Quotes about Organization

Excuse my wandering.
How can one be orderly with this?
It's like counting leaves in a garden,
along with the song-notes of partridges, and crows.

Sometimes organization
and computation become absurd.

It is vital to any organization, to be strong and effective, to be ethical.

Your organization needs to be absolutely clear about purpose and principles and must be very careful to know what a purpose and a principle is—you know, a purpose is not an objective, it's not a mission statement—a purpose is an unambiguous expression of that which people jointly wish to become. And a principle is not a platitude—it is a fundamental belief about how you intend to conduct yourself in pursuit of that purpose. You have to get very precise about these things. If the purpose and principles are constructive and healthy, then your organization will take a very different form than anything that you ever imagined. It will release the human spirit and will be constructive of the biosphere. Natural capital and human capital will be released in abundance and monetary capital will become relatively unimportant. To put it another way, I believe that purpose and principle, clearly understood and articulated, and commonly shared, are the genetic code of any healthy organization.

I spent months and months asking myself, "What is an organization?" If I'm talking about institutional and organizational change, what am I really talking about? What is an organization in the deepest sense? It surely isn't just a set of bylaws, because I can write a set of bylaws and shove it in a desk drawer, and it just becomes an old moldering piece of paper. And if you really think deeply about it, you discover that every organization and every institution, without exception, has no reality save in your mind. It's not its buildings. Those are manifestations of it. It's not its name, it's not its logo, and it's not some fictional piece of paper called a stock certificate. It's not money. It is a mental concept around which people and resources gather in pursuit of common purpose.

We don't have to remain in this radically destructive mind-set and institutional-set. We can change, and the natural order of things could emerge in all of our societal organizations—government, commerce, religion—it's right there, waiting to happen. I often tell people that every mind is like a room in an old house, stuffed with very old furniture. Take any space in your mind and empty it of your old conceptions and new ones will rush in, good or bad. So change is more a getting rid of rather than an adding to or an acquiring.

Individual and organizational change go hand in hand. It takes openness and a strong will to make such a change. And this comes back to why I started doing this work and what it takes to create an organization that's more harmonious with nature, and based on, the same concepts around which nature organizes every living thing and, in fact, organizes the inanimate functioning of the universe as well. When you start thinking this way, the distinction between animate and inanimate begins to vanish, and you can't be sure that the universe is not a form of life, a different manifestation of a living organism.

Your organization needs to be absolutely clear about purpose and principles and must be very careful to know what a purpose and a principle is—you know, a purpose is not an objective, it's not a mission statement—a purpose is an unambiguous expression of that which people jointly wish to become. And a principle is not a platitude—it is a fundamental belief about how you intend to conduct yourself in pursuit of that purpose. You have to get very precise about these things. If the purpose and principles are constructive and healthy, then your organization will take a very different form than anything that you ever imagined. It will release the human spirit and will be constructive of the biosphere. Natural capital and human capital will be released in abundance and monetary capital will become relatively unimportant. To put it another way, I believe that purpose and principle, clearly understood and articulated, and commonly shared, are the genetic code of any healthy organization. To the degree that you hold purpose and principles in common among you, you can dispense with command and control. People will know how to behave in accordance with them, and they'll do it in thousands of unimaginable, creative ways. The organization will become a vital, living set of beliefs.

"An empowered organization is one which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success."

Executives run organizations. In business, we need executives who have clarity, people who are in touch with themselves. Then, in leadership and management positions, they can be good role models and leaders. The people I know who have really moved their organizations are scrupulous role models. They are so clear about honesty, integrity, openness, mutual self-respect, dignity for the individual, and creativity, that they don't deviate from these principles at all in their behavior. And by doing that they generate the same kind of behavior in their organization. In that way, organizations are just like families. If you don't show complete respect or openness, it causes the same kind of Negative Love reactions in people in business as occurs in families.

The leader’s job today, in 21st-century terms, is not about gaining followership. Followership is an outmoded notion. Leadership starts with gaining alignment with the mission and values of the organization: What are we about? What do we believe as a group? Goldman Sachs, where I serve on the board, has achieved solid alignment around its mission: “The clients’ interests always come first.” At Medtronic, we aligned around the idea of “allevi­ating pain, restoring health, and ex­tending life.” It was clear that anyone who didn’t buy into that could work somewhere else.

I don't want to use the word reorganization. Reorganization to me is shuffling boxes, moving boxes around. Transformation means that you're really fundamentally changing the way the organization thinks, the way it responds, the way it leads. It's a lot more than just playing with boxes.

An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

Your organization needs to be absolutely clear about purpose and principles and must be very careful to know what a purpose and a principle is—you know, a purpose is not an objective, it's not a mission statement—a purpose is an unambiguous expression of that which people jointly wish to become. And a principle is not a platitude—it is a fundamental belief about how you intend to conduct yourself in pursuit of that purpose. You have to get very precise about these things. If the purpose and principles are constructive and healthy, then your organization will take a very different form than anything that you ever imagined. It will release the human spirit and will be constructive of the biosphere. Natural capital and human capital will be released in abundance and monetary capital will become relatively unimportant. To put it another way, I believe that purpose and principle, clearly understood and articulated, and commonly shared, are the genetic code of any healthy organization. To the degree that you hold purpose and principles in common among you, you can dispense with command and control. People will know how to behave in accordance with them, and they'll do it in thousands of unimaginable, creative ways. The organization will become a vital, living set of beliefs.

Some go to sleep in an organization and never wake up, and those who do wake up put them selves to sleep again by joining another. This acquisitive movement is called expansion of thought, progress.

Large firms have organization charts and this too often shapes the social hierarchy of a company, and that can unfortunately impact the romantic possibilities within the workplace.

Founders have to be embraced and empowered within the organization, but their strengths have to be strategically channeled.

It is often prudent to release your creativity only when the organization is in a position to be receptive to your ideas.

Understand the control dynamics within your organization and document the generation of your idea or your movie will wind up getting produced without you getting proper credit.

Every organization brands its particular culture and identity with its own distinctive stamp.

It’s a solid organization where initiative and accomplishment-oriented communication happens in both directions.

Too often, effective ideas get rejected because they have to travel too far in an organization filled with fiefdoms and inevitable roadblocks.

The only prize for having an empty in-box, and for sending responses to everyone who contacted you, is a few minutes of quiet.

Amorphous: This is my personal favorite. The amorphous structure is no structure at all. It's the free bird. In these companies, highly motivated and productive managers create and dissolve reporting relationships as the task at hand requires. In these companies, the structure incrementally grows as events dictate.

Without respect, the subtle alchemy that binds an organization or that serves as the impetus for a business transaction would dissolve into mutual suspicion and hostility.

...perhaps the most distinguishing trait of visionary leaders is that they believe in a goal that benefits not only themselves, but others as well. It is such vision that attracts the psychic energy of other people, and makes them willing to work beyond the call of duty for the organization.