After twenty-five years as an operating manager, often in crisis and in turnaround conditions, and having spent another two decades consulting, teaching, and writing, David K. Hurst has learned a great deal about organizations, how they function, and why they fail. Here, as a reflective practitioner, he crafts an extraordinary integration of management thought and practice. He adopts a systems perspective, using analogies drawn from nature, to illustrate his ideas and their practical application.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: What to Expect
Part I: The Dimensions of Change
1. Lost in Management Thought
2. Economics, Evolution, and Ecology
3. Scale in Space and Time
4. Why Wal-Mart's Growth Is like a Forest's
5. The Ecocycle: Life, Death, and Renewal
6. The Ecocycle in Human Organizations
Part II: The Front Loop: Nothing Fails like Success
7. Communities of Trust
8. Logic and Power
9. Climbing the Ladder of Abstraction
10. The Product Life Cycle Meets the Ecocycle
11. The Pathologies of Power
12. The Onset of Crisis
Part III: The Back Loop: from Crisis to Renewal
13. Wisdom from the Scriptures
14. Into the Wilderness
15. Climbing the Mountain
16. The Logic of Leadership
17. The Complete Ecocycle
18. Vice and Virtue
Part IV: Staying in the Sweet Zone
19. Tools and Settings in the Sweet Zone
20. Power Tools and Settings: Instructions and Directions
21. Management Tools and Settings: Rules and Incentives
22. Leadership Tools and Settings: Images and Invitations
23. Culture Tools and Settings: Custom and Convention
24. Change in Depth
25. The Design of Choice
26. Lean: The Practice of "Both... And"
27. Prescribed Burns: Context, Conflict, Crisis, and Creation
28. Growing People
29. Don't Throw the Past Away
Part V: A Brief Orientation and Field Guide
30. Using the Ecocycle: Key Concepts and Questions
Notes
Bibliography
Index