by Margaret Wheatley

Any time we attempt to impose a solution generated by another system, any time we attempt to transfer a program from one place to another, we are not only wasting our time, we are insulting the system. Why, with its creative, discerning capacities, should it even for a moment accept a solution that is the result of another system’s creativity? Why shouldn’t it insist on its own designs?

In practice, all systems do insist on exercising their own creativity. They never accept imposed solutions, pre-determined designs, or well-articulated plans that have been generated somewhere else. Too often, we interpret their refusal as resistance. We say that people innately resist change. But the resistance we experience from others is not to change itself. It is to the particular process of change that believes in imposition rather than creation. It is an assertion of the system’s right to create. It is life insisting on its primary responsibility to create itself.