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Book Review

2008 State of the World: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy

I read the WorldWatch Institute's State of the World report every year. The 2008 Edition, subtitled Innovations for a Sustainable Economy deserves special mention. Even if you don't think of your work as directly related to the environment, I encourage you to consider its connection to the current fate of the earth. In fourteen chapters by as many knowledgable contributors, this volume touches on a wide range of critical issues, including sustainable lifestyles, investing for sustainability, mobilizing human energy, and the parallell economy of the commons. There are issues here that touch on all the work of civil society, no matter how it's otherwise framed. Posted: 1/4/08; 5:29:49 PM #

Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data

Stephen Few's book Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data is an attempt to do for dynamic displays what Edward Tufte has done with static displays. Although I have some misgivings about the fact that his methods are not oriented toward action and workflow, I think this lovely book comes close to its aspirations and I recommend it highly to anyone in the field of nonprofit information systems. The author defines a dashboard as: "A visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives, which fits entirely on a single computer screen so it can be monitored at a glance." He tackles a wide range of dashboard types, including strategic, analytical, and operational. Just Chapter Three alone is worth the price of this book. It describes the following thirteen common mistakes in dashboard design: (1) Exceeding the Boundaries of a Single Screen, (2) Supplying Inadequate Context for the Data, (3) Displaying Excessive Detail or Precision, (4) Choosing a Deficient Measure, (5) Choosing Inappropriate Display Media, (6) Introducing Meaningless Variety, (7) Using Poorly Designed Display Media, (8) Encoding Quantitative Data Inaccurately, (9) Arranging the Data Poorly, (10) Highlighting Important Data Ineffectively or Not at All, (11) Cluttering the Display with Useless Decoration, (12) Misusing or Overusing Color, and (13) Designing an Unattractive Visual Display. Posted: 1/4/08; 5:21:07 PM #

Programming Collective Intelligence

The more I reflect on Toby Segaran's book on Programming Collective Intelligence, the more strongly I want to recommend it to those who pursue a long term, system oriented vision of civil society. When you think about civil society, democracy, economics, and other structural expressions of social will, the more you realize that a large part of what we are all trying to do is figure out ways of turning a mass of individuals into an intelligent group. That's what Amazon's product recommendation system tries to do. And that's what voting tries to do. Sometimes the masses are stupider than the individuals and sometimes they are wiser. What determines the difference is a combination of the nature of the problem to be addressed, the scales involved, and the structures (or programs) used to go from individual action to group action. Every method described in the book - from decision trees to genetic algorithms - is a source of inspiration for anyone working to figure out how to empower groups of people. Don't let the very modest amount of math in the book stop you from taking your time with each gem and seeing how it could connect to your work. Posted: 11/26/07; 10:47:52 PM #

Tools for Radical Democracy: How to Organize for Power in Your Community

If the title of Joan Minieri and Paul Getsos' book: Tools for Radical Democracy, sounds a little like Alinksy's Rules for Radicals to you, then you're probably someone who will want this book. Like Alinsky's classic text, this book is a practical manual on community organizing, updated for the 21st century. The book's chapters include: recruiting consituents, involving members, developing leaders, identifying issues, researching politics, developing strategies, planning campaigns, running actions, forging partnerships, and movement building. With a thousand books out there that frame capacity building as purely about the organization, it's refreshing to see a book that focuses downward - at the community level - and outward - at social movements. In a network centric world, those are the two levels at which we need to focus and this is an ideal book to help us do so. Posted: 9/4/07; 8:45:53 AM #

Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think

I recall my early days in college, when I was first exposed to two disciplines: community organizing and computer programming. I was always attracted to the aesthetics in both and felt that beauty had something to teach us about effectiveness. Not the superficial prettiness of gorgeous (but unread) pamphlets or fancy (but unused) interfaces. Rather, I was interested in deeper beauty, in elegance. I find that this is an interest shared far more often by programmers than by organizers. Andy Oram and Greg Wilson have edited a remarkable book entitled Beautiful Code, with contributions from thirty-three of the most outstanding programmers of our time. Most of the essays don't require deep knowledge of particular programming languages, and don't be put off by the actual code sprinkled throughout the text. Collectively, the authors explore how and why beauty matters in the context of computing. It's mind boggling how relevant the insights are to other fields. They explore things like: the power of fractal sensibilities, elegance and simplicity, reframing as a means of discovering deeper patterns, how deep beauty inspires trust and creates understanding, and the nature of flow. One of the most powerful lessons I took away from this book is the difference between a collection of hacks and beautiful code. We live in a time when everyone wants quick tips and hacks, but a big pile of these does not constitute a strategy. An interest in beauty in all our fields of practice will help us unify our work and give it a power it couldn't otherwise have. Posted: 9/4/07; 8:31:16 AM #

The Challenge of Change by Philip Coltoff

Philip Coltoff's book, The Challenge of Change, delivers on its subtitle - "Leadership Strategies for Not-For-Profit Executives and Boards". Far too often we use the word "strategy" when what we are really talking about is tips or tactics, but Coltoff doesn't fall into that trap. Nor does he just recycle for-profit corporate practices with a nonprofit paint job. Indeed, he makes a point of saying that "Elements of corporate style are certainly useful for not-for-profits. But we should never apply a corporate vision to the substance of our work." Bravo! Throughout this thin volume, Coltoff keeps his eye on high level principles and practices that can be applied again and again in different contexts. Despite the high level strategic perspective, the lessons are not at all vague. When he describes his five essential leadership qualities - Vision, Commitment, Excellence, Humility, and Peace of Mind - I felt like I had actually learned something new, rather than just been lectured with abstractions. It helps enormously that he then applies these principles and provides contextual guidelines in the major areas of nonprofit leadership. Finally, I profoundly appreciated the analysis he provides about the role of social service agencies in social change work, described by the principle "Service + Advocacy = Change". This quick-read of a book is a gem. Posted: 8/24/07; 9:36:42 AM #

Nonprofit Marketing: Best Practices

John Burnett's Nonprofit Marketing: Best Practices is a valuable book and unless you are an experienced marketing professional, it probably belongs on your shelf. It covers every major aspect of mainstream marketing practice, including positioning, branding, research, product management, marketing services, and so on. It's a superb introduction to most of the traditional fields of marketing, with a decent sprinkling of nonprofit examples throughout. Without in any way taking away from this recommendation, I want to describe how this was not the book I hoped it would be. First, although the book acknowledges the existance of interactive media, it is nevertheless fully steeped in the classic one-to-many approach to marketing. There is nothing in the book about the inspiring potential to scale up listening. Thus, despite its 2007 publication date, it's still very much a late twentieth century manual. (Of course, if you don't know the classic practices, then it might be good to learn them.) Second, as with many such texts, the book bolts nonprofit missions and circumstances onto a mainstream business school model of marketing. That's fine, but given that fact, I would have preferred the title not to lead with the word 'nonprofit'. Third, because of its frame of reference, it encourages nonprofits to look at its stakeholders as consumers (or at best customers), rather than as citizens. The author is not alone in this, by any means, but it's deeply pernicious and damaging to civil society. The book's strong points for nonprofits includes its analysis of competition (which every nonprofit should consider), it's description of the characteristics of service products (which is what most nonprofits "produce", if you follow the business paradigm), its exploration of the concept of "servicescapes", and its extremely clear exploration of the concept of "channels" of distribution. Although I don't think the book has nonprofits as its starting point, any one of these strengths is enough for me to recommend it. Posted: 8/15/07; 5:43:48 PM #

Mindfulness, by Ellen J. Langer

In 1989, Harvard Psychology Professor Ellen Langer's book on Mindfulness was published and while I've read much on this topic all my life, it wasn't until this Spring that I finally read her book. The concept of mindfulness is reflected in a great deal of my consulting philosophy and while I have my own evidence for its effectiveness, this book has dramatically deepened both my professional appreciation and my awareness of the extensive research supporting it. The first part of the book looks at the research on mindlessness (the opposite of mindfulness), its causes, and its costs. These are two of the most important themes relate to the role of context and the role of self-image in shaping our thoughts and behaviors. I've written elsewhere on how both people and organizations can have severely limiting self-images. The longer second part of the book looks at the research related to mindfulness itself, with particular emphasis on mindfulness and health and mindfulness at work. I particularly appreciated the insights about how often work can be mindless but how play, in contrast, is almost always mindful. Civil society organizations, because they are so often about empowerment and working from the heart, are particularly well poised to take advantage of the many lessons in this book. Whether it's about preventing burnout by giving people more control over their work or supporting innovation and adaptation through nurturing an environment of creative uncertainty, this book is both inspirational and practical. I highly recommend it. Posted: 7/8/07; 4:11:03 PM #

Momentum, by Allison H. Fine

Just as with my online resources and software reviews, I generally confine myself to reviewing books from my own perspective. But every now and then, I have to take a slightly broader perspective in order to do a book justice. Such is the case with Allison Fine's Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age. This book is meant for a broad audience and toward that end it succeeds admirably. I have some very small quibbles: Fine makes some small mistakes here and there that will bother the experienced reader, such as her definition of "free software" as that which is freely distributed or her description of the origins of Craigslist as a "site". She uses the term "activism" so broadly that it applies to anything we might otherwise call "civil society". She may also be a little too sanguine about the digital divide. In a time of rapid growth of the foundation sector, she asserts that their era is coming to a close. And in one place, she uses the phrase "war on terror" unironically and uncritically. I mention some of these only by way of putting them aside. The book avoided every one of the major traps into which I feared it would fall. The book hits pretty much every important point that needs to be made in order to orient the interested newcomer to the field of activism in the age of networks, including many that are of particular interest to me. Here are my favorites: (1) Networks reward organizational authenticity by enriching conversations and human connection. (2) The idea that there are "too many organizations" is really a reflection of funders' desires for fewer choices; people are not overserviced, they are oversolicited. (3) Organizations lack institutional memory first and foremost because they are terrible listeners. (4) Pushing power to the edges doesn't reduce the power of organizations. (5) Understanding our connections is the first step in any communication technology initiative. I recommend the book in two ways: If you are just starting to look at how the world of networks will affect your organization, then it will give you a superb overview. If your perspective is already fairly sophisticated, but you need to bring some people along (like your board), then you would do well to consider some assigned reading. Posted: 6/18/07; 6:18:35 PM #

Living Well, Working Smart, by Sue Mackey & Laura Tonkin

Sue Mackey and Laura Tonkin's book Living Well, Working Smart is a work I would love to see developed as a weblog. The book, whose subtitle is Soft Skills for Success, is packed with high level ideas in forty-one different fields of activity, ranging from Problem Solving and Stress to Optimism and Time Management. It would probably take a couple of years to give each idea a day or two of online exploration. Although this made the book a little hard to read straight through - I felt myself dealing with the reading equivalent of museum fatigue (too much good stuff) - in some ways this density of big ideas is the strength and point of the book. Just like a good museum, it's meant to be returned to and sampled over time so that, in the end, each reader's experience will be their own. There are five highlights I want to share: (1) In addition to positive suggestions, each topic has a series of Mistakes to Avoid. Considering how common they are, I suspect these will be useful and accessible. (2) I couldn't help but be pleased that they recommend that everyone develop a reading habit. (3) Sprinkled throughout the book are suggestions that you might find too vague or even flat out wrong headed. (For example, I don't share their mainstream perspective on "retirement".) I think this diversity is part of the character of the book. It's a compendium, not a unified philosophy. (4) I was very pleased that one of their sections was devoted to the topic of grief and loss. We go to great lengths to avoid these feelings and that avoidance wreaks havok on our lives and work. Posted: 6/18/07; 6:18:23 PM #

The Cash Flow Solution, by Richard & Anna Linzer

I don't tend to review books about the nuts and bolts issues of nonprofit accounting, but having served on more than thirty boards of directors and having had to report to roughly a dozen of them at one point or another, I decided I had to make an exception for The Cash Flow Solution, by Richard & Anna Linzer. Although I am a firm believer that any organization (even a small one) that carries receivables or payables should use accrual accounting, I have often been frustrated by how much important governance information is missing from the most common reports, such as income statements and balance sheets. This book is a powerful guide to cash flow analysis, which is arguably the single greatest complement to those reports. The near constant context of cash shortage in which most civil society organizations operate has profound strategic impacts. Fundraising, program priorities, project management, amd morale are all affected. Although there are critical external factors at work that create this environment (funder policies and organizational isolation are two that come to mind), I also believe that systematic internal avoidance is a key ongoing enabler. Following the notion that "that which gets measured, gets done", I can see a great many organizations benefiting from the application of the simple methods in this book. Posted: 6/18/07; 6:18:13 PM #

Effective Philanthropy: Organizational Success through Deep Diversity and Gender Equality

Mary Ellen S. Capek and Molly Mead have written one of those books that you hope will have an impact on its intended audience: Effective Philanthropy: Organizational Success through Deep Diversity and Gender Equality. Coming out of some multi-funder initiatives of the mid-nineties, the authors try to tackle the enormous problem of certain social norms and how they deter funding of programs and organizations that address race, class, and gender issues. As it becomes increasingly clear that race, class, and gender are central, not peripheral issues, to a whole range of social change agendas, it's important that funders and other leaders develop a strong strategic framework from which to approach them. This book takes us several steps toward such a framework. First, the book develops the concept of "deep diversity". In my experience, shallow diversity results in efforts that feel tagged on, cause additional expense, and lack synergy with other central aspects of a project. Deeper approaches reveal rich strategic benefits. Second, the book describes case studies of successful foundations and programs. These descriptions are much more than mere anecdotes. The more I learn about social change the more I come to share the perspective of the authors and the visionary funders who supported them. For example, it has become increasingly clear in the last few years that funding women's programs in the international arena is a key toward economic development and social justice. This book will help us take that insight and others and apply them in the years to come. Posted: 2/23/07; 2:17:56 PM #

Taking Advice: How Leaders Get Good Counsel and Use It Wisely

Dan Ciampa's book Taking Advice: How Leaders Get Good Counsel and Use It Wisely is literally incomparable, in that there is nothing else like it. There are hundreds of books on the topic of giving advice, but the skills involved in taking advice, despite their impact on success, are profoundly neglected. This book goes a long way toward rectifying that neglect. One of Ciampa's main contributions is a very useful taxonomy of types of advice: Strategic, Operational, Political, and Personal. He defines the typical content of each of these types, along with how the leader can benefit from it. Then he goes on to define four kinds of advisors: Expert, Experienced, Sounding-Board, and Partner. Together, these form a matrix from which he derives a number of useful scenarios and insights, especially as they relate to the attitudes and practical actions of great advice takers. I was especially interested in his ideas for setting up advice networks. No doubt you'll see signs of these ideas in my own search for advice in the coming months. I hope you find this as useful as I have. Posted: 2/23/07; 1:53:19 PM #

Storytelling: Branding in Practice

Back when I was a lobbyist for environmental and consumer organizations in the mid Eighties, I came to the conclusion that our cause had a secret weapon. We didn't have the advantage of good ol' boy webs of relationships with legislators. We certainly didn't have the cash that built and sustained those relationships. But when the system worked and the fourth estate was functioning properly, we sometimes, just sometimes, had an amazing power on our side: the power of the true story. I won't dwell on the many ways in which telling true stories (or threatening to) worked for us or how I came to believe that legislators are motivated primarily by fear of embarrassment. Rather, I want to use this as an opportunity to recommend the book Storytelling: Branding in Practice, by Klaus Fog, Christian Budtz, and Baris Yakaboylu. Although its examples are drawn primarily from the commercial world, the strengths of this approach to building trust with our stakeholders is even more useful in civil society, where we don't have to concoct passionate reasons for our work. The book applies storytelling to both management and marketing. It has an excellent introduction to the important structural elements of story telling, which is especially useful if you're one of those people who knows a good story but doesn't usually step back far enough to see the patterns that make it work. I encourage you to read this book from cover to cover. You won't regret it. Posted: 1/22/07; 5:13:36 PM #

Migrating from Innovation to Entrepreneurship

I want to be really clear that, despite misgivings that I hope would make a fun conversation with the author, I highly recommend Jerr Boschee's book Migrating from Innovation to Entrepreneurship. The book is a valuable addition to the shelf of any nonprofit leader who wants to take earned income seriously. My misgivings center around the book's frame of reference, rather than its core lessons. That frame of reference, based on anecdote as far as I can tell, is that the culture of the nonprofit sector is fundamentally more averse to entrepreneurship than the business sector. I would like to see a study (controlling for all other factors) that demonstrates that, not just anecdotes and assertions. (By the way, I do think the sector is very conservative, just not necessarily more so than most businesses, as plenty of consultants who work with the latter will tell you.) This frame of reference makes itself known in a variety of unfortunate implications: Are government contracts really not a form of earned income? Are churches really inherently unsustainable because they rely on donations? That said, the book's discussion of critical entrepreneurial success factors alone justifies the modest price of the book. They include: candor, clarity of purpose, courage, core values, willingness to plan, building the right team, the separation strategy, strategic marketing, viability before mission, focus, customer service, quality, aggressive pricing, and strategic partnerships. Buy this book for those lessons. Posted: 1/18/07; 11:03:15 AM #

The Wheel of Engaged Buddhism: A New Map of the Path

Images have the ability to help us focus. When I wake up in the morning, I make a point of looking west in the hopes of seeing the Olympic Mountains. When they are visible, as they were this morning, the sight of them reminds me how small I really am and helps me shed the grandiosity that comes from excessive responsibility. I cherish that focus. Symbols authored by our fellow human beings can often accomplish similar effects and thus aid us in our emotional and intellectual discipline. In his book The Wheel of Engaged Buddhism, Kenneth Kraft offers us such a symbol. He presents us with ten images arranged in a mandala to help us apply our wisdom and compassion to the social, political, and environmental issues of our time. His essays on these images are an inspiration to those of us who believe that contemplation and just action go hand in hand. Posted: 1/3/07; 12:09:39 PM #

The Workshop Book

I was first exposed to structured methods of consensus decision making about thirty years ago. I have run staff meeting that way over the course of my leadership of several organizations. I've used methods developed by Quakers, political movements, and other communities of practice. The Technology of Participation methods of the Institute for Cultural Affairs are a fairly mature set of techniques that you can learn from a 2002 book by Brian Stanfield called The Workshop Book. It describes the general principles, specific tools and their application, the responsibilities of different roles, and the application of these methods to various sizes of groups. If you love the magic of turning diverse creative agendas into powerfully committed group action, then I highly recommend this book. Posted: 11/18/06; 3:26:59 PM #

Alliances, Coalitions, and Partnerships

Joan Roberts is a terrifically clear-headed and visionary consultant from Toronto. Her book-- Alliances, Coalitions, and Partnerships -- is one of the best on the subject of collaboration that I have read. Her strengths include the practicality of her taxonomies and her head-on examination of the topic of power and control. She looks closely both at concrete models and systems of inter-organzational collaboration, as well as the tools and capacities needed with an organization, in order for it to succeed as a collaborator. We need these ideas if we, as a sector, are going to transition successfully into the era of networks. Posted: 11/18/06; 3:11:23 PM #

Tools for Conviviality

I recently decided to reread Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich. It was written in 1973 and I read it for the first time in 1978. His vision of criteria for tools that empower people to be empowered producers rather than consumers of industrial production has some powerful tensions and synergies with contemporary themes of post-scarcity society in the age of the Net. This powerful work is worth revisiting. Posted: 11/18/06; 3:06:00 PM #

Branding for Nonprofits

The subtitle of DK Holland's book Branding for Nonprofits is "Developing Identity with Integrity". I believe that integrity is central to civil society and as a consequence, I found this compelling. Although I think she overemphasizes the end goal of visual design and underemphasizes the role of experience and relationships in communicating an organization's character, it's also true that organization's see the visual identity as the driving product goal and thus this books meets a very important need. This book will help you use the "tyranny of the tangible" (as I call it) to focus everyone's attention on key questions about who your organization is and what you stand for. I highly recommend it. Posted: 11/12/06; 9:07:17 PM #

Emergence: Complexity & Organization, 2004 Annual (Volume 6)

I love gatherings of smart people, even if it's only between the pages of a book. The 2004 Annual Volume of Emergence: Complexity & Organization is a profoundly satisfying example. This collection consistently and successfully bridges the gaps between the academic and the applied, between the history of ideas and their emerging forms, and between the philosophical and the practical. As you know, the concepts of emergence and complexity are critical ones in today's era of networks and large scale phenomena. This collection explores these ideas in several very interesting domains, including: organizational intervention, social networking, the role of the perception of complexity, the ethics of science, and change management. Don't let the density of this book scare you. It's actually very accessible and anyone with a responsibility for thinking in systems terms will find something of value in it. Posted: 10/29/06; 11:42:24 PM #

Inspiring Progress: Religions' Contributions to Sustainable Development

Gary Gardner of The WorldWatch Institute has a book out called Inspiring Progress: Religions' Contributions to Sustainable Development. This book is a wonderful interfaith exploration of the fundamental connection between the world's religions and the vision of a just and ecological society. As always with WorldWatch, the book is solidly grounded in the facts. The program he recommends is a combination of an agreed upon set of global ethics (which may be easier than we think) and a set of practices for the world's religions, including: tapping religious resources, stressing the positive, collaborating wherever possible, and retreating to our own corners for grounding and renewal. In a time that seems governed by a frightening alliance of religious extremism and corporate greed, I deeply appreciate this new call for ecumenical action. Posted: 10/29/06; 11:32:56 PM #

What If? The Art of Scenario Thinking for Nonprofits

Global Business Network's What If? The Art of Scenario Thinking for Nonprofits (overview page for free 119 page PDF) is a solid introduction to one of the key tools of qualitative futurism, using language and examples that make it accessible to folks working in civil society. My favorite sections were chapter 2, which looks at the five basic elements of scenario thinking and chapter 4, which includes a glossary and annotated resources. I like scenario thinking because of the way it forces us to work at the edge between what is going to happen and what should happen. I believe that living at the edge is what makes us effective. Posted: 10/29/06; 11:21:14 PM #

Raising Thousands (if Not Tens of Thousands) of Dollars with Email

Madeline Stanionis' book The Mercifully Brief Real World Guide to Raising Thousands (if Not Tens of Thousands) of Dollars with Email is right on target for the small organization that is just getting its feet wet with email marketing. Although it is true to its title in brevity (comes in at 108 pages, but it's probably more like 60 pages when you cut the excessive whitespace and screenshots), any organization who adopts her ideas will avoid many of the common mistakes made by nonprofits online. I have a few quibbles: Although she has a chapter on what to send when you're not asking for money, she really gives short shrift to cultivation and she is far more OK with appending than I am. But the book is full of solid ideas, like Think Campaigns, Not Appeals and Making the Most of Your Numbers. This book would work well in combination with our own Guide to Nonprofit Email. Posted: 10/15/06; 11:37:59 PM #

An Introduction to Systems Thinking

This is the first time I have ever recommended a software manual as stand alone reading. Barry Richmond's An Introduction to Systems Thinking is written for users of the iThink systems analysis software platform, but its lessons are valuable to anyone who wants to hone their practical systems thinking skills. It teaches the basic principles of operational thinking and closed loop thinking that are often missing from the logic models of modern nonprofit projects. I will no doubt review the software itself at some point, but for now, I will recommend the manual itself. Just the library of systems in the latter half of the book are invaluable, although I would love to see funding someday for a pattern language of similar systems descriptions for civil society. Posted: 10/15/06; 11:27:56 PM #

The Muses Among Us

Here is a book for my Keystrokes students and the other writers out there: The Muses Among Us, by Kim Stafford. The subtitle gives you a clue of what I loved about this book: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer's Craft. This is a book that is more about the structure and practicalities of a writer's life than it is about the written word itself, although in the end you can't separate them. The author's combination of practical wisdom and generosity of spirit makes this a book worth loving and worth listening to. It's already affected how I work. Posted: 10/15/06; 11:21:56 PM #

Behind Closed Doors

Jonathan Rothman and Esther Derby have written an lovely little guide for new managers entitled Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management. The books is cleverly structured around a seven week period as a new manager learns the ropes. The book is very practical in its focus and can easily be skimmed for its tools and tips. Although it's definitely for beginners, it is crammed full of references and even people with 20 years of management experience will find it useful, especially since it is meant to help you bring on new managers. Posted: 10/15/06; 11:15:30 PM #

Ecovillages: A Practical Guide to Sustainable Communities

How we choose to organize our relationships both reveals our values and shapes them. Bringing mindfulness and intentionality to those relationships has been a centerpiece of my work for twenty years, so it should be no surprise that I have an abiding interest in the topic of "intentional community". In my opinion, one of the very best books on the subject is Jan Martin Bang's Ecovillages: A Practical Guide to Sustainable Communities. The critical focus that makes this book important to me is that it deliberately avoids fallacious and destructive division that most of us make between "life" and "work". Many intentional communities focus only on living together, rather than on working together. My own career has focused on the latter, but it's still an artificial distinction that reinforces damaging patterns of labor organization, economies, and human relationships. Human beings evolved in a context of shared Life-Work and this book shows how it's still possible. Starting with the kibbutz and then extending to examples from around the world, the book takes a practical and ecological approach to design, production, economics, and decision making. There are so many people who have been looking for better ways to live, and from this book we can learn a lot from their experiences. Posted: 6/30/06; 1:41:19 PM #

Common Fire: Leading Lives of Commitments in a Complex World

A number of years ago, a dear friend and colleague of mine and I started work on a book entitled Selling Out. We wanted to understand why so many activists don't sustain their work over a lifetime. We decided along the way that we needed to study people who had not given up, in order to determine what was different. The research never got funded, but I'm pleased to see that the team of Daloz, Keen, Keen, and Parks did. They published their results in the (far more positively titled) book Common Fire: Leading Lives of Commitments in a Complex World. In order to choose the people they studied, they developed these four criteria: (1) commitment to the common good, (2) perseverance and resilience, (3) ethical congruence between life and work, and (4) engagement with diversity and complexity. The causal themes they discovered are revealed in some of their chapter titles: connection & complexity, community, compassion, courage, confession, and commitment. Originally published in 1996, I didn't read this book until it was given to me by a colleagues at the University of Michigan in 2003. It helped me decide to return to doing personal counseling and it helped reground me in my own work. I highly recommend it. Posted: 6/30/06; 1:29:46 PM #

The Wealth of Networks

Yochai Benkler's book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom is available for free online in numerous different forms. This book has plenty to love and plenty to hate, but it's deep, rich, and goes far beyond the superficial rhetoric of most contemporary debates that are a reflection of its issues. This is a book that can serve as the basis for discussions that can help remake civil society in the age of networks. Posted: 6/13/06; 8:34:22 PM #

An Ordinary Country: Issues in the Transition from Apartheid to Democracy in South Africa

Sometimes in life it's hard to draw the line between genuine passion and romantic tripe and sadly, I think we are all too often roped in by the latter in our social change and social service work. Having worked in the American anti-apartheid movement for many years in my twenties, I can appreciate the romantic appeal of the peaceful transition to democracy in South Africa. Neville Alexander's book, An Ordinary Country is a brutally honest assessment of the contradictions of that transition with implications for social movements of all kinds, particularly those taking place in the rapidly growing connections between grassroots actions and global strategies. And commitment without the blindness of romance is something we all need, if we are going to bridge the gaps between our movements. Posted: 4/27/06; 12:53:24 PM #

Democratizing Innovation

Katrin Verclas recommended Eric Von Hippel's book Democratizing Innovation last week and now I want to recommend it to you, in turn. It's a great companion book to Lessig's Future of Ideas, but it has its own critically valuable points to make, particularly in the way it lays out a vision of user driven innovation. I believe the nonprofit sector is at best ambivalent about empowering stakeholders and with regard to innovation, often we don't even really know what we mean by the term. There are several chapters of Hippel's book that could help our sector sort out its confusion: Innovation Communities, Toolkits for User Innovation and Custom Design, and Linking User Innovation to Other Phenomena and Fields. Posted: 4/2/06; 7:46:50 PM #

On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: Thinking About the Fundamentals

Robert Helvey's book On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: Thinking About the Fundamentals (189 page PDF) is available as a free download from the Einstein Institute. Funded in 2002 through a grant from the U.S. Institute of Peace, the book is a powerful primer in one of the most important and powerful unifying strategies of modern times. It teaches rigorous thinking about power relations and provides clear guidance for those who are seeking an effective sense of direction in these troubling times. Posted: 3/17/06; 2:18:57 PM #

Storytelling: Branding in Practice

I was telling a colleague yesterday my thoughts on how branding, organizational focus, and story telling are intertwined, and about the power of blogging to enroll others in your story. So, it seems like a good time to recommend Storytelling: Branding in Practice by Fog, Budtz, and Yakaboylu. The book is best consumed whole, but some of the most interesting chapters include: Authentic Raw Material for Story Telling, Story Telling in Management, When Story Telling Becomes Dialogue, and Tearing Down the Walls. In addition to its role in branding, organizational story telling is the key to my own communication planning methodologies. It's an incredibly powerful way to identify the key strategies and strengths on which you want to build both ICT and new tactics. This book is both wise and practical and I recommend it to anyone who has to think about the big picture of their organization. Posted: 3/3/06; 11:15:10 AM #

Taxonomy for the Technology Domain

Lawrence Tomei's Taxonomy for the Technology Domain has as its purpose the design of a comprehensive framework for teaching new technology. I don't think we'll know if he succeeded until this is applied in the field, but I do find his model compelling. The book is intended for teachers and I see it as being relevant to anyone working on digital divide issues. He defines technology as a fourth domain of learning, with cognitive, affective, and psychomotor skills and knowledge being the first three. He then presents six levels of technological learning: literacy, collaboration, decision-making, infusion, integration, and, as the final level, something he calls tech-ology. (This highest level refers to the ability to judge the impact, values, and implications of technology use.) I recommend this book to anyone designing or funding programs that involve helping people up the technological ladder of skills and knowledge. Posted: 3/3/06; 11:14:59 AM #

Guide to Proposal Writing

The fourth edition of The Foundation Center's Guide to Proposal Writing has been on my shelf since shortly after it came out. Based on interviews with grantmakers, it offers reliable, realistic, and respectful advice on all the key aspects of writing grant proposals, including the steps that come before and after. Most of the mistakes in proposal writing seem to come from either sloppy thinking or a lack of understanding of the day to day realities of the program officer receiving the grant. Because proposal writing is a form of thinking out loud, it can help solidify ideas and logic models. And this book can fill in many of the gaps in knowledge about the folks who will be reading your proposals. Posted: 2/15/06; 7:15:57 PM #

Guide to Winning Proposals

The Foundation Center's Guide to Winning Proposals has twenty four proposals and query letters organized into ten categories. It's full of gems, including one of the strongest and clearest opening paragraphs of any proposal I've read, from a proposal by Compumentor: "We respectfully submit a request for $50,000 to help fund our Bay Area Services Initiative, which will assist 20 small nonprofits in San Mateo and Northern Santa Clara Counties in planning and implementing information technology systems that will enhance their capacity to serve their clients and to report on outcomes." Like all the other proposals in this book, the request was successful. Posted: 2/15/06; 7:15:52 PM #

The Art of the Start

Guy Kawasaki's book The Art of the Start lives up to its subtitle: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything. It embraces a kind of empowering, even liberating realism that I have always loved myself and which Kawasaki simply oozes. If you're going to be unrealistic in your goals (and in a way, all of us who want to make the world better are "unrealistic"), then you better face the truth head on in every aspect of your implementation. This book has chapters devoted to each of those aspects: Positioning, Pitching, Planning, Bootstrapping, Recruiting, Fundraising, Partnering, Branding, and Rainmaking. It concludes with a chapter on the Art of Being a Mensch. What a delightful and practical book! I should also mention that Guy Kawasaki will be keynoting the Nonprofit Technology Conference, coming up in Seattle on March 23-24, 2006. Posted: 2/9/06; 4:38:54 PM #

Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart

I have been working on a series of in-depth articles for our journal on the subject of nonprofit knowledge management. In the course of that writing, I have gone back and reviewed some of my favorite books on the subject. Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart, by Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O'Day, is one such book. I appreciate their efforts to get people to focus on "know-why" before they focus on "know-how". If you look at the agendas of the conferences in our field, you can understand their concern: We tend to brush over such issues as measurable objectives and requirements development, let alone developing our understanding of our communication contexts. This book emphasizes systems thinking and strategic questions. I particularly recommend the chapters on Framing Conversations about Technology, Nurturing Home Grown Expertise, and How to Evolve Information Ecologies. Posted: 2/3/06; 1:05:27 PM #

Building Communities from the Inside Out

I was inspired years ago by the asset mapping techniques of John McKnight, who believed that urban communities needed to build on their strengths, rather than on their needs. More than a decade ago, he and John Kretzmann wrote a book called Building Communities from the Inside Out, which I would like to recommend to you today. All of their techniques, from "releasing individual capacities" to "capturing local institutions for community building" can be leveraged to great effect with online communication. New technology has dramatically lowered the cost of asset mapping and asset based organizing, but even projects specifically related to new technology seem to be dragged down by needs assessments and the like. This book is full of fantastic tools and resources which I recommend to any planner, organizer, or online community builder. Posted: 1/25/06; 1:46:04 PM #

Friends on the Path

Thich Nhat Hanh, poet, peace activist, and zen master, lives, teaches, writes in the Plum Village community, a meditation center in southern France. The role of community in an engaged spiritual life interests me profoundly, so of course I had to read Friends on the Path, compiled by Jack Lawlor, with essays by Thich Nhat Hanh and others. The language used is Buddhist of course and so it might be inaccessible to those whose spiritual or cultural background doesn't leave them open to it. But the concepts and lessons are powerful and universal. The book is a great balance of case studies, principles, and practices, including building intergenerational community, creating refuge, starting communities, and nurturing a mindful culture. Posted: 1/25/06; 1:31:56 PM #

The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820 - 1875

Gary Clayton Anderson's The Conquest of Texas is unlike any other book I have reviewed in these pages, but it may well be the most important. The subtitle gave me my first inkling of the book's broader relevance: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820 - 1875. But as I got deeper into the book, it became clear to me that the frightening connections of its themes to the realm of today's world politics were far from superficial. The author's depth of research and even handedness builds the case that the Texas Ranger version of the region's past is an ideological fabrication that masks a history of systematic racial violence and ethnic warfare. What frightens me more deeply, of course, is not that the mythology of Texas is a lie (I wasn't attached to it in the first place), but that this mythology, which was used to effectively cover up ethnic cleansing for over a hundred years, might be successfully repurposed on the global scale. The world's greatest imperial power, its client states, and its corporate allies, have a swaggering Texas wannabe at the helm and the American Texas Ranger metaphor is all too apt and popular. If like me you are struggling to understand the place of our work in these historic times, then you must read this book. Posted: 1/17/06; 7:43:50 PM #

Work as a Spiritual Practice

Because the focus of my work has often been on the role of the human heart and spirit in good work, I have read most of the contemporary books that purport to be on the subject of meaning in the workplace. Many of them are just intellectually emaciated vehicles for various types of executive poetry. Those that aim at a mainstream corporate audience understandably shy away from some central questions of work and values. How do you find equanimity if, deep in your heart, you are not comfortable with the outcomes of your work? Unless you are on a path toward changing those outcomes, I don't think you will find any peace, only the illusion of peace that comes from denial. While Lewis Richmond's Work as a Spiritual Practice doesn't hit people in the face with this question of Right Action, there's no doubt in my mind that the world would be a very different place if even a small proportion of our business leaders followed some of its practices. It's my belief that the nonprofit sector is particularly suited to these ideas, especially those practical tools offered in the book for facing failure, control, stress, scarcity, and gratitude. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is facing difficult times in their work or seeking a sense of the sacred in the workplace. A little mindfulness will work wonders. Posted: 12/26/05; 4:11:27 PM #

Working Virtually: The Challenges of Virtual Teams

I have probably read twenty or thirty mediocre books on distributed work over the last ten years. It seemed for a while that everyone who had something banal to say on the subject would get published with dotcom fury and buzzword laden titles. In that context, my love affair with Idea Group Publishing (this time under their CyberTech imprint) continues with my reading of Working Virtually, by Robert Jones, Robert Oyung, and Lise Pace. This book is clearly the result of thoughtful experience. Distributed work has become a reality around the world in its post-hype period and this book documents that reality in ways that are directly applicable in practice. I found several chapters worth the effort of careful study, including How Teams Work Virtually (which addressed skills, tools, and mixed media of communication), the Virtual Team Maturity Curve, Managing a Virtual team, and Applying Tools for Maximum Impact. Posted: 12/26/05; 2:05:31 PM #

Envisioning Information

Edward Tufte's Envisioning Information is a classic in its field, as are its precursor and successor volumes. I have slowly been learning to give myself the time to work on good diagrams and illustrations for my lectures, workshops, and articles. I enjoy the work immensely and there can be tremendous payoff for my audiences if I get it right, but there isn't the numerical satisfaction of a word count at the end of the day. But I am always reassured about my investment when I return to Tufte. I find that deadly text based slides are still too common at the conferences I attend and I wish most presenters would simply do without. But if you must have slides, consider three or four well developed images rather than thirty or forty bullet points. In this book, I recommend the section on Color and Information, for those of you who are wondering if your use of color is undermining your message. Because I am often trying to explain processes and dynamic systems, I suspect I'll be spending a lot of time in the coming months studying the chapter on Narratives of Space and Time. Posted: 12/26/05; 1:51:17 PM #

eRider Starter Kit

In the process of researching an article for a forthcoming publication from N-TEN, I found myself lingering over Tactical Tech's free ebook called the eRider Starter Kit (92 page PDF). In essence, it's a basic guide to nonprofit technology consulting and it shows the maturity of the field and the accumulated wisdom of Theresa Crawford and her colleagues. For example, it goes further than most such guides in developing some opening inquiries that are not too technocentric. It's packed with checklists and other forms that would provide solid support for the integrity of any consultant. It's published under a Creative Commons license, for the widest possible distribution. And it's prominently labeled version 1.0, so I would encourage every user to offer their feedback for future editions. Posted: 12/21/05; 11:09:16 PM #

Voices in Wartime: The Anthology

Sometimes simply talking about a subject is a radical act. Such is the case with talking about experiences of war during a period of hostile political polarization. That's why Voices in Wartime: The Anthology is such an important book. Edited by Andrew Himes, who founded Project Alchemy as well, the book as a whole takes no position on any particular war other than the premise that our hearts need to be opened to the voices of those who have experienced them. Through poetry, stories, and reflection, we get to share the experiences of soldiers, war correspondents, and others. If anything is missing from this book, it's the voices of those who have no formal role in war, other than to hide or die. The book doesn't spare us their experiences; we just hear them through other voices. It's hard to pick what moved me most in this book. The poetry is well chosen and diverse. The war correspondents are profoundly insightful. Take time for reflection with this book. It's worth it. Posted: 12/18/05; 7:16:00 PM #

The Iraq War and its Consequences

In 2004, Irwin Abrams and Wang Gungwu edited The Iraq War and its Consequences and the insights are no less relevant today than they were at the time they were compiled. Nobel Peace Prize laureates, eminent scholars, and others help paint a picture of how the world order has been affected and the framework of issues that civil society will be dealing with for a generation or more. Posted: 12/18/05; 6:31:05 PM #

Radical Collaboration

James Tamm and Ronald Luyet take a proven and practical approach to successful working relationships in Radical Collaboration their 2004 book. There's nothing in here you wouldn't find in the work of Marshall Rosenberg and others, but this book puts five essential skills into a very neat and conservative package. The title of the book might lead you to think this is about organizational collaboration, but the focus is on five interpersonal skills that focus on reducing defensiveness: collaborative intent, truthfulness, self-accountability, awareness of self and others, and problem solving and negotiation. I recommend this book for any person who struggles with defensiveness in themselves or others as well as for organizations that want to reduce the element of defensiveness in their corporate culture. Posted: 12/18/05; 5:42:44 PM #

Inquiring Organizations: Moving from Knowledge Management to Wisdom

Idea Group Publishing continues to impress me with their thematic collections. The latest one I've read is Inquiring Organizations: Moving from Knowledge Management to Wisdom, edited by James Courtney, John Haynes, and David Paradice. The foundation of the book is the idea that it is inquiry that drives sharing and innovation. The contributors set out to explore different models of inquiry, starting with essential philosophical frameworks, moving through the use of email and information systems in pursuing lines of inquiry, and concluding with genuinely enlightening explorations of what mindfulness and wisdom mean in an organizational context. Posted: 12/6/05; 4:56:52 PM #

Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest

I have long admired Peter Block for his advice about consulting, but I first came to know his work from his book Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest. That someone like Block, who has a section in this book called "The Redistribution of Power, Purpose, and Wealth", can make a good living in corporate America, is a sign of hope. Too many business books are full of inspiration and stories, but lacking in tools for change. By contrast, this book is full of very practical ideas, such as reform of pay scales and job descriptions, that can be applied by leaders who want to foster integrity in their organizations. Posted: 12/6/05; 4:56:46 PM #

Common Knowledge

Nonprofit professionals are not always well rewarded for sharing their knowledge with others, but there is a growing understanding that such sharing is valuable. In 2000, Nancy Dixon wrote Common Knowledge: How Companies Thrive by Sharing What They Know. Although it's not at all focused on nonprofits, the books five models of knowledge transfer -- serial transfer, near transfer, far transfer, strategic transfer, and expert transfer -- are practical tools for helping an organization create systems for ramping up learning. Posted: 11/18/05; 4:04:20 PM #

Forging Nonprofit Alliances

Jane Arenault's Forging Nonprofit Alliances is a book that has only become more important since its publication in 1998. The author takes a close look at four models of alliances -- joint ventures, MSOs, parent organizations, and mergers -- and offers a framework for exploring and pursuing such alliances that respects the realities of the nonprofit world. Her ideas on cultural integration are particularly valuable, as is her step by step guide to negotiation and new governance. Posted: 11/18/05; 3:56:20 PM #

The Innovation Game

The Innovation Game by Armelle Le Corre and Gerald Mischke is a book for systems geeks, a rare and specialized audience. In it, the authors build up a set of interlocking systemic models to describe the processes of innovation. The ultimate product is an innovation pipeline that allows you to experiment with a wide array of variables to see how they might influence the outcomes. I cannot tell you if the model is accurate (somehow I doubt that it can be), but like any good model, it doesn't have to be accurate to be revealing and thought provoking. Posted: 11/15/05; 9:10:13 PM #

Web Design on a Shoestring

Carrie Bickner's Web Design on a Shoestring is a very smart book. Bickner, an experienced nonprofit webmaster who now works for the New York Public Library, doesn't fall into the usual foolish penny pinching that many people on a limited budget seem prone to. Nor does she succumb to the common nonprofit notion that staff time is infinite and we can always ask people to work harder. Instead, she takes a frugal total cost approach to web development and maintenance. She advocates investing in planning, in usability, in standards, and in lightweight content management. I highly recommend this book. Posted: 11/15/05; 8:52:48 PM #

Information and Communications Technology for Sustainable Development

I have become increasingly interested in the topic of information technology and development. It's discouraging to me how often development projects end up benefiting local elites and multinational corporations. My own interests with regard to ICT have therefore focused on the empowerment of the poor and on sustainability. Rahul Tongia, Eswaran Subrahmanian and V. S. Arunachalam have written a book entitled Information and Communications Technology for Sustainable Development and made it available for free online. Their conclusions are realistic and focus on the politics and process of ICT planning more than on ICTs themselves. Posted: 11/13/05; 10:16:46 PM #

Effective Economic Decision Making by Nonprofit Organizations

In an effort to help some folks in my Frictionless Fundraising workshops understand the economic landscape of new media, I spent part of my day explaining marginal costs. I should probably also recommend this book to them, as I am recommending it to you: Effective Economic Decision Making by Nonprofit Organizations, edited by Dennis R. Young. Although the chapter on ICT avoids a number of major issues, the book as a whole is very strong. I enjoyed the editor's last words, in which he develops these seven insights: (1) Mission is a primary concern, central to making all wise economic choices in nonprofit organizations. (2) As a practical matter, mission related effects are often difficult to codify and quantify, but they should be made as precise as possible. (3) Qualitative as well as quantitative benefits and costs must be acknowledged. (4) The tensions between mission and market must be understood and appropriately managed. (5) Diversify to manage risk. (6) Nonprofit organizations are pushed and pulled by multiple, diverse stakeholders. The challenge is to retain a clear focus on mission and core capabilities, in light of these pushes and pulls. (7) Economic conditions change. Nonprofit economic decisions need constantly to be revisited. Posted: 10/25/05; 7:54:37 PM #

Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

William Bridges' book on Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change is justifiably a best seller. As you can tell by the subtitle, the book is not about planning for changes or about making wise changes. Instead, it presents a clear, well organized approach for dealing with it. One example: Identify the losses that people are suffering from the change, acknowledge them sincerely and thoroughly, and compensate people for them. Another example: Sell the problem, not the solution. Posted: 10/25/05; 7:30:09 PM #

In the Tiger's Mouth

For years, I taught workshops on time management and burnout. That was very satisfying work, but it dismayed me how organizations and individual pathologize some very natural, human responses to unhealthy working conditions. Staff would be sent to my workshop to be "fixed" and while many would return with healthier habits, some would make the bold decision that they needed a better place to work. When I could facilitate it, I always appreciated a healthy tension between those two outcomes. One of the books that helped me work with organizations that were prepared to take a more systemic approach was Katrina Shield's In the Tiger's Mouth: An Empowerment Guide for Social Action. With very little wasted space or fuzzy thinking, this is a book that will help any organization with sustainability. Posted: 10/19/05; 10:28:45 AM #

Wellness for Helping Professionals: Creating Compassionate Cultures

Back when I was running an organization called GoodWorks, where I often consulted on issues of organizational health, one of the books that had the greatest influence on me was Wellness for Helping Professionals: Creating Compassionate Cultures, by John Travis and Meryn Callander. The book is a dense compendium of practical resources for anyone with a commitment to following Gandhi's advice to "be the change you want to see in the world". The book has a fair share of fluffy thinking, but to this day, the contents continue to surprise me with their value. The organizational assessment tools and techniques for cultural analysis are particularly useful. Posted: 10/19/05; 10:20:43 AM #

Gracious Space: A Practical Guide for Working Better Together

Patricia Hughes' Gracious Space: A Practical Guide for Working Better Together is an elegant little book published by the Center for Ethical Leadership. The book pulls together concepts of dialogue, learning, and trust building into a common framework for leadership and management. The book is full of concepts that will be familiar to anyone who practices techniques such as Appreciative Inquiry or Active Listening, but given how rarely these work their way into the day to day management of most organizations, I am always looking for frameworks such as this. Posted: 10/9/05; 5:55:03 PM #

Small Pieces Loosely Joined

I am an admirer of David Weinberger's wit and insight. He came to prominence a few years back with his collaboration on The Cluetrain Manifesto, a plea for a return to the human voice in large scale communication. His book Small Pieces Loosely Joined is billed as a "unified theory of the web" and I was skeptical that it would turn out to be very unified, since it seemed to be a collection of thoughtful, but somewhat whimsical essays on topics such as time, space, and perfection. But then I came to the last chapter, entitled Hope, and it all came together. He is excited about the web for the same reason that I am. It's a medium that can reflect and reinforce all the messy relationships that make human beings the delightful and frustrating social creatures that they are and therefore has the potential to help return us to ourselves. Posted: 9/30/05; 4:39:48 PM #

Organizational Culture and Leadership

Those of us who work to help bring about change in nonprofits talk a lot about organizational culture, but I am pretty sure that most of us don't have a clear idea of what that phrase means or how to make it useful. Edgar Schein's classic text on Organizational Culture and Leadership is a must read for any consultant or leader who wants to have a clear vision for how to embed and transmit cultures that support powerful and effective beliefs and practices. I love the last chapter, which defines leadership itself as managed cultural change. Posted: 9/30/05; 4:32:16 PM #

The Now Habit

I have worked with a lot of procrastinators over the years and from time to time I have fallen into the pattern myself. Niel Fiore's The Now Habit describes a deceptively simple formula for overcoming this problem. In pat, it involves: focusing on your Done list rather than your To Do list and recording how you actually spend your time, scheduling pleasurable activities so they immediately follow a small block of effective work, and reversing the power relationships we map out in our mind about large projects. Very good stuff. Posted: 9/27/05; 11:12:14 AM #

Getting Things Done

David Allen's Getting Things Done is incredibly popular these days. I can see why. He takes an honest approach to the workflow issues that keep people from being clearheaded enough to focus. He is weak on the big picture, but I agree with his central assertion that it's very hard to get a handle on the big picture, when we are struggling with hundreds of little tasks that, in essence, have no place to go. When I was teaching time management, I used to do this little exercise about focus. I asked people to look around their work station and count how many messages were coming at them with some kind of call to action, including their calendar and to do lists, post it notes, in boxes, random pieces of paper, project plans on the wall, and so forth. Allen's techniques tackle this confusion head on. Posted: 9/27/05; 11:07:45 AM #

Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge

I first read Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge, by Geoffrey Bellman, back when I was teaching Time Management and Burnout workshops at an agency I founded called GoodWorks. My approach to time management had grown to be fairly radical at this point, with a strong emphasis on the power relationships behind so-called time management issues. I had discovered that most people's issues were a kind of internalization of external disempowerment. In other words, managers will often send people to take a workshop when there are really more systemic problems to address. Bellman's book is full of great little tips and techniques, set firmly in the context of the person who is not fully in charge of their work life. Posted: 9/27/05; 11:01:19 AM #

Original Blessing

For several years as a child, my bedroom was also my father's library. I think this might account for the fact that, to this day, there are a thousand books or so in my bedroom. I can also trace key components of my philosophy of social change to the years I spent among my father's books. One of the authors to influence me the most was a thirteenth century Christian mystic named Meister Eckhart. The core of his theology was a four fold path: the via positiva or path of joy, the via negativa or path of loss, the via transformativa or path of inner change, and the via creativa or path of external change. Often, when I see dysfunction in an organization, it is because they have invested in one path at the expense of others, such as when an organization cannot deal wisely with failure and will only speak of their successes or when an organization focuses only on making change in the world and not on changing themselves. My favorite modern interpretation of Meister Eckhart's work can be found in a book by Matthew Fox called Original Blessing. Frankly, from my frame of reference, this is the best balanced scorecard anyone has come up with yet. Posted: 9/19/05; 2:05:09 PM #

The Active Life

I am a long time fan of the theologian Parker Palmer and his 1990 classic, The Active Life, continues to help ground and inspire me in my work. Too many people see contemplation and action as being in opposition to each other and this book is both a critique of completely private or monastic spirituality and a celebration of a life of active engagement. For nonprofits, I particularly recommend the chapter entitled "Loaves and Fishes" which tackles our culture of scarcity head on. Posted: 9/19/05; 2:04:59 PM #

Friendly Fascism

I have been dusting off some books published during the Reagan presidency, books that helped me understand the dynamics at work in politics and civil society at the time. Those same dynamics have grown to cancerous proportions in the last few years. One of the most provocative and insightful titles of the time is a book called Friendly Fascism by Bertram Gross. As part of my ongoing quest for analyses that make sense of a great many issues at once, this book has few peers. Gross has a keen understanding of power and he doesn't let the nonprofit sector off the hook in any way. Posted: 9/19/05; 2:04:38 PM #

Techniques of Structured Problem Solving

Arthur VanGundy's Techniques of Structured Problem Solving has been on or near my desk for more than fifteen years. It's an encyclopedia of tools for figuring things out, with a solid collection of both divergent tools (for generating ideas and being creative) and convergent tools (for selection and synthesis of ideas). As these tools have slowly migrated online, I have found the book even more relevant. Posted: 8/29/05; 10:35:00 AM #

Resource Manual for a Living Revolution

I don't believe this book is in print any more, but if you can find a copy, you should snatch it up. The Resource Manual for a Living Revolution is one of the most practical collections of skills and tools I have ever come across. It's a book for powerful peacemakers, straight out of the nonviolent activism of the Quakers. It has sections on decision making and conflict resolution, project management, community building, personal growth in the context of activism and more. It even has a section on cooking for large groups! Posted: 8/29/05; 10:29:58 AM #

The Art of the Long View

Peter Schwartz's methods of scenario planning have become very popular in the last decade, based in part on the success of his consulting firm, Global Business Network. Personally, I find it to be a great implementation of a crucial insight: We don't really know what the future will bring. In practice, unfortunately, it often leads to an overly reactive model of strategic planning, but if you read Schwartz's book on the method, The Art of the Long View, you'll know that it's instead meant to encourage strategic flexibility. In a time when I see most nonprofit project plans embrace simple linear projections of the future, this is still a very valuable lesson. Posted: 8/24/05; 9:48:53 AM #

The Rights of Authors, Artists, and Other Creative People

Despite being terribly out of date when it comes to the Internet and some recent draconian changes in copyright law, from time to time I still turn to the basic ACLU guide to author and artist rights, The Rights of Authors, Artists, and Other Creative People. Unfortunately, this topic has been of some legal interest to me recently, but in a broader sense it's of relevance to any organization who is in the business of ideas. Posted: 8/24/05; 9:43:42 AM #

The Balanced Scorecard

Sometimes you need a compelling buzzword or phrase in order to help organizations do the obvious. In the Nineties, Kaplan and Norton's Balanced Scorecard did just that. They emphasized that there were four parts of an organization that required equal attention: financials, internal business processes, learning and growth, and stakeholder (or customer) relations. More importantly their book provided a method for scoring an organization's progress in those four areas, leading to a framework that is today very widely practices as a means of evaluation in both the for profit and nonprofit world. My major misgiving with the method is how it manages to leave out actual outcomes in the world. Posted: 8/24/05; 9:41:23 AM #

The Cluetrain Manifesto

I'm amazed that I haven't yet directly recommended that you buy The Cluetrain Manifesto in book form. In this book, Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger expand on the ninety-five theses that they developed to help us understand what the Internet means for how organizations communicate. The book is a call for radical honesty and the empowerment of networks as a means to success. Posted: 8/16/05; 1:57:50 PM #

Rules for Radicals

Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals is one of the most important books on practical social change and community building ever written and it's definitely one of the most influential. Written in the 1960s, its insights and methods are as relevant to today's modern world of online organizing and global movements as they were to the community organizers of Chicago. It is unapologetic in its understanding that organizing is about power and it is realistic in its approach to the challenge of fighting Machiavellian strategies with the ethics and methods of an open society. Posted: 8/16/05; 1:53:10 PM #

The Rough Guide to a Better World

The Rough Guide to a Better World (112 page PDF) is a lay person's overview of global poverty and development work. It's not a radical book, by any means, but for a general audience interested in knowing more than just that periodically they hear about people starving in Africa, I think it's spot on. Plus, it has all the production values of the Rough Guide travel books, which makes it a pleasant ebook to read. Given the subject, that's a smart idea. Posted: 8/11/05; 5:33:40 PM #

Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think

I have been wallowing joyfully in the theoretical and practical insights that I'm finding in a massive anthology entitled Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think. I'm someone who often takes important phone calls while pacing in front of a white board, where I will draw diagrams and conceptual maps for my own benefit during conversations. There are roughly 50 different articles in this tome, organized into sections on topics such as the creative tension between focus and context, data mapping, and information workspaces. This is a treasure trove of research and inspiration for anyone who likes to think about thinking or wants to build tools to help people be smarter. I highly recommend it. Just don't drop it on your foot. Posted: 8/3/05; 4:54:57 PM #

The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Trick, & Hacks

For the last year, we have been working quietly on a series of upgrades to Nonprofit Online News and our other web sites. As pioneers, it's always interesting to watch the trains pull in next to you, when it seems like only yesterday you were breaking new ground in your covered wagon. In that light, one of the themes of our upgrades is modernization of our HTML, which includes migrating to the use of Style Sheets. We have a library of manuals on CSS, but it turns out that one of the handiest has been Rachel Andrew's The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Trick, & Hacks. Often, books are given titles like that as a poor excuse for sloppy thinking. This author is not afraid to make strong recommendations on the best way to solve a particular problem and that's been very helpful indeed. Posted: 8/3/05; 12:22:46 PM #

Virtual Volunteering Guide

Published originally back in 2000, I'm surprised I haven't recommended this sooner. The Virtual Volunteering Guide (138 page PDF) is a superb handbook by the two acknowledged experts in online volunteerism, Susan Ellis and Jayne Cravens. The free ebook covers every issue, including online recruitment, designing online volunteer projects, online project and relationship management, including people with disabilities, and dealing with the idiosyncrasies of online communication. Posted: 7/24/05; 11:14:52 PM #

Start with People

John Craig and Paul Skidmore's book Start with People is available in full at the Demos web site. (Demos is based in Britain and describes itself as a "think tank for everyday democracy".) The book, based upon thoughtful and recent research, examines the critical role of community organizations in preserving and sustaining public participation and democratic processes. Posted: 7/15/05; 4:53:12 PM #

Buddha

I have enjoyed Karen Armstrong's magisterial books on western religions, so it was with some eagerness that I read Buddha, her bestselling look at what we know about the historical Siddhatta Gotama. I'm interested in what makes for successful radicals, particularly peaceful ones and so I found myself paying attention to the Buddha's ability to speak in terms that made utter sense to his audience, the consistency of his message, and the the religious order that emerged around him. Posted: 7/12/05; 10:39:28 AM #

Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography

I'm fascinated with institution building and social change and thus I am interested in historical figures who have played a role in such things. John Dominic Crossen is a renowned biblical scholar and his Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography eschews myth in favor of giving a powerful picture of the historical Jesus. A Jewish peasant with distinctly radical notions about the politics of the body, he is vividly portrayed by Crossen's unflinching honesty. Posted: 7/12/05; 10:39:19 AM #

Trust in Knowledge Management and Systems in Organizations

I find that the organizations I work with rarely talk candidly about the question of trust. Of course, by its very nature, it's a challenging concept to be open about. Maija-Leena Huotari and Mirja Iivonen, two Finnish academics, have edited a book on the subject, entitled Trust in Knowledge Management and Systems in Organizations. I highly recommend this book for anyone working on knowledge sharing or collaboration. The chapters on trust building as a management strategy, trust in technology partnerships, and the self-organizing emergence of trust in complex networks are of particular importance. Posted: 7/7/05; 5:51:25 PM #

Knowledge Mapping and Management

Don White's Knowledge Mapping and Management is a collection of articles that take a largely social approach to the challenge of knowledge management. There are a few gems in here, particularly for knowledge intensive organizations such as foundations, who might be interested in exploring the barriers to knowledge sharing and creation that exist within and around them. I liked the pieces on collaborative information seeking, the role of argumentation, and the laws of information. Posted: 7/7/05; 5:45:41 PM #

We, the Media

I know that my interest in the underlying support structures of civil society are not of day to day import to nonprofit leaders engrossed in their work, but I continue to look for examples of interdependencies that can get people to look up from their desks at the encroaching world around them. Last week's close call with U.S public broadcasting has focused my recent attention on the media. In that context, I can think of no more important book to recommend to you than Dan Gillmor's We, the Media, which is the best book yet on the future of journalism. It documents the forces that are democratizing the media and the reactions to those forces from the moneyed interests that stand to lose. Whether you're organization is already dependent on a relationship to the mainstream media, or if you have never had such a relationship, but you are engaged in something that is newsworthy to someone out there, you need to read this book. Posted: 6/26/05; 7:34:05 PM #

Hackers and Painters

I have more than once recommended the online essays of Paul Graham, so I'm surprised that it's taken me until now to recommend his book, Hackers and Painters. The title derives from a signature essay of his in which he makes some deep aesthetic and social connections between people who write code and fine artists. As someone who has had the honor and burden of managing some talented engineers, I can say that I agree with his connections. None of his essays, even the one on computer programming languages, are strictly for the technically adept. Some, like the one on design and research, is of value to any creative person or organization. I don't agree with Graham's politics in some places, but I always find myself in a wonderful thoughtful place after reading him. You might too. Posted: 6/26/05; 7:33:57 PM #

Beyond Knowledge Management

Last year, a team of academics from four British universities wrote Beyond Knowledge Management, a book that tries to analyze existing knowledge management theories and synthesize them. In my opinion, the latter ambition is flawed and of little utility, but the book succeeds superbly at creating a framework for understanding many of the various competing theories and languages of the field. The chapter on Systems Thinking and Knowledge Management alone is worth the price of the book. Posted: 6/6/05; 6:12:11 PM #

Creating Knowledge Based Organizations

Jatinder N.D. Gupta and Sushil K. Sharma's book on Creating Knowledge Based Organizations is rich with contributors, references, and footnotes. It's a goldmine of high quality concepts and examples. I found great value in the chapters on Inducing Enterprise Knowledge Flows, Virtual Communities as Role Models, and a Fractal Approach to Managing Intelligent Enterprises. The last one in particular is relevant to the new, emerging models of network advocacy and organization management. Posted: 6/6/05; 6:12:07 PM #

Knowledge Networks: Innovation Through Communities of Practice

Paul Hildreth and Chris Kimble's book Knowledge Networks: Innovation Through Communities of Practice brings together two of my favorite concepts: innovation and networks. A couple of years ago, in an Open Letter to Nonprofit Technology Funders, one of my three major recommendations to the field was to "fund technological fertility, not monolithic 'solutions'". The book demonstrates at length what I was talking about by showing what the factors are in a network that contributes to innovation. I recommend this book to funders, technical assistance providers, umbrella organizations, associations, and large scale movement organizers. I was pleased to see fellow Seattleite Nancy White among the many brilliant contributors. Posted: 6/6/05; 6:12:01 PM #

Sacred Places, Civic Purposes

In 2001, E. J. Dionne, Jr, and Min Hsu Chen edited Sacred Places, Civic Purposes, an exploration of whether government should fund faith based charity in the United States. With twenty one contributors and twenty four commentators, several years later the book is still a hefty contribution to the field. My only misgiving about the book is the fundamental frame of reference asserting that good work done by a religious institution is somehow more "based in faith" than any other good work. But with the recent dramatic increase in this kind of funding by the Bush administration, this book is more relevant than ever. Posted: 5/19/05; 5:54:36 PM #

On Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal

Frances Hesselbein and Rob Johnston of the Drucker Foundation edited On Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal, a collection of twelve superb essays by a wonderfully diverse group of contributors. Whiles there are some weak spots, such as Nigel Nicholson's ideas on "born leaders", overall the book is very strong. I particularly liked the chapters on Sustaining the Ecology of Knowledge and The Residue of Leadership, or Why Ambition Matters. This book would make a great basis for a weekly discussion group. Posted: 5/15/05; 4:07:57 PM #

Changing by Design

Douglas C. Eadie's book Changing by Design is described as a "practical approach to leading innovation in nonprofit organizations". He focuses on three capacities -- leadership, innovation, and implementation -- which he unfortunately calls 3CAP in an attempt to brand his approach. Eadie's clear spiritual perspective leads to a very strong chapter on executive directors and leadership. I was also very pleased to see him tackle the challenge to innovation presented by the usual roles of nonprofit boards. Posted: 5/15/05; 4:00:51 PM #

Sustaining Innovation

Paul Light should be a familiar name to you, given his prominence as a researcher and writer in our sector. I just finished an older book by his, called Sustaining Innovation. Based upon case studies of a couple of dozen Minnesota nonprofits during the early nineties, its focus is on the sustainability of innovation. For the right leader, Light's chapter on the four interlocking organizational values related to innovation -- trust, honesty, rigor, and faith -- is worth the price of the book. For the more operationally minded, his descriptions of ten structural supports for creativity will be invaluable: (1) Stay thin. (2) Create room to experiment. (3) Push authority downward. (4) Lower the barriers to internal collaboration. (5) Democratize! (6) Prime the organization for innovation. (7) Create a marketplace of ideas. (8) Prepare for stress. (9) Maximize diversity. (10) Age gracefully. Posted: 5/15/05; 3:46:58 PM #

Strategic Innovation

Nancy Tennant Snyder and Deborah R. Duarte's book Strategic Innovation may seem, at first glance, to be of little relevance to the nonprofit sector, being a case study of the Whirlpool Corporation. In fact, the lessons are remarkably apt. The book focuses on the process of embedding innovation as a core competency, and thus has insights and ideas related to the accountability, systems, structures, policies, procedures and metrics required to support ongoing innovation. I was particularly fascinated by the chapter on Resource Creation, which explores how to create open markets for funds, ideas, and talent. I would really enjoy seeing a visionary funder apply those concepts in our sector. Posted: 5/15/05; 3:29:32 PM #

What Are People For?

I continue to look for books that cut across the issues and interests of our sector and have learned that, to this purpose, twenty year old essays by Wendell Barry only become more poignant and relevant with time. I recently finished his collection What Are People For?, and it repeatedly reminded me of all that is best in traditional American culture. The current corporate occupiers of the United States government would do well to open their hearts to the words of this rural philosopher. Readers of my own technology work may appreciate the irony of how much I enjoyed his essay "Why I will Not Buy a Computer". Posted: 5/3/05; 8:50:14 PM #

God's Politics

Jim Wallis is the Editor of Sojournor's Magazine and a prominent evangelical speaking out for social justice in the United States. His recent book, God's Politics, is a must read for political and social uniters. Although it's a distinctly Christian book, it's of broad relevance given the role that the language of Christianity plays in American politics these days. I particularly appreciated the arguments he makes in favor of the critical role that must be played by civil society organizations in reforging common values and nurturing political reform. Posted: 5/3/05; 8:49:07 PM #

Photo Retouching with Photoshop, A Designer's Notebook

You may have noticed that I have been reading up on digital photography recently. With the widespread availability of cheap digital cameras, the role of photography in education and activism is taking an interesting historical turn. Just today, charges against various protesters during the Republican National Convention were thrown out when pictures taken on the scene revealed that many police officers' assertions were, to put it succinctly, untrue. They also caught the police department doctoring some video footage to leave out scenes that didn't support those assertions. All this contributes to my interest in another book in the Designer's Notebook series called Photo Retouching with Photoshop, which carefully and beautifully documents the techniques of eight different french photo studios. Posted: 4/12/05; 1:56:42 PM #

Illustrations with Photoshop, A Designer's Notebook

I'm a strong believer in the power of a good image to communicate. Although I am not an illustrator, I have been considering some projects which may require them and so I have been trying to educate myself about the tools of the trade. One book that I particularly enjoyed was Illustrations with Photoshop, part of the Designer's Notebook series that compiles the work of contemporary French artists into a very educational format. The thing that I found so valuable about this particular book is that it gave me an understanding of the specific kinds of illustrations that can be done digitally. Posted: 4/12/05; 1:49:54 PM #

Collaboration Handbook: Creating, Sustaining, and Enjoying the Journey

I wrote a short piece about collaboration in the April 2005 issue of Nonprofit Online News Magazine. If you enjoyed that article, I want to encourage you to read the Wilder Foundation's excellent Collaboration Handbook: Creating, Sustaining, and Enjoying the Journey, by Michael Winer and Karen Ray. There is a tension between their approach and mine, but I think theirs is equally practical. It's a four stage process, starting with connecting individuals, working its way up to the connection between organizations, and finally connecting the organizations to the community. It's very smart work. Posted: 4/8/05; 10:52:22 AM #