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.

— Margaret Wheatley

Leadership is always dependent upon the context, but the context is established by the relationships.

— 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.

— 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?

— 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.

— Margaret Wheatley

Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone.

— Margaret Wheatley

There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.

— Margaret Wheatley

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.

— Margaret Wheatley

Whatever life we have experienced, if we can tell our story to someone who listens, we find it easier to deal with our circumstances.

— 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.

— 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.

— Margaret Wheatley

When we can lay down our fear and anger and choose responses other than aggression, we create the conditions for bringing out the best in us humans.

— Margaret Wheatley

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.

— Margaret Wheatley

In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions.

— Margaret Wheatley

Change always involves a dark night when everything falls apart. Yet if this period of dissolution is used to create new meaning, then chaos ends and new order emerges.

— Margaret Wheatley

To name is to make visible.

— 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.

— 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.

— Margaret Wheatley