With her first and seminal book, Leadership and the New Science, Meg Wheatley began developing a body of work around the links between organizational learning, innovative leadership, and such fields of thought as chaos theory, quantum physics, and neuroscience. Around the same time, she cofounded the Berkana Institute, a U.S.-based not-for-profit organization, dedicated to experimental efforts to build healthy communities around the world, often in highly impoverished areas with many serious challenges. During the next 15 years, Wheatley’s views on communities, and her experience with innovative management practice, have made her a central figure in a wide network of pioneers in organizational learning and change.
Recently she has produced two very different books. The first, Perseverance, is a small, personal book, a meditation on tenacity in the face of adversity. It is written explicitly for people dedicated to organizational change, who have suddenly found their work much more difficult, and who are looking for ways to sustain their effort and their peace of mind.
Walk Out Walk On, coauthored with Deborah Frieze, is subtitled A Learning Journey into Communities Daring to Live the Future Now. It describes seven innovative leadership and community-building initiatives: a self-organizing university in a highland Mexican village, where students build small-scale technologies such as bicycle-powered water pumps as a means of local empowerment; a Brazilian institute that sets up “30-day games” in which players come together to improve conditions in debilitated neighborhoods; a Zimbabwean village dedicated to self-sustaining agriculture in the midst of politically created famine; a remarkable network of people transforming healthcare, education, and social service institutions in Columbus, Ohio; and similarly groundbreaking initiatives in South Africa, India, and Greece. The organizers of all these endeavors walked out of restrictive or confining ways of thinking, and Wheatley argues that anyone can do the same — which might mean changing jobs in some cases, but always means shifting perspective within one’s current situation.
Booz & Company’s Art Kleiner recently interviewed Wheatley. She talks about how too many companies are reverting to fear-driven management, and how instead executives should hold to their values and build healthy corporate communities. As always, her thinking is clear and her views prescient and inspiring.
Source: Strategy + Business
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