Leadership Best-Seller reads like a Thriller To: Politicians, Managers, Journalists, Book reviewers, Bureaucrats, Activists, and Readers everywhere Birth of the Chaordic Age (from Chaos/Order) by Dee Hock, Founder and CEO Emeritus, VISA Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc - 1999 - This book reads like a funny thriller, crammed with fresh insights, yet it contains more governance know-how, and more community than my 1970s MBA. Hopefully Politicians, Managers, Journalists, Book reviewers, Bureaucrats, Activists, and Readers everywhere will read it, and sloooooooooowly absorb, adjust and EVOLVE! "Written by the founder of VISA, the largest business enterprise on earth, with 22,000 member institutions worldwide, 750 million customers, and $1.25 trillion in transactions annually. Visionary yet pragmatic ideas about the nature of money, information, organization, and community, and hope for a better future in an increasingly complex and troubled world." >From http://www.chaordic.org/ The balance of this Review is extracts from: Amazon.com 5-STAR ***** Review at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1576750744/qid=951969311/sr=1-1/002-2 473715-9921830 and Dee Hock's website at http://www.chaordic.org/ I hope you enjoy it as I have done Colin Stark PS It was in stock in Vancouver at: Banyen 732-7912 http://www.banyen.com/ Chapters 431-0463 http://www.chapters.ca/ http://www.amazon.com and Vancouver Public Library This message is broadcast e-mailed widely to Politicians, media, Listservs, and other groups Please feel free to forward it, or to print it out and hand it to print devotees ************************ From: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1576750744/qid=951969311/sr=1-1/002-2 473715-9921830 Birth of the Chaordic Age ~ Dee W. Hock / Hardcover / Published 1999 Our Price: $19.57 ~ You Save: $8.38 (30%) Average Customer Review: 5 STAR ***** Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Birth of the Chaordic Age is a compelling manifesto for the future, embedded within the intriguing story of a personal odyssey. An engaging narrator, Dee Hock is the man who first conceived of a global system for the electronic exchange of value, becoming the founder and CEO of VISA International. He looks critically at today's environment of command-and-control institutions and sees organizations that are falling apart, failing to achieve their own purposes let alone addressing the diversity and complexity of society as a whole. The solution, Hock claims, lies in transforming our notion of organization; in embracing the belief that the chaos of competition and the order of cooperation can and do coexist, succeed, even thrive; and in welcoming in the chaordic age. The underlying tenets of Hock's ideas are well illustrated by the incredible story of the birth of VISA International, an organization formed on chaordic principles that now links in excess of 20,000 financial institutions, 14 million merchants, and 600 million consumers in 220 countries. Hock deplores an age where ingenuity and effort are wasted on circumventing the rules and regulations of insular, hierarchical bureaucracies. In a bold-type subtext interspersed throughout the book, he examines how this situation is stunting our potential as individuals and communities and contemplates what can be changed. This rumination is propelled onward by "Old Monkey Mind" (Hock's own thoughts). Though the technique allows the reader to engage in stimulating mental discovery along with the author, its New Age spiritual tone is sometimes a bit saccharine. His insights, however, are clear and provocative. In the Chaordic Age, he contends, "success will depend less on rote and more on reason; less on the authority of the few and more on the judgment of many; less on compulsion and more on motivation; less on external control of people and more on internal discipline." Hear, hear. --S. Ketchum >From Kirkus Reviews If only the world were more like VISA International, chaos and order would be in balance, and people would work happily together in communities based on ``shared purpose.'' At least, that's the utopian vision of Hock, founder and ``CEO emeritus'' of VISA International and head of a group called The Chaordic Alliance, advising mostly not-for-profits how to reorganize themselves in a new humanitarian way. Hock advocates an evolutionary system of social organization: Top-down control is out, and a... read more Book Description In Birth of the Chaordic Age, Dee Hock argues that traditional organizational forms can no longer work because organizations have become too complex. Hock advocates a new organizational form that he calls "chaordic," or simultaneously chaotic and orderly. He credits the worldwide success of VISA to its chaordic structure: It is owned by its member banks, which both compete with each other for customers and cooperate by honoring one another's transactions across borders and currencies. ******* Pages of www.chaordic.org I found most informative http://www.chaordic.org/chaordic/faq.html#Projects What kind of leadership is needed to run a chaordic organization? I don't see any widespread institutional failure. Command-and-control organizations seem as firmly in control as ever. Am I missing something? http://www.chaordic.org/chaordic/res_visa.html The Visa Story Bank of America launched its BankAmericard in the 1950s. In 1966, five other California banks counter-launched MasterCharge. Bank of America countered by franchising BankAmericard to small and mid-sized banks, and still other large US banks launched their own proprietary cards. etc http://www.chaordic.org/chaordic/news.html In 1991, Mr. Hock became one of thirty living Laureates of the Business Hall of Fame for his many innovations in organization and management. In 1992, he was recognized as one of eight individuals who most changed the way people live in the past quarter century. http://www.chaordic.org/chaordic/res_read.html Reading List The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe's Way toward a Science of Conscious Participation in Nature Henri Bortoft Lindisfarne Press - 1996 - An excellent in depth exploration of different ways of perceiving science, nature and humankind. The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems Fritjof Capra Doubleday - 1996 An accessible introduction to essential principles of ecology and living systems, with an aim to illuminating their implications for how we design sustainable communities. Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology K. Eric Drexler Anchor Books, Doubleday 1986 - A very good introduction to the technology which lies ahead. If read with the thought in mind of what this will mean to social, institutional and economic change, it will stretch the mind. The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling James Hillman Random House, Inc. - 1996 - A penetrating exploration of the wholeness of mind, body, spirit and soul, as opposed to the Newtonian/Cartesian concept that they are separate entities and that the self is separate from the world. and several more! ***********************
