The Last Word on Power:
Executive Re-invention for Leaders Who Must Make the Impossible Happen

by Tracy Goss

Doubleday/Currency
Publication Date: January 1996
Price: $25.00, Hardcover
Pages: 259 pages
ISBN: 0-385-47492-X

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I loved working with Tracy Goss. I'm not sure how influential this book was; it was an extremely ambitious project, turning the insights of Fernando Flores, Werner Erhard, and Tracy herself into a seamless developmental path for innovative thinking. All the more so because we tried to eschew jargon and write only in plain English. (It drove me crazy. Terms we couldn't get rid of, like the "Universal Human Paradigm" or "Winning Strategy" (which actually meant "losing strategy in the long run." And yet I had to admit that Tracy gained some mileage by defining her own terms and sticking with them.)

Tracy was a former Roller-Derby queen who had become a management consultant. She was flamboyant, jovial and mercurial, with a voice like honey filtered through a racecar engine. She lived in Austin, TX, and I remember driving past a chain of lakes to get to her office.

I don't actually agree that this book is the last word on power. There never will be one. (The title was our editor Harriet Rubin's suggestion; in retrospect, I think the book should have been called, The First Word on Power.) The subject is the personal capability to step out of the shackles of an old mindset, either alone or (preferably) in organizations.