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Inspiration From Unlikely Places

In my last post, I mentioned that you need to be open to accepting inspiration from unlikely places (in that case from feedback). I think this mirrors my thoughts a while back when I said that doing at least one thing differently daily will help you see the world through different eyes which in turn…

In my last post, I mentioned that you need to be open to accepting inspiration from unlikely places (in that case from feedback). I think this mirrors my thoughts a while back when I said that doing at least one thing differently daily will help you see the world through different eyes which in turn can lead to new ideas and inspiration as well. Back then, I was talking about my discovery of permaculture. Today I’m talking about a book that I discovered by chance that basically confirms a lot of the thoughts that I’ve been having over the past few years.

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Why I’m saying this happened by chance is that there’s a local community paper that I read basically once in a blue moon. Luckily I happened to glance at one of the captions on the cover the other day and I noticed a mention of Margaret J. Wheatley who wrote a book called Turning To One Another that I had read some years back. So interested in what she was up to now, I decided to grab the paper so I could read it later. Well in reading the article on her later that day, I basically sat there with my jaw dropping down the floor in amazement, as everything my intuition had been hinting at over the past few years was basically confirmed in a couple of pages of that single article.

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What this article was entitled was Community: The Promise and Paradox which relates to her latest book entitled Finding Our Way: Leadership For an Uncertain Time. Of course, I immediately called the local bookstore near my place and asked if they had it. They did and so I grabbed it, returned home, and immediately started reading it. However, instead of starting from the front of the book, I skimmed the table of contents at the front and found a chapter entitled The Real Work of Knowledge Management. Again in that single chapter, almost everything I had been thinking and feeling about over the past few years was confirmed and even more so clarified for me.

To sum up, if you are interested in the Web (yes this includes Web 2.0 as well), organization, structure, knowledge, relationships, communities, culture, or anything along those lines, I’d highly recommend you read this book. Here’s one quote from it below that really stood out for me and mirrored my thoughts on what the culture of the Web would be like if it were a business (that being the dream “business” that we’d all like to work for).

It Is Natural for People to Create and Share Knowledge
We have forgotten many important truths about human motivation. Study after study confirms that people are motivated by work that provides growth, recognition, meaning, and good relationships. We want our lives to mean something; we want to contribute to others; we want to learn; we want to be together. And we need to be involved in decisions that affect us. If we believed these studies and created organizations that embodied them, then work would be far more productive and enjoyable. We would discover that people can be filled with positive energy. Organizations would be overwhelmed by new knowledge, innovative solutions, and great teamwork. It is essential that we begin to realize that human nature is the blessing, not the problem. As a species, we are actually very good to work with.

Other Recommended Books:

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