Leading Systems: Lessons from the Power Lab [Paperback]

Barry Oshry (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1576750728 | ISBN-13: 978-1576750728 | Publication Date: September 1, 1999

In three parts, management educator Barry Oshry explains the phenomena of systems and leadership as experienced through his innovative Power Lab, a total-immersion experience that shows how to exert leadership in the family, the community, organizations, and the nation. The Power Lab shows how and why we repeatedly fall into systemic relationship problems, and what it takes to break out of the pattern. Once people recognize that they are system creatures, they can begin to master system processes rather than fall victim to them.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Leading Systems gets to the dynamics of leadership and power relations more effectively than the usual jargon and rhetoric. People who read this book will see that they can avoid the pitfalls of system life and create healthy societies." -- Betty Friedan, Author and Lecturer

"Leading Systems is the best book on systems living and action I have ever read. The writing is powerful and compelling. It offers a way for us to experience our power, our freedom, our anxiety, and still stay deeply engaged in serving the systems of which we are a part. I highly recommend this book." -- Peter Block, author of Stewardship and The Empowered Manager

"One of the truly great management educators of the era. . . . Every manager, executive, and leader benefits from the insights which jump out of his provocative writings. His ideas will still be sparkling decades from now." -- Kenwyn K. Smith, Professor, University of Pennsylvania

About the Author

Barry Oshry, a pioneer in systems thinking, is the creator of Power Lab, the Organization Workshop on Creating Partnership, which he has conducted in hundreds of organizations in the U.S. and around the world. He and his wife and partner, Karen Ellis Oshry, are cofounders of Power & Systems, Inc., an educational institute dedicated to providing programs and publications that deepen people's understanding of social system phenomena.

A former Chairman of the Department of Human Relations at Boston University, Oshry has presented keynote addresses and workshops for the Association of Quality and Participation, the American Management Association, the Organizational Development Network, and GOAL/QPC.

Product Details

• Paperback: 202 pages
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers (September 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576750728
• ISBN-13: 978-1576750728
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #264,448 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Next Best Thing to Being There, May 25, 2000

By 

Michael J. Sales - See all my reviews

This review is from: Leading Systems: Lessons from the Power Lab (Paperback)

Barry Oshry's book about the Power Lab is the next best thing to being there. The Power Lab is a thirty something year old educational institution that has attracted men and women from all different walks of life. It has been a "laboratory" for Oshry, who has derived a set of truly fascinating insights about the dynamics of social systems by a constant focus upon a microworld of his own creation.

As described in Seeing Systems, participants are born into the Power Lab as either members of the Elite (who own everything), the Immigrants (who own nothing), or the Middles (who own a little). There is a rich texturing of the simulation, provided in detail via a number of vignettes in the book, which help us get a sense of what life is like in these differing positions in the system. And, it turns out that life presents some daunting leadership challenges no matter where one is in the Power Lab.

Through the Power Lab, and his reflections on it, Oshry has accomplished what so many experiential educators long for: He has generalized from a set of macro insights from his observations regarding the particulars of specific events. I believe that he has achieved the ideals for laboratory education that the founders of organizational development as a discipline, such as Kurt Lewin, had hoped for. Therefore, Leading Systems (and its companion volume, Seeing Systems, also published by Berrett-Koehler) occupy a very special place in the field of experiential education theory and practice, quite equivalent to the product of authors such as Argyris and his school.

By using the Power Lab's imitation of life, Oshry offers some profound insights on the dynamics of power at the level of the world stage, and I would recommend these to anyone who wants the possibility of global peace to be anything other than lofty rhetoric. In a simple, but compelling way, he shows the reader how "systems make choices" that, then, affect the thoughts, feelings, and actions of everyone who is a member of the system. So, for example, Americans living in a system that chooses "individuation" are, predictably, going to misunderstand and criticize the Chinese, who live in a system which values "integration."

When the driving principles of systems differ, it is very easy, and human, for the members of contrasting systems to begin to express contempt for the other system in general and for the people who are "stupid, gutless, corrupt, etc..." enough to live in it. Combine mutual contempt with eqivalent access to armaments and a contest over scarce resources, and you've got a near perfect breeding ground for war.

There are a lot of big ideas in this little book, and that's a real relief from a variety of books with a completely opposite construction. In addition to the book's stimulus to the mind, there are many nice touches that make the book easy to use: the author's crisp and cartoon-like illustrations, the structured reflection exercises sprinkled liberally throughout the book, and, last but not least, his embrace of the "real", the "human".

Oshry wants us to look at ourselves unromatically. In a way which is somewhat akin to Gurdjieff, Oshry wants us to understand how completely bound up we are by the systems we live in and how doomed we are to live automatic, sonambulent lives, if we don't understand the forces that are shaping our experience. But, if we do understand them, we have the power to shape and change any system we care about and any structure which threatens us. Therefore, in perhaps his most important contribution, Oshry offers us an antidote to the oppressive and disheartening social diseases of cynicism, alienation and boredom.

There are some difficulties with a book which is so intimately involved with an event. One senses that the next best thing to being there is a pale rendering of the systems insights that are available to those who take the trip to the Power Lab itself. There are many nuances of intensity and understanding that come through in the book, but were not, to me, completely accessible for one who hadn't been there.

That said, the student of systems thinking will find much to profit from in this potent little tome.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Systems thinking you can use, May 15, 2000

By 

Chelsea Mose (Chelsea, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Leading Systems: Lessons from the Power Lab (Paperback)

Really useful books about complex system issues are hard to find. Many offer ideas that are either too hard to imagine implementing or are too familiar, but claimed as original. Then there are some that actually suggest that we can overcome or even manage things that feel like they are just so unmanageable. Imagine being told to manage something like chaose! I'd embrace it first!

For those of us who work with other human beings - though at times, who knows - Oshry's two books make the issues about living and working with those other people readable and useable. I shared my copy of "Seeing Systems" with a colleage professor friend of mine. After reading a few chapters he told me that there was "nothing new here". The very next day he called again and said that not only had he read the entire book, but he arose having actually remembered what he read, and saw lots of opportunities to use the ideas in his university peer relations and consulting practice.

"Leading Systems", like Oshry's earlier book, makes it easier to grasp what is so complicated in system life. The stories about the "Power Lab" are in the realm of archetypes for system thinkers. Rather than telling us just how to do it - do we really need another title about leadership tips from historical figures - Oshry paints pictures filled with the feelings, confusions and revelations that many of us can relate to.

If you are looking for some erudite, academic tome, or the latest "rah-rah do it this way", or someone telling you that you just need to make it a bit more complicated, then don't read these two books. If however, you want a more simple but deep set of primers that will fill you with good ideas about your organizational context and your options - and your responsibility for what you create - read these books.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reducing Blindness in my Organization, May 12, 2000

By 

K. Purcell (Illinois) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Leading Systems: Lessons from the Power Lab (Paperback)

I have followed the work of Barry Oshry for many years. "Leading Systems" is an illuminating read ! In my role as Organization Development Consultant in a Fortune 500 High Tech company, I have found Oshry's work most helpful to my business clients in helping them reduce their "organization blindness". "Leading Systmes" provides practical frameworks and concrete lessons to common pain points that we encounter in our daily lives in REAL workplaces. So many of the other "leadership guru" books borrow from each other and simply re-scramble the words.....the result? Nothing new. Oshry has a way of speaking from the heart, but with an anthropologists lense that provides real clarity amidst the chaos we live in every day. I have given this book, recently, to 5 different executives in my organization, each has thanked me for opening their eyes. Now let's see if their reading of Oshry will translate to business results....stay tuned for my next installment !