Quote

In this new world, you and I make it up as we go along, not because we lack expertise or planning skills, but because that is the nature of reality. Reality changes shape and meaning because of our activity. And it is constantly new. We are required to be there, as active participants. It can't happen without us and nobody can do it for us.

Margaret J. Wheatley

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Margaret J. Wheatley
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: January 1
Business Theorist
Writer
Reality
Meaning
Management
Without
Along
Lack
Make
Nobody
Active
World
Learning
Constantly
Participants
Happen
Shapes
Expertise
Knowledge
Changes
Required
Nature
Skills
Planning
Happens
Activity
Shape

More quotes by Margaret J. Wheatley

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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 J. Wheatley
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For eons, humans have struggled to find less destructive ways of living together.
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When error holds so much power, play disappears. Creativity ceases.
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Aggression is the most common behavior used by many organizations, a nearly invisible medium that influences all decisions and actions.
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Life is creative. It makes it up as it goes along.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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One of the easiest human acts is also the most healing. Listening to someone. Simply listening. Not advising or coaching, but silently and fully listening.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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This is a world of process, not a world of things.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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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
Margaret J. Wheatley
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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.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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Thinking is always dangerous to the status quo. [...] The moment you start thinking, you'll want to change something.
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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
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Listening is a reciprocal process - we become more attentive to others if they have attended to us.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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In our daily life, we encounter people we are angry, deceitful, intent only on satisfying ere is so their own needs. There is so much anger, distrust, greed, and pettiness that we are losing our capacity to work well together.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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Organizations are now confronted with two sources of change: the traditional type that is initiated and managed and external changes over which no one has control.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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A leader is one who... Has more faith in people than they do, and . . . who holds opportunities open long enough for their competence to re-emerge.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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They have eliminated rigidity, both physical and psychological, in order to support more fluid processes whereby temporary teams are created to deal with specific and ever-changing needs. They have simplified roles into minimal categories they have knocked down walls and created workplaces where people, ideas, and information circulate freely.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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we can't be creative if we refuse to be confused. Change always starts with confusion cherished interpretations must dissolve to make way for what's new. Great ideas and inventions miraculously appear in the space of not knowing.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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Many of us have created lives that give very little support for experimentation. We believe that answers already exist out there, independent of us. What if we invested more time and attention to our own experimentation? We could focus our efforts on discovering solutions that work uniquely for us.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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For example, I was discussing the use of email and how impersonal it can be, how people will now email someone across the room rather than go and talk to them. But I don't think this is laziness, I think it is a conscious decision people are making to save time.
Margaret J. Wheatley