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| Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace | 
 enlarge | Author: Gordon Mackenzie
Publisher: Viking Adult
Category: Book
List Price: $22.00
Buy Used: $3.98
You Save: $18.02 (82%)
New (46) Used (45) from $3.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  107 reviews
Sales Rank: 12472
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 0670879835
Dewey Decimal Number: 650.1
EAN: 9780670879830
ASIN: 0670879835
Publication Date: April 1, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Creativity is crucial to business success. But too often, even the most innovative organization quickly becomes a "giant hairball"--a tangled, impenetrable mass of rules, traditions, and systems, all based on what worked in the past--that exercises an inexorable pull into mediocrity. Gordon McKenzie worked at Hallmark Cards for thirty years, many of which he spent inspiring his colleagues to slip the bonds of Corporate Normalcy and rise to orbit--to a mode of dreaming, daring and doing above and beyond the rubber-stamp confines of the administrative mind-set. In his deeply funny book, exuberantly illustrated in full color, he shares the story of his own professional evolution, together with lessons on awakening and fostering creative genius. Originally self-published and already a business "cult classic", this personally empowering and entertaining look at the intersection between human creativity and the bottom line is now widely available to bookstores. It will be a must-read for any manager looking for new ways to invigorate employees, and any professional who wants to achieve his or her best, most self-expressive, most creative and fulfilling work.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 102 more reviews...
 Giant Hairball - what the heck is that, I thought September 18, 2008
It took me a while and even though a good friend from Brussels had talked about the "Giant Hairball" some months ago it didn't come close to me to put it on my reading list.
As Gordon MacKenzie is writing in this amazingly insightful and joyfully written book, it needed a real new approach:
While being over at my friend's place a couple weeks for a job interview, heading for my train to a tournament in Amsterdam he said, "Here take this book. I always have several ones on stock on my shelf to borrow to friends. Please send it back to me when you have finished reading it!".
That was an unusual starting of a fruitful connection:-)
Gordon MacKenzie has the ability to tell daily work problems in a way that you feel directly connected as you see through his stories into your own life at work. You realize that staying in the comfort zone where you comply to the company's procedures is really not fulfilling.
Always try to get into the orbit outside the regular procedures create something new and reconnect with the inner company "hairball".
Every story in the remarkably illustrated book makes you laugh and rethink the future (life and work:-)).
The change you would like to see in the world is done by you taking the first step. You will see the system will change:-))
Cheers,
Ralf Lippold, Leipzig
Brilliant September 7, 2008
I've been buying this book for a decade; I've bought dozens of copies. It has been a welcome gift for all new clients in my agency. The art direction is just wonderful and it echoes Gordon's innovative way of seeing everything. Reading it just made me want to go to the office just to shake things up for the better.
It's brilliant, fun and funny. You can sit down and read it through, or nibble at it in small bites.
 If Tom Robbins wrote a business handbook August 20, 2008
Judging by the evidence of this book, Gordon MacKenzie is a twinkling, Merry Prankster-esque holy fool, a cubicle-farm Patch Adams, out to shake up the grey-carpeted halls of corporate America with his own blend of studiedly random wackiness. As other reviewers have said, there is little in the way of practical, take-away advice in this book, and that might well be how MacKenzie wants it -- telling people how they should be is such an authority trip, man. But it leaves you with very little in the end, other than MacKenzie's self-satisfaction and a lot of fake-amateurish scribbling and marginalia. A few nuggets float to the surface here and there; I noted with interest how he told a group of timid executives to "make marks" on paper instead of draw on it, as "drawing" prompts anxiety in people not used to acting creatively. If MacKenzie could've deigned to offer a little more in that vein, this would have been a valuable book.
Invaluable Creativity, Leadership & Corporate Survival Guide June 21, 2008
A fantastic read about maintaining & continuing to develop your personal creativity, while not allowing yourself to be stifled by corporate culture. This book has amazing & entertaining color illustrations depicting MacKenzie's personal experiences while working for 30 years at Hallmark Cards, not to mention being filled with extremely funny anecdotes. I found myself wondering several times while reading this book whether the author would have been able to continue to develop his creativity so well if he had not been so fortunate as to find himself with a plum job at Hallmark in the first place. Nonetheless, this book is well worth reading. I think that anyone, at any rung of the corporate ladder, could learn valuable survival & leadership tips from & relate well with Orbiting the Giant Hairball.
Living Outside the Box and Coloring Outside the Lines. April 5, 2008
For those who were born living outside the box and coloring outside the lines..........this book was written for us. Humorous, accurate and great advice on how to survive and even thrive within a large company/corporation.
I clearly understand the dynamics he writes about. I survived and even thrived for the last 10 of my 28 years in a large company. I wish I would have had this book back then. It would have helped me figure out how to fly below the radar even quicker than I did.
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