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Meg Wheatley has lead the way in bringing  the concepts of leadership and complexity science together.  This  revised edition of her 1992 book is aimed at leaders and those who care about organizations.  For me, the key message of the book was that complexity science brings an new metaphor  to the understanding of leadership which can be used where the  previous  mechanistic "command and control" approach  fails.  Full of illustrative stories , Wheatley encourages us to stand back and see the whole rather than being caught up in the minutia.     ..

This is one of my favourite books. Quinn  in a sense has provided a workshop within a book.  Each chapter includes a section for the reader to reflect upon  leadership and change questions.    Change in organizations at its best is difficult. One of the most common pitfalls is that leaders who are trying to bring about change fail, not because they do not have good intentions, good plans or good communication, but rather because they do not take on the risk of changing themselves.  This is an excellent book for coaches, leaders, consultants and others who build agility in organizations.  "This book explores a much more difficult change process, the process of deep change. Deep change differs from incremental change in that it requires new ways of thinking and behaving. It is change that is major in scope, discontinuous with the past and generally irreversible. The deep change effort distorts existing patterns of action and involves taking risks. Deep change means surrendering control."

Quinn's latest book  Building the Bridge as you walk on it  is also worth reading

From the cover: "For anyone who wants a better understanding of how organizations and leaders can cope with and master ambiguity, uncertainty, and change, this is the first and best book to go to." Warren Bennis,

"Breaks important new ground in organization theory and provides extremely relevant insights for leaders who want to create high performance cultures that are also truly adaptable and resilient. Written in a captivating style, filled with evocative examples and pragmatic guidelines, this book should be mandatory reading for both theorist and practitioner alike."  John Seely Brown

Not an easy read but then we learn most from those things that don't come easy.

“This is the most important book Block has ever written, and we need to take him seriously (although he is, as always, quite witty.) If enough people say ‘Yes’ to the teachings in this book, we'll be able to stop floundering toward the future and create lives and work that are meaningful contributions to each other and to the future. Please say ‘yes.’” Margaret J. Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science and Turning to One Another

If you are looking for quick answers this book is not for you. This is a book about asking the right questions. By focusing on inquiry, Block challenges leaders to  lead in a different way- one that is authentic, one that looks beyond the immediate towards how we  contribute to each other.

"For businesses to succeed in the 21st century, people can't be treated like cogs in a wheel, ready to be sacrificed for profits, say authors Roger Lewin and Birute Regine in The Soul at Work. Instead, people must "become the new bottom line," they say, drawing this conclusion with the help of complexity science and their own study of companies that profit by putting people first."  This book provides some complexity basics and then explores complexity science in the context of stories about  people in organizations that are applying  lessons from complexity.

Leadership: The Inner Side of Greatness, A Philosophy for Leaders, New and Revised
by Peter Koestenbaum, This is Koestenbaum at his best. He raises the concept of work and leadership to a virtue and challenges leaders to greatness and personal responsibility.  He argues that  leaders who don't strive for greatness in everything diminish the value of work.   Koestenbaum asks deep and basic questions about ethics, vision,  and courage, reality- four points of  a model for exploration of leadership which he calls the leadership diamond.  The underlying theme for me in this book is about authenticity in leadership.  A classic.

Other Leadership books  See 14 other books on leadership in complex organizations or use the search box below to search  amazon.com using your own key words.