Orbiting the Giant Hairball: Recommended Reading for Service Designers

Author

Gordon MacKenzie

Publication Date

April 1998

Publisher

Viking Adult

FROM AMAZON.COM: 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.

Orbiting the Giant Hairball

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Three Comments

lauren argenta on June 21, 2010 8:08pm

From working as a service designer this book has offered me help, inspiration and at times, sanity. Service design projects often require for the designer to get deep under the skin of the client. Whilst this is the way to really answer the brief it does mean the designer risks getting sucked in. The secret is to orbit. This book will not only help you to learn how to orbit, help you navigate when you are on the inside, and help you get out when you inevitably get sucked in. A great book, well written, with a lovely layout and great illustrations.

Melis Senova on June 27, 2010 11:48am

I loved this book. It's funny, it's insightful and it's empowering. And for people like me who have always felt that their view of the world is consistently different, it was validating (read relief). Get it, read it, go back to thinking and believing you're an artist, just like you did when you were 6.

Samuel R Daines II on May 9, 2014 4:00pm

Absorb this book and it will change your mind about what it means to have a job. Powerful.

Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace
By Gordon MacKenzie

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