156 Quotes by Margaret J. Wheatley

I’m sad to report that in the past few years, ever since uncertainty became our insistent 21st century companion, leadership has taken a great leap backwards to the familiar territory of command and control.

Perseverance is a choice. It’s not a simple, one-time choice, it’s a daily one. There’s never a final decision.

The two skills of the warrior are compassion and insight. Compassion is easy – it arises spontaneously from an open heart. Insight or discernment requires more skill. We have to choose our battles.

The future cannot be determined. It can only be experienced as it occurring. Life doesn’t know what it will be until it notices what it has become.

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!

For me, this is a familiar image – people in the organization ready and willing to do good work, wanting to contribute their ideas, ready to take responsibility, and leaders holding them back, insisting that they wait for decisions or instructions.

Thinking is the place where intelligent actions begin. We pause long enough to look more carefully at a situation, to see more of its character, to think about why it’s happening, to notice how it’s affecting us and others.

Whatever your personal beliefs and experiences, I invite you to consider that we need a new worldview to navigate this chaotic time. We cannot hope to make sense using our old maps. It won’t help to dust them off or reprint them in bold colors. The more we rely on them, the more disoriented we become. They cause us to focus on the wrong things and blind us to what’s significant. Using them, we will journey only to greater chaos.

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