: monday morning perspective : mid-march :

... hey, I'm back. Just didn't have much intelligent to contribute last half of last week, not sure why. As some of you will know by my FaceBook status over the weekend I was doing the semi-mindless task of unpacking my books, and re-shelving them here at home. Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone, noooo ... I had to get thinking about all that is in them as I sorted them into categories. Karen asked me if I could tell her a bit about each one of the maybe 500? and I figure I could on 98%.

... so, I found myself drawn to the macro stuff about systems, organizations, whatever. Peter Senge ( MIT ), Dee Hock ( VISA ), Daniel Goleman ( Harvard ) ... people thinking and writing about systemic matters ... not sure why that stuff turns my crank, fires my imagination, makes me wonder how that kind of change could ever take place, but it does. I already have a 'between employment' reading list as long as my arm, so adding to it probably isn't helpful, unless of course, it is part of the discerning process for where I choose to invest my energies this next go 'round?

... some days, or parts of some days I simply want to make a tangible investment in an obvious way, go to work, do my thing, go home, get up next day and do it all over again. Other days, or parts of them, I'm intrigued by far out fantastical possibilities that you would have a hard time proving make much of a difference if not looking at the long view: global governance ( Thomas Homer-Dixon ), organizational 're-conceiving'( Hock's chaordic push past the popular re-organizing, re-structuring, re-engineering, re-gurgitating of our institutions ), learning organizations ( Senge's SoL institute ), emotional and social intelligence ( Goleman ), and others.

... I guess the phrase that is coming to me these days, whether about former places I have worked, or local challenges ( Victoria's homeless and addictions paralysis/gridlock ), or regional, provincial, national and/or international macro-issues is ... "failure of imagination" ... can we be so self-satisfied, or possibly so petty, or so turf protecting, that we can't look up and see that if we put our heads together creatively on some of these things we could actually see progress? Now that? that ... I could get behind with some passion.

Your thoughts?

dlc

ps. here's my partial re-reading list ... I may go crazy yet!

Thomas Homer-Dixon : Ingenuity Gap / Upside of Down
Peter Senge : The Fifth Discipline / Presence / Theory U
Jim Collins : Built2Last / Good2Great / G2G and Social Sectors
Daniel Goleman : Primal Leadership / Social Intelligence
Dallas Willard : Divine Conspiracy / Renovation of the Heart
Brian McLaren : Everything Must Change / Secret Message of Jesus
Miroslav Volf : Free of Charge / Exclusion & Embrace
Tim Conder : Church in Transition
Tim Keel : Intuitive Leadership
Tim Keller : The Reason for God
NT Wright : Simply Christian / Surprised by Hope
Hirsch & Frost : Shaping of Things to Come / Forgotten Ways
Kester Brewin : Signs of Emergence
Eliyahu M Goldratt : The Goal
Naomi Klien : The Shock Doctrine
Jared Diamond : Collapse
Vern Storey : Leadership at the Interface
Dee Hock : Birth of the Chaordic Age