Peter Block Quotes

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

— Peter Block

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

— Peter Block

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.

— Peter Block

“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.”

— Peter Block

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

— Peter Block

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

— Peter Block

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

— Peter Block

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

— Peter Block

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

— Peter Block

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

— Peter Block

“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.”

— Peter Block

“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.”

— Peter Block

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.

— Peter Block

“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.”

— Peter Block

“Why do anything unless it is going to be great?”

— Peter Block

“The world does not need a better definition of issues, or better planning or project management. It needs the issues and the plans to have more of an impact, which is the promise of engagement.”

— Peter Block

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

— Peter Block

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

— Peter Block

“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.”

— Peter Block

“What worked yesterday is the gilded cage of tomorrow.”

— Peter Block

“Ones vision is not a road map but a compass.”

— Peter Block

If you need ownership and responsibility from core workers, patriarchy can't get you there.

— Peter Block

“The artist treats intuition and nuance with respect and reminds us that a little madness resides in all of us. Artists give voice to feelings, to conflict, to the prism of human experience.”

— Peter Block

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

— Peter Block

“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.”

— Peter Block

The choice to worry about why we are doing something more than how we do something is risky business.

— Peter Block

“Why follow the steps of another to find out where our dreams will lead us.”

— Peter Block

“Invitation is not only a step in bringing people together, it is also a fundamental way of being in a community. It manifests the willingness to live in a collaborative way. This means that a future can be created without having to force or sell it or barter for it. When we believe that barter or subtle coercion is necessary, we are operating out of a context of scarcity and self-interest, the core currencies of the economist.”

— Peter Block

If you believe that saying no will get you shot, well, what a fine way to go.

— Peter Block

Learning and performance will become one and the same thing. Everything you say about learning will be about performance. People will get the point that learning is everything.

— Peter Block

“We get the leaders we create.”

— Peter Block

“Anecdotes, personal stories, reminiscences, like biblical parables, are the medium through which faith is restored. Stories are a form of poetry, and give us a saving image to personally relate to.”

— Peter Block

“We have banished our artists to the fringe of society and tell them to eat cake. It is our artists who choose freedom over safety and use their talents to question and confront the culture.”

— Peter Block

How many times have we brought in an outsider to tell us what we already knew?

— Peter Block

“We are reluctant to let go of the belief that if I am to care for something I must control it.”

— Peter Block

“As long as we wish for safety, we will have difficulty pursuing what matters.”

— Peter Block

“Every parent's deepest wish is that their children are self sufficient, happy, and able to live a full life.”

— Peter Block

“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.”

— Peter Block

“Structure influences behavior. Design spaces that make you feel "you are welcome here and that you came to the right place."”

— Peter Block

To be committed means you are willing to make a promise with no exception of return.

— Peter Block

“Questions draw us together. Answers push us apart.”

— Peter Block

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

— Peter Block