Managing Leadership^®

For some time, now, I have been working on a chapter in my next book on management and organizational leadership that deals with how the so-called “new sciences” influence these issues. I must admit that this chapter is taking rather longer to complete than I had anticipated. This topic is among the most fascinating subjects I have ever seen brought into association with the practice of management, both for the good - and the unacceptably poor - use made of these sciences; as it happens, dealing with how to organize and depict these issues is an important (although not the only) reason for the extended time spent on this chapter.

However, I thought I would put a post out at this point about a book that I recommend strongly for those interested in how some of these sciences can meaningfully and positively inform your practice of management. Sync: How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life, by Steven Strogatz, is a fascinating rendering of one of the most exciting and profound of these new sciences.

There has been much discussion in recent years of a fundamental tendency the universe has toward entropy - to degrade from organized structure to chaos; a distinctly discouraging, even distressing, concept. This book comes to the rescue with a description of a just-as-profoundly compelling cosmic instinct for nature to organize itself into ever-more complex - and, in particular, syncronized - systems. Please see the link above for a brief review I have provided at amazon.com for this book. I encourage you, as well, to get a copy for yourself.

You will find yourself picking up excellent and actionable metaphors for your work as managers. What’s more, you’ll be preparing yourself for your reading of my next book (I’ll be done with that chapter soon, really).

Thank you again, as always, for your comments and support. I look forward to continuing these posts and to hearing and learning more from you about your observations regarding, and your experiences with, Managing Leadership.