Orbiting the Giant Hairball

Orbiting the Giant Hairball A corporate fools guide to surviving with Grace

By Gordon Mackenzie

First the surprise as I go to write this review I look in the front of the book and find out when is printed in 1998. A new trend with me, that of reading older books never before read by me. Once again I find this book topical today as it was when is written. I'm feeling somewhat remorseful that I'm so late to coming to the reading.

David Baldwin has an apt summary, which I'm going to insert here, feeling lazy.

" could have been written yesterday. Its insights are timeless and always relevant.

This small volume is a roadmap for escaping the stifling bureaucracy of corporate

culture and achieving a state of creative achievement by “orbiting” the corporation.

As the author says himself, “hairball” is a disgusting term. But it is an appropriate

term for the mass of policies, procedures, rules, management layers, practices,

conformity, compliance and submission to the status quo that every organization

eventually and invariably becomes.

Every new policy or procedure or rule is a new hair in the hairball. Hairs in

organizations are never removed, they are always added. As the number of hairs

accumulates, so does the mass of the hairball. As in physics, as the mass of a body

increases, so does its gravitational pull.

The corporate organization, the hairball, begins to exert its own corporate gravity.

It is the nature of corporate gravity to suck everything and everyone into its mass,

which translates into corporate normalcy.

Orbiting is operating beyond the bounds of corporate normalcy. The corporate mind

set is to protect and repeat past successes. There is little room in corporate

normalcy for original thinking or primary creativity.

Orbiting is responsible creativity, vigorously exploring and operating beyond the

hairball of the corporate mind set, beyond accepted models, patterns or standards,

all the while remaining connected to the spirit of the corporate mission.

Now a few good quotes from the text itself

“Orbiting is actively engaging in the opportunities and resources provided by the

organization without being sucked into the hairball. To orbit, one must be

continuously mindful of the corporate environment and always conscious of one’s

personal mission to be responsibly creative."

"... If you do follow your bliss you put yourself in a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you and the life you ought to be living is the one you're living "Joseph Campbell

  Need to find a balance being committed to the organization culture at the same time committing to the heart of the personally relevant goals of the organization and how you create your own unique contribution and be more than just a headcount. It takes courage, courage to cross boundaries, courage to admit it idiocy, courage to acknowledge impasse, courage be open up to being rescued.

 Things to do

Groping leave behind your habitual corporate cultures analytic explicit rational concrete goal  oriented linear reality and instead experience spontaneous playful holistic nonlinear creative energy

Freedom versus security

So:skydiving without a parachute is suicide

total freedom is suicide

And: holing up in the closet is vegetating

total security is vegetating

Start near security and move mindfully toward freedom

Coercion is a deterrent to creative a participation

And a workshop without creative participation is not a creative workshop at all but rather an exercise in cultural indoctrination

When we tease others about their performance we hold up a stop sign, and keeps them from sharing risking or growing. before you tease you should pause just a moment look deep inside yourself and see if you can understand your motivation and then reconsider are you  trying to stop that person ,belittle them or lift them up

Be careful of those things which foster isolation isolation brings atrophy decay fading away! engagement brings passion vision invention! Stay engaged

Orville Wright did not have a pilots license don't always wait for permission

Escape from habitual culture must always be temporary if you wish to be permitted back into that culture "yes you can go on and play but you must be home by dinner time"

Compassionate emptiness a state of nonjudgmental receiving- how do I listen?

To create we must let go:

Let go strategies that worked in the past

let go or biases the foundation of our illusions

 Let go of our grievances the root source of our victimhood

Let go of our so often denied fear of being found unlovable

Not rejecting but letting go open up yourself to new possibilities

If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted. No one else can paint it. Only you!

Where The Blue Begins

Where The Blue Begins
By Christopher Morley copyright 1922
To be honest I'm not sure how this arrived on my reading list. Morely is a fiction writer, an essayist, and  poetry writer of some acclaim but no great notoriety. I thought Brigham recommended it, but I was mistaken, he didn't. Nonetheless I got an inter-library loan of the book and quickly devoured it.



Reviews even say it may have been written as a child book or other types but I found this book to be a good philosophical read: compelling observation on society, family life, professional life and the self discovery of what one truly is searching out of life.

I started reading and gathering quotes but decided not to do that this time but just to read it and enjoy it. And that I did! Not everybody can write a book with the characters all being dogs. And for that matter I don't know if it adds value to the story to be dogs or people, a unique device. Glad I read it. And recommended to you if you like philosophy books with a slant on social commentary. And it seems relevant to me today in 2016 as it was in 1922 when he wrote it.

One quote I'll throw out there is how he describes discovering who his real self was "Another one of those numerous self-inflicted committed suicide that was the right idea to keep sloughing them off throwing overboard the unreal and factitious paring them down until he discovered the  genuine and in alienable creature" . reminds me a bit of CS Lewis's description of Eustice as a dragon peeling off his Dragon self and trying to find his real self inside. The challenge for all of us – discovering our true inner self and raison d'etre..

The Speech Writer

The speechwriter a brief education in politics by Barton Swaim

Had I remembered who Mark Sanford was - South Carolina's governor crazy 'gone missing ' - I might not of read the book.  this guy Brian was the communications officer and speechwriter for him.  I was interested in reading the book in terms of writing and writing styles and sustaining  process as a political speech writer. there are a number of  interesting insights,nothing breakthrough, but a quick easy read.

The governor understood building brand , defining his message and his key message points and in sticking to them. His speech writer bryan built the repertoire of content that reflected his governors positions and thoughts and approaches and style thus building and establishing the governors brand.

The book  was its most interesting upon  reaching its last seven pages where in we found the definition of the kind of men, like the governor who run for office who are politicians: "
Was he at  last pondering the ruin he created I doubt it… Men like him think of achievement and victory not a failure. And when they fail disastrously the first thought is not to repair the damage but to gauge how far it is to the next victory "

"Why do we trust men who have sought and obtained  high office by innumerable acts of vanity and  self will. They serve because they glory and receiving glory. Politicians maybe lauded when the right venerated when they're dead but they should never be trusted.  difference between their public and private persona... I believe you wanted to feel a deeper remorse he looked inside and it wasn't there all he found was more of himself... Politicians gain power by convincing us that they are wise and trustworthy... The claimant attention or his highest name is is they are every determine politicians I need to praise the finding the seriousness with people take the remarks gaze of the audience the way room falls silent when enters
. He May have good desires it's a desire it's not what drives him. What drives them is the thirst for glory. The public good as he understands it is a means to that end.


Contrasting to King Benjamin 

Mosiah 29:6 ccf
35 And he also unfolded unto them all the disadvantages they labored under, by having an unrighteous king to rule over them;

36 Yea, all his iniquities and abominations, and all the wars, and contentions, and bloodshed, and the stealing, and the plundering, and the committing of whoredoms, and all manner of iniquities which cannot be enumerated--telling them that these things ought not to be, that they were expressly repugnant to the commandments of God.


Mosiah 2
s suffered by the hand of the Lord that I should be a ruler and a king over this people; and have been kept and preserved by his matchless power, to serve you with all the might, mind and strength which the Lord hath granted unto me.

12 I say unto you that as I have been suffered to spend my days in your service, even up to this time, and have not sought gold nor silver nor any manner of riches of m
16 Behold, I say unto you that because I said unto you that I had spent my days in your service, I do not desire to boast, for I have only been in the service of God.

17 And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.
16 Behold, I say unto you that because I said unto you that I had spent my days in your service, I do not desire to boast, for I have only been in the service of God.

17 And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God


Not lipservice but that he's actually serving God. The –Measure of how people should live and how he should govern. Where is their heart where is their reward! 


Sent from tim wilson