Peter Block Quotes

How do you change the world? One room at a time. Which room? The one you're in.

We must establish a personal connection with each other. Connection before content. Without relatedness, no work can occur.

Relationship and connectedness are the pre-condition for change. Every meeting, every process, every training program has to get people connected first. Otherwise the content falls on deaf ears. So small groups are an essential building block to any future you want to create.

All we have to do to create the future is to change the nature of our conversations, to go from blame to ownership, and from bargaining to commitment, and from problem solving to possibility.

Transformation comes more from pursuing profound questions than seeking practical answers.

The shift in the world begins with a shift in our thinking. Shifting our thinking does not change the world, but it creates a condition where the shift in the world becomes possible.

The essential challenge is to transform the isolation and self-interest within our communities into connectedness and caring for the whole.

It is a misuse of our power to take responsibility for solving problems that belong to others.

We need to tell people not to be helpful. Trying to be helpful and giving advise are really ways to control others. ... Advice, recommendations, and obvious actions are exactly what increase the likelihood that tomorrow will be just like yesterday.

Ones vision is not a road map but a compass.

Good questions work on us, we don't work on them. They are not a project to be completed but a doorway opening onto greater depth of understanding, actions that will take us into being more fully alive.

It is hard to learn when we think we know something.

If there is no transformation inside of us, all the structural change in the world will have no impact on our institutions.

If we believe something does not exist unless we measure it, then we put aside: love, feeling, intuition, art and philosophy.

The task of leadership is to be intentional about the way we group people and the questions that we engage them in.

Questions draw us together. Answers push us apart.

Dissent is the cousin of diversity; the respect for a wide range of beliefs. This begins by allowing people the space to say "no". If we cannot say "no" then our "yes" has no meaning. Each needs the chance to express their doubts and reservations, without having to justify them, or move quickly into problem solving. No is the beginning of the conversation for commitment.

We get the leaders we create.

Advice is unfriendly to learning, especially when it is sought. Most of the time when people seek advice, they just want to be heard. Advice at best stops the conversation, definitely inhibits learning, and at worst claims dominance.

I discovered that resolution of conflict comes from people being able to express their own feelings and their own needs in the face of another. Making agreements and setting goals without building upon the feelings of the parties involved is empty, because it does not consider the vulnerabilities of our own humanity.

The price of change is measured by our will and courage, our persistence, in the face of difficulty.

Change from the top down happens at the will and whim of those below.

The goal is to balance a life that works with a life that counts.

Why do anything unless it is going to be great?

We must act as if our institutions are ours to create, our learning is ours to define, our leadership we seek is ours to become.