Quotes By Margaret J. Wheatley

For eons, humans have struggled to find less destructive ways of living together.

In this present culture, we need to find the means to work and live together with less aggression if we are to resolve the serious problems that afflict and impede us.

Destroying is a necessary function in life. Everything has its season, and all things eventually lose their effectiveness and die.

And time for reflection with colleagues is for me a lifesaver; it is not just a nice thing to do if you have the time. It is the only way you can survive.

I believe that the capacity that any organisation needs is for leadership to appear anywhere it is needed, when it is needed.

Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.

I think we have to notice that the business processes we use right now for thinking and planning and budgeting and strategy are all delivered on very tight agendas.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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