Finding Our Way

"No problem can be solved from the same level of thinking that created it."
Albert Einstein

Our systems are made up of fallacious convictions that create leaders who use coercion, control and top-down approaches to managing. Instead of promoting and using methods that would encourage and support self-direction in the systems that we live within, controlling leader types choke the life out of the human spirit. Assumptions that undermine our societies, organizations and the workplace be it government or private business are long held beliefs that will take a long time to alter.

There is a belief that individuals and groups are motivated by fear and greed for the most part. Hierarchical organizations are still the best way to manage bureaucracies. Quantity in a fast paced efficient manner to measure value. Individuals work best when all the rules and regulations are in place.............no one needs to spend time thinking. It's already been covered. Sameness is best. Diversity should not be encouraged. It's best to have a unified, single thinking team that tows the line and works together like a well oiled machine.

So, the systems in our society that we are all dependent on; the ones we may even play a cog-type role in, are set up to find solutions, to protect the population, to effectively deal with the dilemmas.......................Are they working??

Globally.......................

• Katrina's aftermath
• Afghanistan
• Iraq
• Terrorism
• Crime in our Cities
• Homelessness
• Drug Addictions
• AIDs in Africa
• Sudan

Locally..................?

• Our Educational system and low test results of our children
• Highest Obesity rates in Canada
• The Brain drain..........Educated Maritimers having to leave this province for ports west.
• Poverty
• Lowest Welfare rates in the Country
• Crime and Drug Addictions
• Homelessness and Mental Health issues

Margaret Wheatley has written a book entitled, "Finding Our Way: Leadership in an Uncertain Time. In it, she tackles the questions related to the need to shift the paradigm........to get out from under the fallacies...........to help leaders learn how to lead through order and not control, through promoting creativity, interdependence AND independent thinking, through encouraging news ways of solving problems....................all the while respecting the human spirit.

It should be required reading for every politician, bureaucrat and CEO. But then again......if it was required reading, then I would have to use coercive tactics to make them read it!!! It would kind of defeat the purpose, now wouldn't it?

Instead, I will strongly recommend that you give it a little peak and see what she has to say.

Wheatley writes of the fact that we seem to be living in an "era of messes." She's got that right. This world needs a good shake up. We need a new vision.........one that supports and respects all members of the systems.........