The main point: Fear, facts and force are the favored approach for those who want to facilitate change, but they never work. Doctors know that even the threat of death is not enough to influence eight out of nine heart attack patients to change their lifestyles. Instead, successful change agents rely on a mixture of:

• Relate – Establish a new, emotional connection with a person or community that fosters hope.
• Repeat – Use this new relationship to learn and practice the new skills and behaviors you need to sustain change.
• Reframe – Allow this new relationship to help you see your situation and the world in a new light.

Good doctors have the first one down. To reframe, they need to help patients see the benefits of healthy changes today – healthy food can be delicious, exercise can give them more energy, meditation can reduce their stress symptoms. And they need to help them savor short-term wins so that they will repeat the behavior over and over until it becomes their new habit.

Best part about this book: The writing. Deutschman is a magazine writer (Fortune, GQ, Fast Company) and book author (The Second Coming of Steve Jobs) who has a raft of stories at his disposal. He never tells, he shows. He has spent quality time with the change leaders he profiles — so much so that you find out, for example, that 35 years into her successful program to rehabilitate criminals at San Francisco’s Delancy Street, Mimi Silbert still has days when she doesn’t have that fire in the belly. Her solution: act “as if” she does, and eventually the fire comes back.

Favorite quote:

I don’t think a leader can accomplish major change without being willing to slice yourself open and become part of the change. I say, ‘You guys force me to be my best self because I live in a glass house.’ — Mimi Silbert

Bits that stuck:

• Quick wins reward the hard work of change, nourish the faith and keep critics at bay.
• When stuck with a problem I haven’t been able to solve myself, the first step is to seek out a new relationship with someone or some group that has had success in this area.
• When the spirit flags, “fake it until you make it.” Act “as if” you have the spirit and it will come to you.

During his career as a theoretical physicist, David Bohm’s writings and lectures took side trips into dialogue and collective thought. In this book, editor Lee Nichol compiles Bohm’s ideas to suggest a coherent theory of co-creation of meaning.

There is a flavor of quantum physics in Bohm’s take on dialogue. He sees dialogue as the antithesis of debate and discussion in that it is organic, chaotic, and evolving. The process of dialogue is itself the whole meaning, while debate and discussion breaks topics down to constituent parts that in themselves have no meaning. Dialogue is the ticking clock and all that it portends; discussion and debate is the clock smashed to pieces.

The ideas in this book invite a leader to view the rituals of organizational communication in light of co-creation of meaning. He or she will notice the vast amount of energy spent talking without achieving a shared meaning. He or she also will notice that dialogue often happens in spite of the organizational rituals. A leader who witnesses such flashes also will notice the leaps in understanding that accompany them. The leader may discover ways to encourage more dialogue, and also may notice that the organizational culture and the path it takes is itself a process of dialogue that encompasses individuals, work groups, group interactions, and the organization’s interface with its environment.

Senge started a movement with this book, which outlines the first five disciplines (there may be more, he says) that are required to create a “learning organization.” Members of a learning organization understand how they create their reality and how they can influence it. Such an organization is more likely to have generative, creative thinking that advances the organization, its community, and the world.

Four of the disciplines are separate practices: getting a grasp of your personal vision, building a shared vision, fostering team learning, and understanding the effect of our own mental models. These disciplines would be business-book gimmicks if they were not integrated by the fifth discipline: systems thinking. With systems thinking, the leader seeks to find the patterns that underlie an organization’s results.

Senge describes several patterns that usually are not detected unless the leader stands back from strict cause-effect thinking and perceives the influences and delays that are at play on the entire system. This perception will help the leader identify behaviors that contribute to dysfunction and to identify interventions that have greater influence on the system.

Senge’s framework is applicable to the workplace and to society in general. Indeed, he and his fans have created an international group dedicated to fostering systems thinking in all aspects of society (Society of Organizational Learning, solevolution.ning.com).