Time & Perspective Quote by Margaret J. Wheatley

Uncertainty, Wheatley suggests, doesn’t just rattle institutions; it exposes their reflexes. Her “sad to report” lands like a field note from someone who’s watched the same pattern repeat: when the world gets volatile, leaders don’t become bolder or more imaginative - they become smaller. They retreat to “familiar territory,” a phrase that quietly indicts command-and-control as less a strategy than a comfort object.

The line works because it reframes the last decade’s leadership failures as emotional, not merely managerial. “Insistent 21st century companion” personifies uncertainty as something that won’t be negotiated away with better dashboards or a punchier mission statement. It’s always in the room. The subtext: if uncertainty is permanent, then “control” is a fantasy - and the harder leadership clings to it, the more brittle organizations become.

Wheatley is also making a cultural diagnosis. In the shadow of financial crises, pandemics, political polarization, AI disruption, and perpetual “urgent” news cycles, leaders are rewarded for looking decisive, even when decisiveness is theater. Command-and-control performs competence: clear orders, tight metrics, fewer questions. But it often erases the very capacities that complex times demand: distributed intelligence, trust, local adaptation, moral courage.

Calling it a “great leap backwards” flips progress-talk on its head. Modern leadership, she implies, isn’t about upgraded authority; it’s about upgrading relationships. The tragedy isn’t that we lack tools. It’s that we keep choosing the ones that feel safest when safety is exactly what the era can’t promise.