Dr. Baumgartner gives us great tips on reading and buying books. Today’s tip is how to get the best price for a book.
Here are some notes & thoughts on reading Leadership and the New Science. Google has this book in it’s Books feature, so you can skim through it if you want to check it out before buying it or getting it from your local library.
Social Networking & Blogging
It’s amazing to me how much this book made me think of the organic, non-linear, unstructured blogosphere community! Here’s some quotes to tease your brain:
A living system is a network of processes in which every process contributes to all other processes. The entire network is engaged together in producing itself. p. 20.
There are no familiar ways to think about the levels of interconnectedness that seem to characterize the quantum universe. Instead of a lonely void, with isolated particles moving through it, space appears filled with connections. p. 45
Sound like social networking and Web 2.0 to you? Flickr, Del.icio.us, blogging, etc?
I have learned that great things are possible when we increase participation. I always want more people, from more diverse functions and places, to be there. I am always surprised by what people can create as they explore the webs of relation and caring that connect them. Finally, I no longer argue about what is real. We each construct reality, and when I become curious about this, I learn a great deal from other people. I expect them to see things differently from me, to surprise me. p. 46
Yes!! This is why I want others (in my field) blogging so I can learn from them!
We all have to learn how to support the workings of each other, to realize that intelligence is distributed and that it is our role to nourish others with truthful, meaningful information. Fed by such information, everyone can more capably deal with issues and dilemmas that appear in their area. p. 102
Yes, I have a drive to share information, and want others to also share so we can all learn together.
The organization then needs to support people to reflect on this unsettling or disconfirming information, providing them with the resources of time, colleagues, and reflection. p. 108
Do you have colleagues and time so that you can reflect on the influx of information you are bombarded with daily?
State Testing
Another thing that tickled my brain was the comments about measurement that made me think of implications for state testing and No Child Left Behind.
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (quantum physics). We can measure the particle aspect, or the wave aspect — either location or movement — but we can never measure both at the same time.p. 36
Once the observer chooses what to perceive, “the effect of perception is immediate and dramatic. All of the wave function representing the observed system collapases, excpet the one part, which actualizes into reality” (Zukav 1979, 79). p. 37.
Since fractals resist definitive assessment by familiar tools, they require a new approach to observation and measurement. What is important in a fractal landscape is to note not quantity but quality. How complex is the system? What are its distinguishing shapes? How do it’s patterns differ from those of other systems? In a fractal world, if we ignore qualitative factors and focus on quantitative measures, we doom ourselves only to frustration. p. 125.
Jazz
The 123VC workshop I’m involved in is also affectionately called “Jazz.” We probably need to think more deeply about how that metaphor truly captures the way the workshop evolved and is collaboratively presented. Listen to this….
Those who have used music metaphors to describe working together, especially jazz metaphors, are sensing the nature of this quantum world. This world demands that we be present together, and be willing to improvise. We agree on the melody, tempo, and key, and then we play. We listen carefully, we communicate constantly, and suddenly, there is music, possibilities beyond anything we imagined. The music comes from somewhere else, from a unified whole we have accessed among ourselves, a relationship that transcends our false sense of separateness. When the music appears, we can’t help but be amazed and grateful.
Maybe more thoughts later….
Last evening my husband encouraged me to read The Genius of Swarms in the latest National Geographic Magazine. The article explains what scientists are learning about collective behavior and how that knowledge can be used to solve human problems. It’s a fascinating article for anyone interested in leadership.
For example, Thomas Seeley, a biologist at Cornell University, looked at how bees determine a new nest site. Scout bees fly out to potential nest sites, and then return to “tell” (dance) the other bees why their site is better. Soon more bees were at the best nest site than the others. The scout bees returned to tell the rest of the hive and they all moved to the best site.
The bees’ rules for decision-making—seek a diversity of options, encourage a free competition among ideas, and use an effective mechanism to narrow choices—so impressed Seeley that he now uses them at Cornell as chairman of his department.
“I’ve applied what I’ve learned from the bees to run faculty meetings,” he says. To avoid going into a meeting with his mind made up, hearing only what he wants to hear, and pressuring people to conform, Seeley asks his group to identify all the possibilities, kick their ideas around for a while, then vote by secret ballot. “It’s exactly what the swarm bees do, which gives a group time to let the best ideas emerge and win. People are usually quite amenable to that.”
There are several other interesting examples and applications to human organizations in the article. Check it out for yourself and/or view the accompanying photos here.
I’ve recently finished reading Writing Literature Reviews: A Guide for Students of the Social and Behavioral Sciences by Jose L. Galvin. Here are some items I want to remember from this book:
Galvin’s book has details about each step of the process of writing a literature review:
I have two other books to read about literature reviews and will share about those later.
It’s hard for me to read a book without changing behavior based on what I learned. As a practical person, I ask myself, What should I do differently because of what I learned? What are my own action items now that my understanding has expanded by reading The Comforting Whirlwind by Bill McKibben?
Witnessing the Glory Around Us
What part should we play? … Luckily, of course, there are whole huge categories of activity for which reason is utterly suited and which do not also spell destruction for the rest of the ecosystem. Witnessing the glory around us — that is a role no other creature can play (McKibben 67).
One action item is to make time to regularly spend time in nature.
When I was a student missionary on Arno in the Marshall Islands, I loved to walk down the beach past the village. (See picture.) Sitting on the beach for my morning worship, the silence was immense. The ocean stretching infinitely past the horizon. Pondering nature puts all our problems into perspective. The scene calls us to humility and joy (McKibben 47).
Caring for the Environment
We already do several things to help the environment: recycling, growing some of my own food, eating vegetarian, eating as natural as possible with as little packaging as possible, buying locally grown fresh farm veggies in the summer, driving a hybrid car, purchasing environment friendly hand soap and shampoo to name a few.
But of course there is much more we could do. This list of 50 Ways to Save the Environment is a list to grow by. I could improve in the yard and office areas.
Conscious Self Restraint
The secret weapon of environmental change and of social justice must be this — living with simple elegance is more pleasurable than living caught in the middle of our consumer culture (McKibben, 68).
Of these gifts [joy, home, service, etc], the most unique and the most paradoxical is the ability to restrain ourselves. Conscious self-restraint belongs to no other creature, and for us it is the hardest of all tasks, both as individuals and as societies (McKibben, 69).
I choose restraint. I choose to be content with what I have. I choose to give to others. I choose to resist and reject commercialism as often as possible. Instead, I will walk in the sunshine, the glory of God revealed in the world, and focus on His greatness and love always.
So I’ve been reading and re-reading Bill McKibben’s book, The Comforting Whirlwind: God, Job, and the Scale of Creation. It’s one of the assigned readings for the AU Leadership Roundtable this summer.
McKibben thoughtfully uses lessons from the book of Job to explain our responsibility to take care of the environment. The book is an easy read, but will challenge your thinking and behavior.
It started my thinking about a Christian paradox. We know that the earth will be destroyed (2 Peter 3:10); yet God created the earth and commanded us to care for it (Genesis 1:28). Some Christians think that since the earth is going to be destroyed, it doesn’t matter what we do to it now. We have more important things to do; no time to think about the environment.
Yet if we destroy the earth, or even greatly reduce our contact with nature, we are destroying one foundation of our faith. “The images of God’s power that help us locate ourselves on an axis with the divine come largely from nature. It is no accident that many of the best-loved hymns of our faith draw on this emotional power” (McKibben 62); hymns such as How Great Thou Art.
When God spoke to Job he did not reveal Himself; He revealed His works. … Event the most committed doubter can often e shaken by the transcendent pleasure of sitting in a field of native flowers or standing on a wild beach. The sense of rightness, the intuition that the experience is more than the sum of its parts, is both profound and common. When such experiences begin to vanish (as the wildflowers grow less wild, and the beaches reflect our carbon emissions) their religious meaning will fade as well (McKibben 64) .
Thinking that we don’t need to care for the earth because it’s going to be destroyed anyway is like not washing the dishes because they are going to get dirty again. It doesn’t matter if as one person we can’t change the course of a materialistic society. We can and should do our part. It doesn’t matter what we know about prophecy, about the end of time. It isn’t futile to care for the earth now because it will be destroyed later. We should obey God and take care of His creation because He commanded us to. Just like we obey the 10 Commandments because He said to; we should care for His creation too. Not just care for it; but take time to immerse ourselves in the natural grandeur that reminds us of our smallness and God’s greatness.
