Leadership and the New Science

What it’s about

Leadership and the New Science invites leaders to abandon the three-hundred-year-old Newtonian, machine-based worldview that still dominates how we design and manage organizations, and instead to embrace the worldview revealed by twentieth-century science. Drawing on quantum physics, chaos theory, fractal geometry, and the biology of self-organizing systems, Margaret Wheatley shows that order emerges naturally from relationships, information, and a few clear principles combined with great individual freedom—not from rigid control, detailed planning, and reductionist analysis. Through vivid metaphors and personal exploration, she reframes core organizational concerns—change, power, information, vision, participation, and disaster and terrorism response—as living-systems phenomena. The result is a paradigm-shifting case that organizations are living systems capable of adaptation and self-renewal, and that leaders who trust relationships, meaning, and self-organization create more resilient, creative, and humane institutions.

The through-line

Who it’s for

A leader, manager, or change practitioner who wants their organization to be adaptive, creative, resilient, and humane in a turbulent world.

The problem

Organizations feel lifeless, change efforts repeatedly fail, and rigid control structures cannot cope with constant flux and chaos. The leader feels exhausted, confused, anxious, and increasingly incompetent, drowning in change they are supposed to be managing.

The plan

1. Recognize and question the inherited Newtonian, machine worldview that shapes your organization.
2. Shift attention from parts and control to relationships, wholeness, and self-organizing processes.
3. Treat information as living nourishment—generate it, share it freely, and welcome disturbing information.
4. Establish a clear shared identity, vision, and values, then give people great freedom to self-reference and act.
5. Work with change by connecting the system to more of itself and by discovering shared meaning.

The payoff

Organizations become adaptive, creative, and resilient, achieving order without rigid control. · Leaders work with less effort and stress, energized by curiosity, wonder, and participation. · People contribute their full creativity, find meaning in their work, and self-organize to accomplish what matters.

See our guide

• The Bicycle Guide to Study People And Organizations With Scientific Rigor →
• The Bicycle Guide to The Behavioral Science Underneath It All →
• The Bicycle Guide to Understand Human Behavior From The Foundational Canon →
• The Bicycle Guide to Build A People Analytics Function →
• The Bicycle Guide to Deal With Burnout, Stress And Turnover →
• The Bicycle Guide to Make A Decision Your Biases Won't Wreck →
• The Bicycle Guide to Change A Behaviour That Won't Budge →
• The Bicycle Guide to Influence People Without Manipulating Them →
• The Bicycle Guide to Motivate People Without Bribing Them →
• The Bicycle Guide to Design The Organization And Change It →
• The Bicycle Guide to Build A Team People Speak Up In →
• The Bicycle Guide to Do Research That Holds Up →
• The Bicycle Guide to Design Surveys People Answer Honestly →
• The Bicycle Guide to Understand What Drives Individual Performance →

Related profiles we’ve built

• The Bicycle Guide to A Theory of Human Motivation →
• The Bicycle Guide to Anxiety at Work_ 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done →
• The Bicycle Guide to Applied Multivariate Stats Social Sciences Stevens →
• The Bicycle Guide to Assessing Change in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy of Children and Adolescents (Psychology, Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy) →
• The Bicycle Guide to Basics Qualitative Research Grounded Theory Corbin Strauss →
• The Bicycle Guide to Bayesian Multilevel Models for Repeated Measures dаta A Conceptual and Practical Introduction in R →
• The Bicycle Guide to Beyond Hr Boudreau Ramstad →
• The Bicycle Guide to Compensating Your Employees Fairly →

Additional reading

• The Turning Point · Fritjof Capra

  This is the book Wheatley credits with starting her on her journey, providing her first glimpse of the new worldview emerging from quantum physics and its societal implications.

• Order Out of Chaos · Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers

  This is the source for the book's core concepts of self-organizing systems, dissipative structures, and the role of disequilibrium in creating new order.

• Wholeness and the Implicate Order · David Bohm

  Provides the profound concept of an 'unbroken wholeness' and an 'implicate order' that underlies our fragmented surface reality, supporting Wheatley's call to see systems as a whole.

• Chaos: Making a New Science · James Gleick

  The foundational popular text on chaos theory, providing the background for Wheatley's discussion of strange attractors, fractals, and the relationship between order and chaos.

• The Self-Organizing Universe · Erich Jantsch

  A key source for understanding how evolution is a process of self-transcendence and how living systems create order through freedom and dynamic connectedness.

Featured in these guides

• The Bicycle Guide to Understand Human Behavior From The Foundational Canon →Cited source
• The Bicycle Guide to The Behavioral Science Underneath It All →Pole in “Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order”
• The Bicycle Guide to Build A People Analytics Function →Pole in “Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order”
• The Bicycle Guide to Deal With Burnout, Stress And Turnover →Cited source
• The Bicycle Guide to Make A Decision Your Biases Won't Wreck →Pole in “Order Emerges Or Is Engineered”
• The Bicycle Guide to Change A Behaviour That Won't Budge →Pole in “Order Emerges Or Is Engineered”
• The Bicycle Guide to Influence People Without Manipulating Them →Pole in “Order Emerges Or Is Engineered”
• The Bicycle Guide to Motivate People Without Bribing Them →Pole in “Order Emerges Or Is Engineered”
• The Bicycle Guide to Design The Organization And Change It →Pole in “Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order”
• The Bicycle Guide to Study People And Organizations With Scientific Rigor →Pole in “Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order”
• The Bicycle Guide to Build A Team People Speak Up In →Pole in “Order Emerges Or Is Engineered”
• The Bicycle Guide to Do Research That Holds Up →Pole in “Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order”
• The Bicycle Guide to Design Surveys People Answer Honestly →Pole in “Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order”
• The Bicycle Guide to Understand What Drives Individual Performance →Pole in “Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order”

Where other books disagree

• Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order →
• Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order →
• Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order →
• Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order →
• Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order →
• Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order →
• Designed Structure Versus Emergent Order →
• Order Emerges Or Is Engineered →
• Order Emerges Or Is Engineered →
• Order Emerges Or Is Engineered →
• Order Emerges Or Is Engineered →
• Order Emerges Or Is Engineered →