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Books
Bateson, Mary Catherine. Composing a Life. Plume, 1990.
Mary Catherine Bateson is the daughter of Margret Meade and
Gregory Bateson. A cultural anthropologist, she explores the
limitations implied by the myth of the "quest"-
the cornerstone of Western culture. She proposes alternative
myths-for example, the quilt-by which to make meaning in our
lives. Bonnie Severy and I did this at a TWC workshop several
years ago.
Bornstein, David. The Price of a Dream: the Story of Grameen
Bank. University of Chicago, Press, 1997.
The Grameen Bank story is the most exciting one I've heard
in the last 10 years. An economics Ph.D. from Vanderbilt,
Muhammad Yunus returned home to war-ravished Bangladesh, determined
to make a difference. Nothing worked. Finally, using his own
money, he created a bank for the poorest of the poor. To get
a loan, a person had to prove s/he had no collateral. Twenty
years later, the Grameen bank lends $500 million a year to
2 million of the poorest people on earth, with a 96% return
rate - significantly better than most traditional banks. People
have formed sustained community, and lifted their families
out of debt for the first time in generations. The Grameen
bank launched the micro-lending revolution that has turned
upside down how bankers think about banking; and aid agencies
think about aid.
I wonder, what would the parallel paradigm shift be for HP?
What if our non-customers became our biggest market? What
products do the poorest of the poor need from HP?
Bryan, Mark with Julia Cameron and Catherine Allen. The Artist's Way at Work. William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1998
Written by an artist, a management consultant and a senior
line manager, this wonderful workbook demonstrates how imagination
and curiosity create success and satisfaction at work and
in life. It provides fun-to-do exercises to harness your personal
creativity and build your own sustainable personal philosophy,
which you can in turn scale up to the organizational level.
Collins, James C and Jerry I. Porras. Built to Last. Harper Business/Harper-Collins, 1994.
In Built to Last, Collins - a former POD engineer - and Porras
distinguish visionary company from visionary leader. Most
management books write a bout the latter. But who knows who
founded or currently runs 3M? Yet it's always in the top 5
most creative companies? Why? Because its core values place
contribution above profit, and its policies and programs embody
these values. Bill and Dave gave Collins access to the archives,
and many wonderful statements emerged: that contribution not
profit is the purpose of the HP company. Profit is the proof
of contribution, and the enabler for the next one. And more...
Counts, Alex. Give Us Credit. Times Books/Random House. 1996.
Please see notes on The Price of a Dream, above. Alex Counts
runs the Grameen Foundation, USA. Although this book is out
of print, it is available through the Grameen Foundation,
USA. For ordering information, please contact:
Grameen Foundation USA 1709 New York Avenue NW, Suite 101
Washington DC 20006
USA
Phone: (202) 628-3560
Fax: (202) 628-3880
http://www.grameenfoundation.org
Jaworski, Joseph. Synchronicity. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1996.
In Synchronicity, Joseph Jaworski, the son of the Watergate
special prosecutor, shares his evolution from a wildly successful
law practice, to a breakdown before the meaninglessness of
his life, to the founding of the American Leadership Forum,
to the head of Global Scenario Planning for Royal Dutch/Shell
Group. He gives language to the journey we experience when
we go for the big dreams, the impossible challenges, and everything
falls into place; and to the controlling behaviors that choke
the flow that otherwise obtains. This is a remarkable story
of personal transformation and its organizational implications.
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. Men and Women of the Corporation. Basic Books, Inc., 1977.
Men and Women of the Corporation, one of the earliest books
by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, winner of the C. Wright Mills award,
is her best book in my opinion. I've bought and given away
at least a hundred copies of this book in the last decade.
Kanter summarizes all the relevant research to demonstrate
that the relative numbers of people like us profoundly shape
our behavior. When we are a token (the only foreigner, or
woman, or hearing-impaired, or engineer in an otherwise homogenous
group) the impact we can have differs vastly from what's available
if we belong to a minority; which differs vastly from the
impact we can have if we belong to the majority.
Kelly, Kevin. Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World. Addison Wesley, 1994.
This book breaks my sets. I pick it up like a meditation book
to provoke me and blast me out of the box when I get stuck.
Although I can remember little of what I read, even the next
day, I believe his concepts of chaos and self-organization
have profound relevance for the future organization of HPL.
Kleiner, Art. The Age of Heretics. Doubleday Books, 1996.
The Age of Heretics, alone among books about corporate life,
demonstrates the malleability and the potential for good of
our organizations. Kleiner, an editor o f The Whole Earth
Catalogue, documents the history of the corporation from the
time of the medieval monasteries down to the present, demonstrating
that it's the people who challenge the reigning organizational
paradigms that continue to evolve this form of social organization.
As more and more individuals and companies ask the "For
the World" questions, our companies evolve as powerful
forces to change society for the better. Where is HP on this
landscape?
Lawrence-Lightfoot, Sara. I've Known Rivers. Penguin Books, 1994.
African-American sociologist Sara Lawrence Lightfoot interviews
6 outstanding African-American professionals, and challenges
the stereotype of yuppie sell-outs and assimilation. She gives
language to the tension many of us experience as we attempt
to live lives true to our deepest values and dreams for the
world and our communities, at the same time as living up to
our highest professional standards. These lives reassure us
that the messy compromises required by "doing it all"
make for the richest and most satisfying life.
Owen, Harrison. Expanding Our Now: the Story of Open Space Technology. Berrett-Koehler Pub., 1997.
Harrison Owen is so great! Open Space Technology tells you
his story, beginning with his years in divinity school, leaving
it for the Civil Rights Movement, and then the Peace Corp
is West Africa, and then a number of government agencies and
finally, meeting facilitation and planning where he took on
the challenge: "how to make the whole conference as great
as the coffee break?" Open Space Technology is a meeting
facilitation process to organize anywhere from 5 to 1000 people
around very tough, very important organizational issues around
which there is conflict of perspectives and whose resolution
is non trivial. This book is about how OST developed, how
and why it works all over the world, and how it is evolving
to become not just an event management process, but a way
of doing work, and even, a way of life. It offers many examples
of when, where and how the meeting technique has helped groups
achieve their organizational goals.
Owen, Harrison. Leadership Is. Berrett-Koehler Pub., 1997.
What happens to command and control leadership in a world
of self-organizing groups that tap the intelligence and distributed
leadership of the whole? Harrison provides provocative new
concepts and language for rethinking leadership.
Owen, Harrison. Open Space Technology: a User's Guide. Berrett-Koehler Pub., 1997.
This book is a hands-on, detailed description of how to facilitate
a meeting in Open Space. It outlines the rationale, procedures
and requirements of OST; when and when not to hold an OST
meeting, supplies, logistics, etc.
Wheatley, Meg. Leadership and the New Science. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 1992.
In Leadership and the New Science, Meg Wheatley explores the
paradigms of complex and chaotic systems for organizational
life. I underlined on every page of my book.
Music
Jaeger, Rolf. Music from Mind and Soul. Pacific Sound, 1991.
Jaeger, Rolf. Sonic Metamorphosis. Pacific Sound, 1995.
This music is guaranteed to calm hyperactive children (and
their parents!) Rolf Jaeger, who composed and performed these
two albums, was a department manager in HP Labs. This is some
of the most beautiful meditation and healing music I have
ever heard.
Rolf says of his music:
"It has always been the best reward for me to be able
to share with someone else the joy I had when I created the
music in the first place . . . I have been most fond of the
music I created for the annual World Peace Meditations, which
we [Rolf and the Tri-City Church of Religious Science in Fremont,
CA] have participated in since 1986."
To order, send $11.00/cassette to:
Pacific Sound
38684 Kimbro St.
Fremont, CA 94536
(510)796-3180
http://www.california.com/~rolfj/
E-mail Rolf at rolfj@california.com
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