Change the World : How Ordinary People Can Achieve Extraordinary Results

Robert Quinn's Change the World offers profound yet practical guidance for those who truly want to improve their surroundings. Quinn, a University of Michigan professor and author of five books on change and organizational performance, bases Changeon eight "seed thoughts" drawn from the philosophies of Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. After relevant quotations from each, he cites contemporary real-life examples to show how these principles--Envision the Productive Community, First Look Within, Embrace the Hypocritical Self, Transcend Fear, Embody a Vision of the Common Good, Disturb the System, Surrender to the Emergent Process, and Entice Through Moral Power--can really be used. "All our lives we have been explicitly and implicitly taught to see human influence as an exercise in domination," Quinn writes. By learning instead to practice a new type of "transformational behavior," he suggests, even "ordinary people" can have "extraordinary impact." The section on asserting moral authority, for example, segues from his own fifth-grade coaching experiences to those of basketball superstar Larry Bird to details on building a bond between "change agents and change targets" that effects desirable modifications. Recommended for anyone open to new ideas on motivation and stimulating change. --Howard Rothman