Quotes By Margaret J. Wheatley

Everyone in a complex system has a slightly different interpretation. The more interpretations we gather, the easier it becomes to gain a sense of the whole.

In our daily life, we encounter people who are angry, deceitful, intent only on satisfying their own needs. There is so much anger, distrust, greed, and pettiness that we are losing our capacity to work well together.

For example, I was discussing the use of email and how impersonal it can be, how people will now email someone across the room rather than go and talk to them. But I don't think this is laziness, I think it is a conscious decision people are making to save time.

Too many problem-solving sessions become battlegrounds where decisions are made based on power rather than intelligence.

In these troubled, uncertain times, we don't need more command and control; we need better means to engage everyone's intelligence in solving challenges and crises as they arise.

Aggression only moves in one direction - it creates more aggression.

For us, someone who is willing to step forward and help is much more courageous than someone who is merely fulfilling the role.

Circles create soothing space, where even reticent people can realize that their voice is welcome.

These days, our senses are bombarded with aggression. We are constantly confronted with global images of unending, escalating war and violence.

We have created trouble for ourselves in organizations by confusing control with order.

Most people associate command and control leadership with the military.

We do as much harm holding onto programs and people past their natural life span as we do when we employ massive organizational air strikes. However, destroying comes at the end of life's cycle, not as a first response.

Organisations are now confronted with two sources of change: the traditional type that is initiated and managed; and external changes over which no one has control.

In the past, it was easier to believe in my own effectiveness. If I worked hard, with good colleagues and good ideas, we could make a difference. But now, I sincerely doubt that.

Listening moves us closer, it helps us become more whole, more healthy, more holy. Not listening creates fragmentation, and fragmentation is the root of all suffering.

Aggression is the most common behavior used by many organizations, a nearly invisible medium that influences all decisions and actions.

When leaders take back power, when they act as heroes and saviors, they end up exhausted, overwhelmed, and deeply stressed.

I think a major act of leadership right now, call it a radical act, is to create the places and processes so people can actually learn together, using our experiences.

Without aggression, it becomes possible to think well, to be curious about differences, and to enjoy each other's company.

Yet we act as if simple cause and effect is at work. We push to find the one simple reason things have gone wrong. We look for the one action, or the one person, that created this mess. As soon as we find someone to blame, we act as if we've solved the problem.

Our willingness to acknowledge that we only see half the picture creates the conditions that make us more attractive to others. The more sincerely we acknowledge our need for their different insights and perspectives, the more they will be magnetized to join us.

We experience problem-solving sessions as war zones, we view competing ideas as enemies, and we use problems as weapons to blame and defeat opposition forces. No wonder we can't come up with real lasting solutions!

I've wanted to see beyond the Western, mechanical view of the world and see what else might appear when the lens was changed.

Determination, energy, and courage appear spontaneously when we care deeply about something. We take risks that are unimaginable in any other context.

I'm sad to report that in the past few years, ever since uncertainty became our insistent 21st century companion, leadership has taken a great leap backwards to the familiar territory of command and control.

Hopelessness has surprised me with patience.

Probably the most visible example of unintended consequences, is what happens every time humans try to change the natural ecology of a place.

Thinking is the place where intelligent actions begin. We pause long enough to look more carefully at a situation, to see more of its character, to think about why it's happening, to notice how it's affecting us and others.

In virtually every organization, regardless of mission and function, people are frustrated by problems that seem unsolvable.

We know from science that nothing in the universe exists as an isolated or independent entity.