Ron and Ed were honored to interview Margaret Wheatley

A Bit More About Margaret:
Margaret Wheatley has worked globally with many different roles a speaker, teacher, community worker, consultant, advisor, and formal leader. From these deep and varied experiences, she has developed the unshakable conviction that leaders must learn how to evoke people's inherent generosity, creativity and need for community. As the world tears us apart, sane leadership, on behalf of the human spirit is the only way forward. She's the author of nine books, including the classic Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World, Third Edition (2006). Her newest book, in 2017, is Who Do We Choose To Be?: Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity?

Ed’s Questions: Segment One

First question to you Margaret, how are you holding up personally with regard to the whole COVID situation that we're going through.
Yes, just this morning I was talking with my mentor, Howard Hanson. And he told me a story about his mother-in-law who is turning 100 next week. And what a great story and I wished him well, and her husband had passed 25 years ago, and he was saying that she could have gone down the path of being depressed about it. Instead, she embraced her new community. She became active in her bridge club and the place where she lived, and I was thinking, I wonder what someone going through that same situation today as his mother-in-law did, would she be able to do that with everything that's happened to us regarding COVID? So what's been your thinking about the impact of COVID, from an ability to build a strong community standpoint?
So it is the people stepping up at this time willing to put themselves on the line with regard to being willing to get on Skype calls or Zoom calls as opposed to resisting that technology?
One quote I heard was, what are we going to do when we go back to live meetings and can't mute all?
Which leads me into the next question that I wanted to ask you. And I mentioned before we started recording that I've been a reader of your books for a couple of decades now. I have physical copies of some of your books as opposed to just Kindle versions. And it was a great treat to go back and re-read some of the works that I had encountered a dozen years ago or more. And one of them was your book A Simpler Way. And the opening in that book reminded me a little bit of Yuval Levin’s new book, which is called A Time to Build, where he's talking about the need to refirm up our institutions, but in a more positive way, because he says they've gone from being formative of the people in them to just being platforms that other people use, and it even allows others who cracked the code to come in. And when you think about what's happened with our political parties, you know, both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders to a certain extent were outside of the institutions that they rose up in because they just use them as platforms, rather than being shaped by them, or helping to shape them. Thoughts on that?

Ron’s Questions: Segment Two

Welcome back, everybody. We're here with Margaret Wheatley, the author of, among other books, Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World. It's out in its third edition as of 2006. Meg that was the first book of yours I read in 1996 or 1997. Because I was introduced to it in an article from an author who I really admired, he was writing about change. And he quoted you and I thought what he quoted was deeply profound. So I ran out and got your book, and it is profound. And I can imagine because you had a business audience somewhat in mind, I can just imagine some people going, “Well, what am I supposed to do Monday morning?” We're so used to checklists and just led by the nose. Did you ever get that type of feedback?
I love how you weave in that there's three different areas of science that you are intrigued by: quantum physics, self-organizing systems, and chaos theory. You do such a great job of explaining those, especially to a layman like me. And every one of those that you discuss is profound. But you quote, when it comes to systems thinking, the ancient Sufi teaching that captures the shift and focus of this idea that “you think because you understand one, you must understand two, because one and one makes two, but you must also understand ‘and.’”
Do you think this COVID crisis is—and this you explained really well from chaos theory—that you have to go through a period of chaos to emerge in a new way. Do you think this crisis could be that point of chaos?
Now, in the book you talked about what biology has taught you, and it taught you that you can have faith in the system. If a system is suffering, this indicates that lacks sufficient access to itself. It could be lacking information or it might have lost clarity about who it is, trouble with relationships. Can you explain that? Because I just think that is so profound, it lacks sufficient access to itself?

Ed’s Questions: Segment Three

Back with Margaret Wheatley on The Soul of Enterprise and Margaret during our break one of the things that you mentioned to us is that you really wanted to get an opportunity to address our audience and be present to give them a talk about being leaders as leaders, and I thought that was a really interesting turn of phrase. What do you mean by that, enlighten us?
Riffing off of Milton Friedman, he said something in an economic context but when you were talking it reminded me of this quote, he said, “Our job is to keep these ideas around, so that when the impossible becomes the inevitable, the ideas are still around.”
So, it's funny, even before we started recording today, we were talking about your books and I said I had them and they were always beautifully done with photo essays, and poetry. Talk a little bit, we have a few minutes before our break, and now I see why you haven't released a new book but instead have posted online Warriors for the Human Spirit, a song line, a guided journey by voice and sound. So talk a little bit about that offering that you've made with Jerry Granelli, is that correct?
The last thing I wanted to talk with you a little bit about before Ron takes us home to the top of the hour is, and I've signed up for this next week, you're starting a thing called leadership for a changing world, a program that's being offered. Tell us a little about what you're going to be talking about.
Margaret, I am going to say goodbye to you now because Ron is going take you the last 15 minutes. But I want to thank you so much for being a guest. This has been a real thrill to meet one of my heroes from a business author standpoint. So thanks so much for being on the show.

Ron’s Questions: Segment Four

Welcome back, everybody. We're here with Margaret Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World. Meg I have to tell you; you had a section in the book, I forget the chapter, but you talked about Frederick Taylor and Frank Gilbreth. And you said, “I still find this early literature frightening to read.” You'll be happy to know that our very first show on this program was bashing Frederick Taylor (Episode #1). [Meg: Yeah, but he's alive and well]. He is. And that was my question, we call it the cult of efficiency but why? Why is his allure so powerful
We've created organizations that are less creative and adaptable then the people inside of them. Gary Hamel, his new book, Humanocracy is just a screed against bureaucracy, and how we need to kill it. And he gives lots of examples of companies that have. Do you see us overcoming bureaucracy?
We've done a few shows on organizational change management and you quote in your book studies that show 75% of these initiatives fail, or at least don't live up to the people's expectations.
You wrote, and I just thought this was lovely. You said, “I was well trained to create things, plans, events, measures, programs. I invested more than half my life and trying to make the world conform to what I thought was best for it. It's not easy to give up the role of master creator and move into the dance of life.”
Margaret, it has been an honor to chat with you. I just I love the book. Highly recommend that everybody read Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World, and make sure you get the third edition. It's absolutely profound. You'll think your way through this book. It'll give you new words to use, new models to think about, and new ways to see the world. It's had a profound impact on me, Meg, thank you so much for being on The Soul of Enterprise.

Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

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Bonus episode 109 - COVID Update, Mulan, and Subscrptions. Here are a few stories we discussed during this episode: