Customer Reviews

Life at the Edge of Chaos: Creating the Quantum Organization

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Kay Gilley, keynote speaker, executive development consultant, and author of Leading from the Heart and The Alchemy of Fear:

This isn't a good book: it is a GREAT book. And, it is a must-read for anyone doing business on the bridge into the 21st Century.

Mark Youngblood has done a masterful job of simply and succinctly helping us understand the promise of ever-present, fast-paced, and dynamic change in our businesses. Encouraging us to transcend the limitations of Newtonian organizations, he brings tangible application to what it means to lead and work in a quantum one. He offers the promise that when we learn to embrace with the fluidity of chaos that we will be both more effective and enjoy our lives and work more. His examples are simple and direct and bring crystal clarity to the concepts he presents.

My personal copy is always near at hand, well-marked with dog-eared pages, sticky notes, and a long list of page reference notations in the back. When readers show up at my book signing with books that look like this, I know they have been well used...and my copy Life at the Edge of Chaos has indeed been well used. I can't recommend this book too highly.

This important book presents a "how-to" guide for dealing with the "tectonic changes" outlined by The 500-Year Delta. It becomes clearer every day that a new paradigm is emerging and the resultant changes in society and our global economy are with us to stay. Life at the Edge of Chaos explains, in a lucid, breezy manner, what these changes will require of our organizations and social institutions. Once you view the world through this lens, you will never see things the same way again. In fact, in spite of its easily-digested style, I found myself re-reading parts of the book to better understand this new model, because it is significantly different from the models we've lived by and applied for the past several hundred years. Yet these very tenets are at work in the most successful organizations today. If you enjoy the principles of Visa founder Dee Hock, or marvel at the success of Southwest Airlines and Whole Foods Market, you will certainly enjoy this book.

As the primary author of the world's only organization theory textbook with a transformational perspective, I appreciate Mark's courage and boldness in articulating this new paradigm of organization. This book picks up where mine (and others) leave off: he clearly spells out a "road map" of where we are organizationally, how we got there, and what to do about it. A stunning achievement!!!!

I FOUND MYSELF NODDING CONSTANTLY AS I READ THIS BOOK. MARK CAPTURES BEAUTIFULLY MANY OF THE OBSERVATIONS AND FRUSTRATIONS I HAVE SEEN AND HAD AS SOMEONE WHO HAS WORKED INSIDE AND EXTERNAL TO CORPORATE AMERICA.

A FAN OF THE NEW SCIENCES AND THE APPLICABILITY TO THE BUSINESS WORLD, I WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING THAT PROVIDES SOME PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO INTERGATE THESE POWERFUL CONCEPTS INTO THE BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT. MARK'S BOOK DOES JUST THAT. EASY TO READ (MARK AVOIDS THE ALIENATING JARGON I HAVE FOUND IN MANY BUSINESS BOOKS), MARK OFFERS PLENTY OF MODELS, ANALOGIES AND QUOTES THAT HELP CLARIFY THE IMPACT OF OLD NEWTONIAN THINKING AND THE POSSIBLITIES OF QUANTUM THINKING.

FOR ME, A GOOD MEASURE OF HOW MUCH I ENJOYED A BOOK IS THE AMOUNT OF NOTES I SCRIBBLE IN THE MARGINS. THIS BOOK IS FULL OF THEM!

Youngblood takes a big risk. He challenges the most essential, basic assumptions about how organizations work. By providing solid historical evidence of how our current paradigms were developed, he assures the reader that change is possible. Since big business is the single largest entity on the planet, and therefore responsible for the whole, my hope is that major corporations will embrace the creative programs proposed by Youngblood and have the courage to change to environments which are non-toxic for employees, stakeholders, communities and our planet.

Overall, I think this is a great book about organization building. It mainly talks about how you can change an organization. You need to face the challenge of "shared vision", "corporate culture", and "goverance". As a change agent, you need to improve your personal leadership/personal mastery, relationship and dialogue with others.

The reason I only give it 4-star is because I can't find a strong link between all these great lessons and Chaos/Complexity/Quantum. I think all these lessons exist everywhere in all great organization building book.

Net, I recommend this book to anyone who are interested in organization building, but not about Chaos/complexity theory, etc.

While there are some good insights into human nature and life in this book, it is such a distraction when an author litters their ideas with leftist dogma. If you are going to refer to economic phenomena, you should understand what you are writing.