So I finished the book this morning - and it's great - certainly I recommend to anyone wondering about buying it. Best accessible write up of VSM I've come across and an excellent application of it to highlight the blind spots in economics.
My ebook of The Unaccountability Machine has inconveniently shown up on the exact same day as the package containing the textbooks I was recommended here a while ago, so now I need to exercise extreme self-discipline and save it for after I've done my homework.
Parramore's Quantitative Methods in Finance is exactly what I was looking for in terms of a convenient stack of formulae, explanations and rules of thumb, thank you immensely for saving me quite a lot of searching (and congratulations on the book!).
As an aside, the attentuation mechanism Beer describes always shows up in my head as an analogy from one of Stephen Jay Gould's columns in "Natural History". He wrote about a bird that laid its eggs in a guano nest. If any of the chicks hatched and wandered out the nest it was considered lost to the mother and would starve. I've always thought of knowledge flows in organizations as collections of guano nests.
Copy ordered. Re: information systems & feedback loops, I am reminded that early on someone told me that the principal reason Goldman was so consistently successful was its unmatched ability to share relevant info across the bank, largely without fear or favour, so that it was always half a turn smarter than the rest of the street. Of course, only a terrible cynic would suggest that occasionally, in the bad old days, the odd Chinese wall might have been unintentionally scaled …
I’m halfway through the book right now and it is terrific. I wish there was a publication that interpreted the world along the lines that you describe. Does it already exist?
So I finished the book this morning - and it's great - certainly I recommend to anyone wondering about buying it. Best accessible write up of VSM I've come across and an excellent application of it to highlight the blind spots in economics.
My ebook of The Unaccountability Machine has inconveniently shown up on the exact same day as the package containing the textbooks I was recommended here a while ago, so now I need to exercise extreme self-discipline and save it for after I've done my homework.
Parramore's Quantitative Methods in Finance is exactly what I was looking for in terms of a convenient stack of formulae, explanations and rules of thumb, thank you immensely for saving me quite a lot of searching (and congratulations on the book!).
Do you plan on going on Doug Henwood’s radio show/podcast?
Excited to read the book!
As an aside, the attentuation mechanism Beer describes always shows up in my head as an analogy from one of Stephen Jay Gould's columns in "Natural History". He wrote about a bird that laid its eggs in a guano nest. If any of the chicks hatched and wandered out the nest it was considered lost to the mother and would starve. I've always thought of knowledge flows in organizations as collections of guano nests.
Copy ordered. Re: information systems & feedback loops, I am reminded that early on someone told me that the principal reason Goldman was so consistently successful was its unmatched ability to share relevant info across the bank, largely without fear or favour, so that it was always half a turn smarter than the rest of the street. Of course, only a terrible cynic would suggest that occasionally, in the bad old days, the odd Chinese wall might have been unintentionally scaled …
I’m halfway through the book right now and it is terrific. I wish there was a publication that interpreted the world along the lines that you describe. Does it already exist?
Ordered my hard copy yesterday 😁
Congrats on the publication and reviews Danny!