Partial book profile

Leadership and the New Science

A management thinker argues that the discoveries of quantum physics, self-organizing systems, and chaos theory offer a radically new and more hopeful way to lead organizations in a world of constant change.

The full book profile is not available yet.

Get the book →

What it’s about

Leadership and the New Science invites leaders to abandon the three-hundred-year-old Newtonian, machine-based worldview that still dominates how we design and manage organizations, and instead to embrace the worldview revealed by twentieth-century science. Drawing on quantum physics, chaos theory, fractal geometry, and the biology of self-organizing systems, Margaret Wheatley shows that order emerges naturally from relationships, information, and a few clear principles combined with great individual freedom—not from rigid control, detailed planning, and reductionist analysis. Through vivid metaphors and personal exploration, she reframes core organizational concerns—change, power, information, vision, participation, and disaster and terrorism response—as living-systems phenomena. The result is a paradigm-shifting case that organizations are living systems capable of adaptation and self-renewal, and that leaders who trust relationships, meaning, and self-organization create more resilient, creative, and humane institutions.

The through-line

Who it’s for: A leader, manager, or change practitioner who wants their organization to be adaptive, creative, resilient, and humane in a turbulent world.
The problem: Organizations feel lifeless, change efforts repeatedly fail, and rigid control structures cannot cope with constant flux and chaos. The leader feels exhausted, confused, anxious, and increasingly incompetent, drowning in change they are supposed to be managing.
The plan: Recognize and question the inherited Newtonian, machine worldview that shapes your organization.
Shift attention from parts and control to relationships, wholeness, and self-organizing processes.
Treat information as living nourishment—generate it, share it freely, and welcome disturbing information.
Establish a clear shared identity, vision, and values, then give people great freedom to self-reference and act.
Work with change by connecting the system to more of itself and by discovering shared meaning.
The payoff: Organizations become adaptive, creative, and resilient, achieving order without rigid control. · Leaders work with less effort and stress, energized by curiosity, wonder, and participation. · People contribute their full creativity, find meaning in their work, and self-organize to accomplish what matters.

See our guide

Related profiles we’ve built

Additional reading

The Turning Point · Fritjof Capra
This is the book Wheatley credits with starting her on her journey, providing her first glimpse of the new worldview emerging from quantum physics and its societal implications.
Order Out of Chaos · Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers
This is the source for the book's core concepts of self-organizing systems, dissipative structures, and the role of disequilibrium in creating new order.
Wholeness and the Implicate Order · David Bohm
Provides the profound concept of an 'unbroken wholeness' and an 'implicate order' that underlies our fragmented surface reality, supporting Wheatley's call to see systems as a whole.
Chaos: Making a New Science · James Gleick
The foundational popular text on chaos theory, providing the background for Wheatley's discussion of strange attractors, fractals, and the relationship between order and chaos.
The Self-Organizing Universe · Erich Jantsch
A key source for understanding how evolution is a process of self-transcendence and how living systems create order through freedom and dynamic connectedness.

Featured in these guides

Understand Human Behavior From The Foundational Canon →Cited source
The Behavioral Science Underneath It All →Pole in “Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order”
Build A People Analytics Function →Pole in “Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order”
Deal With Burnout, Stress And Turnover →Cited source
Make A Decision Your Biases Won't Wreck →Pole in “Order Emerges Or Is Engineered”
Change A Behaviour That Won't Budge →Pole in “Order Emerges Or Is Engineered”
Influence People Without Manipulating Them →Pole in “Order Emerges Or Is Engineered”
Motivate People Without Bribing Them →Pole in “Order Emerges Or Is Engineered”
Design The Organization And Change It →Pole in “Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order”
Study People And Organizations With Scientific Rigor →Pole in “Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order”
Build A Team People Speak Up In →Pole in “Order Emerges Or Is Engineered”
Do Research That Holds Up →Pole in “Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order”
Design Surveys People Answer Honestly →Pole in “Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order”
Understand What Drives Individual Performance →Pole in “Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order”