title: Leading Systems: Lessons from the Power Lab
author:  Barry Oshry 
description: "Leading Systems gets to the dynamics of leadership and power relations more effectively than the usual jargon and rhetoric. People who read this book will see that they can avoid the pitfalls of system life and create healthy societies." -- <i>Betty Friedan, Author and Lecturer</i><br /><br />"Leading Systems is the best book on systems living and action I have ever read. The writing is powerful and compelling. It offers a way for us to experience our power, our freedom, our anxiety, and still stay deeply engaged in serving the systems of which we are a part. I highly recommend this book." -- <i>Peter Block, author of Stewardship and The Empowered Manager</i><br /><br />"One of the truly great management educators of the era. . . . Every manager, executive, and leader benefits from the insights which jump out of his provocative writings. His ideas will still be sparkling decades from now." -- <i>Kenwyn K. Smith, Professor, University of Pennsylvania</i>
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  Bill Powers grew up in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois and served in the United States Navy in 
  World War II, after which he earned his Physics degree from Northwestern University on the 
  GI Bill. His interest in control theory as a model of behavior began while he was a medical 
  physicist at the Veteran’s Administration Research Hospital in Chicago, where he designed 
  many devices for medical research; notably, a curve-tracer for plotting isodose contours in the 
  beam of radiation from a Cobalt-60 therapy machine. 
  While attending the Graduate School of Psychology at Northwestern in 1960, he worked part-
  time as a technician in the Department of Astronomy where later he became chief systems 
  engineer. In that capacity, Powers designed and built lowlight-level television systems for 
  astronomy. He was involved in the design of the Lindheimer Astronomical Research Center, 
  and was responsible for the design and building of the Corralitos Observatory. He created the 
  automatic all-s