Themes from Articles by Margaret Wheatley

Goodbye , Command and Control (Self Organization as against tight control : Organizations are not machines . Productivity would always be greater when people feel involved and directly responsible in any given task . But leaders do not think so . And yet , it is only in freedom that people can co-operate for the achievement of the common good , satisfying the worker and reaching the goals of the leader . However , no organization can enjoy this level of success without trust and confidence of the leader in his team . Effective communication of the organization 's vision would then

serve as guide for the changes that innovations bring quite naturally . Leaders must give people information richly and trust them to be responsible . And usually , people will . But then , self organization never occurs over-night

The destructive impact of command and control (How is Your Leadership Changing

Leadership fails in its primary purpose when it resorts to the maneuvering of people . This successfully takes the best outcomes beyond the reach of the organization as workers ' enthusiasm is snuffed out . And their creativity is bargained away for the leader 's unbridled crave for power . Every leader must watch against this pitfall as it destroys trust , zaps vitality out of him and leaves a legacy of failure . For the demands of today will succumb best only to collective efforts

How Large-Scale Change Really Happens - Working With Emergence Large-scale change can happen when people of a common mind work together consciously - emergence . Outside this , not even the best efforts at change would be meaningful . Indeed , the opposite could be the outcome as is the case with the No Child Left Behind ' policy which emerged out of the need to salvage American education from its mammoth challenges , resulting in the Culture of High-Stakes Testing ' as against the Culture of Achievement for All ' it was intended to create . Reversing the woes of the NCLB would require the leaders encouraging and cross-linking local efforts that back the educational future we want , and commitment to co-operation among the locals as elaborately typified by the Communities of Practice . COfPs hold the key to the educational future of America

Journeying to a New World : To live and lead happily here , our world view must not be too machine-like . Chaos is one great teacher of this lesson that life would not always be straight . This is why we must pick our ways gently through as these periods precede the birth of improved world views . Finally , we must hold each other up and appreciate the role chaos has come to play in our lives

Leadership Lessons for The Real World : The real world is one of chaos seeking in a continuous cycle driven by relationships existing among individuals . New science presents a better response to disasters than organized bureaucracies as was evident in Katrina and Oklahoma simply because people are allowed to take initiatives and responsibilities

When Change is Out of Our Control : Uncertain Times

many events , both traditional and external are beyond our control and they affect us...