Customer Reviews

Zen & Creative Management

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This fascinating book is a powerful illustration of the value of Zen to understand structures, processes and dilemmas that faces every manager when analysing problems and making decisions. There is an actual link between organizations and products to keep the track of competetive actions and strategic plans. In this book, any product is understood as an idea in a form with a demand; it introduces an innovative frame of reference to understand the development, processing and distribution stage of good and services in any firm or agency. Work is understood as the exercise of discretion within limits in order to produce a result. This is also an innovative framework to analyse task cycles, job description and evaluation as well as setting up a salary administration system. Four criteria by which to judge organizational effectiveness are approached: simplicity, completeness, pragmatism and communicability. The author has been a business executive for two decades and now, retired, is the director of the Montreal Zen Center. Both facets together give him an unusual and unique perspective on managerial things. He has the rare ability to express complex concepts in clear, strong and compelling language. There is a French and Spanish version of this book.

Quite a dense book. the premise sees quite obvious. A business is not a "thing" that can be categorized within a fixed concept. It must be appreciated as an organism which have its own fuctions, but whose nature is defined by other forces such as its costumers, the shareholders and the employees. Therefore, any attempt to understand a business from a single angle implies a failure to understand its true nature, which will lead to its destruction sooner than later.

To make a stand before that challenge, Zen philosophy provides several mental tools to surf the paradigms of linear thinking and the reduced field of vision that a particular problem creates for a manager concentraded in the day to day activities of its business.

This books helps to ground anyone in reality, a large perception of reality.