You know you’re losing your mind when – after a week of intensive musings – you
still can’t put into clear words an issue which has led to much feverish searching for (and pulling out
of) books……
But the library also contains books on subjects such as Systems Change, Chaos theory and Complexity which have never been able to engage my sustained attention – apart from Thomas Homer-Dixon’s The Ingenuity Gap – how can we solve the problems of the future? (2001)
So other books were duly deposited on the desk – both real and virtual - and now form a rather fascinating list which starts with a book written in 1967 and ends with 4 powerful books with messages of hope I strongly recommend to my readers.
It seemed
initially to be about the source of
significant social change – the extent to which it comes from external social and technical factors compared with more internal subjective factors… Arthur
Koestler’s The Yogi and the Commissar; (1945) was perhaps an
early expression of that dualism….
The
collapse of communism in 1989 showed how regime self-confidence could melt
in the sunshine….
In the
middle of last week I came across in Brasov a nicely-presented book in the
self-help genre - About
Presence; a journey into ourselves - which I was tempted to buy (and read!)
simply because the language was more conversational and downbeat than its usual
type. And the book seemed to connect to the point which a friend had just put
to me about the over abstract nature of the discourse which people like me use. As
well as to the question put a couple of years ago by a schoolfriend with whom I had tried to renew contact after more than 50 years – “why doesn’t your personal life figure
in your blog??”
The answer
is quite simple – the technocratic role I’ve played since 1991 had no place for
the personal….at least in the style of our writing…We had to pretend to a
neutrality…if not omniscience! (Although the feedback was that I seemed to be
more committed to grassroots change than the typical “expert”….)
The About Presence book
reminded me of another similar title in my library Presence
– exploring profound change in people, organisations and society; P Senge et al (2005) - typical of "new age" managerialism. By then I had piled on my desk my
old Robert Quinn favourites – “Deep Change” and “Change the World” – which remain for me
the key books exploring the link between the individual and the apparently
impervious forces of the world at large…..
But the library also contains books on subjects such as Systems Change, Chaos theory and Complexity which have never been able to engage my sustained attention – apart from Thomas Homer-Dixon’s The Ingenuity Gap – how can we solve the problems of the future? (2001)
These focus
on the increase of the interdependence of one system with another – making apparently
for a world which no one can control and yet one in which local victories are
achieved….
So other books were duly deposited on the desk – both real and virtual - and now form a rather fascinating list which starts with a book written in 1967 and ends with 4 powerful books with messages of hope I strongly recommend to my readers.
Embracing Complexity – strategic
perspectives for an age of turbulence; Jean Boulton, Peter Allen and Cliff Bowman
(2015)
How
Change Happens Duncan Green (2016)
Can We Know Better?; Robert Chambers (2017)
Knowledge Management Matters – words of wisdom
from leading practitioners; J and J Girard (2018)
This post is
long enough. I will attach the list tomorrow……
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