Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Groaning under its overload of blacksmith equipment and steel passengers - a menagerie of elephants, crocodiles, Stegosauri, turtles and sundry fantasy creatures - my rusted-out..." (more)
Key Phrases: Humor Workshop, Contemporary Design, Kansas City (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

There is no denying the creativity of someone who can persuade one of the 50 largest private companies in the U.S. to create a position for him called "creative paradox," or someone who can convince the accounting department of that same company to write off to the company art collection the purchase of more than a dozen roll-top desks to be used in his "creative lab," or someone who could come up with such a goofy title for a book. MacKenzie worked for the Hallmark greeting card company for 30 years, first as a sketch artist and eventually as an upper-level manager, until he escaped the "hairball" by creating his own niche. A corporate hairball is an entangled pattern of behavior or a mess of bureaucratic procedure that discourages originality and stifles imagination. A consultant for the last seven years, MacKenzie tells what he knows about creativity and what he learned about the creative process in a corporate setting. David Rouse

Product Description

Creativity is crucial to business success. But too often, even the most innovative organization quickly becomes a "giant hairball"--a tangled, impenetrable mass of rules, traditions, and systems, all based on what worked in the past--that exercises an inexorable pull into mediocrity. Gordon McKenzie worked at Hallmark Cards for thirty years, many of which he spent inspiring his colleagues to slip the bonds of Corporate Normalcy and rise to orbit--to a mode of dreaming, daring and doing above and beyond the rubber-stamp confines of the administrative mind-set. In his deeply funny book, exuberantly illustrated in full color, he shares the story of his own professional evolution, together with lessons on awakening and fostering creative genius.

Originally self-published and already a business "cult classic", this personally empowering and entertaining look at the intersection between human creativity and the bottom line is now widely available to bookstores. It will be a must-read for any manager looking for new ways to invigorate employees, and any professional who wants to achieve his or her best, most self-expressive, most creative and fulfilling work.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1 edition (April 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670879835
• ISBN-13: 978-0670879830
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (117 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #11,425 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Working Creatively and Effectively Inside the Corporation, June 25, 2000

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

This book deserves more than five stars.

Although I have read many excellent books about nurturing creativity and working creatively in companies, this is the first book I have read where the author has been someone who has done that repeatedly and in a variety of ways. That perspective is uniquely valuable both to those who want to have more creative jobs and those who would like to encourage creativity.

Although the analogies seem far-fetched at first (orbiting the giant hairball means taking a creative tangent and refocusing it to have relevance for the company's purpose), they serve to open your mind to thinking differently about creativity and organizations.

Although the author's key points are not summarized anywhere in the book, you will begin to get a sense of how the ideas connect together. That's useful, because otherwise why should he try to teach us so much? Except in the chapter that deals with them, any of the key observations would have been enough for a whole book on the subject. The overall theme is that our minds are subject to being too quickly anesthetized, rather than stimulated to ground-breaking insights. You'll love the story about hypnotizing hens where he introduces that concept.

One of my favorite stories in the book described when the author was asked to create an introductory course on creativity. The first session was wildly successful. The author then analyzed why it worked and created a more organized version of this course (called Grope). That sesssion didn't work as well. Then he went back to being unstructured (operating at the edge of chaos), and the course worked again. He learned from this the delicate connection between groping and rote. You need more of the former and less of the latter.

Another of my favorite stories related to the joy he experienced when he first started parachuting. But within six months, it was getting to be boring. He could only make it more exciting by taking the parachute off, but that would be suicide. On the other hand, if he never tried something new, he would be vegatating. So we want to stay somewhere between suicide and vegetation for the most effective results.

You will enjoy reading this book because it presents a fresh perspective that will stay with you. The successful point of entry is a story about children. When the author shows children about making sculpture from sheets of steel, he asks them if they are creative. All first graders raise their hands. By sixth grade, no one will say that they are creative. The pressure to be like everyone else makes the creative people want to hide. It just gets worse from there. Everyone who reads that story will remember experiences from childhood where their creativity was actively discouraged by teachers, parents, neighbors and classmates. Such a pity!

Each story is imaginatively illustrated to help you get a sense of a different reality. It also makes the material more accessible to people of all ages.

In addition to reading and changing your own behavior, this book should be shared with young people to reinforce the idea that it is desirable to be creative. This would be a good book to discuss with your coworkers, as well.

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I LOVE this book!, February 25, 2000

By	P. Lozar "plozar" (Santa Fe, NM USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is far and away THE most delightful book I've bought in a long time. It's stimulating visually as well as intellectually, fun to read, and the chapters are short enough to be assimilated by even the most harried business person. But it's not fluff: the points he makes about education, the way businesses are run, and the continual tension between creativity and corporate inertia, are crucial ones (every manager in every large firm should read Chapter 18, "The Pyramid and the Plum Tree"!). And MacKenzie's recommendations are not, as some critics have argued, applicable only in an "entertainment" industry like greeting cards: in today's fast-paced business world, a company's most important asset is its ability to be flexible and continually come up with new ideas; the "giant hairball" of entrenched structures and organizational habits won't cut it any longer. While I agree that the people who most need to hearken to this book's message are educators, I think it's equally important for business people: even if you've been trained (first by your schools and then by your employers) to stifle your natural creativity and become a good little corporate clone, it's not too late for you to recapture what you started out with. I wish I could rate this 10 stars!

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not for business, December 30, 1999

By	Donald E. Ingram "Barefoot Again" (Bend, OR USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Gordon's book is listed as a rave for business anywhere. I would say, that it should be in the hip pocket of every teacher and educator in the world.

If our education system would use this book as a guideline, we would not have to write this way for business. In our world we seem to always work at fixing things when they are broken and not working on the Source. To use this book in business is addressing a secondary manifestation.

If we were to follow his book, chapter by chapter, the children would grow in their creative genius, and the business world would automatically be fixed. I loved the story of how the chickens were mesmerized and if ever we need to free our schools from keeping the children's beaks on a chalk line on the porch, it is now.

I cannot say enough; from the question at the beginning about, how may of you are artists? to the end where we are given the challenge to paint our own masterpiece...each anecdote, speaks loudly, nay, shouts to every person in a classroom to open the containers and let the minds find their creative genius.

If this book were on every teacher's desk, and more importantly in the cellular understanding of each educator, there would be no articles in any paper about how schools are failing.

Gordon, if you are watching and listening....you created a legacy that will not be forgotten...Thank you.