"In virtually every organization, regardless of mission and function, people are frustrated by problems that seem unsolvable"
About this Quote
A quiet indictment hides inside Wheatley's calm, managerial phrasing. "Virtually every organization" is an ice-cold universal: not just failing companies or dysfunctional bureaucracies, but nonprofits, schools, hospitals, churches, startups that swear they're different. By leveling the field, she denies the reader the comforting escape hatch of exceptionality. If everyone is stuck, the problem isn't a handful of bad actors; it's something structural.
The key move is in "problems that seem unsolvable". Wheatley doesn't claim the problems are unsolvable, only that they present themselves that way. That single word "seem" is doing persuasion work: it reframes paralysis as perception, not fate. The sentence names a common emotional reality (frustration) while subtly pushing the reader toward a systems view: the sensation of impossibility often comes from how organizations are designed to process information, distribute authority, and protect themselves from uncertainty. "Mission and function" signals a second subtext: noble purpose doesn't immunize you from bad patterns. In fact, high-stakes missions can worsen them, because moral urgency makes people cling harder to familiar routines.
Context matters: Wheatley wrote as a leading voice in organizational leadership influenced by complexity thinking and living-systems metaphors. This line reads like a doorway into that worldview. It's meant to disarm individual blame and invite a different question: if the organization keeps producing the same stuckness, what is it reliably organized to preserve? The promise is implicit: if "unsolvable" is an appearance created by the system, changing the conditions can change the possible.
The key move is in "problems that seem unsolvable". Wheatley doesn't claim the problems are unsolvable, only that they present themselves that way. That single word "seem" is doing persuasion work: it reframes paralysis as perception, not fate. The sentence names a common emotional reality (frustration) while subtly pushing the reader toward a systems view: the sensation of impossibility often comes from how organizations are designed to process information, distribute authority, and protect themselves from uncertainty. "Mission and function" signals a second subtext: noble purpose doesn't immunize you from bad patterns. In fact, high-stakes missions can worsen them, because moral urgency makes people cling harder to familiar routines.
Context matters: Wheatley wrote as a leading voice in organizational leadership influenced by complexity thinking and living-systems metaphors. This line reads like a doorway into that worldview. It's meant to disarm individual blame and invite a different question: if the organization keeps producing the same stuckness, what is it reliably organized to preserve? The promise is implicit: if "unsolvable" is an appearance created by the system, changing the conditions can change the possible.
Quote Details
| Topic | Leadership |
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