King Arthur's Round Table: How Collaborative Conversations Create Smart Organizations

by David N. Perkins

Your organization functions and grows through conversations-face-to-face and electronic, from the mailroom to the boardroom. The quality of those conversations determines how smart your organization is. This revelatory book shows you how the Round Table of Arthurian legend can help foster collaboration and transform today's world of business, nonprofits, and government."When I want a group to work effectively, I turn immediately to my colleague of thirty-five years, David Perkins. This book is a distillation of his knowledge and wisdom."
-Howard Gardner
author of Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences and Intelligence Reframed

"David Perkins applies his wit and inventive mind to create a fresh perspective on the world of collaboration in organizations. His archetypes and toolboxes offer valuable insights to anyone facing the challenges of collaborative problem solving."
-David Straus
author of How to Make Collaboration Work

Genres: Business, Management

288 pages, Hardcover

First published December 27, 2002

About the author

David Perkins is a founding member of Harvard Project Zero, a basic research project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education investigating human symbolic capacities and their development. For many years, he served as co-director, and is now senior co-director and a member of the steering committee. Perkins conducts research on creativity in the arts and sciences, informal reasoning, problem solving, understanding, individual and organizational learning, and the teaching of thinking skills. He has participated in curriculum projects addressing thinking, understanding, and learning in Colombia, Israel, Venezuela, South Africa, Sweden, Holland, Australia, and the United States. He is actively involved in school change. Perkins was one of the principal developers of WIDE World, a distance learning model practitioners now embedded in programs at HGSE. He is the author of numerous publications, including fourteen authored or co-authored books. His books include; The Eureka Effect, about creativity; King Arthurs Round Table, about organizational intelligence and learning; Making Learning Whole, a general framework for deepening education at all levels; and Future Wise, about what's worth teaching for the contemporary era.

Reviews

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perkins is such a wonderful synthesizer. Every time I read one of his books, I feel like I have actually ready more than one book. He captures and explains the thinking of others when he is covering a specific topic or idea. His use of metaphors, analogies and stories make reading it so much more engaging. And, because he is a cognitive scientist, he knows the importance of repetition. Each chapter ends with a synopsis of key points.

[Jim Tucker · Rating 3 out of 5]

By all reviews, this book is an excellent guide to collaboration and group-think. And it is that to be sure. But for me, it is more of a plodding workbook, long on explanation and short on inspiration. I need more inspiration. The integration of the King Arthur myth and processes described, which is the reason I bought the book, seems forced and contrived. But when I find myself in need of a how-to-do-it-in-detail set of directions, this will be one of the books I will turn to.

[Caitlin Trepp · Rating 2 out of 5]

I dismissed this book at first. It's difficult to take seriously because how simplistic and REPETITIVE and REPETITIVE it is. There was at least one concept that ended up coming in handy.

[Meaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good exploration of leadership and collaboration. Insightful.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

Because it teaches people how to make smart changes in a complex world. I particularly like his perspective on people he calls "dragons." : )