Quotes from Margaret J. Wheatley
The things we fear most in organisations — fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances — are the primary sources of creativity.
— Margaret J. 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.
— Margaret J. Wheatley
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!
— Margaret J. Wheatley
We could focus our efforts on discovering solutions that work uniquely for us.
— Margaret J. Wheatley
Too many problem-solving sessions become battlegrounds where decisions are made based on power rather than intelligence.
— Margaret J. 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.
— Margaret J. Wheatley
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.
— Margaret J. Wheatley
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.
— Margaret J. Wheatley
The world thus appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which connections
— Margaret J. Wheatley
Focus on serving others. ... No matter what is going on around us, we can attend to the people in front of us, to the issues confronting us and there, we offer what we can. We can offer insight and compassion. We can be present. We can stay and not flee. We can be exemplars of the best human qualities. That is a life well lived, even if we didn't save the world.
— Margaret J. Wheatley
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.
— Margaret J. Wheatley
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.
— Margaret J. Wheatley