The Power of Minds at Work:
Organizational Intelligence in Action
by Karl Albrecht

Drawing on 25 years of experience as an organizational consultant, Karl Albrecht delivers a whack on the head to today's leaders: we've got to make our organizations smarter.

He coined Albrecht's Law to express the problem:

Intelligent people, when assembled into an organization, will tend toward collective stupidity.

Using a wide variety of personal experiences, success and failure stories, and real cases, he lays out a manifesto for escaping from collective stupidity and achieving collective intelligence — in short, organizational intelligence, or "OI." While some might argue that OI is an oxymoron, or contradiction in terms, Karl Albrecht argues that it can — and must — be achieved if our business enterprises are to move to the next level of performance of which they are capable.

Book; "The Power of Minds at Work - Organizational Intelligence in Action"


CONTENTS:

Preface

PART I — THE CASE FOR SMARTER ORGANIZATIONS

1. Albrecht's Law

Collective Stupidity: It's Normal
The Entropy Tax: Energy Lost Forever
Organizational IQ: When 1+1+1 Don't Add Up to 3
Does an Organization Have a "Mind?"
Collective Intelligence: Brain Power Writ Large

2. Learned Incapacity: How People Collude to Fail

Corporate DNA: The Internal Codes of Success & Failure
Seventeen Basic Syndromes of Dysfunction
The Crisis Mode: Start with Denial
GroupThink: Deciding Not to Think
Profiles in Dysfunction: How the Great Become Mediocre

PART II — ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

3. What is Organizational Intelligence?

Syntropy: Multiplying Brain Power
Seven Traits of the Intelligent Organization
Profiles in Intelligence: You Know It When You See It
The Causes of Organizational Intelligence
Should We Train Brains?

4. Strategic Vision: Every Enterprise Needs a Theory

The Arc of Success: The "Golden Age" Syndrome
Bifocal Vision: What Now and What Next?
Seeing Through the Fog: Management Fads, Fallacies, & Folklore
The Manifesto: Vision, Mission, Values, & Strategy
Leadership, Vision, and Action: Horses for Courses
The Pathology of Power
The Neurology of Leadership
Key Indicators of Strategic Vision

5. Shared Fate: the Holodynamic Organization

I, We, They, Us, and Them: The "Rabble Hypothesis"
The Hologram as Metaphor
Culture as the Collective Unconscious
Our History: Who Are We and How Did We Get Here?
Lifeboat Politics: Zero-Sum Thinking
Organizing Across Cultures: Ethnic and Social Interfaces
Key Indicators of Shared Fate

6. Appetite for Change: Planned Abandonment

Homeostasis and the Dominant Neurosis: How Organizations Avoid Their Futures
The Dominators Are Rarely the Innovators
The Sick-Sigma Syndrome: Perfection or Destruction?
Organizing for Change
Key Indicators of Appetite for Change

7. Heart: Earning the Discretionary Energy

You Can't Get Good Help These Days: The Ghost of Frederick Taylor
How Do You Turn People On? You Don't
Motivators and Demotivators: The Ghost of Frederick Herzberg
Meaning and Motivation: The Power of a Common Cause
Quality of Work Life: The Barometer of Heart
Key Indicators of Heart

8. Alignment and Congruence: Eliminating the Contradictions

The Structural Paradox: Any Way You Organize is Wrong
System Craziness: Designing for Failure
System Intelligence: Designing for Success
Chastity Belts: Designing Trust Out of the Organization
Are We Rewarding Failure and Punishing Success?
Bolting Cultures Together: How to Sink a Merger
Organize for the Mission
Key Indicators of Alignment

9. Knowledge Deployment: the "Hive-Mind"

Knowledge Capital: What Is It?
Knowledge Productivity: The Unsolved Problem
Brains Online
Information: The Next "Quality Revolution"
Digital Cultures: Where Are We Headed?
Key Indicators of Knowledge Deployment

10. Performance Pressure: Leadership With Purpose

Una Cosa: Don't Try to Chase Ten Rabbits
Selling the Story: The Leader as Logo
Feedback: The Breakfast of Champions
Cowardly Management: More Common Than We Admit
Key Indicators of Performance Pressure

PART III — GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT GETTING SMART

11. Facing the Challenge

The Fizzle Factor: Why Most Big-Deal Change Programs Fail
The J-Curve: Fantasy Confronts Reality
Planned Growth and Unplanned Growth
Going Outside: How Consultants Can Help — and Hurt — an Organization

12. Psychotherapy for the Enterprise

Organization Development: Is There a "Theory" of Change?
Change Management 101: Five Requisites for Successful Change
Ten Principles for Change Agents
Some Final Thoughts

Amacom, 2002

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