Margaret J. Wheatley Quotes

There are limits to what reorganization and reform can do.

We’ve already decided to change. The question is: In which direction do we change, and from where do we start?

You always have years when you go through transition and the side needs to be rebuilt. Or you have changes in terms of managers.

It's generally much easier to kill an organization than to change it substantially.

Any company has got to reinvent itself again and again.

Reorganization to me is shuffling boxes, moving boxes around. Transformation means that you're really fundamentally changing the way the organization thinks, the way it responds, the way it leads. It's a lot more than just playing with boxes.

In any business, you have to evolve.

In any business that grows big on one business model, transitions can throw everything in the air.

Well, changes have been made. The question is whether we've done enough by way of change.

There was a point in time when I was in dire need of changing the way the model agency was working.

Sometimes, in order to be successful, a business must reset.

You know, in a workplace, when you shrink the size of a workforce, there is pain there. But there is no question: we have a government that we can no longer afford. That is the cold, hard fact. So we have to make this more efficient. We have to sunset programs that no longer work. We have to eliminate waste and fraud. We must do this.

Organizational changes to fix the problems usually create new vulnerabilities in the process of fixing the old ones.

If you don’t actively reform, you will passively get reformed.

The consolidation that we started in 2009 was clearly the requirement of that time.

I think there are several departments we could completely get rid of, and we wouldn't miss it.

Culture change means we will do things differently.

Most of the clubs I have had, they have been in a precarious situation when I have taken over and I have had to change it, even going back to Scarborough and all that.

When a company makes a fundamental change, it is inevitable that some people will leave.

I'm not going to be the one who turns out the last lights of the last conglomerate. So we need to reinvent ourselves all the time.

You have to seed internal disruptors. You need sources of internal disruption. They don't guarantee your survival, but you have got to try.

We've got to change the way we do things.

When you're transitioning, and you're trying to develop a better brand of soccer, at some point, you have to step backward before you step forward.

I think death is the most wonderful invention of life. It purges the system of these old models that are obsolete.

Law Number XXVIII: It is better to be the reorganizer than the reorganizee.