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Inspired by Matthew Skelton's comment on Wholehearted I decided to read the book . This is not a review of the book, merely a note of the most important (to me, at least) take-aways. Being "whole" Why is it called wholehearted? The answer is given in the introduction and this helped me file the book in the right "box": a thing is whole according to how free it is of inner contradictions. When it is at war with itself, [...] it is unwhole. Mike Burrows then gives examples of situations in which we experience that "magical chemistry" that makes performing (in a group of people) effortless. This is (at least to me) a powerful revelation and a great way to define what I get to experience from time to time when my organization just performs. When that happens we are whole. And it's an awesome experience. The other insight that I got is that a business is always "at war": with the market. But when it also goes to war against itself because of...

Another illuminating quote from Matthew Skelton , posting about Mike Burrows book Wholehearted : Don't re-organize people; re-organize purpose This made immediately sense to me, as I often find that teams that struggle to perform are teams that don't have purpose or have lost it or are so removed from their outcomes that they mechanically complete the next thing. Also, this once again shows how crucial the role of the chain of command is for providing this purpose (the why), making a compelling case against micro-managers, or we-need-a-process-for-everything managers.