The worldwide success of VISA International, Dee Hock asserts, due to its chaordic structure: it is owned by 22,000 member banks, which both compete with each other for 750 million customers and must cooperate by honoring one another's ＄ 3.2 trillion in transactions anually across borders and currencies. One From Many takes the never-before-told story of how that structure came into being, and updates it for today.
It is also the story of Dee Hock's life-long quest from humble beginnings to an iconoclast who challenged the nature of traditionsl organizations and management. It is the story of an entrepreneur who created a new concept of organization, brought it into being and led it to amazing success in less than a decade, a corporate statesmean who is now engaged in an extraordinary odyssey to take these ideas ideas around the world.
But One From Many is far more than that. It is filled with concepts, ideas, and philosophy that challenge our fundamental beliefs about money, organizations, leadership,management, the human spirit, and our relationship to the natural world.
Hock makes a compelling case that all organizations are fundamentally based on foawed seventeenth century concepts that are no longer relevant to the vast systemic social and environmental problems we experience daily. But he doesn't stop there. He delineates a path to creating organizations that are based on chaordic principles-organizations that he believes can harmonio usly blend chaos and order, competitions and cooperation.
One From Many is at times lyrical, at times humorous, at times powerfully thoughtful, at times playful. Throughout it is lucid and straight the heart, shattering the boundaries of business books. As gripping as a novel, as a novel, it is written by an extremely concerned man who has gone beyond theory to put his ideas into practice in the real world and is convinced that we can and must create the kind of organiaations that a livable future demands.
