Great Throughts Treasury

"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."

"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."

"It's not differences that divide us. It's our judgments about each other that do."

"When we seek for connection, we restore the world to wholeness. Our seemingly separate lives become meaningful as we discover how truly necessary we are to each other."

"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."

"There are many benefits to this process of listening. The first is that good listeners are created as people feel listened to. Listening is a reciprocal process - we become more attentive to others if they have attended to us."

"Despite current ads and slogans, the world doesn't change one person at a time. It changes when networks of relationships form among people who share a common cause and vision of what's possible. This is good news for those of us intent on creating a positive future. Rather than worry about critical mass, our work is to foster critical connections. We don't need to convince large numbers of people to change; instead, we need to connect with kindred spirits. Through these relationships, we will develop the new knowledge, practices, courage and commitment that lead to broad-based change."

"Too many problem-solving sessions become battlegrounds where decisions are made based on power rather than intelligence."

"Someone who is willing to step forward and help is much more courageous than someone who is merely fulfilling the role."

"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."

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

"The things we fear most in organizations -- fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances -- are the primary sources of creativity."

"Destroying is a necessary function in life. Everything has its season, and all things eventually lose their effectiveness and die."

"Listening is such a simple act. It requires us to be present, and that takes practice, but we don't have to do anything else. We don't have to advise, or coach, or sound wise. We just have to be willing to sit there and listen. "

"We are, always, poets, exploring possibilities of meaning in a world which is also all the time exploring possibilities."

"The future cannot be determined. I can only be experienced as it is occurring. Life doesn't know what it will be until it notices what it has become."

"Aggression is inherently destructive of relationships. People and ideologies are pitted against each other, believing that in order to survive, they must destroy the opposition."

"Aggression only moves in one direction - it creates more aggression."

"And time for reflection with colleagues is for me a lifesaver; it is not just a nice thing to do if you have the time. It is the only way you can survive."

"Aggression is the most common behavior used by many organizations, a nearly invisible medium that influences all decisions and actions."

"Determination, energy, and courage appear spontaneously when we care deeply about something. We take risks that are unimaginable in any other context."

"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."

"At the same time ? and this is the serendipity of life ? I had a friend and educator whom I had worked with for many years who said casually one day "Meg, if you're interested in systems thinking, you should be reading quantum physics." He didn't know where I was in my despair over my professional failings. But I said, "Okay, give me a book list." He gave me ten titles. I read eight of those and I was off. I always credit him with that casual, helpful comment that changed my life."

"Circles create soothing space, where even reticent people can realize that their voice is welcome."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"For eons, humans have struggled to find less destructive ways of living together."

"For us, someone who is willing to step forward and help is much more courageous than someone who is merely fulfilling the role."

"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."

"Hopelessness has surprised me with patience."

"I didn't have an interest in the new science. I had a realization that in my profession ? which was vaguely labeled "organizational change," "organizational development," or "management consulting" in general ? none of us knew how organizations change. When I talked to other consultants, I noticed that if we had an organizational change effort that was successful, it felt like a miracle to us. I realized with a great start one day that we weren't even geared up for success. It didn't matter that we didn't know how to change organizations. We were all professionals who didn't hope to achieve what we were selling or suggesting to clients. The field was really moribund."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"I think it is quite dangerous for an organization 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."

"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."

"I believe that the capacity that any organization needs is for leadership to appear anywhere it is needed, when it is needed."

"If vision is a field, think about what we could do differently to create one. We would do our best to get it permeating through the entire organization so that we could take advantage of its formative properties. All employees, in any part of the company, who bumped up against the field, would be influenced by it. Their behavior could be shaped as a result of ?field meetings?, where their energy would link with the fields form to create behavior congruent with the organizations goals. In the absence of that field, in areas of the organization that hadn?t been reached, we could hold no expectation of desired behaviors. If the field hadn?t extended into that space, there would be nothing there to help behaviors materialize, no invisible geometry working on our behalf"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"In this present culture, we need to find the means to work and live together with less aggression if we are to resolve the serious problems that afflict and impede us."

"I've wanted to see beyond the Western, mechanical view of the world and see what else might appear when the lens was changed."

"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."

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

"Listening moves us closer, it helps us become more whole, more healthy, more holy. Not listening creates fragmentation, and fragmentation is the root of all suffering."

"In virtually every organization, regardless of mission and function, people are frustrated by problems that seem unsolvable."

"Most people associate command and control leadership with the military."

"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."