Margaret Wheatley quotes - page 3

It's not differences that divide us. It's our judgments about each other that do. (Margaret Wheatley)
Leadership is always dependent upon the context, but the context is established by the relationships. View quote
Margaret Wheatley
Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful. It's amazing to me how much we do, but how little time we spend reflecting on what we just did. View quote
Margaret Wheatley
There is a simpler, finer way to organize human endeavor. I have declared this for many years and seen it to be true in many places. This simpler way is demonstrated to us in daily life, not the life we see on the news with its unending stories of human grief and horror, but what we feel when we experience a sense of life's deep harmony, beauty, and power, of how we feel when we see people helping each other, when we feel creative, when we know we're making a difference, when life feels purposeful. View quote
Margaret Wheatley
I believe that our very survival depends upon us becoming better systems thinkers. How can we learn to see the systems we're participating in? How can we act intelligently when things remain fuzzy? View quote
Margaret Wheatley
Here are a few principles I've learned. Start something, and see who notices it. It's only after we initiate something in a system that we see the threads that connect. Usually, someone we don't even know suddenly appears, either outraged or helpful. View quote
Margaret Wheatley
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. View quote
Margaret Wheatley
To name is to make visible. View quote
Margaret Wheatley
I was reading of chaos that contained order; of information as the primal, creative force; of systems that, by design, fell apart so they could renew themselves; and of invisible forces that structured space and held complex things together. These were compelling, evocative ideas, and they gave me hope, even if they did not reveal immediate solutions. View quote
Margaret Wheatley
We have created trouble for ourselves in organizations by confusing control with order. This is no surprise, given that for most of its written history, leadership has been defined in terms of its control functions. View quote
Margaret Wheatley
The things we fear most in organizations - fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances - need not be signs ofan impending disorder that will destroy us. Instead, fluctuations are the primary source of creativity. (Margaret Wheatley)
We will need to become savvy about how to build relationships, how to nurture growing, evolving things. All of us will need better skills in listening, communicating, and facilitating groups, because these are the talents that build strong relationships. View quote
Margaret Wheatley
If vision is a field, think about what we could do differently to create one. We would do our best to get it permeating through the entire organization so that we could take advantage of its formative properties. All employees, in any part of the company, who bumped up against the field, would be influenced by it. Their behavior could be shaped as a result of "field meetings”, where their energy would link with the fields form to create behavior congruent with the organizations goals. In the absence of that field, in areas of the organization that hadn't been reached, we could hold no expectation of desired behaviors. If the field hadn't extended into that space, there would be nothing there to help behaviors materialize, no invisible geometry working on our behalf. View quote
Margaret Wheatley
The dense and tangled web of life-the interconnected nature of reality--now reveals itself on a daily basis. Since September 11th, think about how much you've learned about people, nations, and ways of life that previously you'd known nothing about. We've been learning how the lives of those far away affect our own. We're beginning to realize that in order to live peacefully together on this planet, we need to be in new relationships, especially with those far-distant from us. View quote
Margaret Wheatley
Over many years of work all over the world, I've learned that if we organize in the same way that the rest of life does, we develop the skills we need: we become resilient, adaptive, aware, and creative. We enjoy working together. And life's processes work everywhere, no matter the culture, group, or person, because these are basic dynamics shared by all living beings. View quote
Margaret Wheatley
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. View quote
Margaret Wheatley
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. View quote
Margaret Wheatley
Aggression only breeds more aggression. It only creates more fear and anger. View quote
Margaret Wheatley