Like Any Living System, Every Organization Co-evolves Meg Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers

Like any living system, every organization co-evolves.

Its character and capabilities emerge as it plays with possibilities.

It messes about with others until a workable system appears.

This system has abilities and beliefs no one planned.

It accomplishes work in ways no one designed.

It has relationships no one mandated.

While we worry about designs and structures, tweak procedures and rules, insist on compliance and control, we never succeed in creating an organization by these activities.

Organization wants to happen.

Human organizations emerge from processes that can be comprehended but never controlled.

Credit: Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers