Interrelativity

Category: Books

  • Stumbling on Happiness: Simulation, Surrogation, Attachment and Service

    Dan Gilbert gave an inspiring talk at Microsoft Research recently (before heading into Seattle to present to a larger audience at Town Hall), sharing some insights from his book Stumbling on Happiness.  Dan provided numerous opportunities to experience "learning through laughing" as he guided us through an engaging, enlightening and often delightful exploration into how…

  • The Pervasiveness and Permeability of Games Worlds

    The Microsoft Research Social Computing Symposium this week highlighted the pervasiveness of games and raised a number of questions (for me) about the thin membrane between games worlds and so-called real life. I was also reminded of a number of themes I first encountered years ago in a delightful and insightful book, Finite and Infinite…

  • The Network Effects of Awareness, Energy, Trust and Serendipity

    The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations, by Rob Cross and Andrew Parker, illuminates far more than I expected about the different types of social networks that exist within and across organizations, and the way those networks impact, and are impacted by, the organizations in and through which…

  • Unfolding Radiance

    Dan Oestreich is one of my favorite bloggers. One of the insights that has unfolded for me, through regularly reading Dan’s blog, Unfolding Leadership, is that everyone is a leader: like it or not, I am always "leading by example", intentionally and unintentionally.  His latest post, On the Capability to Lead, weaves together many rich,…

  • The Art, Science, Business and Politics of Happiness

    The Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled "Happiness, Inc." in this week’s Weekend Edition, which described how research into happiness is being applied in business contexts.  I’ve encountered a whole bunch of happiness-related pieces recently, and this one prompted me to weave them together. The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living, by His…

  • Chaordic Leadership Principles

    In anticipation of the possibility that week’s Seattle Times article about Interrelativity might generate increased interest in the company, I updated our web site … including my curriculum vitae (CV, aka resumé), both the short and long versions.  I decided to include a section in the latter document about my approach to leadership, which I…

  • Virtues, Goals, Plans and Aspirations

    I recently wrote about goal-free living,  and the value of non-attachment to outcomes … and in a subsequent comment, how this might apply to plans.  Shortly after making the original post, I read about Benjamin Franklin’s 13-point "plan" (via BoingBoing), through which he achieved great happiness throughout his 79-year life. He maintained a weekly chart…

  • Living Without Attachments

    Stephen Shapiro gave an energetic presentation last night at Bellevue Community College on Success 101: The Goal-Free Approach, in which he highlighted some pitfalls of being too attached to the achievement of goals, and instead emphasized the importance of enjoying the moment(s) … essentially: don’t focus so intensely on the destination that you don’t enjoy…

  • Filling Buckets, Online and Offline

    How Full is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life, a book by Tom Rath and the late Donald O. Clifton, provides a simple metaphor of buckets and dippers to represent the way we store and forward positive and negative emotions, and highlights the tremendous cumulative impact of all our individual choices to fill…

  • Howard Schultz on Passion, Perseverance and Partnership

      I had a remarkable Starbucks Experience yesterday, which prompted me to go back and review my notes from Howard Schultz’s inspiring book “Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time” (co-authored with Dori Jones Yang).  It reminded me of my intention to start posting more summaries of…