Disillusionment

This current volume by successful consultants to leading organizations and institutions combines two of their recent papers. The first paper, 'Disillusionment', looks at the phenomenon of illusion and disillusion in organizations. The authors believe that illusions construct us, as opposed to the commonly-held view that we create them. This is the main hypothesis in the book, which is examined with the help of examples from personal and institutional points of view. The authors claim we can learn to recognize our own illusions and learn from them, and this is the process they call 'disillusionment'. Dialogue of Lacks> follows on from the first paper and further elaborates on the process that is disillusionment and discusses "lack of dialogue".'The trudging that each of us is engaged in - over a shorter or longer distance - whilst grappling with our own illusions is a fundamental journey, intimate and unique, passing through our own construction and touching on the very essence of our life. It is not only about knowing whether we are being manipulated, nor just how far these illusions can obscure our judgement, our rational and reasonable mind. Our freedom is at stake. It is about understanding where the boundary lies between survival (and its frantic analogue all too frequent these days that we refer to as "hyperlife") and a life of desire and creation. Our intention here is to formulate a starting hypothesis and to begin to unfold it in order to discover its consequences. It is based on our experience as advisers in leadership which invites us to work regularly with this kind of questions with leaders of organisations. Illusion is indeed as much an individual issue as it is a collective and institutional one.'- From the Introduction