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The Necessary Revolution: How Individuals And Organizations Are Working Together to Create a Sustainable World | 
 enlarge | Authors: Peter M. Senge, Bryan Smith, Nina Kruschwitz, Joe Laur, Sara Schley
Publisher: Doubleday Business
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $17.45
You Save: $12.50 (42%)
New (33) Used (4) from $17.45
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 6472
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1
ISBN: 038551901X
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.927
EAN: 9780385519014
ASIN: 038551901X
Publication Date: June 10, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new hard cover with dust jacket just arrived from publisher - ships with tracking #
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Product Description
Imagine a world in which the excess energy from one business would be used to heat another. Where buildings need less and less energy around the world, and where “regenerative” commercial buildings – ones that create more energy than they use – are being designed. A world in which environmentally sound products and processes would be more cost-effective than wasteful ones. A world in which corporations such as Costco, Nike, BP, and countless others are forming partnerships with environmental and social justice organizations to ensure better stewardship of the earth and better livelihoods in the developing world. Now, stop imagining – that world is already emerging.
A revolution is underway in today’s organizations. As Peter Senge and his co-authors reveal in The Necessary Revolution, companies around the world are boldly leading the change from dead-end “business as usual” tactics to transformative strategies that are essential for creating a flourishing, sustainable world. There is a long way to go, but the era of denial has ended. Today’s most innovative leaders are recognizing that for the sake of our companies and our world, we must implement revolutionary—not just incremental—changes in the way we live and work.
Brimming with inspiring stories from individuals and organizations tackling social and environmental problems around the globe, THE NECESSARY REVOLUTION reveals how ordinary people at every level are transforming their businesses and communities. By working collaboratively across boundaries, they are exploring and putting into place unprecedented solutions that move beyond just being “less bad” to creating pathways that will enable us to flourish in an increasingly interdependent world. Among the stories in these pages are the evolution of Sweden’s “Green Zone,” Alcoa’s water use reduction goals, GE’s ecoimagination initiative, and Seventh Generation’s decision to shift some of their advertising to youth-led social change programs.
At its heart, THE NECESSARY REVOLUTION contains a wealth of strategies that individuals and organizations can use — specific tools and ways of thinking — to help us build the confidence and competence to respond effectively to the greatest challenge of our time. It is an essential guidebook for all of us who recognize the need to act and work together—now—to create a sustainable world, both for ourselves and for the generations to follow.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Not Systems Thinking August 5, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The Necessary Revolution: How Individuals and organizations are working together to create a Sustainable World. (TNR)
Value of TNR: The theme of TNR is that we must shift beyond being reactive in our solutions approach, merely seizing short term solutions, and move to deep thinking to really make a difference. I strongly agree. The book includes many stories of what organizations and individuals are doing to try to be more proactive. The "Take, Make, Waste" mode of the last 60 years is no longer viable and some folks are digging deeper in their thinking and getting beyond symptom solutions. It is the right message but with insufficient thinking on the part of the authors on what it would really take to accomplish that deep thinking. They fall into the same trap they are critiquing, working in a problem-solving mode with humans doing less harm and letting nature restore itself, but with just a more sophisticated version than they challenge.
Shortfall: The authors point out that what got us into the mess we are in is working from a Cartesian view of reality that sees the world as things divided into parts and pieces that are not connected. As a result we have outsourced solutions by specialty, allow the problem creator to side step the deep dive to get to the underlying causes. However, TNR is working with an approach to Systems Thinking based on the Study of machines and computers that originated at MIT with Jay Forrester in the Engineering and Cybernetic Systems School in the 1950s. Forrester moved to the Sloan Management School and took his Systems Dynamic Theory with him. It is still a part of the Sloan School and has been adopted by the SOL Sustainability Consortium unrevised from its computer science basis and applied directly to human systems. It is true that Systems Thinking is needed to get us past the current crisis but one based in and developed from understanding artificial intelligence in computers and the working of machinery is just as limited as the element Cartesian model that positioned us for the current challenge. Even though the authors open with the Einstein quote, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we create them," they fail to see that that is the mind that created the form of system thinking is still the one they are using for the most part.
One of the greatest shortfall of the book is the banalization of the term regenerative and equating it with renewable, as in renewable resources and restorative, as restoring a wetland to its original state--or letting nature do it. This comes from the way of thinking about Systems itself.
The least encompassing type of Systems Thinking is what I call, Causal Systems Thinking or Cybernetic Systems Thinking because it is based in Cybernetic Studies and Science coming from Computer Science fields and Industrial Engineering applications to machinery based on non-living metaphors applied to Living Systems. Causal loops are an incomplete and often inaccurate way to describe human and social systems since they imply a single connecting or steam of causes back to an original cause. Even Forrester said that feedback loops do not apply to open systems, which Living Systems are because feedback loops are based on repetitive behavior and refer back to actions of the past and control those directly for the future. In open systems, the actions are independent of past action. (see Principles of Systems, Jay Forrester, 1979) www.wholebusinessblog.wordpress.com
Hits the Nail on the Head August 4, 2008
Senge's book correctly identifies the sustainability challenge, gives a bit of history about how we got where we are and then establishes a framework for companies, individuals, governments and others to follow in order to tackle the problem. He provides lots of examples of sucesses in the area of sustainability and gives a good amount of detail about specific initiatives that have yielded results. Well-written and provocative. I work in this area and he gave even me reason to rethink some of my ideas.
 An important contribution to sustainability strategies July 28, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is one of the most interesting and important contributions of 2008 to the vital area of sustainability thinking. MIT's Peter Senge is well known for deep analysis of organizational effectiveness (that can be challenging to read). He applies the same "systems thinking" found in his best-selling book, "The Fifth Discipline", to the multi-dimensional problem of unsustainable industrialization to reveal the real drivers and not merely the symptoms of the core problems. Yet in this fresh, face-paced book, Mr. Senge takes a more "story-teller" approach to illustrate how we as a society can accomplish much more in our efforts to find more sustainable practices working together than working in a wary isolation.
He uses many examples of successful collaboration between industry, brands, NGO groups, government and individuals. This is the new charter for effectiveness. As Wired magazine rightly said this year: "Global warming is too important to leave to environmentalists alone to solve." Government and business are in the best position to lead large-scale sustainable change and must take more and more ownership.
I help lead sustainability programs for a major athetic brand, and we would never dream of collaborating around performance technology innovations. Yet, increasingly, we and my peers at other brands throughout the industry have been actively collaborating around many sustainability initiatives - even making ideas and patented technologies that solely benefit the environment available to others. We work with NGO groups to better inform our strategies and they are always willing and helpful to collaborate (as some of them say, we would rather work in partnership than take you to court!). We are working to develop common mreasures and standards to drive supply chains toward more sustainable production and better equip the consumer for informed choices regarding environmental impact. Senge's book is all about such collaboration - in product companies, energy sector and the built environment.
No longer perceived as a fad or gimick, sustainability and eco-thinking are now evolving to necessary(and perhaps even survivability) strategies to insure this generation's children will have a world worth inheriting and similar opportunities than us adults have had living quite well off the resouces of the planet. Peter Senge shows us how to get there by developing shared awareness of the problem and working effectively across boundaries of all kinds. A main audience he wrote this book for is the grass-roots visionaries who have "gotten this" long ago and who work quietly but surely as the dynamic change-agents for a more sustainable world. A intellectually savvy and notable contribution to the topic that reads remarkably well. 5 stars.
A compass and Road Map for Progress July 21, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am a fan of the Society for Organizational Learning's approach to large organizational and social challenges. This book closes the loop on the learning's of Senge's entourage which span from The Fifth Discipline and the practical Field books to Presence. Now in The Necessary Revolution each author's unique experiences in teaching and guiding many fellow travelers along the road towards a more sustainable way of life are blended together in a coherent whole.
This book captures the process of leading organizations on the journey towards sustainability without losing the necessary personal and spiritual touch that is so necessary in leading multi-dimensional sustainable changes within complex organizations. This is certainly a book to be used in business schools because while it teaches some administration of the sustainable organization, it also teaches the value of disruption and the disruptive innovation process, and how to guide and meld such strategies.
I have been fortunate to have known personally, Brian, Sara, and Joe, and to have learned much as a result of their efforts through workshops, seminars and the Sustainable Enterprise Academy. I am very pleased to see so much of the essence of these efforts condensed in this volume. There are now many books on approaching sustainability through enterprise, organizations and society, but The Necessary Revolution enters new territories through the experience and rigor of the authors.
Conversations and collaboration are the way forward July 2, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
This long awaited book fulfills all of my expectations for a manual to help us create the conversations and collaboration necessary to reclaim our world's health. Over the years there have been quite a few high impact books helping us understand the extent of the challenges we face as we look forward to create a sustainable world. "The Necessary Revolution" steps forward and outlines how to create the partnerships that are needed to unleash the pent up creativity that millions of team members across the world and in all enterprises have been holding back. Peter Senge and team from his organization Society for Organizational Learning come at the subject as world leaders in the austere world of business. It is going to be very difficult for business leaders across the world to read this work and write it off as rantings of an extremist. Peter is one of the top business minds in the world and I do not believe this work can be easily ignored.
For those of us who are disbursed across enterprises and feel like we have little impact on moving our enterprises towards a more sustainable future, this book provides outstanding case studies of work being done across the world by enterprises large and small. Some of the work and the visions of the leaders chronicled in this text are not only enlightening but surprising. After many chapters a "toolbox" is provided to help set the stage for the conversations and collaboration needed to move change forward. And of course, all of this work is set in a framework of systems thinking which is so necessary to be able to see beyond the silos so many are bound by.
"The Necessary Revolution" should be required reading for community leaders of all types, NGO, religious, Government, and corporate alike. As we start to create these critical partnerships and conversations focused on sustainability, I believe that we can quickly change the course that we are on. A must for every person who wants to see a change in our direction. Thank you Peter, Bryan, Nina, Joe, and Sara for this extraordinary work.
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