Crisis & Renewal

I found this book interesting because it helps me to see ways that a crisis can benefit an organization. Hurst pulls together ideas from a number of different places to show that leadership must take on new habits when crisis hits.

When the Globe & Mail newspaper reviewed this book, it referred to Mr. Hurst as "a thinking manager's Tom Peters." Not bad, and based on the book not entirely unjustified. What makes this book really fascinating to me is the way it weaves insights from human history, anthropology, science, and personal business experience into a coherent picture of organizational growth, decay, and renewal. A lot of us have had a feeling that the standard bell curves and life cycles weren't really all that helpful. David Hurst has proposed an alternative solidly grounded in practice and history, one which is much better-suited to helping real managers think systemically about their companies and make decisions on the ground. Hopefully David can expand on some of his insights in a forthcoming book, and include some more business cases that show his ideas in action. Action-oriented, "give it to me in 10 bullet points" types will probably find this book a bit frustrating for that reason. But if you belong to the school of thought that says wanting everything in 10 bullet points is part of the problem, this is definitely a book worth your time.