Down to Earth, Absorbing, Perfectly Presented, “Must Read”
October 10, 2010
Randy Komisar with Kent Lineback
I'm putting this book into the 6 Star and Beyond category at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, for two reasons: it has a proper definition of what business should be about–creativity and humanity; and it strives to focus the innovator on passion versus drive, life versus “the kill.”
The book was first published in 2000, and I only get to it now because it was explicitly recommended to me by a Hackers Conference colleague to help me in grappling with my “what next” explorations.
The book impresses from the first page, the opening quote from Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (Oxford World's Classics) which I might have to read next. It took an enormous amount of creative focus to find this quote, I will just provide the first half here:
Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irrestibly real and attractive to us–for that moment only. Not the fruit of the experience, but experience itself, is the end.
For me, this was perfect prologue, and a have a note shortly into the book, “the zen of advanced information technology leadership.
This is a carefully crafted and elegantly presented book with exactly the right amount of white space, integrated emails, and real-life annecdote, and the bottom line is clear: bet on the vision and take the risk. Go for the big idea that changes the world or at least tries to change the world, do NOT “do” the web play as a path to being rich or anywhere other than being “there.”
Since its publication in 1946, George Orwell's fable of a workers' revolution gone wrong has rivaled Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea as the Shortest Serious Novel It's OK to Write a Book Report About. (The latter is three pages longer and less fun to read.) Fueled by Orwell's intense disillusionment with Soviet Communism, Animal Farm is a nearly perfect piece of writing, both an engaging story and an allegory that actually works. When the downtrodden beasts of Manor Farm oust their drunken human master and take over management of the land, all are awash in collectivist zeal. Everyone willingly works overtime, productivity soars, and for one brief, glorious season, every belly is full. The animals' Seven Commandment credo is painted in big white letters on the barn. All animals are equal. No animal shall drink alcohol, wear clothes, sleep in a bed, or kill a fellow four-footed creature. Those that go upon four legs or wings are friends and the two-legged are, by definition, the enemy. Too soon, however, the pigs, who have styled themselves leaders by virtue of their intelligence, succumb to the temptations of privilege and power. “We pigs are brainworkers. The whole
Amazon Page
management and organisation of the farm depend on us. Day and night, we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples.” While this swinish brotherhood sells out the revolution, cynically editing the Seven Commandments to excuse their violence and greed, the common animals are once again left hungry and exhausted, no better off than in the days when humans ran the farm. Satire Animal Farm may be, but it's a stony reader who remains unmoved when the stalwart workhorse, Boxer, having given his all to his comrades, is sold to the glue factory to buy booze for the pigs. Orwell's view of Communism is bleak indeed, but given the history of the Russian people since 1917, his pessimism has an air of prophecy. –Joyce Thompson
Phi Beta Iota: Morality is how civilizations transmit the hard lessons of the past. Both Communism and Fascism–including Faux Democracy Of, By, and For the Corporations and Banks, lack morality. The only antidote to corrupt elites is educated non-violence, as both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison among others understood so well. This web site is an attempt to inspire public intelligence in the public interest.
Thomas Jefferson: A Nation’s best defense is an educated citizenry.
James Madison: Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
1) Let's distinguish between the book and the heavy-handed (late) censorsorship. The book is an earnest personal effort by an experienced officer who knows what he is talking about. The book as now published does NOT violate even the late heavy-handed censorship. I consider the book to be an excellent overview of where US intelligence and special operations are today, along with General Mike Flynn's powerful critique “Fixing Intel-A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan,” (free online at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog).
2) Now on to the officer's loss of clearances and heavy-handed censorship.
2a) First, his loss of clearances was ABUSIVE, unwarranted, and totally reflective of the pathological operational decrepitude of our entire clearance system. I am not speaking of those who administer the system, they do the best we can. I am speaking of Colonels and Flag Officers who abuse the system to punish and silence and bankrupt–this is a form of political assassination akin to CIA's “Fitness for Duty” physicals that seek to declare any person with ethics unwilling to go along with insane or unconstitutional practices to be “crazy” and unemployable.
2b) Secondly, the book was CLEARED for publication, it is only after the fact that someone (if I had to speculate, I would guess General Ron Burgess, Director of DIA) decided that the book might make them look bad and sought desperately and foolishly to find a way to get it off the market. One of the real problems we have in our Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information world is that it turns intelligent adults into morons (Daniel Elsberg said this to Kissinger, I am just borrowing it). They actually end up with the delusion that they can “control” anything by making it secret.
The US is hosed strategically, financially, operationally, politically, and ethically. What we “do” at vast expense to the now bankrupt Treasury that has wasted over 14 trillion on the bank bail-out and over 4 trillion on an out of control Pentagon that can no longer build ships or airplanes or even provide squads with effective personal weapons or immediate area surveillance devices, is not in the public interest. Poverty has skyrocketed under this Administration precisely because it continued the previous Administrations two wars, both wars justified to the public by 935 lies led by Dick Cheney while Colin Powell stood silent.
This book is valuable, it merits five stars on its own, and now that Pentagon and CIA clumsiness have made a free online side by side version of the book available, one side as written, the other as redacted, the public has the added advantage of being able to see with great precision that 90% of the redactions are idiotic and have nothing to do with national security anything–precisely the kind of ineptitude that 90% of our expensive and unwarranted secrecy seeks to cover up across the $75 billion (going on $90 billion) secret intelligence archipelago.
I have not deleted the review and welcome the negative votes as a reminder to myself that we have differing views and that many do not see the world as I see it based on my very broad experience and very broad reading patterns. I am loyal to the Republic, to the Constitution, and to the idea that is America. Much of what we do today is inconsistent with the Constitution and the idea that is America. This book is a checkpoint in our road back to being in a state of grace with our Founding Fathers. IMHO.
At Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, in support of my latest book (free online there but better if bought in hard copy here at Amazon: INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainaabilty, I have two massive free lists of lists, the first everything that is wrong with America (according to other authors); the second everything that could be right with America (according to other authors). I am but a bridge to the thinking of others, and I commend to everyone's attention, these lists.
Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)
Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)
Bless you all–too many of you think of the author of this book, and of me, as being part of the enemy force. Not so. We are the good guys who have been left wounded on the battlefield by comrades who should have known better. Neither the chain or command nor careerism are worth dying for, but today our brave troops are dying for precisely that: ideologically and politically justified decisions divorced from reality; and flag officers prostituting themselves to careerism and not doing what I as a young lieutenant knew was my job: protecting my troops from other officers and their bad judgments.
TThe author and I reconnected on LinkedIn and he had the publisher send me a copy of this book. I would not normally have bought it for myself, thinking it a “tourism” or “travel” kind of book, and I would have been very very wrong. The sub-title, “and the Dream of Capitalism,” might better read “Case Study in Emirate Capitalism at Its Best.”
This book starts very early in the history of Dubai, back when it was such a hole that no one even knew it was there or wanted to go anywhere within thousands of miles of it. The early part of the book persuaded me that the author has done some deep, serious, utterly professional and thorough homework, and the books reads easily, with gifted turns of phrase that educate and often inspire.
Putting the book down just now (and recommending the paperback that comes with a second epilogue for 2010) I reminded myself to recommend this book as a case study for both business and public administration graduate courses, as well as recommended reading for undergraduates. I certainly believe the author himself should be invited–and very well paid–to interact with the most serious and gifted of business and public administration adult students, both on and off the record. This book is a GOLD MINE of insights into what worked in an environment where, as the author describes so beautifully, the leadership knew that lawyers are generally worthless and bureaucracies are pathetic things to be dismissed. For that section alone this book goes into the Beyond 5 Stars (6 Stars and Above) and will be so rated at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.
This book will be cataloged there in Capitalism, not just regional or country, in Leadership, and in a number of other categories as well. I have not, in as long as I can recall, had the pleasure of reading a book about a people, a place, a leadership, and a time that is as detailed, as harmonized in the telling, as instructive, and as enjoyable as this one.
The level of detail is EXTRAORDINARY and yet not burdensome. The detail is present as the filigree to the main wall, the story told in well-planned segments. The detail gives life to this book. This book is both educational and inspiring.
I am NOT “down on Dubai” and I don't think the author is either. In 58 years of travel and 48 years of reading–the last thirty focused on non-fiction, I have not seen any book do a better job of capturing the essence, in detail, of a culture, a place, and a living time.
The book ends with very serious challenges to Dubai being presented in a professional, responsible manner. The leaders of Dubai are clearly extraordinary people with extraordinary sensibilities, and I suspect they will rise to these challenges, not the least of which are spoiled citizens receiving $55,000 a year, and an energy and carbon footprint that could alone take down the Earth if proliferated. But even here, one sees the beauty of Emirate Capitalism as I choose to call it: every building now has to meet the LEEDS standard, and other measures are being put into place. Having said that, one must also recognize that Emirate Capitalism can be brutal to some, a form of robber=baronism, and that now that the world is in an economic decline, Dubai's leaders are going to have to think twice as boldly, listen to twice as many advisors, and be twice as tough and focused as they have been, if they are to survive.
If you are going to Dubai, if you know anyone at all in Dubai, if you own shares in any company based in Dubai, if you even THINK you might one day fly OVER Dubai, buy and read this book (the paperback, but frankly, although I got the new epilogue in Xerox form, it does not add that much, so for those of us that love hard-copy covers, go with the hard copy and forego the new epilogue, which I am suggesting to the author be put on line so as not to diminish sales of the remaining hard copies.
The author covers the Iran-US and other regional issues well enough, but this is not a book about politics, it is a book about Emirate Capitalism that should be studied for the next century, along with other books that needs to be written about Arab Capitalism as–and if–Arab Capitalism can be inspired by Emirate Capitalism.
This book needs a sequel, perhaps one that expands north and south and brings us all up to date on Emirate Capitalism, Iranian/Persian Capitalism (it does exist), and Arab Capitalism.
As one person cited in the book points out, Dubai is both the most magnificent fastest built marvel of the Earth, and also a microcosm of everything that is wrong with Western engineering ignorant of ecological economics or “true cost” of goods and services. Dubai is an OPPORTUNITY. City of Gold is the opening act–I cannot wait for the sequel. This is “jolly good stuff” and an absolutely riveting read–and not one to be skimmed over, either. This is a serious book for serious people.
I am not going to link to other books here. This book has no peers. Visit Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog for the 1,600 or so non-fiction books, organized in 98 categories, which provide the backdrop from my praise of this book by this author. Righteous!
Startling clarity, common sense, and immediate relevance
September 21, 2010
Steve Denning
I received a copy of this book as a galley from the publisher, and I strongly recommend it in any form. I first met Steve Denning when he was recently retired from being program director of knowledge management at the World Bank, and had created no-cost global networks for multinational information sharing decades before the term M4IS2 came into vogue (Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making). His first book, The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations (KMCI Press) remains an essential reference for any leader at any level.
This book grabbed me right away, and while it reminds me of Peter Drucker, Peter Senge, and Gifford Pinchot, with a strong leavening from all the books I have been reading in the Collective Intelligence, Evolutionary Activism, Human Scale, and Epoch B Leadership arenas, this is clearly his own unique work and I would venture to say that this is the first book that captures the essence of 21st Century leadership. Continue reading “Review: The Leader's Guide to Radical Management–Reinventing the Workplace for the 21st Century”
Real book, real facts, desperately needs visualization
August 29, 2010
Robert Glennon
I was torn between a four and a five and came down on the side of five because this is a real book with real facts and real interviews and it covers a vital topic very ably. I was tempted to drop to a four for two reasons: this book desperately lacks visualization, something publishers are going to have to learn to integrate if they want to survive (see the TED Briefing “Data is the New Dirt” by David McCandless); and because this book is part of a twelve-book read and review series started for UNESCO, I don't see all the solutions well represented at the end–the book ends weakly. Still, it is a vitally serious, desperately serious book, a sequel to the author's Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping And The Fate Of America's Fresh Waters, and should be read with When the Rivers Run Dry: Water–The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century and The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster, and the Water We Drink.
Down to Earth, Absorbing, Perfectly Presented, “Must Read”
