The Aesthetic Compass

Aesthetics is more important than you realize.

How does aesthetics inform leadership thinking and decision-making? And what role does aesthetics play in perpetuating the status quo in leadership and management practice? The Aesthetic Compass answers these and many other important questions. 

The Aesthetic Compass is new and unique framework for understanding why organizations are led and managed in mostly the same way today as centuries ago. It is a simpler, Occam’s razor explanation for the complex and deeply rooted phenomena that prevent leaders from improving their thinking and practice of leadership and management.

Aesthetics is much more powerful than is realized and may even be, in most cases, the fundamental determinant of action or inaction that limits how far leaders will move beyond the status quo. Because of this, aesthetics acts as a compass that points leaders towards an understanding of beauty that is antithetical to progressive management.

The Aesthetic Compass is the fourth volume in a remarkable tetralogy that illuminate why leaders resist, reject, or ignore progressive management. The previous books are:

• The Triumph of Classical Management Over Lean Management: How Tradition Prevails and What to Do About It
• Irrational Institutions: Business, Its Leaders, and The Lean Movement
• Management Mysterium: The Quest for Progress

While The Aesthetic Compass provides the simpler explanation, these earlier books supply the complex details that are well worth your time to understand. Together these four book provide the ideas and inspiration needed to replace classical management with progressive management.

Reviews of The Aesthetic Compass

Fresh perspective with elements I will be able to implement immediately. Highly recommend.

Mark Rimbergas 

Another work by Emiliani that sparkles with cross-disciplinary intelligence and passion.

Ken Eakin

Powerfully insightful book. Definitely worth the read.

Calvin Williams

I highly recommend reading this book.

Kyle Kumpf

Bob Emiliani digs deeper. Where others stop, he continues to ask uncomfortable questions. The Aesthetic Compass brings more clarity. It shows why managers are attracted by beautiful things and repelled by ugly things. It is not sufficient for Lean and Agile enthusiasts to be smart and have interesting tools. If we do not recognize centuries-old leadership patterns, we will fail to change for better, again and again.

Jan Fischbach

The Aesthetic Compass is superb.

Brian Butler

More Information

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Book Details

The Aesthetic Compass: Foundation of Leadership Action and Inaction

by Bob Emiliani
Cubic, LLC South Kingstown, RI, USA

158 pages • ISBN 978-1-7320191-5-7 • April 2022

Foreword by Ken Eakin
Preface
Introduction
1. Hiding in Plain Sight
2. Aesthetics of Classical Management
3. Management Design
4. Path Dependence and Change
Closing Comments
About the Author