Leading Systems: Lessons from the Power Lab

by Barry Oshry

In three parts, management educator Barry Oshry explains the phenomena of systems and leadership as experienced through his innovative Power Lab, a total-immersion experience that shows how to exert leadership in the family, the community, organizations, and the nation. The Power Lab shows how and why we repeatedly fall into systemic relationship problems, and what it takes to break out of the pattern. Once people recognize that they are system creatures, they can begin to master system processes rather than fall victim to them.

Genres: Leadership, Nonfiction

220 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1999

Reviews

[Sandeep Nair]

The book is made of two sections. The first section is the narration of many conversations within a multi-day off-site leadership exercise, and the second section is the crystallization of lessons learnt from the exercise.

The exercise is unlike any boring corporate offsite. The participants are divided into 3 groups (elites, immigrants, and managers) with different resources and powers and left inside a gated community. The "Survivor" like setup leads to very predictable character driven behavior from participants that is unlike them in the "real" world. The tiring script of conversations and negotiations amongst the 3 groups leaves the reader with the takeaway that, "it's not the people, it's the system"!

The second section seems somewhat disjointed from the first but introduces useful verbs: individuate/integrate, differentiate/homogenize, stabilize/change, the dynamics amongst them, and how all 6 are needed for a balanced system. There is also a discussion on predictictable phases of any society which seems on point.

Overall, the book introduces a few good frameworks for systems thinking but doesn't deliver it in a concise and attractive manner.

[Eric Nehrlich]

Oshry spent thirty years running simulations of society in his "Power Lab", and discovered the systemic patterns that kept arising even though it was always a different set of people. This book shares those insightful patterns, as well as thought-provoking, and hilarious, stories about how people adapt to being owners, managers or workers in a society. He starts the book with a story from his first experiment, where the workers immediately rebelled and slashed the tires of everybody's cars so nobody else could leave, then took hostage the representative of the company running the simulation to negotiate for better conditions.

[Kevan]

This thinking and work will stand alongside Nonviolent Communication as world-changing ideas that help humans connect. It still needs to be adapted and translated to meet non-American, non-corporate contexts, in language that meets a ready new generation, yet Oshry's foundational insights are going to continue to help us as a species achieve healthier partnerships.

[Cathy]

I like Oshry and his analysis of systems - superuseful (though Seeing Systems is more fun and practical)