Birth of the Chaordic Age - Hardcover

Dee Hock

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1576750744 ISBN 13: 9781576750742

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler, 1999

Synopsis

A inside look at the VISA corporation and the new chaordic business organization method, chaos and order combined, describes how this method works for VISA and how it is being put into practice all over the world. 75,000 first printing. $75,000 ad/promo. Tour.

About this title

Review

Birth of the Chaordic Age is a compelling manifesto for the future, embedded within the intriguing story of a personal odyssey. An engaging narrator, Dee Hock is the man who first conceived of a global system for the electronic exchange of value, becoming the founder and CEO of VISA International. He looks critically at today's environment of command-and-control institutions and sees organisations that are falling apart, failing to achieve their own purpose let alone address the diversity and complexity of society as a whole. The solution, Hock claims, lies in transforming our notion of organisation, of embracing the belief that the chaos of competition and the order of cooperation can and does coexist, succeed, even thrive, and of welcoming in the chaordic age.

The underlying tenets of Hock's ideas are well illustrated by the incredible story of the birth of VISA International, an organisation formed on chaordic principles that now links in excess of 20,000 financial institutions, 14 million merchants and 600 million consumers in 220 countries. Hock deplores an age where ingenuity and effort are wasted on circumventing the rules and regulations of insular, hierarchical bureaucracies. In a bold-type subtext interspersed throughout the book, he examines how this situation is stunting our potential as individuals and communities and contemplates what can be changed. This rumination is propelled onward by "Old Monkey Mind" (Hock's own thoughts). Though the technique allows the reader to engage in stimulating mental discovery along with the author, its New Age spiritual tone is sometimes a bit saccharine. His insights, however, are clear and provoking. In the Chaordic Age, he contends, "success will depend less on rote and more on reason; less on the authority of the few and more on the judgment of many; less on compulsion and more on motivation; less on external control of people and more on internal discipline". Hear, hear. --S. Ketchum

Synopsis

Written by the founder, president, and CEO emeritus of VISA International, this is the story of how VISA International was conceived, founded and established. It is also the life story of Dee Hock, a maverick banker who put his own wild ideas into practice to create something the likes of which the world had never seen. This text challenges the ideas and radical philosophy about the nature of the world, the role of money and organizations in the world, reinventing leadership and management, and transforming business and society.

Edition details

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1576750744
• ISBN 13: 9781576750742
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 345