Recommended Reading
A great many writers have influenced my thinking while developing the ideas expressed in Glow and in my earlier book, Hot Spots. An extensive bibliography can be found in that book; additional works that I have found of great value are presented here, organized, like this book, according to the components of the Glow Profile.
Cooperative Mindset
The whole idea of cooperation sits at the center of an exciting emerging field of research called positive psychology. My hunch is that over the next decade we will see a significant swing toward what I might call complex cooperation. So if you want to stay ahead of the curve, you may want to explore the following works.
David Bohm. On Dialogue. Ed. Lee Nichol. New York: Routledge, 1996.
This book is not for the fainthearted, but if you want to dip into the mind of one of the great scholars of conversation and dialogue, here is where to start.
Kim S. Cameron, Jane E. Dutton, and Robert E. Quinn (eds.). Positive Organizational Scholarship: Foundations of a New Discipline. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2003.
Three professors at Michigan University have brought together a fascinating collection of ideas in this book. Many are pertinent not just to cooperation but also to jumping across worlds. Cameron and Dutton are key members of a community of practice in the relative new field of positive psychology.
Jane E. Dutton. Energize Your Workplace: How to Create and Sustain High-Quality Connections at Work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003.
This is an interesting and insightful book about trust and cooperation, placed firmly in the context of work.
Theodore Zeldin. Conversation: How Talk Can Change Our Lives. Mahwah, N.J.: Hidden Spring, 1998, 2000.
This is a tiny and rather exquisite book about conversation sprinkled with pictures and ideas. It’s a great book to have on hand when you need uplifting and want to embark on creative dialogue.
Jumping Across Worlds
Networks and their analysis are getting a great deal of academic attention right now, and some practitioners are embracing the ideas. I believe this is a development that you should keep an eye on.
Wayne E. Baker. Achieving Success Through Social Capital: Tapping the Hidden Resources in Your Personal and Business Networks. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000.
If you are interested in building your networks, this book provides a series of exercises that can help you understand where you are now and how to plot a course of action to where you want to be.
Rob Cross and Andrew Parker. The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2004.
The authors look at networks primarily from the perspective of organizations. The book contains many useful examples of network diagrams and is particularly helpful in its discussion of how knowledge travels around networks.
Martin Kilduff and Wenpin Tsai. Social Networks and Organizations. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2003.
This is a fairly scholarly book in which the authors take an overview of the field of networks from various perspectives. It contains a useful list of recommended reading selections if you are inclined to dig deeper into this fascinating emerging field.
Scott E. Page. The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007.
If heuristics fascinate you, this is the book from which to learn more about them. Page is a professor of complex systems who has shown that progress and innovation depend less on the lone thinker and more on diverse people working together and capitalizing on their individuality.
Bertrand Russell. The Conquest of Happiness. London: Allen & Unwin, 1930.
If you liked his quote in Chapter Eleven on friendship and strangers, you may want to dip into the book from which it was taken.
Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, and William N. Snyder. Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002.
This book takes a thoughtful and highly practical approach to communities of practice. If Action 5, jumping out of the boundaries that constrain you, is an area you feel you need to work on, I suggest you take a closer look at this book. It contains detailed case studies of communities and many fascinating insights about how they can flourish and the dangers they face.
Igniting Latent Energy
There are a great many books on vision and development; this is a rather idiosyncratic mix of books that have inspired me.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books, 1997.
Creating meaningful, fulfilling work is an exciting challenge for all of us. This book concentrates on what it would take for you to create a working context that inspires you. He uses the notion of “flow” to suggest times and occasions when you are truly and wholly engaged in your work.
Herminia Ibarra. Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career. Boston : Harvard Business School Press, 2003.
Ibarra has some fascinating things to say about how to shape a meaningful working life. Her argument is that changing yourself and your work is less about reflection and more about doing. Like me, she believes that watching others and modeling their behavior is key to personal change. So her emphasis is on getting yourself into places where people are doing what you would like to be doing.
Joseph Jaworski. Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1996.
There are many inspiring stories about how a person found his or her voice and vision. This is one of the best. Jaworski’s focus is on deepening one’s understanding of reality and shaping the future. What is inspiring about this book is how the author has made space in his life for the unexpected to emerge.
Thomas W. Malone. The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2004.
Crafting visions and asking igniting questions can be supported by a deeper understanding of the future. There are many futurologists around; my personal favorite is Tom Malone at MIT. He provides an extensive and far-reaching view of how work will evolve over the coming decades.
Peter Schwartz. The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World. New York: Currency/Doubleday, 1991.
Peter Schwartz is one of a group of people that includes Arie de Geus, Pierre Wack, and Kees van der Heijden, who developed the art of scenario planning. In this book he describes how he as a futurist at the Royal Dutch Shell Group worked on developing the scenarios the group used in the 1990s.