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It turns out I had already read most of the reference books she used and am familiar with the areas of new science she was referring to reach her conclusions so it was easy to understand.The book I bought had pencil markings and underlines in it, which weren't mentioned prior to purchase.but oh well.I can erase them if I wish. I enjoy Meg Wheatley's writing style.and was curious about how she would extrapolate the new science into leadership in group communities.
Every leader owes it to themselves to read and understand it. This book is a wonderful insight in to advanced management and relationship ideas.
She claims them with no reasons whatsoever, and then prescribes how an organization should work based on the false analogies. The author uses physics for analogies with organization behavior. After that the readers are supposed to swallow the false analogies as well as the conclusions that don't even follow from those analogies. It would seem at times that she brings up physics to dull the readers' critical thinking by associating herself with an established science and by overloading readers with irrelevant (and wrong) info. There are two major problems here. First, her physics is completely wrong: she thinks that Newtonian systems don't exhibit chaotic behavior, that quantum mechanics is non-deterministic, and even that light (also known as EM field) is invisible.Second, the analogies are not justfied.
Wheatley declares that the highest values, the metavalues are not platitudes, they are active agents that actually configure the behavior of organizations. Because Wheatley--much as did Maslow--ignores the logic-tight barriers between disciplines that prevent creative breakthrough thinking.
Also see Frances Hesselbein, ("Hesselbein on Leadership" and "Be-Know-Do"). Truth, Beauty and Goodness translate into modern organizations as Integrity, Caring and Excellence.
Wheatley's argument transcends science. Nor will the pure organizational specialist find a clear technique for applying values, he or she will need to go to Sally Helgesen for that.
This book is highly recommended. It is really a philosophical treatise that broadly embraces the position of Heisenberg, the father of the Uncertainty Principle of quantum physics (see: "Across the Frontiers"), Abraham Maslow ("The Psychology of Science" and "Maslow on Management"), Sally Helgesen ("The Female Advantage"), and more recently Marie Wilson ("Bridging the Leadership Gap").
This will not please the pure scientist who lacks the scope of a Heisenberg (who declared that Plato was right after all, values are realities).
If you think fortune cookies have a lot of wisdom to offer, then you will love this book. She says things like information must be shared by all parties, complacency is bad for organizations and communication is important. Anyone who does not know this should buy a book on common sense instead. I had to buy this book for a college course and I wouldn't have read it otherwise. If you want some real leadership guidance, you may want to buy Schein or Bolman and Deal instead. Its sort of like a Certs commercial.it has Retsyn, so it must be good. The author tries to lull the reader into a passive state by hitting them with a bunch of science at the beginning. Once you trim away her fancy lingo, her leadership ideas offer nothing new.
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