Will Sargent reviewed Seeing systems by Barry Oshry
Review of 'Seeing systems' on 'Storygraph'
4 stars
When I started this book, I was worried it was going to be a woo-woo description of how people really feel and how everything could be better if we could open up to one another.
Which is technically true -- it is about how people feel, and it is about opening up. But it's much better than you would expect, because it focuses on how the organization of companies results in very different experiences for people in the organization. He describes "anthropologists" who are studying a company and attending all of the meetings going over the unexpected and extreme reactions of individuals in an organization... and then goes back through the notes and the structure of the system as a whole to show that the organization itself was putting intense pressure on the individual even though each of the individuals in that organization thought they were behaving rationally.
In some …
When I started this book, I was worried it was going to be a woo-woo description of how people really feel and how everything could be better if we could open up to one another.
Which is technically true -- it is about how people feel, and it is about opening up. But it's much better than you would expect, because it focuses on how the organization of companies results in very different experiences for people in the organization. He describes "anthropologists" who are studying a company and attending all of the meetings going over the unexpected and extreme reactions of individuals in an organization... and then goes back through the notes and the structure of the system as a whole to show that the organization itself was putting intense pressure on the individual even though each of the individuals in that organization thought they were behaving rationally.
In some sense, it reminds me of another book, The Deadline. However, it's much better for its simplicity and its diagrams... it doesn't talk about delivering software, and it doesn't talk about deadlines. It talks about what power and responsibility does to people and how people react to the use of it.
Not just recommended, but one of the books I really wish I'd read when I took my first job.