Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace

by Gordon MacKenzie

Book Overview

Creativity is crucial to business success. But too often, even the most innovative organization quickly becomes a "giant hairball"--a tangled, impenetrable mass of rules, traditions, and systems, all based on what worked in the past--that exercises an inexorable pull into mediocrity. Gordon McKenzie worked at Hallmark Cards for thirty years, many of which he spent inspiring his colleagues to slip the bonds of Corporate Normalcy and rise to orbit--to...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670879835
• ISBN13: 9780670879830
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: Viking
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 7.4"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Fantastic Book

This book is simple but yet profound with brilliant insights.

addicted to structure & conformity? think business/life should run by formula? meet your cure.

OK, Here's the review: Buy this book and take it's message to heart. I have purchased and given this book more times than I can count to people in all levels of business, and to friends who are at crossroads in their lives. I have seen some reviews here which take issue with the fact that the author's message is too far ahead of it's time, won't fly within the gridwork of a conformist corporate culture, or that the message is inaccessable due to the book's apparent lack of structure. Well, the message and how it's presented are kind of the point, not the problem. If the message won't fly in a particular company culture, the problem is within the culture. Those groups need to pay attention more than any other, because they stand to gain the most. The perspective offered here is unique and invaluable. It applies to more than the immediate situation, not just to surviving a job at Hallmark, or any job, for that matter, but can be applied to any aspect of life. If you are in business today, you can apply the lesson given here. If you are a CEO and think that workers are drones who need your company more than it needs them, accept the moral initiative given by this book and learn why change is good, both economically and sprititually. If you are a humble worker bee and are saddened by your present position, use this book as a springboard to give you the initiative you need to find a better place, one away from the CEOs who haven't read this book. That would probably make Gordon smile. This book is all those things that have already been said about it: it's loopy, zany, wise, generous, playful, full of heart, loaded with quirky illustrations, and stuffed to the gills with genuine spirit. It's a non-traditional and revealing take on that most pathological of institutions, the American corporation. In this case, the corporation happens to be a seemingly warm and fuzzy greeting card company. It's also a fun, quick read. End of review. I also want to offer a second book which Gordon personally recommended to me in 1990. Years before he wrote "Hairball", he told me to read "The Addictive Organization : Why We Overwork, Cover Up, Pick Up the Pieces, Please the Boss, and Perpetuate Sick Organizations" by Anne Wilson Schaef. It inspired him enough to tell others about it; in turn, it opened my eyes to the real reasons behind the deep-seated problems within organizations, and I want to pass it to others. If you've already taken inspiration from Gordon's own gentle, brilliant book, check this one out, too. If you haven't, then read both. What follows is a brief personal account of my interaction with the author. Those looking for a traditionally structured review may wish to look elsewhere. I was VERY lucky to meet Gordon MacKenzie when I was at a low point in my career, having just (naively) taken a job with a division of Hallmark that existed at the outermost edge of the Mothership, a division which I came to learn was known internally as

Working Creatively and Effectively Inside the Corporation

This book deserves more than five stars.Although I have read many excellent books about nurturing creativity and working creatively in companies, this is the first book I have read where the author has been someone who has done that repeatedly and in a variety of ways. That perspective is uniquely valuable both to those who want to have more creative jobs and those who would like to encourage creativity.Although the analogies seem far-fetched at first (orbiting the giant hairball means taking a creative tangent and refocusing it to have relevance for the company's purpose), they serve to open your mind to thinking differently about creativity and organizations. Although the author's key points are not summarized anywhere in the book, you will begin to get a sense of how the ideas connect together. That's useful, because otherwise why should he try to teach us so much? Except in the chapter that deals with them, any of the key observations would have been enough for a whole book on the subject. The overall theme is that our minds are subject to being too quickly anesthetized, rather than stimulated to ground-breaking insights. You'll love the story about hypnotizing hens where he introduces that concept. One of my favorite stories in the book described when the author was asked to create an introductory course on creativity. The first session was wildly successful. The author then analyzed why it worked and created a more organized version of this course (called Grope). That sesssion didn't work as well. Then he went back to being unstructured (operating at the edge of chaos), and the course worked again. He learned from this the delicate connection between groping and rote. You need more of the former and less of the latter.Another of my favorite stories related to the joy he experienced when he first started parachuting. But within six months, it was getting to be boring. He could only make it more exciting by taking the parachute off, but that would be suicide. On the other hand, if he never tried something new, he would be vegatating. So we want to stay somewhere between suicide and vegetation for the most effective results. You will enjoy reading this book because it presents a fresh perspective that will stay with you. The successful point of entry is a story about children. When the author shows children about making sculpture from sheets of steel, he asks them if they are creative. All first graders raise their hands. By sixth grade, no one will say that they are creative. The pressure to be like everyone else makes the creative people want to hide. It just gets worse from there. Everyone who reads that story will remember experiences from childhood where their creativity was actively discouraged by teachers, parents, neighbors and classmates. Such a pity!Each story is imaginatively illustrated to help you get a sense of a different reality. It also makes the material more

I LOVE this book!

This is far and away THE most delightful book I've bought in a long time. It's stimulating visually as well as intellectually, fun to read, and the chapters are short enough to be assimilated by even the most harried business person. But it's not fluff: the points he makes about education, the way businesses are run, and the continual tension between creativity and corporate inertia, are crucial ones (every manager in every large firm should read Chapter 18, "The Pyramid and the Plum Tree"!). And MacKenzie's recommendations are not, as some critics have argued, applicable only in an "entertainment" industry like greeting cards: in today's fast-paced business world, a company's most important asset is its ability to be flexible and continually come up with new ideas; the "giant hairball" of entrenched structures and organizational habits won't cut it any longer. While I agree that the people who most need to hearken to this book's message are educators, I think it's equally important for business people: even if you've been trained (first by your schools and then by your employers) to stifle your natural creativity and become a good little corporate clone, it's not too late for you to recapture what you started out with. I wish I could rate this 10 stars!

Not for business

Gordon's book is listed as a rave for business anywhere. I would say, that it should be in the hip pocket of every teacher and educator in the world. If our education system would use this book as a guideline, we would not have to write this way for business. In our world we seem to always work at fixing things when they are broken and not working on the Source. To use this book in business is addressing a secondary manifestation. If we were to follow his book, chapter by chapter, the children would grow in their creative genius, and the business world would automatically be fixed. I loved the story of how the chickens were mesmerized and if ever we need to free our schools from keeping the children's beaks on a chalk line on the porch, it is now.I cannot say enough; from the question at the beginning about, how may of you are artists? to the end where we are given the challenge to paint our own masterpiece...each anecdote, speaks loudly, nay, shouts to every person in a classroom to open the containers and let the minds find their creative genius.If this book were on every teacher's desk, and more importantly in the cellular understanding of each educator, there would be no articles in any paper about how schools are failing.Gordon, if you are watching and listening....you created a legacy that will not be forgotten...Thank you.

R.I.P. Mr. Paradox

Gordon MacKenzie changed my life. He truly lived by the principles in his book. He didn't just seek out the most visible idea people or those whose external appearances trumpeted that they were creative. His book is not just talk. I know because I was one of those shy little nobodies whom Gordon sought out and encouraged. I am sorry to say for those of you who don't know, that Gordon passed away on July 26, 1999. Here is the passage that was on his funeral leaflet: "You have a masterpiece inside you, too, you know. One unlike any that has ever been created, or ever will be. And remember: If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted. No one else can paint it. Only you."