12 new links and books.
Links and books
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Added 3 days ago
Gary Hamel (2012)
Obviously, there are lots of things that matter now. But in a world of fractured certainties and battered trust, some things matter more than others. While the challenges facing organizations are limitless; leadership bandwidth is not. That is why you have to be clear about what really matters now. What are the fundamental, make-or-break issues that will determine whether your organization thrives or dives in the years ahead? Hamel identifies five issues are that are paramount: values, innovation, adaptability, passion and ideology. In doing so he presents an essential agenda for leaders everywhere.
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1 vote
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Richard Sennett (1991)
With an eye toward the architecture, the art, the literature, and the technology of urban life, Richard Sennett gives an account of the search for shelter and the fear of exposure to strangers and new experience in Western culture – and how these two concerns have shaped the physical fabric of the city. “Why do we avert our eyes when we encounter the unaccustomed?” asks Sennett. In answer, he moves between past and present from the assembly hall of Athens to the Palladium Club; from Augustine’s City of God to the Turkish baths of the Lower East Side; from eighteenth-century English gardens to the housing projects of East Harlem; from Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy to subway graffiti. The Conscience of the Eye is an exploration of the politics of vision.
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2 votes
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Richard Sennett (1977)
“Public” life once meant that vital part one’s life outside the circle of family and close friends. Connecting with strangers in an emotionally satisfying way and yet remaining aloof from them was seen as the means by which the human animal was transformed into the social – the civilized – being. And the fullest flowering of that public life was realized in the 18th Century in the great capital cities of Europe.
Sennett shows how our lives today are bereft of the pleasures and reinforcements of this lost interchange with fellow citizens. He shows how, today, the stranger is a threatening figure; how silence and observation have become the only ways to experience public life, especially street life, without feeling overwhelmed ; how each person believes in the right, in public, to be left alone. And he makes clear how, because of the change in public life, private life becomes distorted as we of necessity focus more and more on ourselves, on increasingly narcissistic forms of intimacy and self-absorption. Because of this, our personalities cannot fully develop: we lack much of the ease, the spirit of play, the kind of discretion that would allow us real and pleasurable relationships with those whom we may never know intimately.
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1 vote
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Richard Sennett (1999)
Drawing on interviews with dismissed IBM executives in Westchester, New York, bakers in a high-tech Boston bakery, a barmaid turned advertising executive, and many others, Sennett explores the disorienting effects of the new capitalism. He reveals the vivid and illuminating contrast between two worlds of work: the vanished world of rigid, hierarchical organizations, where what mattered was a sense of personal character, and the brave new world of corporate re-engineering, risk, flexibility, networking, and short-term teamwork, where what matters is being able to reinvent yourself on a dime. In some ways the changes characterizing the new capitalism are positive; they make for a dynamic economy. But they can also be destructive, eroding the sense of sustained purpose, integrity of self, and trust in others that an earlier generation understood as essential to personal character.The Corrosion of Character enables us to understand the social and political context for our contemporary confusions and Sennett suggests how we need to re-imagine both community and individual character in order to confront an economy based on the principle of “no long term.”
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2 votes
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Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald (2011)
Being a social organization goes beyond experimenting with social media technology tools - the provide and pray approach. In fact, it is not about the technology at all. A social organization addresses significant business challenges and opportunities using the social media platform to create mass collaboration - what Gartner predicts will be the next evolutionary pillar defining how work gets done around the world. Mass collaboration extends beyond social media to enable your employees, customers, suppliers and all other stakeholders to participate directly in the creation of value. That, in broad strokes, is the promise of social media, declare Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald, authors of The Social Organization, which reveals how executives from CEOs to managers can make mass collaboration a source of enduring competitive advantage in their enterprise.
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1 vote
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Clayton M. Christensen and Henry J. Eyring (2011)
The Innovative University illustrates how higher education can respond to the forces of disruptive innovation , and offers a nuanced and hopeful analysis of where the traditional university and its traditions have come from and how it needs to change for the future. Through an examination of Harvard and BYU-Idaho as well as other stories of innovation in higher education, Clayton Christensen and Henry Eyring decipher how universities can find innovative, less costly ways of performing their uniquely valuable functions.
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2 votes
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Richard Sennett (2012)
Living with people who differ - racially, ethnically, religiously, or economically - is the most urgent challenge facing civil society today. We tend socially to avoid engaging with people unlike ourselves, and modern politics encourages the politics of the tribe rather than of the city. In this thought-provoking book, Richard Sennett discusses why this has happened and what might be done about it. Sennett contends that cooperation is a craft, and the foundations for skillful cooperation lie in learning to listen well and discuss rather than debate. In Together he explores how people can cooperate online, on street corners, in schools, at work, and in local politics. He traces the evolution of cooperative rituals from medieval times to today, and in situations as diverse as slave communities, socialist groups in Paris, and workers on Wall Street. Divided into three parts, the book addresses the nature of cooperation, why it has become weak, and how it could be strengthened. The author warns that we must learn the craft of cooperation if we are to make our complex society prosper, yet he reassures us that we can do this, for the capacity for cooperation is embedded in human nature.
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2 votes
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John Kotter (2006)
Most of the denizens of the Antarctic penguin colony sneer at Fred, the quiet but observant scout who detects worrying signs that their home, an iceberg, is melting. Fred must cleverly convince and enlist key players, such as Louis, the head penguin; Alice, the number two bird; the intractable NoNo the weather expert; and a passle of school-age penguins if he is to save the colony. Their delightfully told journey illuminates in an unforgettable way how to manage the necessary change that surrounds us all. Simple explanatory material following the fable enhances the lasting value of these lessons.
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1 vote
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Richard Hunter and George Westerman (2009)
If you're a general manager or CFO, do you feel you're spending too much on IT or wishing you could get better returns from your IT investments? If so, it's time to examine what's behind this IT-as-cost mind-set. In The Real Business of IT, Richard Hunter and George Westerman reveal that the cost mind-set stems from IT leaders' inability to communicate about the business value they create-so CIOs get stuck discussing budgets rather than their contributions to the organization. The authors show how to communicate about these forms of value with non-IT leaders-so they understand how your firm is benefiting and see IT as the strategic powerhouse it truly is.
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2 votes
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Two IT gurus face off on value of enterprise architecture frameworksWho says enterprise architecture frameworks are worse than useless? Vivek Kundra, that's who. The former CIO of the United States made a blistering case against enterprise architecture in his keynote at the 43rd Society for Information Management (SIM) meeting this week. It came in a talk on his efforts to reform the federal IT program with initiatives like IT dashboards and a cloud-first policy. The remarks were especially exciting because they followed a passionate argument for the value of enterprise architecture by John Zachman, an early pioneer of enterprise architecture frameworks.- Enterprise Architecture - |
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MIT Conference on Systems Thinking for Contemporary Challengeshttp://sdm.mit.edu/systemsthinkingconference/2011/ Addressing Complexity and Innovation in Healthcare, Education, and Product Development, October 24-25, 2011, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Across industries and government organizations around the globe, a systems-based approach is increasingly seen as critical to addressing the urgent and complex problems we face today. For many organizations, the question is not whether to employ systems thinking, but how to apply it before it is too late. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's annual Conference on Systems Thinking for Contemporary Challenges, sponsored by the System Design and Management Program, will focus on addressing complexity and innovation in healthcare, education, and product development. MIT has carefully chosen speakers not only for their expertise in addressing complex systems challenges, but also for their role in leading the implementation of the day-to-day tasks that produce results.- System Thinking - |
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