Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
our modern world, even though it was appropriate to older, simpler times. Working with imagination and often hilarious computer simulations, Dietrich Dorner provides a compass for intelligent planning and decision-making that can sharpen the skills of managers and policy-makers everywhere.
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
Good analysis, but way to long winded
Customer Rating:
This book layed out some good work on determining common errors when confronted with a complex problem. However I thought the book could have been condensed into just a few chapters while still presenting much of the same informaion.
A MUST READ!
Customer Rating:
This book should be required in school. It's an easy read and a good introduction into how complicated our society has become and how quickly things can get out of control.
Facinating and informative!
Customer Rating:
I got this book from a co-worker, and didn't know anything about it, but ended up reading it all in a few days. Very well written and fascinating look into reasons humans make mistakes.
Highly recommended!
Over-promised and under-delivered
Customer Rating:
The book got my juices flowing in the first chapter, especially with the reference to human interaction with dynamic systems and the tendency to "oversteer". I wrote my doctoral dissertation over 30 years ago on just such a phenomenon as applied to the broiler industry (yes, chickens), which behaves as an underdamped servomechanism. (I'm an engineer).
However the early promise of the book didn't bloom as I'd hoped. Rather than use real world examples, all of the author's principles are drawn from simulated experiments. As a doctoral student I was subjected to many simulated business game situations, and while they can be made complex to third and fourth generation consequences, life is more complex than that (think The Tipping Point and Jim Burke's The Pinball Effect).
The effort to draw principles in the last chapter suffered two defects: there are too many of them and they are shallowly explained in terms of real-world usefulness.
While I think the book is worth reading, it over-promised and under-delivered. I'd recommend speed reading it for high level content and avoid getting bogged down in the simulations. I highlight as I read, and the highlighting became less and less as the book wore on. That's the best evidence I have on the value of a book to me when I finish reading it and review my highlighting and notes.
A much more practical book (for me) was Managing the Unexpected by Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe.
Use common sense
Customer Rating:
This book was clearly written and provided a great deal of food for thought. There are several useful concepts described here and I am glad I read the book. I recognized many of the habits and weaknesses in my own thought patterns. However, I was a little disappointed that the final analysis seemed to be: "learn common sense" from experience, perhaps by engaging in computer simulations of decision making. With so many interesting ideas presented throughout the book, I had expected something more profound in the final chapter.
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