Customer Reviews

The Minding Organization: Bring the Future to the Present and Turn Creative Ideas into Business Solutions

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According to the authors, "To keep up with the complexity and uncertainty of an unconventional and largely unpredictable global business world, organizations must embrace a new metaphor that will transform an organization into a minding organization. The minding organization behaves like a living organism, in which adapting is central to vitality and control." Agreeing with Drucker that organizations must manage the implications and consequences of a future that has already occurred, the authors suggest a number of strategies which will "bring the future to the present and turn creative ideas into business solutions." Their book is organized as follows:

Chapter One: The Minding Organization

Chapter Two: Transforming the Organization into an Organism

Chapter Three: Adapting and Planning

Chapter Four: Structure, Creativity, and Error: The Foundations of the Minding Organization

Chapter Five: Chaos to Order to Chaos: Embracing Uncertainty

Chapter Six: Expanding the Imagination: Frames as Filters

Chapter Seven: Kniht [Think] Backward: Visit the Future in the Present

Chapter Eight: The New Leadership: Operating on the Edge of Chaos

Chapter Nine: The Minding Organization in Action

The authors provide a rigorous analysis of each component of a process by which to "bring the future to the present and turn creative ideas into business solutions." At the conclusion of Chapter Six, they suggest that the minding organization "creates chaos deliberately up front by starting with divergent concurrent perceptions and encourages errors to surface early when the costs of detection and correction are minimal." Immediately in the next chapter, they explain that the "frames" we create "filter the world for us, allowing us to manage the tremendous amount of information available." They then examine various "filters" which could prevent us from formulating the aforementioned "divergent concurrent perceptions." The sequence of the authors' ideas thus flows logically from one chapter to the next.

In the final chapter, the authors identify thirteen "precepts" of the minding organization. By now they have explained the interrelationships between (indeed the interdependence of) these precepts; they have also provided a cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective plan by which to apply those precepts to the needs of any organization, regardless of its size or nature.

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to read two books written by Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline and The Dance of Change. Rubinstein, Firstenberg, and Senge no doubt agree with Derek Bok's observation, when criticized by parents of Harvard students after a tuition increase: "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." In the minding organization, education is alive and well...and given its relative cost, a bargain.

I read this book about four years ago and frequently return to Professor Rubinstein and Firstenburg's excellent discourse on creating creativity within an organization. Their instruction on chaos versus order is worth the price of the book. Written in a no-nonsense and straight-forward fashion, this book will help open-minded leaders in any industry.
Highly recommended.

A fun book to have to read in B-school.

Well written and easy to get through.

This book taps into the trend of seeing organisations in organic terms and focusing on action-based creativity. It is about creating a "minding organization," one that behaves like a human being-instantly able to adapt to new and ever-changing conditions; where the right hand literally knows what the left hand is doing.

In a minding organization, all of the parties involved in a project-whether it's developing a new product, streamlining a process, or changing a strategy-get together from the start to explore the issues. They bring insights up front that would normally be learned only later on, a kind of high-level connection that is the hallmark of the minding organization and the surest way to gain competitive advantage. The goal of a minding organization is to adapt so readily that it innovates before its competitors do.

This book shows managers how to transform their organisation into one that behaves like a living organism-alive with ideas and instantly able to adapt for survival in an increasingly complex, unpredictable global business world.

Moshe F. Rubinstein is a professor at the UCLA School of Engineering and a frequent speaker at universities and organizations all over the world. Iris R. Firstenberg is an adjunct professor in the UCLA Department of Psychology and has also taught at the UCLA School of Engineering and the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA.

Reviewed by Azlan Adnan, Managing Partner of Azlan & Koh Knowledge and Professional Management Group.