My office at the moment There is something interesting happening. As I write, my office is being torn apart as the local plumber replaces our home’s hot water tank. There is a lot of chaos, with the washer and dryer moved out of the bathroom and into my office proper, and the plumber and his little Jack Russel darting around the place. The more we get past the hot water tank, the more little problems we find, like the fact that my main water shut-off valve isn’t working anymore. So we’ll replace that too…if we can find the shut off …
My friends Peggy Holman and Anne Stadler are working on a book. That’s not news, as either of these very interesting women has a book’s worth of wisdom ready to share at all times. What’s news is that I finally got around to reviewing the starter they posted called Emergent Organizations, and it is a provocative piece. The paper outlines the central thesis of their work of the past few years, which is harnessing the spirit of large scale change events and translating them throughout organizations to sustain the moment. This is a pet concern for me as well, as …
Nice quote from Thoughts On Business: “THE PRONOUN TEST: For six months now, I’ve been visiting the workplaces of America, administering a simple test. I call it the ‘pronoun test.’ I ask frontline workers a few general questions about the company. If the answers I get back describe the company in terms like ‘they’ and ‘them,’ then I know it’s one kind of company. If the answers are put in terms like ‘we’ or ‘us,’ I know it’s a different kind of company. — ROBERT B. REICH Former U.S. Secretary of Labor” I’ll use that one.
John Moore responds to my Dalai Lama posting with this gem: I remember a teacher holding his hand out before me in a fist. “This is not a heart,” he said. Then he opened it fully. “And this is not a heart.”. Then he started to move it open-and-closed, to and fro. “This is a heart”.