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

David Hurst has a unique knowledge of organizations-their function and their failure-both in theory and in practice. He has spent twenty-five years as an operating manager, often in crises and turnaround conditions, and is also a widely experienced consultant, teacher, and writer on business. This book is his innovative integration of management practice and theory, using a systems perspective and analogies drawn from nature to illustrate groundbreaking ideas and their practical application. It is designed for readers unfamiliar with sophisticated management concepts and for active practitioners seeking to advance their management and leadership skills.
Hurst's objective is to help readers make meaning from their own management experience and education, and to encourage improvement in their practical judgment and wisdom. His approach takes an expansive view of organizations, connecting their development to humankind's evolutionary heritage and cultural history. It locates the origins of organizations in communities of trust and follows their development and maturation. He also crucially tracks the decline of organizations as they age and shows how their strengths become weaknesses in changing circumstances.
Hurst's core argument is that the human mind is rational in an ecological, rather than a logical, sense. In other words, it has evolved to extract cues to action from the specific situations in which it finds itself. Therefore contexts matter, and Hurst shows how passion, reason, and power can be used to change and sustain organizations for good and ill. The result is an inspirational synthesis of management theory and practice that will resonate with every reader's experience.