Penny O

“The goal is not make everyone equally powerful, but to make everyone fully powerful. This is best understood using a metaphor from nature. A fern or a mushroom growing next to a tree might not reach as high as the tree, but that is not the point. Through a complex collaboration involving exchanges of nutrients, moisture, and shade, the mushroom, fern, and tree don't compete as much as they cooperate to grow into the biggest and healthiest versions of themselves.”
― Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations: An Illustrated Invitation to Join the Conversation on Next-Stage Organizations

“The sound of the Gion Shoja temple bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that to flourish is to fall. The proud do not endure, like a passing dream on a night in spring; the mighty fall at last, to be no more than dust before the wind.”
― Helen Craig McCullough, The Tale of the Heike

“At an individual level, when life calls for change, we always feel a tensions, sometimes pleasant, sometimes unsettling. There are habits we have grown fond of; our identity is invested in certain situations. But when change isn't imposed from the outside, from above; when we personally feel powerful and responsible; when there is a safe space where we can have meaningful conversations about all of this...chances are that embracing change is somewhat easier.”
― Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations: An Illustrated Invitation to Join the Conversation on Next-Stage Organizations

“For most of the people she knew, people in their forties, this was a time of softening and expanding, of expectations growing blurred, of running a little to seed or to fat after the exhaustion of the chase: she saw them beginning to relax and make themselves comfortable in their lives.”
― Rachel Cusk