Average customer rating:
- Feng Shui - Simplified!
- Well written and easy to understand
- Full of facts, well written
- Rave Reviews for this book
- A lot of Nonsense
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Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life : How to Use Feng Shui to Get Love, Money, Respect and Happiness
Karen Rauch Carter
Manufacturer: Fireside
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Fast Feng Shui: 9 Simple Principles for Transforming Your Life by Energizing Your Home
ASIN: 0684866048 |
Book Description
Promising health, wealth, and happiness, feng shui offers endless appeal -- at least in concept. Unfortunately, feng shui's seemingly complicated methods are often difficult to learn and apply in a meaningful way. Fortunately, Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life is written in plain and simple English for the modern Western reader. Revealing the ancient Chinese secrets that are as useful and necessary today as they have been for centuries, Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life communicates how to:
* MEET "THE ONE"
* FIND A DREAM JOB
* EARN BETTER GRADES IN SCHOOL
* ENJOY A BETTER SEX LIFE
Customer Reviews:
Feng Shui - Simplified!.......2007-07-10
This book makes feng shui easy and fun! Karen Rauch Carter uses the Black Hat style which is a very simple, but effective, form of feng shui. With this book you don't need a compass, pendulum or certified feng shui expert, in order to enjoy the benefits of this timeless art. You'll be able to start making changes to your home, and your life, immediately with the easy to follow instructions that are provided.
Inside, you will find a chapter for each of the 9 sections of the Bagua. Immediate action items and a short summary are provided at the end of each chapter, which can be referred to over and over. Karen will keep you entertained though out the entire book with her quirky sense of humor! She also provides loads of examples and stories of how feng shui can improve your life. I am an antique dealer, by trade, and I own my own business. I can honestly say that after decluttering my laundry room (my prosperity area) and painting it a pretty shade of lavender, I immediately noticed and increase in sales at my shop!
Just A Tip: Make sure you read chapter 12 before you start making changes in your home, the affirmations in this chapter will make all of your actions much more effective!
Well written and easy to understand.......2007-05-20
This is probably on the top five list of good feng shui books that I've ever read. Very informative and easy to understand and follow. It's really put together nicely.
While I do think there is definately something to harmonizing the energy around you, I don't think that moving your stuff is any guaranteed way to bring a certain thing to yourself. I have a love/hate relationship to books like this. I find some really good ideas, and some I think are silly and just don't work. I know that there are other issues involved. -Like what's in a person's birth chart for example. If someone is having a difficult planetary aspect in their money house, then, no amount of moving furniture/furnishings is going to change that aspect. Although, I do think it COULD help the person deal with it better. By moving something, it could represent a shift in how one has arranged or re-arranged their thinking about the problem. So, in that way, I think it could have a beneficial side.
I found many interesting things in this book, for example, in my helpful people/travel section of my home, that's where I already have the computer (World wide web) and I just happened to have a world map there. I found a lot of other helpful information too.
This is a fun and interesting book, and it's not gonna hurt anything to give something a try afterall. Just see what works for you.
Full of facts, well written.......2007-04-12
Excellent explanations and suggestions without getting bogged down in thousands of years of history. Written in 21st century speak with humor and intelligence. The best Feng Shui book in my bookcase (I have a few) -topping Lilian Too's series. Even tells you the anecdote when the sink is in your romance corner!
Rave Reviews for this book.......2007-04-03
I LOVED this book, and I am having so much fun with this, I have completely redecorated my home, using mostly stuff I already had, and all my friends are commenting "What have you done?" "It feels different in here" and "Everything seems to flow better". I hung a cutglass windchime in my missing "family" space to energize the space as recommended, and within minutes my youngest daughter called me. Amazing! And so much FUN! Now I am waiting for my romance energy to imporove!
A lot of Nonsense.......2007-03-19
I purchase several feng shui books and this one was the easiest to understand. However, nothing happened after purchasing several hundred dollars of feng shui items. Instead it seems bad things were happening to me. I junked all the stuff. I think it's total nonsense and more like witchcraft...stay away from it.
Book Description
How do you find your way in an age of information overload? How can you filter streams of complex information to pull out only what you want? Why does it matter how information is structured when Google seems to magically bring up the right answer to your questions? What does it mean to be "findable" in this day and age? This eye-opening new book examines the convergence of information and connectivity. Written by Peter Morville, author of the groundbreaking Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, the book defines our current age as a state of unlimited findability. In other words, anyone can find anything at any time. Complete navigability.
Morville discusses the Internet, GIS, and other network technologies that are coming together to make unlimited findability possible. He explores how the melding of these innovations impacts society, since Web access is now a standard requirement for successful people and businesses. But before he does that, Morville looks back at the history of wayfinding and human evolution, suggesting that our fear of being lost has driven us to create maps, charts, and now, the mobile Internet.
The book's central thesis is that information literacy, information architecture, and usability are all critical components of this new world order. Hand in hand with that is the contention that only by planning and designing the best possible software, devices, and Internet, will we be able to maintain this connectivity in the future. Morville's book is highlighted with full color illustrations and rich examples that bring his prose to life.
Ambient Findability doesn't preach or pretend to know all the answers. Instead, it presents research, stories, and examples in support of its novel ideas. Are we truly at a critical point in our evolution where the quality of our digital networks will dictate how we behave as a species? Is findability indeed the primary key to a successful global marketplace in the 21st century and beyond. Peter Morville takes you on a thought-provoking tour of these memes and more -- ideas that will not only fascinate but will stir your creativity in practical ways that you can apply to your work immediately.
"A lively, enjoyable and informative tour of a topic that's only going to become more important."
--David Weinberger, Author, Small Pieces Loosely Joined and The Cluetrain Manifesto
"I envy the young scholar who finds this inventive book, by whatever strange means are necessary. The future isn't just unwritten--it's unsearched."
--Bruce Sterling, Writer, Futurist, and Co-Founder, The Electronic Frontier Foundation
"Search engine marketing is the hottest thing in Internet business, and deservedly so. Ambient Findability puts SEM into a broader context and provides deeper insights into human behavior. This book will help you grow your online business in a world where being found is not at all certain."
--Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D., Author, Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity
"Information that's hard to find will remain information that's hardly found--from one of the fathers of the discipline of information architecture, and one of its most experienced practitioners, come penetrating observations on why findability is elusive and how the act of seeking changes us."
--Steve Papa, Founder and Chairman, Endeca
"Whether it's a fact or a figure, a person or a place, Peter Morville knows how to make it findable. Morville explores the possibilities of a world where everything can always be found--and the challenges in getting there--in this wide-ranging, thought-provoking book."
--Jesse James Garrett, Author, The Elements of User Experience
"It is easy to assume that current searching of the World Wide Web is the last word in finding and using information. Peter Morville shows us that search engines are just the beginning. Skillfully weaving together information science research with his own extensive experience, he develops for the reader a feeling for the near future when information is truly findable all around us. There are immense implications, and Morville's lively and humorous writing brings them home."
--Marcia J. Bates, Ph.D., University of California Los Angeles
"I've always known that Peter Morville was smart. After reading Ambient Findability, I now know he's (as we say in Boston) wicked smart. This is a timely book that will have lasting effects on how we create our future.
--Jared Spool, Founding Principal, User Interface Engineering
"In Ambient Findability, Peter Morville has put his mind and keyboard on the pulse of the electronic noosphere. With tangible examples and lively writing, he lays out the challenges and wonders of finding our way in cyberspace, and explains the mutually dependent evolution of our changing world and selves. This is a must read for everyone and a practical guide for designers."
--Gary Marchionini, Ph.D., University of North Carolina
"Find this book! Anyone interested in making information easier to find, or understanding how finding and being found is changing, will find this thoroughly researched, engagingly written, literate, insightful and very, very cool book well worth their time. Myriad examples from rich and varied domains and a valuable idea on nearly every page. Fun to read, too!
--Joseph Janes, Ph.D., Founder, Internet Public Library
Customer Reviews:
Well, THAT was weird..........2007-06-22
This book is an interesting follow-up to Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by the same author. This time, instead of focusing on the nuts and bolts of IA, the author spoke about the nature of findability itself.
Morville shares research and anecdotes from business, history, library science, anthropology, and neurobiology in his quest for the perfect system where everything in the world is instinctively easy to locate. Can we ever achieve ambient findability? And what would the world look like in such a place? What are the social and political ramifications of findability? Will it be big brother, or will the very concept of unquestionable authority wither and die?
Recent manifestations such as Google, Wikipedia, and blogger watchdogs suggest the latter is more likely...
Ironically, the more information we have, the less likely anybody is to use it. Obtaining information is very painful, even if the data is easy to find. The relatively unknown Mooers law states:
"An information retrieval system will tend to NOT be used whenever it is more painful and troublesome for a customer to have information than for him not to have it." -- Calvin Mooers
Meaning, if I have a problem, I can either look up the answer, or ask somebody for help. If I ask somebody, then they might do all my work for me, which is good for me. However, if I look up the answer online, then I have to read it, understand it, and implement the solution myself. Not only must I confront my own ignorance, but its a lot more work.
Stupid Google.
Along the same lines, it's insufficient for information merely to be available and findable... it must also be believable, useful, and tailored to the audience so its easy to absorb. That's the top-to-bottom challenge, and very few people understand it. This book doesn't give much practical advice about absorbability, but it covers findability needs and existing technology quite well. The rest is up to you.
Another Rambling Book from O'Reilly.......2007-06-17
Like most O'Reilly books, the credentials of the author are impeccable, and the concept is current and relavant.
However, like most techincal publishing houses, O'Reilly does not have enough editors fluent in enough technical areas of expertise to impose order on its authors. The result is that they produce excellent texts for those already familiar with the subject, and dreadful experiences for those hoping for something other than a "Dummies" book.
"Ambient Findability" is no different. The subject is broad, the concepts are deep, and the order is completely lacking. O'Reilly seemed to have exercised no editorial restraint in the publishing of this book - it is andectoal, rambling and repetitive in parts, and generally jumps around (much like the subject of the book), without any common touch points.
The main point of the book is that information is grouped in structured and not so structured ways on the web, and being able to "find" information is predicated on how it is percieved by other parts of the web. This already is a vast ocean of space to cover. 180 pages with a lot of graphics is bound to be light, but add on rambling discourse, and you can only swallow 20-30 pages at a time, before bed.
I really believe the author is a great mind on this subject. He could do much better w/ a well disciplined editor.
A philosophy book, not a how-to book . . ........2007-06-08
. . . . But what a great philosophy book it is!
This may be the only O'Reilly book I have ever read that changed some of my basic notions about things I thought I understood, not at a "how to code this or that" level but at a "how the world works" level.
The book presents itself as a thoughtful ramble through some issues around finding and retrieving content that a person might wish to have. And it does a very good job of laying out the landscape, identifying pitfalls, and pointing out unpredictable successes (and failures).
But the real beauty of this book is its own internal organization. The author starts with tangible physical location and navigation, and then moves onto to fluently-written descriptions of virtual location and navigation. The book is thought-provoking and fairly balanced in presenting the perspectives of people who feel strongly about these issues while disagreeing vehemently with one another.
This volume offers no easy solutions, but it illuminates a landscape that needs desperately to be better understood by more people, and it does so in a readable, accessible way. I learned some things, I unlearned some things, and I had a heck of a good time doing so. Will it make me a better information architect? I hope so, but it certainly made me a more thoughtful one.
I am very interested in this kind of topic, BUT could not get into this.......2007-04-19
This felt like a long college senior thesis. Rambling, unfocused and without real-world applicability.
A good survey, timely..........2007-02-16
I find the book most useful as a survey of technologies and ideas suitably themed "ambient findability". I agree with the idea that the future of search will be more than cyberspace. The ability to search the physical world with a search engine will be extremely useful and how to make (physical world) objects findable (even at different levels of granularity) an interesting challenge (RFID tagging is one way but perhaps there are others). The combination of cyberspace and physicalspace and how to bridge between them (from augmented reality, ambient objects, to ambient sensing) is interesting. The book provides a convenient overview, in one place, of where much of computing is heading.
Book Description
This book provides the most current, thorough, and contemporary account of the factors affecting the organizational design process, making important organization theories accessible and interesting. It addresses the many issues and problems that are involved in managing the process of organizational change and transformation, providing direct and clear managerial implications.
Topics covered in this comprehensive book are the organization and its environment; organizational design; organizational change; and finally, interesting case studies that illustrate the concepts presented.
A useful book that is appropriate for managers in any organization.
Average customer rating:
- must like stores like radio shack
- Useless - not worth the money
- Greasy Kids' Stuff
- More for kids
- A little silly, but fun
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Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things: How to Turn a Penny into a Radio, Make a Flood Alarm with an Aspirin, Change
Cy Tymony
Manufacturer: Andrews McMeel Publishing
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Electronic Gadgets for the Evil Genius : 28 Build-It-Yourself
ASIN: 0740738593 |
Book Description
Do you know how to make something that can tell whether the $20 bill in your wallet is a fake? Or how to generate battery power with simple household items? Or how to create your own home security system?Science-savvy author Cy Tymony does. And now you can learn how to create these things¿and more than 40 other handy gadgets and gizmos¿in Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things. More than a simple do-it-yourself guide, this quirky collection is a valuable resource for transforming ordinary objects into the extraordinary. With over 80 solutions and bonus applications at your disposal, you will be ready for almost any situation. Included are survival, security, self-defense, and silly applications that are just plain fun.You¿ll be seen as a superhero as you amaze your friends by:¿ Transforming a simple FM radio into a device that enables you to eavesdrop on tower-to-air conversations.¿ Creating your own personalized electronic greeting cards.¿ Making a compact fire extinguisher from items typically found in a kitchen pantry.¿ Thwarting intruders with a single rubber band.By using run-of-the-mill household items and the easy-to-follow instructions and diagrams within, you¿ll be able to complete most projects in just a few minutes. Whether you use Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things as a practical tool to build useful devices, a fun little fantasy escape, or as a trivia guide to impress friends and family, this book is sure to be a reference favorite for years to come.
Customer Reviews:
must like stores like radio shack.......2007-06-15
This book describes how to make gadgets. If you already know about electricity and magnetism and basic physical science, buy this book and impress your young cousins/nephews/ nieces. there is survival stuff like collecting water from plants, safety stuff like making a fire extinguisher, and cool stuff like building a magnetic ring or wand to do things (hence the radio shack title).
Also a good purchase for budding mad scientist and science teacher.
Useless - not worth the money.......2007-05-23
I found this book to be useless and lacking in creativity. I think I'm actually dumber for reading the section on how to connect things. It says to twist wires together or tape things together. I hate the fact that my first review is negative, but I felt compelled to write because I don't want others to be as disappointed as I was.
Greasy Kids' Stuff.......2007-03-10
Color me disappointed. This would be a fun book for pre-teens to early teens, but the Make magazine / Burning Man crowd should stay away. Anyone with a basic grasp of physics or electronics probably won't find much to astound or amaze here.
More for kids.......2007-01-05
The theme of this book is more for kids with nothing to do and have a little MacGyver in them. Not a bad bathroom read, but I don't really see myself ever using more than one or two of the projects described in the book. The theme is more for sneaking around which may be better for child thieves than survival tips.
A little silly, but fun.......2006-11-19
This book is a sort of training manual for MacGyver wannabes. It's a collection of low-tech, cheap little projects that one can do in order to simulate "real" technology. You could certainly use some of these in an emergency, which is what the author suggests, but that's not really the point of the book in my view.
The real use would be for kids-- or, even better, kids and parents-- who want to mess around with some every day items in ways they haven't previously, have some fun, and enjoy some "Wow! Look at that!" moments. Had the author designed the book explicitly for that purpose, many of the negative reviews here wouldn't have been written.
So, the book is both pretty silly and enjoyable, but it's not any sort of survival manual. A word of advice: Avoid the sequel; the author used all of his good ideas in this volume.
Book Description
Over the last three decades the average life expectancy of a corporation in North America has dipped well below 20 years. In fact, by 1983 a full third of the 1970 Fortune 500 companies had been acquired, merged, or broken apart. In this landmark book, one of the business world's foremost pioneers, Russell L. Ackoff, delivers this indispensable guide for those hoping to beat these odds--and to better navigate the corporate challenges of the next millennium. While most business and management schools continue to teach the functions of a corporation separately--production, marketing, finance, personnel--the reality is that for a corporation to endure each division must work with the others to create an effective system. Re-Creating the Corporation is Ackoff's masterful blueprint for understanding and creating these model corporate systems. In four comprehensive sections--Background, Process, Designs, and Change--Ackoff lays out in clear concise prose the five organizational goals of successful corporate systems: plan effectively, learn and adapt rapidly, democratize, introduce internal market economies, and employ a flexible structure that will minimize the need for future restructuring. And through a deft mix of practical and theoretical examples drawn from a wide range of applications in a wide range of firms, this book ultimately guides executives to the system best suited to meet their organizational goals. Re-Creating the Corporation, which is the culmination of a lifetime of innovative and insightful business thought from one of the business world's premier thinkers, is essential reading for those attempting to navigate the rapidly changing economic environment of the next millennium.
Customer Reviews:
Truly Ackoff's Best.......2002-05-29
Recreating the Corporation is Ackoff's best work on utilizing the use of systems thinking to understand how to make not only pieces of companies better, but how optimizing the entire company can lead to dramatic improvements. Those who know Ackoff's work will appreciate his freshening of material contained elsewhere and the addition of new concepts to make the framework wholistic.
Organizational Design to Apply The Fifth Discipline.......2000-09-25
Since Peter Senge eloquently introduced business readers to the importance of systems thinking in The Fifth Discipline, companies have been grappling with how to apply that aspect of the learning organization. In Re-Creating the Corporation, Russell Ackoff has written the most complete description of how such an organization can be created.
A system is any grouping of parts that is influenced by its parts and requires their coordination to create the best result. A car is an example. You can take the best transmission from one type of car, the best engine from another, and the best brakes from a third, and they will not work together. This is a typical quality of systems: If you optimize any part of the system, you reduce the effectiveness of the whole. But most organizations are set up to seek optimization of the part rather than the system, creating disasters like the car example I just used.
Although he makes only limited reference to it, Professor Ackoff is clearly influenced by complexity science. He has created fractals (small versions of the whole that scale up and down) in his organization, and is trying to expose the widest number of people to the widest possible perspectives on the systems issues of an organization.
The book is designed as a series of essays to explain what systems are and how they operate; processes for planning, design, implementation and learning; organizational designs that apply the concepts of democracy, economy and flexibility; and an overview of the weaknesses of management fads and panaceas, and the benefits of working on organizational and transformational leadership instead. His goal is to create an organization that is as stable as possible in order to create an organization that is as flexible as possible. Let me explain. He wants to avoid reorganizations of roles and jobs, but he wants the organization as a system to evolve rapidly and easily in serving stakeholders.
I found the concepts to be quite consistent with the realities of a wired world, by putting a structure and a thought process together that will provide a context for gaining benefits from enhanced communication. Basically, the structure relies on creating a three dimensional organization -- one that relies on input (functional) units like purchasing, finance, and legal that are primarily used internally, output (product or service creating) units such as the manufacturing activities, and market or user defined (customer or geography) units. Most organizations emphasize one of these three dimensions or the other. By keeping them in place in a balanced way, the idea is to avoid needing to make adjustments to create or abolish any of these types of units.
A second major innovation to aid this organizational structure is the idea of using interacting boards to supervise each unit. This creates more participation, more democracy, and more interconnection across the organization.
To this, Ackoff combines a common process for systems solution creation and implementation that all would learn in the organization.
With organization, thinking, and doing processes in place, he then proposes that organizations go for transformational change rather than incremental change.
I found the book to be full of fresh thinking and interesting examples of how this can be applied based on Mr. Ackoff's consulting experiences with his well-known, long-term clients like DuPont and Anheuser-Busch.
For those who want to learn more about systems thinking at the micro level, I suggest reading the sections on that in The Fifth Discipline Field Guide. That will help you understand the concepts much better than the material in this book.
While I agree with the concept of keeping the organization as stable as possible, I found the proposals here to be a pretty ponderous way to accomplish that end. I suspect that simpler versions of this concept could work almost as well in coordinating systems thinking, and might work much more rapidly. For a newer, smaller organization, the structure would be overly complicated.
My own idea is that companies should move beyond organizational design and problem-solving structures as their focus to concentrate instead on creating an overriding mission, vision, strategy, tactics, and means of implementation (with employees and stakeholders who are energized by this diretion) that are all-encompassing in perspective and in providing direction, and perpetual in appropriateness. Then, by focusing on the key points of potential progress, the organization should constantly make large improvements in its business model that are more adaptable to the changing business environment. I think this concept of the organization that I have just described is easier to understand and apply once it is formulated in an organization than the ideas described here from Re-Creating the Corporation.
Even though I disagree with the proposed solutions in this very interesting book, I gave the book five stars for raising most of the right questions. We learn more from good questions than from the first sets of proposed solutions, and I hope that others will take these questions seriously and pursue them as well.
After you have read this book, ask yourself where in your organization you are pursuing optimization of an area or a part of the organization's activities. When will that optimization be harmful? How can you prevent that harm? What means of coordination could create a better combined result for your organization?
"There are no simple solutions to complex problems"........2000-08-21
"This book is a product of applying systems thinking to the management and organization of enterprises". Russel L. Ackoff writes, "therefore, an understanding of the nature of systems and systems thinking is essential for understanding what this book is about. Although most people can identify many different systems, few know precisely what a system is. Without such knowledge, one cannot understand them, and without such an understanding, one cannot be aware of their implications for their management and organization and for treatment of the most important problems that currently face them" (p.5).
Thus, he firstly argues that a system is a whole consisting of two or more parts that satisfies the following five conditions:
(1). The whole has one or more defining properties or functions.
(2). Each part in the set can affect the behavior or properties of the whole.
(3). There is a subset of parts that is sufficient in one or more environments for carrying out the defining function of the whole; each of these parts is necessary but insufficient for carrying out this defining function.
(4). The way that each essential part of a system affects its behavior or properties depends on (the behavior or properties of) at least one other essential part of the system.
(5). The effect of any subset of essential parts on the system as a whole depends on the behavior of at least one other such subset.
Hence, Ackoff summarizes his argument that a system is a whole that cannot be divided into independent parts without loss of its essential properties or functions, and additionally argues that when the performances of the parts of a system, considered separately, are improved, the performance of the whole may not be (and usually is not) improved.
Within this general framework, he:
* defines four different types of systems, and shows their effects on organizations and the way they are managed (more detailed discussion see Chapter 2):
(1). 'Deterministic', systems and models in which neither the parts nor the whole are purposeful.
(2). 'Animated', systems and models in which the whole is purposeful but the parts are not.
(3). 'Social', systems and models in which both the parts and the whole are purposeful.
(4). 'Ecological', systems and models in which some parts are purposeful but as a whole have no purposes of their own.
* by considering three primary forms of traditional management and planning (reactive, inactive, and preactive) and their deficiencies, discusses systems-oriented/interactive form of management and planning.
* discusses five aspects of interactive planning in separate chapters as follows:
- preparing the state of the organization or a situational analysis (more detailed discussion see Chapter 4).
- determining ideals, objectives, and goals or ends planning of the organization (more detailed discussion see Chapter 5).
- identifying the gaps between what the organization is and is now doing and where it wants to be and to be doing (more detailed discussion see Chapter 6).
- considering resources such as money, plant and equipment (capital goods), people, consumables (materials, supplies, energy, and services), data, information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, and asking and answering following questions:
i. How much will be required, where, and when?
ii. How much will be available at the required time and place?
iii. How should each shortage or excess be treated? (more detailed discussion see Chapter 7).
- implementing and controlling with learning and adaptation (more detailed discussion see Chapter 8).
* describes and explaines circular type of organization as a democratic hierarchy.
* discusses internal market economies as substitution of the centrally planned and controlled economies within the organizations.
* discusses the multidimensional design and organization that eliminates the need to restructure when internal or external changes require adaptation, and argues that "the circular organization, the internal market economy, and multidimensional design can all be combined in one organization. The power of each is significantly enhanced by its interactions with the others".
* examines currently popular panaceas such as downsizing, TQM, continuous improvement, benchmarking, and process reengineering and the reasons they fail, and argues that "there are no simple solutions to complex problems. Furthermore, since problems are interdependent, their solutions should be. Interdependent problems constitute messes, systems of problems. Therefore, their solutions must also form a system. A system of solutions is a plan, and plans are complicated, not simple. It is not possible in a few minutes to find behavior that will resolve, solve, or dissolve a set of problems that took years to cultivate".
Strongly recommended.
Highly Readable and Very Articulate.......1999-12-05
I enjoyed this book very much, particulary the introduction with its synopsis of systems theories and management applications. Recommended for managers in organization redesign roles in business and government
Highly Readable and Very Articulate.......1999-12-05
I enjoyed this book very much, particulary the introduction with its synopsis of systems theories and management applications. Recommended for managers in organization redesign roles in business and government
Book Description
Reveals emerging techniques for answering the challenges senior managers face today: improving organizational quality, inspiring team performance, and creating powerful long-range strategy. Presents a proven model for understanding organizations and demonstrates how it can be used to effect positive change in organizational systems.
Customer Reviews:
An Excellent Book!.......2000-04-07
An Excellent Book.. A Must For All The Managers In Any Organistaion.
Average customer rating:
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Handbook of Ancient Water Technology (Technology and Change in History)
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ASIN: 9004111239 |
Book Description
The design of an organisation — the accountability system that defines roles, rights, and responsibilities throughout the firm—has a direct impact on the performance of every employee. Yet few leaders devote focused attention to how this design is chosen, implemented, and adjusted over time. Robert Simons argues that by viewing design as a powerful and proactive management lever—rather than an inevitable outcome of corporate evolution—leaders can maximize productivity across every level of the organisation. Levers of Organizational Design presents a new design theory based on four key yet often underrated categories: customer definition, critical performance variables, creative tension, and commitment to mission.
Customer Reviews:
ONE OF BEST BOOKS ON ORGANIATION DESIGN! FIRST-RATE, RICH IN CONTENT AND VALUE........2007-02-13
A first-rate book on the subject of organizational design.
Chapters focus on:
- tensions of organization design;
- aligning span of attention;
- unit structure;
- diagnostic control systems;
- interactive networks;
- shared responsibilities;
- examples of adjusting the levers; and
- designing organizations for performance.
Central to this book are four key factors that guide effective design decisions: customer definition, critical performance variables, creative tension, and commitment to others.
The book offers great insights and guidance to design an organization that influences how people perform, focus their attention, and how their efforts can be aligned with strategy. Rich in content and value! Very highly recommended.
An OD book with a solid combo of theory and practice.......2005-11-03
Finally, an OD book with a solid combination of theory and practice. The theory in this book is the most comprehensive model for OD I've ever seen. Simons' model incorporates all functional areas of business. He does an excellent job of looking at the whole organizational picture. This is where many authors have fallen short with theories that only cover one or two functional areas of business leaving you to guess at how to incorporate the rest. This cross-functional approach to OD is not just refreshing; it's quite necessary in today's business environment.
Simons' theory is based on levers and sliders. Easy to understand and easy to visualize. Part of the value of the book is that the theory is backed up with practical implementation examples. Like any good learning resource (a.k.a. text book) each chapter provides us with a summary and action steps. I give this book an A+ and consider it a "must read" for anyone in the OD field. It is also recommended for management teams looking to assess their organization design. Using this book will provide the understanding you need to get started.
Eloquent and Essential Practicality .......2005-09-08
Unlike subtitles of so many other recently published business books, the one for Levers of Organization Design correctly identifies its author's primary objective: to explain "how managers use accountability systems" to achieve "greater performance and commitment." Simons thoroughly and brilliantly responds to questions such as these:
What are the nature and extent of tensions of organization design or redesign?
How to get "span of attention" in proper alignment?
What is an appropriate "unit structure"? Why?
Which diagnostic control systems can be most effective? How?
Why are interactive networks essential?
How to establish and then strengthen them?
How should shared responsibilities be determined and then managed?
Then, how to sustain productive collaboration?
Which "levers" of organizational design are most effective? Why?
Which examples best illustrate how to make appropriate adjustment of them?
What are the most effective strategies and tactics when designing organizations for performance?
According to research which Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton provide in The Strategy-Focused Organization, only 5% of the workforce understand their company's strategy, only 25% of managers have incentives linked to strategy, 60% of organizations don't link budgets to strategy, and 85% of executive teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy. If true, these are chilling statistics which suggest that few decision-makers in any organization (regardless of its size or nature) would be able to answer, clearly and realistically, each of the questions listed previously. Hence the urgency of their reading Simons' book. I also urge them to check out the several works co-authored by Kaplan and Norton.
Average customer rating:
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Working With Water in Medieval Europe: Technology and Resource-Use (Technology and Change in History)
Manufacturer: Brill Academic Publishers
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ASIN: 9004106804 |
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- Massive change
- An optomistic view of mankind's future
- For every dreamer....
- Missed opportunity
- AWESOME
|
Massive Change
Bruce Mau ,
Jennifer Leonard , and
Institute Without Boundaries
Manufacturer: Phaidon Press
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Life Style
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S M L XL: Second Edition
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A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History
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Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan
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Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises
ASIN: 0714844012 |
Book Description
Massive Change is a modern illustrated primer on the new inventions, technologies, and events that are affecting the human race worldwide. The book is a part of a broader research project by Bruce Mau Design intended to provoke debate and discussion about the future of design culture, broadly defined as the "familiar objects and techniques that are transforming our lives."In essays, interviews, and provocative imagery aimed at a broad audience, Massive Change explores the changing force of design in the contemporary world, and in doing so expands the definition of design to include the built environment, transportation technologies, revolutionary materials, energy and information systems, and living organisms. The book is divided into 11 heavily illustrated sections covering major areas of change in contemporary society #151; such as urbanism and architecture, the military, health and living, and wealth and politics. Each section intersperses intriguing documentary images with a general introductory essay, extended captions, and interviews with leading thinkers, including engineers, designers, philosophers, scientists, architects, artists, and writers. Concluding the book is a graphic timeline of significant inventions and world events from 10,000 B.C. to the present.
Customer Reviews:
Massive change.......2007-03-08
Excellent vision and unhappy scenarios are show us. How could we do this? It's time to change!
Robson Quinello
An optomistic view of mankind's future.......2007-01-13
An excellent look at the challenges and possible solutions facing the human race. My only complaint is that the book is a bit dated, but its perspective is future proof. The concept of the Institute without Boundaries is especially interesting.
For every dreamer...........2006-02-24
Bruce Mau is more than a designer. He is a futurist who has swapped fatalism for idealism. His vision of the future is based on facts, but you feel his undertone of optimisim. Massive Change is an utterly interesting read from cover to cover. The structure of the book and the writing style makes it a great resource of information. Massive Change is a necessity for the bookshelf of every intellect and every dreamer.
Missed opportunity.......2005-10-26
Bruce Mau's previous book - "Life Style" - was a pivotal publication that had something very fundamental to say about the practice of design. The argument woven into this survey of Bruce Mau Design's portfolio derived its edginess from an underlying, existential dilemma. On the one hand, Mau wanted to do justice to design's capacity to give "style" to sprawling, viral "life" (originally a very Nietzschean concept, later taken up and politicised by Foucault and Deleuze). On the other hand, there was the fear for the domestication of his practice to the status of banal, lifeless purveyor of images and artefacts - global capitalism's lingua franca. This tension between subversion and acquiescence turned "Life Style" into a poignant testimony.
Massive Change is, I am sorry to say, a much less compelling read. It takes its cue from Life Style's key idea - design is able to reformat the very principle of life - but dispels the darker, problematic side of the equation. Indeed, although Mau would like us to believe otherwise, the book's perspective is squarely utopian. In adopting as its motto theme "Now that we can do anything, what will we do?", it echoes the pragmatist voluntarism of the peer-to-peer movement. But the dissonances - P2P's paradoxical (symbiotic/parasitic) relationship with capitalism - have been filtered from the echo. What remains is the suave message that technological progress - shaped and harnessed by design - will be able to solve all our problems if we only want it to.
So, although Massive Change promises to bring us a "wildly unexpected view of the future", it really doesn't reach beyond the intellectual horizon of, say, a special issue of Scientific American on "Key Technologies for the 21st Century". The material is conventionally organised in sections that review the state of the art in urban planning, transportation, energy, information, material sciences, military technologies, biotech etc. Only two chapters discuss governance issues ("market economies" and "wealth and politics"). The relatively meager substance comes from short interviews with a series of "experts" in the disciplines surveyed. The selection is very US-centric and contains quite a few usual suspects (Dean Kamen, Stewart Brand, Lawrence Lessig, Jaime Lerner, Hazel Henderson etc).
By now we are also well acquainted with Mau's cinematic and fractured style in book design. "Massive Change" doesn't break any new ground compared to previous volumes (not only Life Style but also S,M,L,XL (with Rem Koolhaas) and the Zone series of books). What was once truly refreshing is becoming stale. By the way, the short interviews are printed on glaringly yellow pages, which I find positively ugly.
All of this is disappointing. I can think of two explanations for the intellectual and stylistic flaccidity exhibited in this volume. First, we are missing the incisiveness and depth that Mau's sparring partner Sanford Kwinter brought to "Life Style" (In my opinion, Kwinter's three-page lead essay was worth the price of that book). I am not sure what happened between Mau and Kwinter, but the latter is almost completely absent from this volume.
Then, although this is not be obvious at first sight, "Massive Change" is not really a Mau book. In fact, it has been largely put together by Jennifer Leonard, one of the students from the inaugural year of the Institute without Boundaries (a newly established postgraduate education programme whereby students spend a full year in the Mau studio). So, although Mau's name figures prominently on the cover, inside we learn that the Institute led the research, development, design and production of Massive Change.
I can't recommend this volume. "Massive Change" is a missed opportunity.
AWESOME.......2005-09-30
I can't stop opening up this book and reading it. It's my daily bible for information. I'm addicted!
Books:
- Navigating the Badlands: Thriving in the Decade of Radical Transformation
- Newton's Cannon: Book One of THE AGE OF UNREASON (The Age of Unreason)
- OBJECTION!: HOW HIGH-PRICED DEFENSE ATTORNEYS, CELEBRITY DEFENDANTS, AND A 24/7 MEDIA HAVE HIJACKED OUR CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
- Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company
- Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company
- Organization Change: Theory and Practice (Foundations for Organizational Science)
- Organizing Business Knowledge: The MIT Process Handbook
- Patents, Copyrights & Trademarks for Dummies
- Plan Your Estate
- Principles of Public International Law
Books Index
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- The Weight of the Image : Teaching Design and Computing in Architecture
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