Thoughtware [Hardcover]

Philip J. Kirby (Author), J. Philip Kirby (Author), David Hughes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 21, 1997

Change the Thinking and the Organization Will Change Itself. In order to facilitate true change in an organization, its thinking patterns need to be the first thing to change. Your employees need more than empowerment. They need to move from just doing their jobs to doing whatever is needed for the good of the entire organization. Thoughtware is the underlying platform on which your organization operates, the set of assumptions upon which it is structured. When you understand and change Thoughtware, the tools and techniques of continuous improvement become incredibly powerful. Sustainable change only happens when both philosophy and techniques are combined in a well-grounded methodology. The new Thoughtware introduced here describes how to shift your organisation's understanding from the old paradigm based on division of labour, departmentalisation, span of control, and point of authority to the powerful new context of knowledge, measurement, time to action and allotment. New Thoughtware will allow knowledge workers to emerge, grow, and truly impact your organization. For senior executives, middle managers and frontline workers, this book provides new thought patterns for the knowledge era.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In their first book, management theoreticians Kirby and Hughes argue that most management initiatives, such as TQM and reengineering, are at best peripheral. They maintain that real change in organizations can occur only when the contextual underpinning itself is transformed. To borrow from genetics, they claim that thoughtware?the organizational DNA?needs to be altered. While not an original idea (cf. W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis, 1982), Kirby and Hughes establish the weaknesses of management measurement tools currently in place, and they advocate a total-capital approach linking financial capital, tangible assets, and intellectual capital. A number of other authors have intimated similar approaches, but Kirby and Hughes provide an intellectual framework with clear contemporary examples that should be of benefit to management practitioners.?Steven Silkunas, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, Philadelphia
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 271 pages
• Publisher: Productivity Press; 1 edition (July 21, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563271060
• ISBN-13: 978-1563271069
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,620,186 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is one good book you have to work on it!, March 13, 2001

By 

Lee Say Keng "KNOWLEDGE ADVENTURER/TECHNOLOGY... (Ho Chi Minh City/Singapore) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Thoughtware (Hardcover)

When I first saw the book cover/title, Thoughtware, on the Amazon.com website, I was very fascinated. It brought back sweet memories of a part of my corporate life.

It was back in the late 80's that I had the privilege to be associated professionally with two very innovative Swedish consultants: Jan-Erik Lundstrom and Leif Edvinsson. I was then working under them in the development of software for real-time man-machine communications, known as EYESCREAM, created by Jan-Erik. It was then that I believed Leif actuallly coined the term "Thoughtware" for the first time, as he had already delivered papers on it in international conferences. (Leif subsequently went on to co-author two excellent books, Intellectual Capital: Realising Your Company's True Value by Finding its Hidden Brainpower in March 1997, and Intellectual Capital: Navigating the New Business Landscape in June 1998. I would recommend readers to explore these two books, as they documented the pioneering knowledge management work at Scandia, the largest financial services group in Sweden.)

It was my initial experimentation work with EYESCREAM in the late 80's that I began my life-long journey in understanding the intricacies - and the idiosyncracies - of the human mind, in the context of strategy formulation and development. I started gathering all kinds of books, magazine articles, newsletters and research papers on the subject, to help in enhancing my life-long learning and real-world understanding.

In the mid-90s, came Amazon.com website, which actually helped me in sourcing the main bulk of the best books and other hard-to-get stuff on the brain/mind, learning, creativity, innovation, peak performance, change management, intellectual capital, strategic exploration, opportunity discovery, etc.

Now, back to the Thoughtware book, I must say this has become one of my favourite books. (Readers are welcome to explore some of my favourites in `Strategic Thinking Bookshelf,' `Opportunity Pathfinding Bookshelf,' `Visual Thinking Toolkits for Business,' and `Business Blindspots, Illusions Mind-sets & Paradigms' on the Amazom.com website).

Using the analogy of computer software, the authors of Thoughtware had very masterfully crafted a book in a creative and engaging style, with 3 major parts, against a smorgasbord of real-world business cases.:

Part 1: Context, introducing the performance drivers; Part 2: New Thoughtware, introducing the dynamics of intellectual capital; Part 3: Installation, introducing the installation framework for new thoughtware, involving 8 modules;

This is one good book which you just can't just read it in one go and put it on your shelf. You have to read it, think about it, reflect on it, synthesise it with your other reading stuffs, research your own experience, add what is specifically your own, come back to it and then plot out your next steps.

In a nut shell, let me recapitulate the essence of the book: What we do is rooted in our thoughtware. This is the ancestor of all our thinking and actions. The sum of the people's thinking in an organisation and their collective interaction is the mastermind of the organization's performance. It is the underlying platform on which every organization operates. First, change the thoughtware in our heads, and we will automatically change our behaviour. We can then move on to create capability to manage the future. We must constantly invest in new thoughtware, new operating platforms that become the foundation from which we generate learning, knowledge, innovation, change and growth.

The authors' contention in Thoughtware is exactly in line with the pioneering work of Edward de Bono, who wrote about the urgent need for FIRST ORDER THINKING in whatever we do, and who also coined the term 'LATERAL THINKING,' in the 70's. For more information about FIRST ORDER THINKING, read his books.

I enjoy reading and working with this Thoughtware book very much, and appreciate also the authors in affirming their book at the onset as "a work in progress." The human mind is too vast and too complex to be explored and understood completely, and then captured in a 200-page book. I expect the authors to come out with their new work soon.