Quotes from 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.

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!

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.

We could focus our efforts on discovering solutions that work uniquely for us.

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.

I think it is quite dangerous for an organisation to think they can predict where they are going to need leadership. It needs to be something that people are willing to assume if it feels relevant, given the context of any situation.

Even though worker capacity and motivation are destroyed when leaders choose power over productivity, it appears that bosses would rather be in control than have the organization work well.

The things we fear most in organisations — fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances — are the primary sources of creativity.

In Yellowstone National Park, human-imposed stability thwarted for many years the natural process of small fires, which regularly clean out brush and dead trees. The result was a fragile equilibrium completely vulnerable to the cataclysm of fire that destroyed large areas of the park. The attempt to manage for stability and to enforce an unnatural equilibrium always leads to far-reaching destruction. The

Life offers us this great gift of self-organization, how we can be held in the basin of shared meaning and, within that, exercise individual freedom. It is such a shame to waste it on fear and doubt. Or to seek to contain and control it.

It's been said thousands of times, in all faiths and philosophies. Know thyself. What may be less clear in these wise expressions is the reason we learn to know ourselves: we develop a knowledge of self so that we can give up the self and serve others.