Organizing retrospective 58

This is a post in my series on organizing ”between and beyond.” Other posts are here. This is a retrospective of what has happened during the week. The purpose is to reflect on the work itself. Here is my previous retrospective. Here is my next retrospective.

What has happened? What needs to be done?
I mentioned in the last week’s retrospective that I’ve been reading John Seddon. Here is my review of Seddon’s Freedom from Command & Control. Two of Seddon’s observations are (1) that you ‘get away’ with command-and-control in manufacturing because the products are standard, and (2) that it’s an unquestioned assumption in command-and-control that managers should set targets and then create control systems to ensure the targets are met.

Command-and-control is logical for economic machines – but it’s the wrong logic for living companies. This is something Arie de Geus addresses in his book The Living Company. His message is that a living company needs to be managed differently from an economic machine. The book is brilliant so I will take the time to write a book review.

A book which arrived this week is Walk Through Walls by Marina Abramović with James Kaplan. Abramović is a Serbian performance artist who explores body and mind. I will continue reading her memoir next week.

Yesterday, I went to Stockholm to learn more about Quaker decision-making. Here are my notes (in Swedish). This book was required reading prior to the training. Here is also a very interesting book on employing Quaker processes of communal discernment in research.

What was good? What can be improved?
I enjoyed my trip to Stockholm yesterday. Interestingly, some of the Quaker stuff increases my aliveness (how to enter into dialogue with others in the lived moment), some of it reduces it (the awkward historical language).

While in Stockholm I also met with Marcus Kempe.

There are a number of books which I read four years ago which I need to re-read. (Arie de Geus book, which I read this week, is one of them.)

Related posts:
Organizing in between and beyond posts