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A Simpler Way
 
 

A Simpler Way (Paperback)

by Wheatley (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 135 pages
  • Publisher: Berrett-Koehler; New edition edition (1 Jan 1999)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1576750507
  • ISBN-13: 978-1576750506
  • Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 20.2 x 1.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 177,015 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #10 in  Books > Business, Finance & Law > Reference & Education > Competition
    #64 in  Books > Business, Finance & Law > Management > Management Skills > Inspiration
  • See Complete Table of Contents

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Product Description

Product Description

Downsizing didn''t produce the increase in pr oductivity many companies expected. Working on the premise t hat the way we develop organisations depends heavily on how we organise and live our lives, the authors explore alternat ive methods. '

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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

9 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.4 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A simpler and much needed way, 11 Mar 2003
By Alexander Kjerulf "Alexander Kjerulf" (Copenhagen, Denmark) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)      
This book by Margaret Wheatley is without a doubt the most beautiful and unconventional business-related book I've ever read. It conveys it's message not only through prose, but also in poems and photographs.

And the message itself is simple and beautiful, namely that:
There is a simpler way to organize human endeavour. It requires a new way of being in the world. It requires being in the world without fear. Being in the world with play and creativity. Seeking after what's possible. Being willing to learn and to be surprised.

So what is this simpler way?

The book will tell you what it's not: It's not the world view fostered in Darwinism, that the world is a cruel place, in which only the strongest can thrive. This world view has been prevalent since Darwin.

And it's not mechanistic and reductionist either. According to this book, systems are irreducible. You cannot understand or predict a system by looking at it's components. The properties of the system are emergent, and only manifest themselves in the system. They are not present in the seperate components.

So they argue that the common western metaphor for life today, ie. "life as a struggle", is not in tune with the way the world (and life) organizes itself. Life organizes and evolves itself through relations and cooperation. Therefore, a much more accurate metaphore for life would be "life as play".

Seeing life as a game could have many implications for the way we live and organize our endeavours, but the principal promise of such a world view, is that it can make life easier and more fun.

The traditional view is that life is hard. Only those who work hard and struggle are succesful. You must make sacrifices to reach your goals. Especially work life is no picnic. This view is very common, and after having read this book, I'm convinced that it's totally false - or rather, it's true, but only because we make it true by believing that it's true.

The whole book is eminently quotable. Almost every paragraph holds succinct, interesting nuggets of information, presented in a simple but thought-provoking way. Here's an example:
We live in a world where attraction is ubiquitous. Organization wants to happen. People want their lives to mean something. We seek one another to develop new capacities. With all these wonderful and innate desires calling us to organize, we can stop worrying about designing perfect structure or rules. We need to become intrigued by how we create a clear and coherent identity, a self that we can organize around.

The whole book is like that, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Read it!

If I may suggest an equally untraditional companion, consider seeing Koyaanisqatsi by Godfrey Reggio. This is a movie with no plot, no actors and no dialogue. It's simply and hour and a half of nature contrasted with mans impact on nature. It illustrates beautifully the contrast between "life as struggle" and "life as play". And no. it's not boring at all, it's breath-taking.

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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading, 19 Jul 1999
By A Customer
It's late on a Sunday night and I've just finished reading "A Simpler Way" for the second time. It's one of those books that repays multiple readings as you delve deeper into what the authors are saying. It may be the best book I've ever read about creativity and organizational change, and I've read a bunch of 'em. It may change your life, if you let it. It's not "too New Age" at all - it's firmly grounded in the latest thinking in biology and other sciences. Basically, it says we are too controlled by inaccurate images of the world - specifically, the Darwinist belief in the "struggle" to survive and the machine metaphor. These two ways of looking at the world have predominated for decades now, and have percolated down into our lives, so that we think that such things as struggle, fierce competition, control, planning, rigidity, coercion, and so on, are the ways life is, and are the ways to organize our lives. WRONG, say the authors. The world actually is very different from what the Darwinists and the machine-as-metaphor people have said. According to the latest and best studies of evolution, biology, physics, nature, etc., the world is a lot more interested in cooperation, connections, synergy, alliances, freedom, etc., than we thought, and we can, if we're brave enough, allow THESE images of the world to pervade our lives and our companies.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Does your organization have room for wisdom?, 23 Jun 1997
By A Customer
This review is from: Simpler Way (Hardcover)
Most management theories and methods are based on control and competition. Managers lead through their personal influence over a certain system and they must compete with other systems and sources of influence. This is too rationalist and egocentric: no wonder so many managers are neurotic!

Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers believe in overcoming egocentric attitudes in business. While most business books try to influence the reader's cognitive level, with rational arguments and informations, "A Simpler Way" tries to go deeper, appealing to the reader's esthetic and emotional perception.

Our education made us believe that individuality and competition are basic facts of life. But this idea does not match the perception that life is effectively growing and diversifying over our planet. This can only be explained if we understand cooperation and creativity to be the basic facts of life!

"A Simpler Way" does not include formulas or steps to implement a specific organization model. Instead, it subtly shows that living, real organization is not based on fear, but on freedom and diversification, suppliyng ideas for the transformation and giving references for further study.

If you believe that in business wisdom is more important than knowledge, you will probably like to read "A Simpler Way". If you don't, maybe you should read it anyway and give yourself a chance to change your mind.

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