"Even though worker capacity and motivation are destroyed when leaders choose power over productivity, it appears that bosses would rather be in control than have the organization work well"
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Wheatley’s line is a polite grenade tossed into the boardroom: it indicts a leadership culture that treats authority as the real product and organizational health as a nice-to-have. The phrasing matters. “Even though” sets up a truth everyone in an institution can feel in their bones - morale collapses, initiative evaporates, talent checks out - and then pivots to the darker punch: leaders often know the damage and do it anyway. That’s not incompetence; it’s preference.
Her sharpest move is the contrast between “power” and “productivity.” We like to pretend those goals naturally align, that hierarchy exists to coordinate work. Wheatley suggests the opposite: in many systems, control becomes self-justifying, a reward loop. If you equate being a leader with being obeyed, then an efficient, self-managing organization is a threat. Productivity can be outsourced, automated, or credited elsewhere; control is personal.
The subtext is psychological and structural. Psychologically, power soothes anxiety: if you can command, you don’t have to trust. Structurally, modern organizations frequently promote people for managing risk, not enabling work, and then measure them on compliance, not outcomes. In that environment, a motivated workforce is volatile - full of opinions, alternatives, and collective leverage.
Contextually, Wheatley’s broader project (systems thinking, “new science” approaches to organizations) treats workplaces as living networks, not machines. Her warning lands in an era of engagement surveys, performative “culture” initiatives, and surveillance-flavored management. It explains why so many reforms fail: you can’t motivational-poster your way out of a control addiction. If leaders want the organization to work well, they have to tolerate the one thing power fears most - shared agency.
Her sharpest move is the contrast between “power” and “productivity.” We like to pretend those goals naturally align, that hierarchy exists to coordinate work. Wheatley suggests the opposite: in many systems, control becomes self-justifying, a reward loop. If you equate being a leader with being obeyed, then an efficient, self-managing organization is a threat. Productivity can be outsourced, automated, or credited elsewhere; control is personal.
The subtext is psychological and structural. Psychologically, power soothes anxiety: if you can command, you don’t have to trust. Structurally, modern organizations frequently promote people for managing risk, not enabling work, and then measure them on compliance, not outcomes. In that environment, a motivated workforce is volatile - full of opinions, alternatives, and collective leverage.
Contextually, Wheatley’s broader project (systems thinking, “new science” approaches to organizations) treats workplaces as living networks, not machines. Her warning lands in an era of engagement surveys, performative “culture” initiatives, and surveillance-flavored management. It explains why so many reforms fail: you can’t motivational-poster your way out of a control addiction. If leaders want the organization to work well, they have to tolerate the one thing power fears most - shared agency.
Quote Details
| Topic | Leadership |
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