Being Spherical: Reshaping Our
Lives and the World for the 21st Century was published in
2004. This 183-page custom designed paperback has 82 illustrations
and 65 chapters—most of which are two pages each, for easy reading.
The book offers a new vocabulary for seeing whole and being whole.
It uses a sphere as a conceptual, mythological way to help you understand
our current reality. It features sample sphere charts—visualization
tools that help transform the way you see your life or organization.
Being Spherical reveals new insights
regarding history dating back 400 years and the participants who changed
that history. It explains the origins of our current worldview; why
it has expired and why we must see the world anew.
It explores the dynamics of living
at a time when it is possible for society to experience a leaping
together of people, ideas and events—a time when quantum leaps
of awareness are eclipsing prevailing but limited belief systems.
Being Spherical explains how we are individually and collectively
shaping the future—a future no longer dominated by traditional
hierarchies and concentrated power centers.
The book explains why in this dawning era of interconnection and interdependency,
we require a dramatic transformation in the way we see, think and
act.
If you change the way you see your world, your world is bound
to change.
Circling
the elephant
It was September 1994 that a business writer and I joined forces in
Los Angeles in an attempt to grasp the whole picture. At the time,
I was a speaker, author and management consultant, traveling frequently
to Europe, specializing in the integration of transformational technologies.
By then, I had experienced many different liefstyles and occupations
and I had discovered that the world didn't work the way mankind had
been taught. I sensed there was another way and I spoke about it at
public venues.
Then along came Rob Lindstrom, a business writer who had profiled
one of my technology projects in a book he authored, published by
Business Week. He took an interest in my unorthodox views of business
and the world—ideas in which, he too was interested.
Within four months we had written our first manuscript, but the message
proved incomplete. We wrote more outlines but they too fell short
of expectation.
Ours was a special pairing that reflected opposite perspectives of
the world—that of priveledge and education versus self-made man.
It fueled rich, often intense, discussions and research.
Meanwhile, my life changed with the times. I moved to Texas, then
Colorado flexing and adapting to the chaotic business environment.
The fall of 1999 I dropped out of the corporate world entirely. I
realized it was the only way that I would ever complete this important
book. I moved to a 70-year-old cabin in the woods and Rob and I began
the last leg of this journey by means of a long-distance relationship—a
journey that would take five more years of research and great sacrifice
to complete
Being Spherical was published in 2004.
In October 2006 I
did a little research project, the results of which, I believe, will
fascinate you. I researched how many people that month had searched
for the word "whole" on one particular Internet search engine.
I was stunned by what I found.
That month there were only 215,000 searches on the word. Roughly 110,000
were for whole foods; 43,000 were for whole life insurance, followed
by 6,300 searches for song lyrics about a Whole New World. Miscellaneous
searches on the word represented an additional one half of one percent.
Nobody searched for the word as it relates to the whole of our lives,
the whole of our companies, or humanities relationship to our whole
planet, even though—thanks to the World Wide Web—people
are beginning to grasp that we live in an interconnected and interdependent
world.
By comparison, there are millions of regular hits on words like war,
money and dating.
That little research project was sobering to me. Do you know why?
If I asked you how that you arrive at the most important decisions
of your life—regarding your education, career, the growth of
your business, your marriage, or politics—you would most likely
tell me that you look at the big picture, the whole story.
The truth is, we have barely scratched the whole surface.
For the last four centuries mankind has been trained to peer at parts—parts
of an assembly line, departments of a business, parts of our
bodies and parts of our lives. We spend so much time analyzing parts
that we rarely step back and take a good hard look at the whole. We
think we do, but the reality is, we barely do.
No wonder people are anxious, fearful—unable to make complete
sense of things. It's time to see the whole picture to successfully
navigate your way.
Being
Spherical - Reshaping Our Lives and Our World for the 21st Century
