"The pattern of personal characteristics of the leader must bear some relevant relationship to the characteristics, activities, and goals of the followers. [...] It becomes clear that an adequate analysis of leadership involves not only a study of leadership but also of situations." (R M Stodgill, "Journal of Psychology", 1948)
"The published objectives of a company will never reflect all the goals and values of the corporation as an institution or its management as human beings."(Richard Eells, California Management Review, 1959)
"Linking the basic parts are communication, balance or system parts maintained in harmonious relationship with each other and decision making. The system theory include both man-machine and interpersonal relationships. Goals, man, machine, method, and process are woven together into a dynamic unity which reacts." (George R Terry, "Principles of Management", 1960)
"The essential task of management is to arrange organizational conditions and methods of operations so that people can achieve their own goals best by directing their own efforts toward organizational objectives." (Douglas McGregor, "The Human Side of Enterprise", 1960)
"Leadership is interpersonal influence, exercised in a situation, and directed, through the communication process, toward the attainment of a specified goal or goals." (Robert K Tanenbaum, "Leadership and Organization", 1961)
"[System dynamics] is an approach that should help in important top-management problems [...] The solutions to small problems yield small rewards. Very often the most important problems are but little more difficult to handle than the unimportant. Many [people] predetermine mediocre results by setting initial goals too low. The attitude must be one of enterprise design. The expectation should be for major improvement [...] The attitude that the goal is to explain behavior; which is fairly common in academic circles, is not sufficient. The goal should be to find management policies and organizational structures that lead to greater success." (Jay W Forrester, "Industrial Dynamics", 1961)
"It is of course desirable to work with manageable models which maximize generality, realism, and precision toward the overlapping but not identical goals of understanding, predicting, and modifying nature. But this cannot be done."(Richard Levins, "The strategy of model building in population biology", American Scientist Vol. 54 (4), 1966)
"Good mission statements focus on a limited number of goals, stress the company's major policies and values, and define the company's major competitive scopes." (Philip Kotler, "Marketing Management", 1967)
"Most of our beliefs about complex organizations follow from one or the other of two distinct strategies. The closed-system strategy seeks certainty by incorporating only those variables positively associated with goal achievement and subjecting them to a monolithic control network. The open-system strategy shifts attention from goal achievement to survival and incorporates uncertainty by recognizing organizational interdependence with environment. A newer tradition enables us to conceive of the organization as an open system, indeterminate and faced with uncertainty, but subject to criteria of rationality and hence needing certainty." (James D Thompson, "Organizations in Action", 1967)
"Cybernetics, based upon the principle of feedback or circular causal trains providing mechanisms for goal-seeking and self-controlling behavior." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "General System Theory", 1968)
"Targets set by individual managers are relevant to the company's goals because the entire management group is involved in the total planning process." (Walter S Wilkstrom, "Managing by-and-with Objectives", 1968)
"The concept of organizational goals, like the concepts of power, authority, or leadership, has been unusually resistant to precise, unambiguous definition. Yet a definition of goals is necessary and unavoidable in organizational analysis. Organizations are established to do something; they perform work directed toward some end." (Charles Perrow, "Organizational Analysis: A Sociological View", 1970)
"[Management by objectives is] a process whereby the superior and the subordinate managers of an enterprise jointly identify its common goals, define each individual's major areas of responsibility in terms of the results expected of him, and use these measures as guides for operating the unit and assessing the contribution of each of its members." (Robert House, "Administrative Science Quarterly", 1971)
"Every goal and every change from the status quo has a price tag on it." (Lyle E. Schaller, "The Change Agent", 1972)
"General systems theory is the scientific exploration of 'wholes' and 'wholeness' which, not so long ago, were considered metaphysical notions transcending the boundaries of science. Hierarchic structure, stability, teleology, differentiation, approach to and maintenance of steady states, goal-directedness - these are a few of such general system properties." (Ervin László, "Introduction to Systems Philosophy", 1972)
"Management as an activity has always existed to make people’s desires through organized effort. Management facilitates the efforts of people in organized groups and arises when people seek to cooperate to achieve goals." (Daniel A Wren, "The evolution of management thought", 1972)
"[...] management should emphasize the contributions to total goals rather than the accomplishments of subgroup goals." (Paul Hersey & Kenneth H Blanchard, "Management of Organizational Behavior", 1972)
"The productivity of a work group seems to depend on how the group members see their own goals in relation to the goals of the organization." (Paul Hersey & Kenneth H Blanchard, "Management of Organizational Behavior", 1972)
"No experiment on programmer performance should be undertaken without clear, explicit and reasonable goals unless that experiment is designed to measure the effect of unclear, implicit, or unreasonable goals." (Gerald M Weinberg & Edward L Schulman, "Human Factors", 1974)
"[...] when a variety of tasks have all to be performed in cooperation, synchronization, and communication, a business needs managers and a management. Otherwise, things go out of control; plans fail to turn into action; or, worse, different parts of the plans get going at different speeds, different times, and with different objectives and goals, and the favor of the 'boss' becomes more important than performance." (Peter F Drucker, "People and Performance", 1977)
"Overly optimistic goals nearly always result in one of two extremes. If the goal is seen as a must, then the division manager must 'go for broke'. This can result in reckless risk taking. More commonly [...] ultraconservative action. The reasoning is: 'Why take any chances to achieve an unattainable goal.'" (Bruce Henderson, "Henderson on Corporate Strategy", 1979)
"There are always 'class or prestige' gaps between various levels of management. There are also functional gaps between working units of the organization. If we superimpose the management gaps on top of the functional gaps, we find that companies are made up of small operational islands that refuse to communicate with one another for fear that giving up information may strengthen their opponents. The project manager’s responsibility is to get these islands to communicate cross-functionally toward common goals and objectives." (Harold Kerzner, "Project Management: A systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling", 1979)
"Superordinate goals - the goals above all others [..] play a pragmatic role by influencing implementation at the operational level. Because an executive cannot be everywhere at once, many decisions are made without his knowledge. What superordinate goals do, in effect, is provide employees with a "compass" and point their footsteps in the right direction [... to] independent decisions." (Richard T Pascale & Anthony G Athos, "The Art of Japanese Management", 1981)
"No matter how high or how excellent technology may be and how much capital may be accumulated, unless the group of human beings which comprise the enterprise works together toward one unified goal, the enterprise is sure to go down the path of decline." (Takashi Ishihara, Cherry Blossoms and Robotics, 1983)
"Goals should be specific, realistic and measureable." (William G Dyer, "Strategies for Managing Change", 1984)
"The key mission of contemporary management is to transcend the old models which limited the manager's role to that of controller, expert or morale booster. These roles do not produce the desired result of aligning the goals of the employees and the corporation. [...] These older models, vestiges of a bygone era, have served their function and must be replaced with a model of the manager as a developer of human resources." (Michael Durst, "Small Systems World", 1985)
"A network is not a team. Nor is it a support system, which many women mistake it for. A man's network is the sum total of all those people with whom he barters. It is ever expanding among those of mutual interest and goals, not necessarily of mutual values and likes. They are the people with whom he does business, people who may join his team for some purpose, and others who may not." (Jinx Milea & Pauline Lyttle, "Why Jenny Can't Lead", 1986)
"An ability to tolerate ambiguity helps to avoid overdetermining one's goals. [...] As they proceed, peak performers can adjust goals. [...] What they are doing is balancing between change and stasis, between innovation and consolidation." (Charles Garfield, "Peak Performers", 1986)
"Goal setting has traditionally been based on past performance. This practice has tended to perpetuate the sins of the past." (Joseph M Juran, 1986)
"Organizations are complex and paradoxical phenomena that can be understood in many different ways. Many of our taken-for-granted ideas about organizations are metaphorical, even though we may not recognize them as such. For example, we frequently talk about organizations as if they were machines designed to achieve predetermined goals and objectives, and which should operate smoothly and efficiently. And as a result of this kind of thinking, we often attempt to organize and manage them in a mechanistic way, forcing their human qualities into a background role. By using different metaphors to understand the complex and paradoxical character of organizational life, we are able to manage and design organizations in ways that we may not have thought possible before." (Gareth Morgan, "Images of Organization", 1986)
"A systematic effort must be made to emphasize the group instead of the individual. [...] Group goals and responsibilities can usually overcome any negative reactions to the individual and enforce a standard of cooperation that is attainable by persuasion or exhortation." (Eugene Raudsepp, MTS Digest, 1987)
"Setting goals can be the difference between success and failure. [...] Goals must not be defined so broadly that they cannot be quantified. Having quantifiable goals is an essential starting point if managers are to measure the results of their organization's activities. [...] Too often people mistake being busy for achieving goals." (Philip D Harvey & James D Snyder, Harvard Business Review, 1987)
"The manager must decide what type of group is wanted. If cooperation, teamwork, and synergy really matter, then one aims for high task interdependence. One structures the jobs of group members so that they have to interact frequently [...] to get their jobs done. Important outcomes are made dependent on group performance. The outcomes are distributed equally. If frenzied, independent activity is the goal, then one aims for low task interdependence and large rewards are distributed competitively and unequally." (Gregory P Shea & Richard A Guzzo, Sloan Management Review, 1987)
"The major fault in this process - and thus, in the way we were making decisions - is that it lacks an organizing framework. In pursuing a variety of goals and objectives, in whatever situation we manage, we often fail to see that some of them are in conflict and that the achievement of one might come at the expense of achieving another. In weighing up the actions we might take to reach our goals and objectives, we have no way to account for nature's complexity and only rarely factor it in." (Allan Savory & Jody Butterfield, "Holistic Management: A new framework for decision making", 1988)
"Conventional process structures are fragmented and piecemeal, and they lack the integration necessary to maintain quality and service. They are breeding grounds for tunnel vision, as people tend to substitute the narrow goals of their particular department for the larger goals of the process as a whole. When work is handed off from person to person and unit to unit, delays and errors are inevitable. Accountability blurs, and critical issues fall between the cracks." (Michael M Hammer, "Reengineering Work: Don't Automate, Obliterate", Magazine, 1990) [source]
"Corporate governance is concerned with holding the balance between economic and social goals and between individual and communal goals. The governance framework is there to encourage the efficient use of resources and equally to require accountability for the stewardship of those resources. The aim is to align as nearly as possible the interests of individuals, corporations and society." (Dominic Cadbury, "UK, Commission Report: Corporate Governance", 1992)
"A process perspective sees not individual tasks in isolation, but the entire collection of tasks that contribute to a desired outcome. Narrow points of view are useless in a process context. It just won't do for each person to be concerned exclusively with his or her own limited responsibility, no matter how well these responsibilities are met. When that occurs, the inevitable result is working at cross–purpose, misunderstanding, and the optimization of the part at the expense of the whole. Process work requires that everyone involved be directed toward a common goal; otherwise, conflicting objectives and parochial agendas impair the effort." (James A Champy & Michael M Hammer, "Reengineering the Corporation", 1993)
"At the very least (there is certainly more), cybernetics implies a new philosophy about (1) what we can know, (2) about what it means for something to exist, and (3) about how to get things done. Cybernetics implies that knowledge is to be built up through effective goal-seeking processes, and perhaps not necessarily in uncovering timeless, absolute, attributes of things, irrespective of our purposes and needs." (Jeff Dooley, "Thoughts on the Question: What is Cybernetics", 1995)
"Cybernetics is a science of purposeful behavior. It helps us explain behavior as the continuous action of someone (or thing) in the process, as we see it, of maintaining certain conditions near a goal state, or purpose." (Jeff Dooley, "Thoughts on the Question: What is Cybernetics", 1995)
"Complex systems operate under conditions far from equilibrium. Complex systems need a constant flow of energy to change, evolve and survive as complex entities. Equilibrium, symmetry and complete stability mean death. Just as the flow, of energy is necessary to fight entropy and maintain the complex structure of the system, society can only survive as a process. It is defined not by its origins or its goals, but by what it is doing." (Paul Cilliers,"Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems", 1998)
"Quality goals that affect product salability should be based primarily on meeting or exceeding market quality. Because the market and the competition undoubtedly will be changing while the quality planning project is under way, goals should be set so as to meet or beat the competition estimated to be prevailing when the project is completed." (Joseph M Juran, "The quality planning process", 1999)
"To attain quality, it is well to begin by establishing the 'vision' for the organization, along with policies and goals. Conversion of goals into results (making quality happen) is then done through managerial processes - sequences of activities that produce the intended results."
"Within image theory, it is suggested that important components of decision-making processes are the different 'images' that a person may use to evaluate choice options. Images may represent a person's principles, goals, or plans. Decision options may then match or not match these images and be adopted, rejected, considered further, depending on circumstances." (Deborah J Terry & Michael A Hogg, "Attitudes, Behavior, and Social Context: The Role of Norms and Group Membership", 1999)
"Just as dynamics arise from feedback, so too all learning depends on feedback. We make decisions that alter the real world; we gather information feedback about the real world, and using the new information we revise our understanding of the world and the decisions we make to bring our perception of the state of the system closer to our goals." (John D Sterman, "Business dynamics: Systems thinking and modeling for a complex world", 2000)
"The manager [...] is understood as one who observes the causal structure of an organization in order to be able to control it [...] This is taken to mean that the manager can choose the goals of the organization and design the systems or actions to realize those goals [...]. The possibility of so choosing goals and strategies relies on the predictability provided by the efficient and formative causal structure of the organization, as does the possibility of managers staying 'in control' of their organization's development. According to this perspective, organizations become what they are because of the choices made by their managers." (Ralph D Stacey et al, "Complexity and Management: Fad or Radical Challenge to Systems Thinking?", 2000)
"There are two ways to approach prevention of these planning failures. We can plan not to lose, or we can plan to win. The two are not identical. Planning not to lose is defensive; while planning to win is aggressive. [...] the problem that planning is supposed to solve is simply, to build the right system at the right cost. If we take a defensive posture by planning not to lose, we will be able to hold people accountable for any failures; but at an enormous cost. If we take an aggressive posture and plan to win, we will be unafraid to make errors, and will continuously correct them to meet our goals." (Kent Beck & Martin Fowler, "Planning Extreme Programming", 2000)
"You basically get what you reward. If you want to achieve the goals and reflect the values in your mission statement, then you need to align the reward system with these goals and values." (Stephen Covey, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook", 2000)
"Organizations are (1) social entities that (2) are goal-directed, (3) are designed as deliberately structured and coordinated activity systems, and (4) are linked to the external environment." (Richard Daft, "The Leadership Experience", 2002)
"The key element of an organization is not a building or a set of policies and procedures; organizations are made up of people and their relationships with one another. An organization exists when people interact with one another to perform essential functions that help attain goals."
"If great managers are catalysts, speeding up the reaction between the individual's talents and the company's goals, then great leaders are alchemists. Somehow they are able to transform our fear of the unknown into confidence in the future." (Marcus Buckingham,"The One Thing You Need to Know", 2005)
"Management can be defined as the attainment of organizational goals in an effective and efficient manner through planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling organizational resources." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)
"Strategy is the serious work of figuring out how to translate vision and mission into action. Strategy is a general plan of action that describes resource allocation and other activities for dealing with the environment and helping the organization reach its goals. Like vision, strategy changes, but successful companies develop strategies that focus on core competence, develop synergy, and create value for customers. Strategy is implemented through the systems and structures that are the basic architecture for how things get done in the organization." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)
"A model is a representation in that it (or its properties) is chosen to stand for some other entity (or its properties), known as the target system. A model is a tool in that it is used in the service of particular goals or purposes; typically these purposes involve answering some limited range of questions about the target system." (Wendy S Parker, "Confirmation and Adequacy-for-Purpose in Climate Modelling", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 83, 2009)
"A leader’s most important job is creating and constantly adjusting this strategic bridge between goals and objectives." (Richard Rumelt, "Good Strategy Bad Strategy", 2011)
"When organizations are unable to make new strategies - when people evade the work of choosing among different paths in the future - then you get vague mom-and-apple-pie goals everyone can agree on. Such goals are direct evidence of leadership's insufficient will or political power to make or enforce hard choices." (Richard Rumelt, "Good Strategy Bad Strategy", 2011)
"Image theory is an attempt to describe decision making as it actually occurs. […] The concept of images is central to the theory. They represent visions held by individuals and organisations that constitute how they believe the world should exist. When considering individuals, the theory refers to these images as the value image, trajectory image and strategic image. The value image is based on an individual’s ethics, morals and beliefs. The trajectory images encompass the decision maker’s goals and aspirations. Finally, for each trajectory image, a decision maker may have one or more strategic images that contain their plans, tactics and forecasts for their goal. […] In an organisational decision-making setting, these images are referred to as culture, vision and strategy." (Christopher B Stephenson, "What causes top management teams to make poor strategic decisions?", 2012)
"The leader is one who mobilizes others toward a goal shared by leaders and followers. [...] Leaders, followers and goals make up the three equally necessary supports for leadership." (Garry Wills, "Certain Trumpets: The Nature of Leadership", 2013)
"There's no single right way to accomplish your goals. Each of us has a number of avenues to reach our potential. The world constantly changes. Life often unfolds as a series of phases. Our potential is likely to evolve as the world evolves and as we continue to learn, grow, and develop our capabilities." (Robert S Kaplan, "What You're Really Meant To Do", 2013)
"Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It's about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others' success, and then standing back and letting them shine." (Chris Hadfield, "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth", 2013)
"Perfection of means and confusion of goals [...] characterize our age." (Albert Einstein)
"To tend, unfailingly, unflinchingly, towards a goal, is the secret of success." (Anna Pavlova)
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