The rate at which organizations learn may soon become the only sustainable source of competitive advantage.

Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist — someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations.

Most of us at one time or another have been part of a great 'team', a group of people who functioned together in an extraordinary way-who trusted one another, who complemented each other's strengths and compensated for each other's limitations, who had common goals that were larger than an individual's goals, and who produced extraordinary results ... the team that became great didn't start off great-it learned how to produce extraordinary results.

Trusting people to be creative and constructive when given more freedom does not imply an overly optimistic belief in the perfectibility of human nature. It is, rather, belief that the inevitable errors and sins of the human condition are far better overcome by individuals working together in an environment of trust and freedom and mutual respect than by individuals working under a multitude of rules, regulations, and restraints imposed upon them by another group of imperfect individuals.

Business has a way of talking about how to create value, which is in some way isn't bad... We just need to start thinking about if the value we want to create is consistent with all social and environmental well being.

Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing ‘patterns of change’ rather than static ‘snapshots.’

The difference between a healthy group or organization and an unhealthy one lies in its members' awareness and ability to acknowledge their felt needs to conform.