Michael Schreiber
@schreibrations
Michael Schreiber
When there’s no place for the scalpel, words are the surgeon’s only tool.
Paul Kalanithi • When Breath Becomes Air
I’ve taken a different tack. After years of experimenting, I discovered that the more I tried to exert power directly, the less powerful I became. I learned to dial back my ego and distribute power as widely as possible without surrendering final authority. Paradoxically, this approach strengthened my effectiveness because it freed me to focus on
... See morePhil Jackson • Eleven Rings
I realized that providing expertise is antithetical to cultivating agency, and I began seeking new ways to engage my client organizations. For example, I stopped offering organizational models and started emphasizing the use of living systems frameworks, which provide the structure for thinking but require participants to supply the content and do
... See moreCarol Sanford • No More Gold Stars: Regenerating Capacity to Think for Ourselves
The crises of the modern world verify what Indigenous cultures have always known: that all phenomena are inextricably interconnected.
What Indigenous Wisdom Can Teach Us About Economics
I could see that the Wasichus did not care for each other the way our people did before the nation’s hoop was broken. They would take everything from each other if they could, and so there were some who had more of everything than they could use, while crowds of people had nothing at all and maybe were starving. They had forgotten that the earth
... See moreJohn G. Neihardt • Black Elk Speaks
Magical leverage points are not easily accessible, even if we know where they are and which direction to push on them. There are no cheap tickets to mastery. You have to work hard at it, whether that means rigorously analyzing a system or rigorously casting off your own paradigms and throwing yourself into the humility of Not Knowing. In the end,... See more
donellameadows.org • Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System
You can't make this point better than Leslie Lamport did:
If you're thinking without writing, you only think you're thinking.
Paul Graham • Writes and Write-Nots
without the grand shows and displays, the burning of incense and the lighting of forty million candles and all of the Gregorian chants or the rock and roll or whatever you choose, without any of it—in the silent temple of your heart, you make a simple choice: In this moment, I am going to discover what it means to teach only Love.