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Thinking is always dangerous to the status quo. [...] The moment you start thinking, you'll want to change something.

Margaret J. Wheatley

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Margaret J. Wheatley
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: January 1
Business Theorist
Writer
Start
Moment
Moments
Change
Something
Always
Thinking
Status
Dangerous

More quotes by Margaret J. Wheatley

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No longer in a relational universe, can we study anything as separate from ourselves. Our acts of observation are part of the process that brings forth the manifestation of what we are observing.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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Disorder can play a critical role in giving birth to new, higher forms of order.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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Power is the capacity to generate relationships.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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Power in organizations is the capacity generated by relationships. It is an energy that comes into existence through relationships.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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Let's just keep asking ourselves this question: 'Is what I'm about to do strengthening the web of connections, or is it weakening it?'
Margaret J. Wheatley
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I think we have to notice that the business processes we use right now for thinking and planning and budgeting and strategy are all delivered on very tight agendas.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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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.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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I think a major act of leadership right now, call it a radical act, is to create the places and processes so people can actually learn together, using our experiences
Margaret J. Wheatley
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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 J. Wheatley
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Hopelessness has surprised me with patience.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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Aggression is the most common behavior used by many organizations, a nearly invisible medium that influences all decisions and actions.
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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A world based on machine images is a world filled with boundaries. In a machine, every piece knows its place.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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We could focus our efforts on discovering solutions that work uniquely for us.
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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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
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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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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There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.
Margaret J. Wheatley
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Surrendering to life offers some wonderful realizations. We learn we're capable of being in this dance, of working with whatever happens. We learn to trust ourselves and then others and, gradually, we learn that life itself can be trusted.
Margaret J. Wheatley