Margaret Wheatley is an internationally acclaimed speaker and writer and
President Emerita of the Berkana Institute. She has been an organizational
consultant and researcher since 1973 and a dedicated global citizen since her
youth. Her first work was as a public school teacher and urban education
administrator in New York, and a Peace Corps volunteer in Korea. She also has
been Associate Professor of Management at the Marriott School of Management,
Brigham Young University, and Cambridge College, Massachusetts.
For the past decade, she has been working with an unusually broad variety of
organizations on all continents. Her clients and audiences range from the head
of the U.S. Army to twelve year old Girl Scouts, from CEOs to small town
ministers. This diversity includes large corporations, government agencies,
healthcare institutions, foundations, public schools, colleges, major church
denominations, the armed forces, professional associations, and monasteries.
All of these organizations are wrestling with a common dilemma - how to
maintain their integrity and effectiveness as they cope with the relentless
upheavals and rapid shifts of these chaotic times. But there is also another
similarity: a common human desire to live together more harmoniously, more
humanely.
The Berkana Institute is a global charitable leadership foundation begun in
1991, dedicated to serving life-affirming leaders. Berkana has always
experimented with the new ideas, processes, and structures that represent the
future of organizing. The Institute has worked in dozens of countries, many of
them in the third world, supporting local leaders to create positive change in
their communities, villages, and organizations. Berkana has discovered that
the world is blessed with tens of thousands of these courageous leaders. They
are young and old, in all countries, working in all types of organizations and
communities.
She has served in a formal advisory capacity for leadership programs in
England, Croatia, Denmark, Australia and the United States and, through her
work in Berkana, with leadership initiatives in India, Senegal, Zimbabwe and
South Africa.
Meg's path-breaking book, Leadership and the New Science was first
published in 1992, and has been translated into 17 languages. This book is
credited with establishing a fundamentally new approach to how we think about
organizations. It is a standard text in many leadership programs, and has won
notable awards, including "Best Management book of 1992" in Industry Week, Top
Ten Business Books of the 1990s in CIO Magazine, and Top Ten Business Books of
all time by Xerox Corporation. A new edition was published in 1999,
significantly revised, updated and expanded. The video of Leadership and the
New Science, produced by CRM films, has also won several film awards.
A Simpler Way, co-authored with Myron Rogers (1996), uses photos, poetry and
prose to explore the question: How would we organize human endeavor differently
if we understood how Life organizes?
Turning To One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the
Future (2002), proposes that it is the simple, familiar act of
conversation that offers the most hope for changing the world. This book is
being widely used by communities, schools, religious organizations and social
change efforts.
Her newest book is Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time
(2005), Finding Our Way is a collection of her practice-focused
articles, where Meg applies the themes addressed throughout her career to
detail the organizational and personal practices and behaviors that bring them
to life.
She writes frequently for professional journals and magazines. Meg received
her doctorate from Harvard University's program in dministration, Planning and
Social Policy. She holds an M.A. in Communications and Systems Thinking from
New York University, and has also been a research associate at Yale University.
She has received several awards and honorary doctorates. The American Society
for Training and Development (ASTD) has honored her with the title "a living
legend."
In May 2003, she received the highest award given by ASTD, the
"Distinguished Contribution to Workplace Learning and Performance." The
citation for this award included this description: "Meg Wheatley gave the world
a new way of thinking about organizations with her revolutionary application of
the natural sciences to business management. Her concepts have traveled across
national boundaries and through all sectors. Her ideas have found welcome
homes in the military, not-for-profit organizations, public schools, and
churches as well as in corporations. Through the Berkana Institute, a
charitable foundation which she started in Provo, Utah, Wheatley is supporting
the development of local leaders in over 40 countries to foster societies that
tap and evoke the best of human capability. Through her interdisciplinary
curiosity, Meg Wheatley provides new insights into the nature of how people
interact and inspires us to build better organizations and better societies
across the globe".
