly derived from a Newtonian perspective. She says: "The universe that Sir Isaac Newton describe was a seductive place. As the pendulum swung with perfect periodicity, it prodded us on to new discoveries. As the Earth circled the sun, we grew assured of the role of determinism and prediction. We absorbed expectations of regularity into our very beings. And we organized work and knowledge to fit this universe. "It is interesting to note just how Newtonian most organizations are. "Until recently, we really believed that we could study the parts to arrive at knowledge of the whole. We have reduced and described and separated things into cause and effect, and drawn the world in lines and boxes. "A world based on machine images is a world filled with boundaries." This essentially Newtonian view of management conflicts with the current knowledge we are deriving from quantum physics and chaos theory. In years to come, the metaphor for management will be chaos theory and quantum physics. This elegant book helps the novice manage begin to understand these complex ideas in terms of how they can influence your perspective about the management of people and events. This book is a testament to Wheatley's command of writing, command of the scientific subjects she explains, and her practical experience in organization behavior. She pulls of a complex exercise off with grace, interest, and practicality. We are selling the audio tape, but you can go into www.amazon.com to order the book itself. The book has some wonderful pictures which illustrate chaos theory. Laurence J. Stybel. Board of Directors Resource Center Boston, MA
Rating:
Summary: The Newtonian Organization in the Quantum Age
Review: The thing I don't like about Meg Wheatley's book is its bland title. The heading of Chapter Two of the book would have been a more meaningful and accurate title: "Newtonian Organizations in a Quantum Age." Wheatley says that many of our models and metaphors about effective management are explicitly or implicitly derived from a Newtonian perspective. She says: "The universe that Sir Isaac Newton describe was a seductive place. As the pendulum swung with perfect periodicity, it prodded us on to new discoveries. As the Earth circled the sun, we grew assured of the role of determinism and prediction. We absorbed expectations of regularity into our very beings. And we organized work and knowledge to fit this universe. "It is interesting to note just how Newtonian most organizations are. "Until recently, we really believed that we could study the parts to arrive at knowledge of the whole. We have reduced and described and separated things into cause and effect, and drawn the world in lines and boxes. "A world based on machine images is a world filled with boundaries." This essentially Newtonian view of management conflicts with the current knowledge we are deriving from quantum physics and chaos theory. In years to come, the metaphor for management will be chaos theory and quantum physics. This elegant book helps the novice manage begin to understand these complex ideas in terms of how they can influence your perspective about the management of people and events. This book is a testament to Wheatley's command of writing, command of the scientific subjects she explains, and her practical experience in organization behavior. She pulls of a complex exercise off with grace, interest, and practicality. We are selling the audio tape, but you can go into www.amazon.com to order the book itself. The book has some wonderful pictures which illustrate chaos theory. Laurence J. Stybel. Board of Directors Resource Center Boston, MA
Rating:
Summary: This is more than a book on organizational management
Review: This is a book that you read and buy more copies to give to anyone who has the slightest inclination to understand what is going on around them. "Leadership and the New Science" is more than a book on organizational management. The impact of the Newtonian mind set affects all areas of our lives. Margaret's observations on quantum physics and chaos theory verge on the poetic. This is a book to savor.
Rating:
Summary: This is more than a book on organizational management
Review: This is a book that you read and buy more copies to give to anyone who has the slightest inclination to understand what is going on around them. "Leadership and the New Science" is more than a book on organizational management. The impact of the Newtonian mind set affects all areas of our lives. Margaret's observations on quantum physics and chaos theory verge on the poetic. This is a book to savor.
Rating:
Summary: World class philosophy but light on specifics
Review: Wheatley does a fine job of explaining the implications for organizations and management philosophy of the shift away from the mechanistic worldview that grew out of Newtonian physics. She does a good job of explaining how quantum physics and chaos theory together demolished all the asusmptions of the mechanistic worldview. This mechanistic view fostered the idea that organizations are impersonal machines. It also gave credence to the nonsensical idea of the commodity theory of labor applied to the people hired to fill the "job-parts" of those machines. The mechanistic view excludes concepts such as esprit de corps or team spirit. It ignores the communal loyalty that goes with teamspirit that helps foster cooperative self-motivated teamwork so vital in achieving top performance. The new (postmodern) worldview is organic rather than mechanistic, is holistic rather than parts centered, is participatory rather than impersonal and manages much more via networks than through top down hierarchies. As Capra points out in his book, The Web of Life, all living systems are mainly coordinated by networks, not hierarchies. All this fits well with the new postmodern management philosophy that stress empowerment of employees on the local level, self managed teams, and organic systems. And as Wheatley points out the reality of such new thinking lies in the relationships that arise from them If Wheatley is great on philosophy and of the importance of relationships, she is more than a bit light on the specific policies that in fact create a mechanistic or an organic set of social relationships within an organization. These policies are not at all mysterious. If you want to create a mechanistic (read bureaucratic) organization then as a matter of policy establish an employment relationship between the firm and employee based on the buyer-seller relationship. You will then hire people to do designated jobs complete with detailed job descriptions. And thus though autopoiesis (that Wheatley well describes but does not much apply)you almost will guarantee that your employees will become job defensive, especially in times of change which will be seen as threats to one's (job-based)identity because autopoiesis drives all life at all levels to remain self consistent including the integrity and consistency of one's identity. The employee is thus driven to job-defensiveness. The bureaucratic employee will also sub-optimize behavior around the job-part, rather than the whole organization. To be promoted, one must be promoted in job, motivating most bureaucrats to lobby constantly for more levels of management in the administrative hierarchy to create more rungs on the administrative promotion ladder. Then too turf battles between departments full of jobs routinely break out for lack of a holistic focus on the enterprise. (The word bureaucracy is the same as saying departmentocracy and is itself an indication of a fragmented focus.) But it is important to realize, as Wheatley does not seem to, that all such pathology is policy-driven more than attitude-driven. After all, the attitude of suboptimization itself arises from the policy to depend on hired labor paid to do particular jobs in a buyer-seller relationship. It is this parts-focused relationship that creates bureaucratic reality. It does so the world around quite apart from cultural differences. You want out of this bureaucratic box? Then go organic and pay the person, not the job. Make the employee a "member of the firm" as if the firm were a sort of extended family. Let the income of all such members rise or fall together in sync with the firm's performance. The the employee is no longer an impersonal hireling, but an organic member of the whole. As such he or she is free to focus on the whole firm. Indeed they have every motivation to do so. Thus organic members tend spontaneously to develop a team spirit. They are free to participate as a team member cooperating for the better good of the whole, because, to do so is not threatening as it often is to the hired job-holder. William M. Wallace's book (Postmodern Management) which is also available on Amazon.com makes all this clear. Still in the end Wheatley is worth reading and I for one read it several times. Thus I anxiously await her updated version which apparently will appear next month.
Rating:
Summary: World class philosophy but light on specifics
Review: Wheatley does a fine job of explaining the implications for organizations and management philosophy of the shift away from the mechanistic worldview that grew out of Newtonian physics. She does a good job of explaining how quantum physics and chaos theory together demolished all the asusmptions of the mechanistic worldview. This mechanistic view fostered the idea that organizations are impersonal machines. It also gave credence to the nonsensical idea of the commodity theory of labor applied to the people hired to fill the "job-parts" of those machines. The mechanistic view excludes concepts such as esprit de corps or team spirit. It ignores the communal loyalty that goes with teamspirit that helps foster cooperative self-motivated teamwork so vital in achieving top performance. The new (postmodern) worldview is organic rather than mechanistic, is holistic rather than parts centered, is participatory rather than impersonal and manages much more via networks than through top down hierarchies. As Capra points out in his book, The Web of Life, all living systems are mainly coordinated by networks, not hierarchies. All this fits well with the new postmodern management philosophy that stress empowerment of employees on the local level, self managed teams, and organic systems. And as Wheatley points out the reality of such new thinking lies in the relationships that arise from them If Wheatley is great on philosophy and of the importance of relationships, she is more than a bit light on the specific policies that in fact create a mechanistic or an organic set of social relationships within an organization. These policies are not at all mysterious. If you want to create a mechanistic (read bureaucratic) organization then as a matter of policy establish an employment relationship between the firm and employee based on the buyer-seller relationship. You will then hire people to do designated jobs complete with detailed job descriptions. And thus though autopoiesis (that Wheatley well describes but does not much apply)you almost will guarantee that your employees will become job defensive, especially in times of change which will be seen as threats to one's (job-based)identity because autopoiesis drives all life at all levels to remain self consistent including the integrity and consistency of one's identity. The employee is thus driven to job-defensiveness. The bureaucratic employee will also sub-optimize behavior around the job-part, rather than the whole organization. To be promoted, one must be promoted in job, motivating most bureaucrats to lobby constantly for more levels of management in the administrative hierarchy to create more rungs on the administrative promotion ladder. Then too turf battles between departments full of jobs routinely break out for lack of a holistic focus on the enterprise. (The word bureaucracy is the same as saying departmentocracy and is itself an indication of a fragmented focus.) But it is important to realize, as Wheatley does not seem to, that all such pathology is policy-driven more than attitude-driven. After all, the attitude of suboptimization itself arises from the policy to depend on hired labor paid to do particular jobs in a buyer-seller relationship. It is this parts-focused relationship that creates bureaucratic reality. It does so the world around quite apart from cultural differences. You want out of this bureaucratic box? Then go organic and pay the person, not the job. Make the employee a "member of the firm" as if the firm were a sort of extended family. Let the income of all such members rise or fall together in sync with the firm's performance. The the employee is no longer an impersonal hireling, but an organic member of the whole. As such he or she is free to focus on the whole firm. Indeed they have every motivation to do so. Thus organic members tend spontaneously to develop a team spirit. They are free to participate as a team member cooperating for the better good of the whole, because, to do so is not threatening as it often is to the hired job-holder. William M. Wallace's book (Postmodern Management) which is also available on Amazon.com makes all this clear. Still in the end Wheatley is worth reading and I for one read it several times. Thus I anxiously await her updated version which apparently will appear next month.
Rating: 
Summary: Good concept, poor writing.
Review: Wheatley taps into an interesting view regarding the way organizations should be run. The ideas and concepts are interesting but the writing style is close to unbearable. It took days to read because I was constantly falling asleep.
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