The worldwide success of VISA International, Dee Hock asserts, is due to its chaordic structure: it is owned by 22,000 member banks, which both compete with each other for 750 million customers and must cooperate by honoring one another's $125 trillion in transactions annually across borders and currencies. "One From Many takes the never-before-told story of how that structure came into being, and updates it for today. The book also highlights Dee Hock's evolution from humble beginnings to an iconoclast who challenged the nature of traditional organizations and management. It is the story of an entrepreneur who created a new concept of organization, brought it into being, and led it to amazing success in less than a decade. Hock is a corporate statesman who continues to carry these ideas around the world. Lyrical, humorous, powerfully thoughtful, "One From Many tells how one man blended chaos and order in the unexpected realm of business.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Dee Hock’s insights are brilliant and humane, his prescription is smart and workable. -- Alan M. Webber, Founding Editor, Fast Company magazine
I was quite simply stunned at how this man broke old, staid rules…Accessible, personal, and deeply inspiring. -- Robert Redford
One From Many is an organizational revolution that the world ignores at its stagnant peril. -- Ralph Nader
The most original approach to organizing we have been offered. It fits the ‘must-read,’ ‘must-absorb’ category for leaders. -- Tom Peters
I was quite simply stunned at how this man broke old, staid rules…Accessible, personal, and deeply inspiring. -- Robert Redford
One From Many is an organizational revolution that the world ignores at its stagnant peril. -- Ralph Nader
The most original approach to organizing we have been offered. It fits the ‘must-read,’ ‘must-absorb’ category for leaders. -- Tom Peters
About the Author
Dee Hock is founder and CEO emeritus of VISA. In 1968 he developed the concept of a global system for the exchange of value and a unique new concept of organisation for that purpose. In 1970 he founded the company that became VISA. He is currently founder and CEO of The Chaordic Alliance, a nonprofit organisation committed to the formation of practical, innovative organisations.
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22 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Edit of 30 Dec 07 to add comment and links.
New comment: something big is happening, in both politics and business. Moral green open transparent memes are in overdrive. See links.
I read a lot, a solace and a life line out of the madness of today. I finished up my week-end with this most unusual gem, and it is with some emotion that I put it down and take the time to write this review.
In my lifetime, there have been fewer than four individuals able to understand me and manage me, and Dee Hock now joins that number, sight unseen. This is one of the *good guys*! If he and Bill Bradley and Jim Turner (Transpartisanship) can come together, we can remake the world.
The book benefits from a Foreword by Peter Senge, who notes that VISA as it emerged was a disruptive concept that threatened traditional powers. Senge also notes the importance of distinguishing between enabling technologies, such as the Internet, and what is enabled, such as democracy or equitable wealth creation and sharing. Finally, Senge observes that global complexity requires distributed democracy, to which I and the author would both be quick to add: "and moral capitalism."
The book is at root about the failure of all of our instititutions, and the need to find a third way between over-bearing centralization and anarchic decentralization. The author coins the word "chaordic" to deswcribe an even-handed and often-changing balance between the two.
Dee Hock is a philosopher-king, and I am reminded of "Voltaire's Bastards" and "Consilience" as I read his denouncement of the Western concept of separability and his own understanding that complexity is about never-ending and alway-changing relationships. In one example with the US Army, he explores how rules-based organizations waste 45-85% of the time and value of their employees. He specifically notes that human ingenuity is the ultimate resource and is abundant, but too often constrained if not crushed by schools, armies, corporations, and so on.
The author's morality shines forth as he describes non-monetary exchanges of value as the best possible foundation for what others call reciprocal altruism. At one point he observes that "leadership is not necessarily constructive, ethical, or open."
The entire book is about the creation of an organization in which participation is the primal element, agreement is dynamic, and trust and tolerance are the prevailing values. He states that organizational heaven is purpose, principle, and people. Purgotory is paper and procedure. Hell is rule & regulation.
He realizes early on that fraud and theft are major challenges, and that information is, as he quotes Gregory Bateson, "a difference that makes a difference."
I have a big note: this is a smart, ethical, practical, inspiring person--one of the good guys!
The author is deeply and empathetically aware of the discord between our industrial era understandings and perceptions, and the bio-cultural realities of the Earth and all its processes. He sees clearly what the "true cost" or natural capitalism literature seeks to teach.
A line jumps out, in which the author is lamenting that we have such a wealth of information, yet have drifted into "collective madness."
He clearly sees that our current form of predatory immoral "bandit" capitalism specializes at the socialization of cost and the capitalization of gain, which is fancy wording for looting the commons and stealing the profit. He also points out that we are putting the debt on to future generations.
He clearly describes the current form of corporations as inimical to the commons.
The book concludes strongly, lionizing the will to succeed when joined with the grace to compromise, placing VISA on a par with the Internet and LINUX as an organizational model for the future, and noting that growth comes from failure.
On page 284 he lists the following ten attributes from a living organization in Spain that represents the best of the chaordic model:
01 Open membership
02 Democratic organization
03 Worker sovereignty
04 Instrumental subordinate nature of capital
05 Participation in management
06 Wage solidarity
07 Cooperating between cooperatives
08 Social transformation
09 Universal nature
10 Education (he might have added, life-long, unconstrained, free of the prison-rote we now suffer, and teaching sharing as well as learning)
He ends with the story of his recall from his wanderings in the wilderness, to explore examples, models, the intellectual foundation, and organizations by which we might save the Planet and our species, to include the necessary means of mind-crafting for the future.
I actually had goose-bumps as I put this book down. I felt, very strongly, that I had been within the aura of a great leader, a gentle person, a world-class humanitarian, a capitalist Dalai Lama if you will (don't laugh--this author strikes me as quite amazingly special).
I cannot say enough about this book. It joins the very short list of books I have posted on moral leadership through open source intelligence, and it places Dee Hock up there with Buckminster Fuller, Margaret Wheatley, Robert Buckman, and a tiny handful of Senge's and Druckers.
I hope I meet him one day. Right now, he joins Bill Bradley as one of just two people I'd be willing to leave my mink-lined bunker to follow into battle. This book and this author's mind and clarity of communication have simply blown me away.
See the two images I have loaded here to illustrate concepts that I share with this author. You can see other images at Earth Intelligence Network, where you can also use the Amazon Base Page to get access to my 30 lists of books for each of the ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers. I am also creating Amazon discussion pages for each of these.
Related books:
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda For Business Leaders
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
New comment: something big is happening, in both politics and business. Moral green open transparent memes are in overdrive. See links.
I read a lot, a solace and a life line out of the madness of today. I finished up my week-end with this most unusual gem, and it is with some emotion that I put it down and take the time to write this review.
In my lifetime, there have been fewer than four individuals able to understand me and manage me, and Dee Hock now joins that number, sight unseen. This is one of the *good guys*! If he and Bill Bradley and Jim Turner (Transpartisanship) can come together, we can remake the world.
The book benefits from a Foreword by Peter Senge, who notes that VISA as it emerged was a disruptive concept that threatened traditional powers. Senge also notes the importance of distinguishing between enabling technologies, such as the Internet, and what is enabled, such as democracy or equitable wealth creation and sharing. Finally, Senge observes that global complexity requires distributed democracy, to which I and the author would both be quick to add: "and moral capitalism."
The book is at root about the failure of all of our instititutions, and the need to find a third way between over-bearing centralization and anarchic decentralization. The author coins the word "chaordic" to deswcribe an even-handed and often-changing balance between the two.
Dee Hock is a philosopher-king, and I am reminded of "Voltaire's Bastards" and "Consilience" as I read his denouncement of the Western concept of separability and his own understanding that complexity is about never-ending and alway-changing relationships. In one example with the US Army, he explores how rules-based organizations waste 45-85% of the time and value of their employees. He specifically notes that human ingenuity is the ultimate resource and is abundant, but too often constrained if not crushed by schools, armies, corporations, and so on.
The author's morality shines forth as he describes non-monetary exchanges of value as the best possible foundation for what others call reciprocal altruism. At one point he observes that "leadership is not necessarily constructive, ethical, or open."
The entire book is about the creation of an organization in which participation is the primal element, agreement is dynamic, and trust and tolerance are the prevailing values. He states that organizational heaven is purpose, principle, and people. Purgotory is paper and procedure. Hell is rule & regulation.
He realizes early on that fraud and theft are major challenges, and that information is, as he quotes Gregory Bateson, "a difference that makes a difference."
I have a big note: this is a smart, ethical, practical, inspiring person--one of the good guys!
The author is deeply and empathetically aware of the discord between our industrial era understandings and perceptions, and the bio-cultural realities of the Earth and all its processes. He sees clearly what the "true cost" or natural capitalism literature seeks to teach.
A line jumps out, in which the author is lamenting that we have such a wealth of information, yet have drifted into "collective madness."
He clearly sees that our current form of predatory immoral "bandit" capitalism specializes at the socialization of cost and the capitalization of gain, which is fancy wording for looting the commons and stealing the profit. He also points out that we are putting the debt on to future generations.
He clearly describes the current form of corporations as inimical to the commons.
The book concludes strongly, lionizing the will to succeed when joined with the grace to compromise, placing VISA on a par with the Internet and LINUX as an organizational model for the future, and noting that growth comes from failure.
On page 284 he lists the following ten attributes from a living organization in Spain that represents the best of the chaordic model:
01 Open membership
02 Democratic organization
03 Worker sovereignty
04 Instrumental subordinate nature of capital
05 Participation in management
06 Wage solidarity
07 Cooperating between cooperatives
08 Social transformation
09 Universal nature
10 Education (he might have added, life-long, unconstrained, free of the prison-rote we now suffer, and teaching sharing as well as learning)
He ends with the story of his recall from his wanderings in the wilderness, to explore examples, models, the intellectual foundation, and organizations by which we might save the Planet and our species, to include the necessary means of mind-crafting for the future.
I actually had goose-bumps as I put this book down. I felt, very strongly, that I had been within the aura of a great leader, a gentle person, a world-class humanitarian, a capitalist Dalai Lama if you will (don't laugh--this author strikes me as quite amazingly special).
I cannot say enough about this book. It joins the very short list of books I have posted on moral leadership through open source intelligence, and it places Dee Hock up there with Buckminster Fuller, Margaret Wheatley, Robert Buckman, and a tiny handful of Senge's and Druckers.
I hope I meet him one day. Right now, he joins Bill Bradley as one of just two people I'd be willing to leave my mink-lined bunker to follow into battle. This book and this author's mind and clarity of communication have simply blown me away.
See the two images I have loaded here to illustrate concepts that I share with this author. You can see other images at Earth Intelligence Network, where you can also use the Amazon Base Page to get access to my 30 lists of books for each of the ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers. I am also creating Amazon discussion pages for each of these.
Related books:
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda For Business Leaders
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
By R. W. Broad
Format:Paperback
When I saw this new recommendation from Amazon, I was thrilled. I loved Birth of the Chaordic Age, and was eager to learn what new wisdom Dee has to share with us. I checked out the reviews and table of contents and was disappointed to see that One from Many ... is the same book under a new title. Too bad.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
By Eric Olinger
Format:Paperback
Dee Hock is not only a great story teller but also a "future teller". The history of his incredible involvement with the rise of VISA only sets the stage for a fascinating look at the future as it "might become and ought to be". Very much worth the read for anyone vested with leadership and/or innovation in any organization (which is everyone).
The one story not told is how the book was made to come about. After reading of Dee Hocks life experience it seems that it is simply "how it ought to be".
The one story not told is how the book was made to come about. After reading of Dee Hocks life experience it seems that it is simply "how it ought to be".
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant
Hock has demonstrated with clarity, beauty and humility that leadership comes from bringing people to together to do the impossible. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Jeanelyse Doran Adams
5.0 out of 5 stars
Chaos at Work
Dee Hock has provided an eloquent story of a complex, adaptive, self-organizing chaordic system. His recounting the story of the formation of VISA provides proof that such an... Read more
Published 5 months ago by madeline f finnerty
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book!
This book is a great combination of business history about Visa and philosophy about how we need to organize ourselves to survive and prosper in the 21st century and beyond. Read more
Published on July 25, 2009 by J. Canfield
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Amazing Resource--Dee and the Book
Dee Hock is a masterful storyteller, with none of the snarky, ironic stuff that passes today for insight and understanding. Read more
Published on July 25, 2009 by William Corsair
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must read
If you are in a position of leadership in a company you should read this book. It is absolutely incredible what they did. They were truly before their time. Read more
Published on April 1, 2009 by oneworld 4149
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good book
I enjoyed this book. The author is a little exsintrict but that made it fun. It is the story of how Visa came to be and it teachs about how to harnes chaos.
Published on October 14, 2008 by Christopher Akers
5.0 out of 5 stars
One from Three
If, lets imagine, the library of Management Literature would be destoyed tomorrow, there's three treasured books I hope will be preserved somewhere, safe and sound. Read more
Published on July 8, 2008 by T. Boves
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great history of the credit card
Loved the subtitle on this book enough to pick it up blind and was not disappointed. Hock delves into leadership at a level that leaves you feeling invested in his -- VISA -- and... Read more
Published on April 6, 2008 by Rob Woodbridge
5.0 out of 5 stars
Management Consultant
Dee Hock, Founder and CEO Emeritus of Visa, not only recalls the intriguing events that led to the creation of Visa, but shares the roots of his personal journey that took him to... Read more
Published on May 2, 2006 by William Ulrich
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 15
books:
See all 15 books this book cites
- Space Technology (Young Scientist) by Hemesh Alles in Front Matter
- The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler on page 290
- Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology by Eric Drexler on page 177
- The Living Company by Arie De Geus in Front Matter
- Black's Law Dictionary, Second Pocket Edition by Bryan A. Garner on page 135
See all 15 books this book cites
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