A Warrior’s search for Synchronicity

Warren Bennis is an amazing writer – comparison of yesteryear’s leaders with people who used a map to get to a destination to this year’s leaders as people who uses an inner compass to wade through unchartered waters or a perfect storm not knowing what the destination would look like, after making each move they check their inner compass and make the next move, continuosly handling known unknowns and unknown unknowns – is just one inkling to his brilliant insight. A marvel of a book – must read

This is the story of the renowned design firm IDEO. Any one who thinks they know what brain storming is need to take a peep this book. This one is most certain to humble you up. The culture, the drive, the feel and the race towards the deadline is truly amazing and for a firm which has delivered innovation upon innovation to most of the world class companies, a book like this is surely not enough, each of the instances could be turned into an equally gripping book.

If you are the sort of person, who love some idea to change your view of the world, shatter your beliefs, make you humble and recreate you with a new light in every single approach you take from now on, this is the book for you. I tried two times to listen to the audio edition of this one, failed, it is too intensive for audio assimilation,bough a hard print and I must say this is the most deep book I have read in the past 10 years. In the field of economics, forecast and philosophy,this book is like Dostoyevsky in the field of literature and psychology. You feel like entering a deep ‘well’, opening crystal doors one after the other dismayed at each juncture. It is intense reading, however the ideas certainly are a worthy pay off, for the attention and thought you shower on it. This book leaves me with no choice but to read this autor’s earlier book ‘Fooled by Randomness’. As a person who uses and does forecasts, analyses trends and states a reason, put numbers to a business case and vice versa for a living, I must say this book has changed the way I look at the world and also have injected a lot of humility into me.

What can be more fun than creating a dent in the universe or creating something insanely great or being a part of a great group that does so. Warren Bennis’ this extremely well written book is accounts of seven such groups including Apple, Skunkworks, Disney. The most touching truth that stands out  in Warren’s own words “It is no surprise that Great Groups will do almost anything to perfect their technology or their movie. Not do so would be to violate one’s own integrity by breaking a promise made only to one’s self.” This is the guiding light promise to one’s self that always stands us out from the crowd. A must read for all those who do something insanely great.