Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time

by Margaret J. Wheatley

Book Overview

For years, Margaret Wheatley has written eloquently about humanizing our organizations and helping people to work together more effectively and compassionately. She has shown how breakthroughs in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1576753174
• ISBN13: 9781576753170
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 1.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.8" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Alarmingly Inspirational

You know those times when you meet someone for the first time yet the experience is like you have known them all your life. This book was like that for me. Much of what I read felt like reacquainting myself with what I already new, but had forgotten, like some life-long fog of amnesia slowly clearing. Is the book too `touchy-feely' (as some have suggested)? decide for yourself. Frankly, I don't care. All I can say is I applied some of the principles in this book immediately with a team for whom I am responsible. It works. In one meeting (no bull) we turned around two years of pain, suffering and anguish. Is there still work to be done? Sure. Do we know all the answers? Gee, we don't even know what all the questions are. One thing we are sure about, we will find our way through talking, community and shared responsibility. We might even have fun doing it. Thanks Margaret.

Poetic Humanist Counterpart to Her "Serious" Book

I am a little concerned by some of the negative commentary on this book being too "touchy feely." That is generally a sign that it has touched a nerve among "macho shit" types who think that elegance of thought and open affection for humanity is for gays and children. "Humanness" is for all of us, and if cannot cry, you cannot be human. Feelings must, as E. O. Wilson and others have documented so well, be fully factored into the whole of the human experience. This is the poetic humanist counterpart book, a series of essays from the past from before the author was recognized as one of the most brilliant leadership gurus in the English-language. I certainly do recommend that her "serious" book, "Leadership and the New Science," be read first, and then this one. The author has done a superb job of taking older essays and organizing them, putting them in context, to tell a new story. This book of essays is a new book for having been re-created in the aftermath of the success of "Leadership and the New Science," and I am choosing to give this book out to the audience of a gala leadership dinner in Washington, D.C., rather than the first book. The author stresses that the old story of organization is the "machine" model, where people control and domination are the management paradigm, and resistance to change is seen as obstinance rather than coherent humanist understanding of the badness of the imposed conditions. The new story, by contrast, sees that everything is connected--as the author brilliantly puts it in her preface, "Independence is a political concept, not a biological concept." She focuses on two fundamentals: the need for all mankind to be free to experiment, and in experimenting, create unlimited diversity; and the need to enhance and expand relationships with others as part of that diversity and sustainable mutually beneficial wealth creation. Translating that into meaning for organizational leaders, she stresses self-organization, listening, embracing all inputs, and striving to create self-identity, information-sharing, and relationships that in turn generate discovery, sharing, and fulfillment. This is not touchy-feely, this is common sense restored to the conversation of mankind. The other important theme in this book is the paradox of community, which sets the stage for her rather bleak conclusions about America facing an abyss. She spends a lot of time examining how the web and nations are separating clusters of individuals, isolating groups, rather than nurturing a broadening of the communal ethos, what Paul Goodman understood so well in the 1980's as the need for "communitas" from neighborhood to globe. The author is one hundred per cent on the money when she says, in a notional conversation with America's teen-agers, "We haven't taught you well about honor, sustainability, community, or compassion. We failed to show you how to be wise stewards of the earth, how to care for one another, how to resolve conflicts pe

How to get things according to Spirit

This is an excellent book on how to organize for all leaving out no one. I was required to read it for a strategic planning meeting for a faith-based organization. I was so impressed with the contents, I use it in my UCBE class on strategic planning for FM's to provide contrast and comparison in my class.

To a Kinder Gentler Business World

As the sub-title says, these are uncertain times. The leadership role Dr. Wheatley advocates is a kindler, gentler form of management. Based on her background as a Peace Corps volounteer in Korea and a public school teacher in New York. As she sas, there is a simpler, finer way to organize human endeavor. The normal managment techniques of control and imposition of will do not produce an organization working together to learn, develop, adapt to the changing future. She says that management should follow the organization that naturally develops for people going through life. As she puts it, "Goodbye Command and Control." I can only wish that more of the managers I've worked for in the past followed her theories. I try. Sometimes I'm successful, and it works.

Continuing the Conversation

Listening to Meg Wheatley is always worth while and her newest book is no exception. I find myself stoppng frequently to reflect on her words, poetry and photography, thinking about how they connect with my world and experiences. It takes a bit longer this way but the payoff is immense. In a time of deep division and fear, Meg offers us a full measure of hope that nourishes the spirit and encourages me to put away my doubts, pick up my load and continue walking my chosen path. She is a voice of wisdom in a time that desperately needs wise encouragement. If you're already a fan, you'll enjoy this book ... if you haven't yet discovered Meg's gentle voice, I highly encourage you to dive in!