Birth of the Chaordic Age

http://www.amazon.com/Birth-Chaordic-Age-Dee-Hock/dp/1576750744/sr=8-1/qid=1159512859/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-9303214-6993607?ie=UTF8&s=books

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Birth of the Chaordic Age is a compelling manifesto for the future, embedded within the intriguing story of a personal odyssey. An engaging narrator, Dee Hock is the man who first conceived of a global system for the electronic exchange of value, becoming the founder and CEO of VISA International. He looks critically at today's environment of command-and-control institutions and sees organizations that are falling apart, failing to achieve their own purposes let alone addressing the diversity and complexity of society as a whole. The solution, Hock claims, lies in transforming our notion of organization; in embracing the belief that the chaos of competition and the order of cooperation can and do coexist, succeed, even thrive; and in welcoming in the chaordic age.

The underlying tenets of Hock's ideas are well illustrated by the incredible story of the birth of VISA International, an organization formed on chaordic principles that now links in excess of 20,000 financial institutions, 14 million merchants, and 600 million consumers in 220 countries. Hock deplores an age where ingenuity and effort are wasted on circumventing the rules and regulations of insular, hierarchical bureaucracies. In a bold-type subtext interspersed throughout the book, he examines how this situation is stunting our potential as individuals and communities and contemplates what can be changed. This rumination is propelled onward by "Old Monkey Mind" (Hock's own thoughts). Though the technique allows the reader to engage in stimulating mental discovery along with the author, its New Age spiritual tone is sometimes a bit saccharine. His insights, however, are clear and provocative. In the Chaordic Age, he contends, "success will depend less on rote and more on reason; less on the authority of the few and more on the judgment of many; less on compulsion and more on motivation; less on external control of people and more on internal discipline." Hear, hear. --S. Ketchum

From AudioFile

In a powerful memoir, a maverick manager tells how he overcame banking's rigid lending culture to create the electronic payment system we now know as VISA. His strategies for building trailblazing teams are illustrated by fascinating stories, all laced with insights that make the lessons vivid and understandable. The title suggests a broad, abstract agenda for the program--a history of how command and control organizations change into the organic systems required by today's non-linear organizations, organizations he calls "chaordic." But the program is more about the author's journey than the management transformation. It's a riveting story, read with profound understanding by one of today's best voices, a story of a well-lived life at the center of an important societal revolution. T.W. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.