On Value and Values: Thinking Differently about We in an Age of Me

by Douglas K. Smith

Book Overview

Smith explores bringing value and values back together in organizations, markets, networks, and people's lives in this book that examines old values that can still work without imposing ideologies... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0131461257
• ISBN13: 9780131461253
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: FT Press
• Length: 284 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

What a great book

On Value and Values has been called "A book for our times" and all that. The question is, why? Doug Smith has taken us out of the "once upon a time" world of place being the most important factor in how we relate to the world, and he has brought us to a different reality. It is no longer a world that revolves around our neighborhoods. Our worlds revolve around our jobs, our scools, our politics, our churches, and so on. It is not about where we live; it is about who we are and how we interact ethically with those around us for a better community and life. This is not a simplistic book nor an easy read. It requires thought and as the subtitle ssuggests, "Thinking differently about We in the age of Me." It is well worth the effort. I have come back to On Value and Values over and over again and each time I go away with another nugget. This is not a book of Utopian dreams. It is handbook of usable, workable plans on how to relate to each other and build value, material wealth, and physical assests while still maintaining our values as moral individuals. We do not have to screw each other and the planet to be comfortable and happy. We can leave the world a better place. Smith does an excellent job in helping us transition into this new millenium.

Thinking Differently

On Value and Values is a refreshing breath of fresh air, and a sad but true commentary on the age of me. People all too often think about themselves, and not about others.

More important than just a good read

On Value and Values took me by surprise-it's so much more than I expected. I was introduced to the book at the outset of an extensive strategic planning project, and I was prepared for another temporarily interesting management book. Instead, I found a persistently thought provoking work of social and moral philosophy that compelled me to introduce it to others in one of the organizations in which I participate. The arresting image of "the twin towers of market democracies-political liberty and self-interested economics" introduces Doug Smith's thesis that we today suffer from an extremism that has apotheosized economic value and self-gratification, and which imperils our ability to bring to fruition the "best in our natures." The importance of On Value and Values is that it diagnoses our situation, grounds it in a reality that is true for millions of us, and proposes solutions that in part draw on Smith's exceptional organizational and management expertise. This is important because central to Smith's viewpoint is the idea that organizations have supplanted the "world of places" as the venues where people actually are bound together by shared values and fates. And it is thus through organizations that individuals acting together can bring about the change that will reunite value and values.

On Value and Value

Most books give us something, but land on the shelf never to be read again. Doug Smith's On Value and Values is one that I expect to be returning to regularly. Beautifully written, this provocative and thoughtful book cracks the code of what makes things different in the world in which we live. Finally I understand the profound difference between living in a world of place and one of purpose. It answers the question of whatever happened to WE and provides some direction for how the ME can function in this environment. It's a must read, and a keeper.

Us Them

On Value and Values is a great book on how to actionably get out of the mindset of Us versus Them; Value to the negation of Values. It's akin to the Lakota "All My Relations" in that it asks us to rethink how we think of ourselves. We are not one citizen/employee of one country/company, but part of an enormous web of relationships. Our actions affect and are affected by everything that we do, even if it seems insignificantly local, place-based, or otherwise. Using real-life examples and with some real prescriptions for how to escape dangerous myopic perspectives, Smith weaves a path out of Us versus Them. Terrific!