Margaret J. Wheatley Quotes

There's a certain amount of disorder that has to be reorganized.

I am still making order out of chaos by reinvention.

We do as much harm holding onto programs and people past their natural life span as we do when we employ massive organizational air strikes. However, destroying comes at the end of life's cycle, not as a first response.

Disorder brings about order.

All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.

Every organization has to prepare for the abandonment of everything it does.

To survive and succeed, every organization will have to turn itself into a change agent

It is easy to turn a scooter, but not a train with 40 bogeys. This is such a big country, changes are constant and widespread.

Things fall apart, so they can fall together at a higher level of order.

Chaos demands to be recognized and experienced before letting itself be converted into a new order.

Living systems are never in equilibrium. They are inherently unstable. They may seem stable, but they’re not. Everything is moving and changing. In a sense, everything is on the edge of collapse.

Any time there is change, there is opportunity. So it is paramount that an organization get energized rather than paralyzed.

Nature is orderly. That which appears to be chaotic in nature is only a more complex kind of order.

Nature doesn't move in a straight line, and as part of nature, neither do we.

When the amount of change externally exceeds the amount of change internally, the end is in sight.

Disorder can play a critical role in giving birth to new, higher forms of order.

The large organization has to learn to innovate, or it won't survive.

I think change is always a good thing. Change keeps things moving.

The universe is a trillion, trillion threads moving in seemingly unrelated directions. Yet when you look at them together, they create a remarkable tapestry.

And can anything else that is useful be accomplished without change? Do you not see then that for yourself also to change is just the same, and equally necessary for the universal nature?

Orderliness by itself is not sufficient to account for the nature of organized systems in general or for those created by man in particular. Mere orderliness leads to increasing impoverishment and finally to the lowest possible level of structure, no longer clearly distinguishable from chaos, which is the absence of order. A counterprinciple is needed, to which orderliness is secondary. It must supply what is to be ordered.

To change a team you must change their comfort zone.

Life is about moving, it’s about change. And when things stop doing that they’re dead.

All new learning looks at first like chaos.

The opportunity ahead for Microsoft is vast, but to seize it, we must focus clearly, move faster and continue to transform. A big part of my job is to accelerate our ability to bring innovative products to our customers more quickly.