1-7 Star Rating – Page 129 – Public Intelligence Blog

2010/07/142010/07/14

Review: Building Social Business–The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Needs

6 Star Top 10%, Associations & Foundations, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Economics, Environment (Solutions), Humanitarian Assistance, Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Justice (Failure, Reform), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Priorities, Public Administration, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, United Nations & NGOs, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

4 in isolation, beyond 6 in context–a cornerstone book

July 14, 2010

Muhammad Yunus and Karl Weber

While I sympathize with those who feel that the book lacks reference to prior art, that social business has been around for a very long time, and that much of the book is somewhat similar to his first book that I also reviewed, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism, I am rating this book a five here and a “6 Star & Beyond” at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, for the simple reason that he is not just doing it, but doing it on a global scale, pushing the envelope across all boundaries, and setting the stage for realizing what Nobel-candidate C. K. Prahalad articulates in The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Revised and Updated 5th Anniversary Edition: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits.

The Nobel Prize to Yanus was a righteous one–unlike the political idiocy of awards to Al Gore and Barack Obama. I can only hope that the Norwegian public shames its overly political Nobel Committee into getting back on track with awards such as this one.

My friend Howard Bloom has a new book out that complements this one: The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism and of course there are others both recent and past, such as Capitalism at the Crossroads: Next Generation Business Strategies for a Post-Crisis World (3rd Edition).

Three things are changing that make this book a cornerstone book:

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2010/07/13

Review (Guest): Bureaucracy–What Government Agencies Do And Why They Do It

5 Star, Budget Process & Politics, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Government), Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Democracy, Diplomacy, Economics, Education (General), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Environment (Problems), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Force Structure (Military), Information Operations, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Leadership, Military & Pentagon Power, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Religion & Politics of Religion, Science & Politics of Science, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Security (Including Immigration), Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

James Wilson (Author)

43 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive Guide To Government Bureaucracy, January 1, 2002

By	Tansu Demir (Springfield, IL) – See all my review

This book is really a “comprehensive” (in the literal meaning of the word), clearly written, richly supported by concrete cases (mostly, federal agencies) guide about government bureaucracy mainly in the United States. From introduction to the end, Wilson clearly and convincingly demonstrates the reasons what the government agencies do and why they do that in the way they do.

The book is organized into six parts: Organizations, Operators, Managers, Executives, Context, and Change. In the first part, Wilson's thesis is simply that organization matters. Organization must be in accordance with the objectives of the agency. In the second part, the author examines the operators' behavior (say, street-level bureaucrats) and how their culture is shaped by the imperatives of the situation they encounter in a daily basis. The third part deals with the issues peculiar to managers of public agencies. In this part, attention is focused upon the constraints that put the mangers in a stalemate (see chapter 7, this chapter is completely insightful!!). The fourth part is devoted to the Executives. This part clearly illustrates why the executives of government agencies compete with other departments and which strategies are used in the process of competition and/or cooperation (especially see the 10th chapter about Turf, insightful!!). In the fifth part, Wilson focuses on the context in which public agencies do their business (Congress, Presidents and Courts). In the last part, Wilson summarizes the problems and examines alternative solutions (the market alternatives to the bureaucracy) and concludes with reasonable and “little” propositions.

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2010/07/072010/07/08

Review: When to Speak Up and When to Shut Up

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Consciousness & Social IQ, Democracy, Public Administration

Christian Social IQ Book with Moral Foundation

July 7, 2010

Michael Sedler

This was a very intriguing book and I am going to have to read it more than once. I bought it thinking it was a social IQ book, kind of an intelligent person's conversational etiquette. It is far more than that, very Christian but also very practical for anyone. If I were to give away two small books as traveling companions for anyone, this would be one, Leadership Lessons of Jesus: A Timeless Model for Today's Leaders, which was sold in the Special Operations bookstores when LtGen Jerry Boykin was deputy for intelligence in the Pentagon, see his biography, Never Surrender: A Soldier's Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom.

Where this book impacted on me to the extent any book can influence the habits of a 57-year old, was in really making crystal clear the value of questions instead of statements as a conversational contribution. I kept thinking Socratic, and also thinking of my colleagues in the war colleges who must learn to teach future generals who do not want to be told anything, but can be challenged to think more broadly.

The author distinguishes between questioning (bad) and asking questions (good), and this I noted down:

QUESTIONING
1. Persisting
2. Complaining
3. Challenging
4. Debating and disputing
5. Making accusations
6. Taking up an offensive

ASKING QUESTIONS
1. Prepare
2. Timing
3. Get to the point
4. Recognize authority
5. Ask for more information if not clear
6. Avoid becoming defensive
7. Avoid trying to justify self
8. Thank for time

Two quotes I especially liked:

“The enticement to be secretive, and to withhold information is a battle for many of us.”

“Dishonesty,trickery, deceit, lying–each may be justified in our own minds. We rationalize and develop our own sense of morality in order to protect ourselves. Unfortunately a web of deceit usually ends up creating more problems than originally existed.”

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2010/07/072010/07/08

Review: Nelson’s Complete Book of Bible Maps and Charts

6 Star Top 10%, Atlases & State of the World, History, Religion & Politics of Religion

Above Five Stars–Sets a Standard

July 7, 2010

I needed books to read on a flight out of Dallas, which is now a totally Christian airport. This book, and When to Speak Up and When To Shut Up were the best options for a non-fiction fanatic.

My first note is “PHENOMENAL. Overview, charts with key ideas, photos, maps, a Gold Standard.” This is an extraordinary reference in every sense of the word, and I consider the price to be at cost or gift levels, particularly with the full color nature of all the charts and maps.

I am NOT one of the “the only book I read and need is the Bible” crowd. Certainly they already know of this book and love it. For me, this book represents the very art and science of perfection in opening the Bible and its meaning to those that are NOT steeped in the arcane passages or that have NOT memorized passages over time.

As an intelligence officer, I found myself studying the maps and ultimately noting the following:

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2010/07/072010/07/07

Review: Revolutions and Revolutionary Movements

4 Star, Insurgency & Revolution

Excellent Primer Lacking in Some Substantive Respects

July 7, 2010

James DeFronzo

There is no question but that this book would be an excellent undergraduate primer, but it is lacking in a number of substantive respects. The shortfalls first:

1. Needs to add understanding and summary of “secret war” and covert action dimensions underlying each revolution and its counter-revolution. Although there are some references, the reality about the CIA and others that comes out in books such as Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA or None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam is simply not there. In this vein, the author focuses too much on world “permissiveness” for revolution as a factor, and not enough on the grave sorrows inflicted on humanity by US sponsorship of dictatorships (see Ambassador Mark Palmer's utterly sensational Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025. While the author does address CIA's role in subverting both Guatemala and Iran (and in Guatemala, of Che Guevara's being there to witness the illegal over-throw), generally this book lacks a system of systems approach to the raw disconnect between government and people across political-legal, socio-economic, ideo-cultural, techno-demographic, and natural-geographic factors.

2. Needs to add understanding and summary of the role of multinational corporations in both sponsoring and suppressing revolutions. From Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations to War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier to The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back, the role of elite corruption sponsored by the USA or USSR or China or Iran is simply not adequately integrated.

3. Needs to add understanding and summary of the role of criminal networks as substantive players in any and all revolutionary movements, not just whatever poster child the US Government wants to emphasize that day. Criminals, terrorists, revolutionaries, and white collar criminals all share the same smuggling and money-laundering spectrum of networks. See Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy.

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2010/07/062010/07/08

Review: IDENTITY ECONOMICS–How our Identities Shape Our Work, Wages, and Well-Being

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Best Practices in Management, Civil Society, Consciousness & Social IQ, Economics

Concise, Relevant, Documents New Knowledge, Respects Work of Others

July 6, 2010

George Akerlof and Rachel Kranton

This book is a solid five, and one of those instances when brevity adds value. While I was concerned to see no discussion of “true cost” economics and the book is overly fawning on Goldman Sachs (written before Goldman Sachs was exposed for its multiple fiscal crimes against both investors and governments), the superior References, Notes, and Acknowledgements balanced this out. This work began in 1995.

This is an engrossing book and it immediately overcame my general disdain for economists, most of whom have only recently discovered information asymmetries and most of whom refuse to recognize that corruption in the US government and cheating across the US economy is fully the equivalent of transnational organized crime in cost to society.

Overall I consider this book very useful as both an overview (with most impressive “by name” citation of prior art on every page) and as a critique of conventional economics. This book is an excellent complement to the book I just reviewed, The Hidden Wealth of Nations and will be complemented by the book I will review next week, Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism That Serves Humanity's Most Pressing Needs. See also my review of Nobel-worthy The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Revised and Updated 5th Anniversary Edition: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits.

Core concept: IDENTITY is actualized psychological norms within a social context.

QUOTE (page 8): Identity economics restores human passions and social institutions into economics.”

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2010/07/042010/07/06

Review: SnowCrash

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War

WARNING: This is the GERMAN language edition. For English see Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book).

I received this book as a gift at one of the Silicon Valley Hackers/THINK Conference where I was elected to membership in 1992 or so, and it remains for me the first window into the cyber-chaos that results when CIA and the Library of Congress merge and everyone is a collector, producer, and consumer of digital information.

This book is ESSENTIAL reading, and foretold by decades the ineptitude of the US Government and the deliberate refusal of corporations to get a responsible grip on cyber-reality.