BirthOfTheChaordicAge

• Birth of the Chaordic Age, Dee Hock, [ISBN 1576750744 (amazon.com, search)]

I'll never look at my credit card in quite the same way again. -- lb

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Hock seems to blunder into building and using high-trust, self-organizing teams of knowledge workers. The impression I got in reading was that he was unconsciously competent at establishing such environments, and his analysis came after. I may be off in my reading of his time sequences.

The self-managing project - conversion of gazillions of banks and customers from BankAmericard? to Visa cards - was awesome. The project featured an Information Radiator (work products needed) and a moving "today" marker - a dirty coffee cup on a string. From those two openly visible cues, people met, argued, re-arranged and completed a very aggressive schedule. The "all of us are smarter than any of us" lesson.

Hock's reflections on how things work, how chaos & order are both necessary, remind me of the Magic of Recluse fantasy series by L.E.Modesitt, Jr. (recommended), -- BobLee 2003.04.07

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