It's well known that human beings are allergic to change. This is
nowhere more true than of human beings in organizations. Organization
Development initiatives, Leadership Development programs, and Business
Transformation plans all founder too often on our resistance and
reluctance, on the tendency of people and things to slip back to how
they were before. For a long time, Systems Thinkers in general (and
Power+Systems pioneer Barry Oshry in particular) have understood that
the problem lies with our failure to look at the surrounding
organizational structures and dynamics, at the wider picture, at the
context.
Barry Oshry draws on a lifetime's experience to explain the nature of
the problem with our organizational structures, and the ways in which we
can dissolve the problem. This book is written in play-form: a simple
briefing conversation between a recently hired team member and the Chief
Contextual Thinker for a Business Consultancy firm. They discuss the
change initiative they are running for a key client. The conversational
format allows Oshry to introduce the relevant theory clearly and in
sequence, while addressing questions and misunderstandings as they
arise.
The result is a guide to Systems Thinking for Organizations that's as
short, clever, engaging, bright, and helpful as any business book you
have ever picked up. This is a story with the potential to transform any
organization and it is written for anyone interested in the workings and
structures of human organizations: from Board Directors and Chief
Executives, through Middle Managers to interested workers. [Subject:
Systems Thinking, Organization Development, Sociology, Business]
