"Aggression is the most common behavior used by many organizations, a nearly invisible medium that influences all decisions and actions"
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Aggression, in Wheatley’s hands, isn’t the cartoonish boss who yells in meetings; it’s the default operating system humming underneath “normal” work. Calling it “the most common behavior” is a deliberate provocation: she’s reframing what many organizations label as ambition, urgency, accountability, or “high standards” as something more primal and more corrosive. The real sting is “nearly invisible medium.” Aggression isn’t just an occasional tactic, it’s the atmosphere - the thing you breathe so constantly you stop noticing it until it starts shaping your lungs.
The subtext is about normalization. When aggression becomes the medium, every choice gets filtered through threat and control: who gets heard, what risks are punished, what truths are softened, what metrics get worshipped. Even “collaboration” can become competitive theater, a polite knife fight over credit and budget. Wheatley implies that aggression is self-replicating: people adapt to survive, then pass the habit along as culture, process, and “how we do things here.”
Context matters. Wheatley’s broader work pushes against mechanistic, command-and-control management, arguing for organizations as living systems built on relationships, meaning, and trust. Read in that light, the line is less a moral scold than a diagnostic. If aggression is the hidden medium, you won’t fix dysfunction with another training or reorg. You have to change the conditions: incentives, information flow, how conflict is held, what gets rewarded. She’s warning that the most dangerous forces at work aren’t the ones that announce themselves - they’re the ones that feel like common sense.
The subtext is about normalization. When aggression becomes the medium, every choice gets filtered through threat and control: who gets heard, what risks are punished, what truths are softened, what metrics get worshipped. Even “collaboration” can become competitive theater, a polite knife fight over credit and budget. Wheatley implies that aggression is self-replicating: people adapt to survive, then pass the habit along as culture, process, and “how we do things here.”
Context matters. Wheatley’s broader work pushes against mechanistic, command-and-control management, arguing for organizations as living systems built on relationships, meaning, and trust. Read in that light, the line is less a moral scold than a diagnostic. If aggression is the hidden medium, you won’t fix dysfunction with another training or reorg. You have to change the conditions: incentives, information flow, how conflict is held, what gets rewarded. She’s warning that the most dangerous forces at work aren’t the ones that announce themselves - they’re the ones that feel like common sense.
Quote Details
| Topic | Management |
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