Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future

Written by Margaret J. Wheatley

Narrated by Margaret J. Wheatley

"I believe we can change the world if we start talking to one another again."

With this simple declaration, Margaret Wheatley proposes that citizens band together with their colleagues and friends to create the solutions for social change, both locally and globally, that are so badly needed. Such change will not come from governments or corporations but from the ageless process of thinking together in conversation. Turning to One Another encourages this process.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ascent Audio
• Release date: Apr 17, 2008
• ISBN: 9781596592384

Margaret J. Wheatley

Margaret Wheatley is president emerita of the Berkana Institute. She has been a consultant since 1973, working in virtually every type of organization on all continents. She is coauthor of A Simpler Way and author of Turning to One Another and Finding Our Way as well as many articles, videos, and DVDs. She has also worked as a public school teacher, a Peace Corps volunteer in Korea, and as an associate professor of management at the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University and Cambridge College, Massachusetts.

Reviews for Turning to One Another

[prudencegoodwife · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Well resourced book about the necessity of turning to one another, learning from community and the importance of understanding and embracing positives from other cultures. Very inspirational, honest, and easy to comprehend.

[steve55_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love quotations, and I have a favorite from Albert Einstein.“Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” I offer this book as an example of that courage. In a world that bizarrely seeks to make everything more complex, seeks to manage everything through laws and regulations, replaces even the most basic of interactions and relationships with reams of procedures, schedules and instructions, it is an act of genius to cut through it all to see a simple truth.In this book the simple truth proposed is that the world would be a much better place if we just spent more time in better conversations with each other.It’s an idea so staggeringly simple, so obvious and so deep rooted in human understanding that it will inevitably evoke one of two responses. It will be ignored as profoundly simplistic, juvenile and irrelevant to the problems of today. Or it will be converted into a procedure, a training program, a revenue generating commodity, applied by people whose misunderstanding of the idea is so profound they see not a hint of irony in their lunacy.The book draws on the long tradition of the power of conversation throughout human history and how in our search for the complex and suspicion of the simple we have turned this powerful and natural ability into something complex and misunderstood.Part 1 of the book sets out the idea of conversing and draws on the traditions of our own and more ancient cultures for story telling, sharing and talking.Part 2 contains some quotations and sketches as a space in which to pause and reflect on the ideas of section 1.Part 3 has a series of what Margaret J Wheatley calls conversation starters. On first reading these I wasn’t particularly drawn to the idea of having or needing a list of topics as the start points for conversations, but the more I’ve reflected, the more I see these as being a valuable element of the book.There are ten conversation starters and for each there is an introductory quotation and a short essay which outlines the topic area and provides some ‘talking points’.By way of example the topics include3. What do I believe about others?6. Am I willing to reclaim time to think?9. When have I experienced working for the common good?We live in a world that contains over 400 million Harry Potter books. Do your bit to redress the balance and get yourself a copy of this book.