🖌️Stephen Covey - Collected Quotes

"Habit is the intersection of knowledge (what to do), skill (how to do), and desire (want to do)." (Stephen R Covey & Warren Bennis, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", 1989)

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." (Stephen R Covey & Warren Bennis, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", 1989)

"Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions." (Stephen R Covey & Warren Bennis, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", 1989)

"We see the world, not as it is, but as we are - or, as we are conditioned to see it." (Stephen R Covey & Warren Bennis, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", 1989)

"In effective personal leadership, visualization and affirmation techniques emerge naturally out of a foundation of well thought through purposes and principles that become the center of a person's life." (Stephen Covey, "Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People", 1994)

"Management is clearly different from leadership. Leadership is primarily a high-powered, right-brain activity. It's more of an art it's based on a philosophy. You have to ask the ultimate questions of life when you're dealing with personal leadership issues. (Stephen Covey, "Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People", 1994)

"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)

"Values are social norms - they're personal, emotional, subjective, and arguable. All of us have values. [...] The question you must ask yourself is, Are your values based upon principles? In the last analysis, principles are natural laws - they're impersonal, factual, objective and self-evident. Consequences are governed by principles and behavior is governed by values; therefore, value principles." (Stephen R Covey, "The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness", 2004)

"Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out." (Stephen Covey)

"Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall." (Stephen R Covey)

"Management works in the system; Leadership works on the system." (Stephen R. Covey)

🖌️C West Churchman - Collected Quotes

"Scientists whose work has no clear, practical implications would want to make their decisions considering such things as: the relative worth of (1) more observations, (2) greater scope of his conceptual model, (3) simplicity, (4) precision of language, (5) accuracy of the probability assignment." (C West Churchman, "Costs, Utilities, and Values", 1956)

"The concern of OR with finding an optimum decision, policy, or design is one of its essential characteristics. It does not seek merely to define a better solution to a problem than the one in use; it seeks the best solution. [...] [It] can be characterized as the application of scientific methods, techniques, and tools to problems involving the operations of systems so as to provide those in control of the operations with optimum solutions to the problems." (C. West Churchman, "Introduction to Operations Research", 1957)

"We have overwhelming evidence that available information plus analysis does not lead to knowledge. The management science team can properly analyse a situation and present recommendations to the manager, but no change occurs. The situation is so familiar to those of us who try to practice management science that I hardly need to describe the cases." (C West Churchman, "Managerial acceptance of scientific recommendations", California Management Review Vol 7, 1964)

"A systems approach begins when first you see the world through the eyes of another." (C West Churchman, "The Systems Approach", 1968) 

"For the scientist a model is also a way in which the human though processes can be amplified. This method often takes the form of models that can be programmed into computers. At no point, however, the scientist intend to loose control of the situation because off the computer does some of his thinking for him. The scientist controls the basic assumptions and the computer only derives some of the more complicated implications." (C West Churchman, "The Systems Approach", 1968)

"How can we design improvement in large systems without understanding the whole system, and if the answer is that we cannot, how is it possible to understand the whole system?" (C West Churchman, "Challenge to Reason", 1968)

"In general, we can say that the larger the system becomes, the more the parts interact, the more difficult it is to understand environmental constraints, the more obscure becomes the problem of what resources should be made available, and deepest of all, the more difficult becomes the problem of the legitimate values of the system."  (C West Churchman, "The Systems Approach", 1968) 

"The management of a system has to deal with the generation of the plans for the system, i. e., consideration of all of the things we have discussed, the overall goals, the environment, the utilization of resources and the components. The management sets the component goals, allocates the resources, and controls the system performance." (C West Churchman, "The Systems Approach", 1968)

"The systems approach to problems does not mean that the most generally formulated problem must be solved in one research project. However desirable this may be, it is seldom possible to realize it in practice. In practice, parts of the total problem are usually solved in sequence. In many cases the total problem cannot be formulated in advance but the solution of one phase of it helps define the next phase." (C West Churchman, "The Systems Approach", 1968)

"We are always obliged to think about the larger system. If we fail to do this, then our thinking becomes fallacious." (C West Churchman, "The Systems Approach", 1968)

"When one is considering systems it's always wise to raise questions about the most obvious and simple assumptions." (C West Churchman, "The Systems Approach", 1968)

"Operations research (OR) is the securing of improvement in social systems by means of scientific method." (C West Churchman, "Operations research as a profession", 1970)

"The comprehensiveness of OR’s aim is an example of a ‘systems’ approach, since ‘system’ implies an interconnected complex of functionally related components." (C West Churchman, "Introduction to Operations Research", 1957)

"The systems approach goes on to discovering that every world-view is terribly restricted." (C West Churchman, 1970)

"Knowledge can be considered as a collection of information, or as an activity, or as a potential. If we think of it as a collection of information, then the analogy of a computer's memory is helpful, for we can say that knowledge about something is like the storage of meaningful and true strings of symbols in a computer." (C West Churchman, "The Design of Inquiring Systems", 1971)

"Knowledge is a potential for a certain type of action, by which we mean that the action would occur if certain tests were run. For example, a library plus its user has knowledge if a certain type of response will be evoked under a given set of stipulations." (C West Churchman, "The Design of Inquiring Systems", 1971)

"To conceive of knowledge as a collection of information seems to rob the concept of all of its life. Knowledge resides in the user and not in the collection. It is how the user reacts to a collection of information that matters." (C West Churchman, "The Design of Inquiring Systems", 1971)

"A system may actually exist as a natural aggregation of component parts found in Nature, or it may be a man-contrived aggregation – a way of looking at a problem which results from a deliberate decision to assume that a set of elements are related and constitute such a thing called ‘a system." (C West Churchman et al, "Thinking for Decisions Deduction Quantitative Methods", 1975)

🖌️Andrew S Grove - Collected Quotes

"Automation is certainly one way to improve the leverage of all types of work. Having machines to help them, human beings can create more output." (Andrew S. Grove, "High Output Management", 1983)

"Detect and fix any problem in a production process at the lowest-value stage possible." (Andrew S Grove, "High Output Management", 1983)

"Individual contributors who gather and disseminate know-how and information should also be seen as middle managers, because they exert great power within the organization." (Andrew S Grove, "High Output Management", 1983)

"Information gathering is the basis of all other managerial work, which is why I choose to spend so much of my day doing it." (Andrew S Grove, "High Output Management", 1983)

"Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite." (Andrew S Grove, "High Output Management", 1983)

"There is an especially efficient way to get information, much neglected by most managers. That is to visit a particular place in the company and observe what's going on there." (Andrew S Grove, "High Output Management", 1983)

"A strong corporate culture is the invisible hand that guides how things are done in an organization. The phrase, 'You just can't do that here', is extremely powerful, more so than any written rules or policy manuals." (Andrew S Grove, "One-On-One With Andy Grove", 1987)

"Setting and communicating the right expectations is the most important tool a manager has for imparting that elusive drive to the people he supervises." (Andrew S. Grove, "One-On-One With Andy Grove", 1987)

"[...] a strategic inflection point is a time in the life of business when its fundamentals are about to change. That change can mean an opportunity to rise to new heights. But it may just as likely signal the beginning of the end." (Andrew S Grove, "Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and Career", 1988)

🖌️Jay R Galbraith - Collected Quotes

"Organization design is conceived to be a decision process to bring about a coherence between the goals or purposes for which the organization exists, the patterns of division of labor and interunit coordination and the people who will do the work." (Jay R Galbraith, "Organization Design", 1972)

"The basic proposition is that the greater the uncertainty of the task, the greater the amount of information that has to be processed between decision-makers during the execution of the task. If the task is well understood prior to performing it much of the activity can be pre-planned. If it is not understood, then during the actual task execution more knowledge is acquired which leads to changes in resource allocations, schedules, and priorities." (Jay R Galbraith, "Organization Design", 1972)

"If the organization is faced with greater uncertainty due to technological change, higher performance standards due to increased competition, or diversifies its product line to reduce dependence, the amount of information processing is increased. The organization must adopt at least one of the four strategies when faced with greater uncertainty." (Jay R Galbraith, "Designing complex organizations", 1973)

"Organizations make two responses to deal with the behavior control problem. The first change involves the substitution of craft or professional training of the work force for the detailed centralized programming of the work processes." (Jay R Galbraith, "Designing complex organizations", 1973)

"[Task uncertainty is] the difference between the amount of information required to perform the task and the amount of information already possessed by the organisation." (Jay R Galbraith, "Designing complex organizations", 1973)

"There is no one best way to organize [...] Any way of organizing is not equally effective." (Jay R, Galbraith, "Designing complex organizations", 1973)

"If management can identify the negatives of its preferred option, the other policies around the star model can be designed to counter the negatives while achieving the positives. (Jay R Galbraith, "Designing organizations: an executive guide to strategy, structure, and process", 2002)

"Metrics help align individual behaviors and performance with the organizational goals." (Jay R Galbraith et al, "Designing Dynamic Organizations", 2022)

"Organization design is the deliberate process of configuring structures, processes, reward systems, and people practices and policies to create an effective organization capable of achieving the business strategy." (Jay R Galbraith et al, "Designing Dynamic Organizations", 2022)

"Organization design is the means for creating a community of collective effort that yields more than the sum of each individual’s efforts and results." (Jay R Galbraith et al, "Designing Dynamic Organizations", 2022)

"Strategy is the cornerstone of the organization design process. If the strategy is not clear, or not agreed upon by the leadership team, there are no criteria on which to base other design decisions. Without knowing the goal, it is impossible to make rational choices along the way." (Jay R Galbraith et al, "Designing Dynamic Organizations", 2022)

"The strategy determines what types of skills, competencies, and other capabilities are required of employees and managers." (Jay R Galbraith et al, "Designing Dynamic Organizations", 2022)

🖌️Douglas McGregor - Collected Quotes

"Above all, it is necessary to recognize that knowledge cannot be pumped into human beings the way grease is forced into a machine. The individual may learn; he is not taught." (Douglas McGregor, "The Human Side of Enterprise", 1960)

"Behind every managerial decision or action are assumptions about human nature and human behavior." (Douglas McGregor, "The Human Side of Enterprise", 1960)

"Classical organization theory suffers from 'ethnocentrism': It ignores the significance of the political, social, and economic milieu in shaping organizations and influencing managerial practice." (Douglas McGregor, "The Human Side of Enterprise", 1960)

"Every managerial act rests on assumptions, generalizations, and hypotheses - that is to say, on theory. Our assumptions are frequently implicit, sometimes quite unconscious, often conflicting; nevertheless, they determine our predictions that if we do a, b will occur. Theory and practice are inseparable." (Douglas McGregor, "The Human Side of Enterprise", 1960)

"Formal theories of organization have been taught in management courses for many years, and there is an extensive literature on the subject. The textbook principles of organization - hierarchical structure, authority, unity of command, task specialization, division of staff and line, span of control, equality of responsibility and authority, etc. - comprise a logically persuasive set of assumptions which have had a profound influence upon managerial behavior." (Douglas McGregor, 'The Human Side of Enterprise", 1960)

"If there is a single assumption which pervades conventional organizational theory, it is that authority is the central, indispensable means of managerial control." (Douglas McGregor, "The Human Side of Enterprise", 1960)

"It is probable that one day we shall begin to draw organization charts as a series of linked groups rather than as a hierarchical structure of individual 'reporting' relationships." (Douglas McGregor, "The Human Side of Enterprise", 1960)

"Man will exercise self-direction and self-control in the service of objectives to which he is committed." (Douglas McGregor, "The Human Side of Enterprise", 1960)

"The decision which achieves organization objectives must be both (1) technologically sound and (2) carried out by people. If we lose sight of the second requirement or if we assume naively that people can be made to carry out whatever decisions are technically sound - we run the risk of decreasing rather than increasing the effectiveness of the organization." (Douglas McGregor, "The Human Side of Enterprise", 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)

"The ingenuity of the average worker is sufficient to outwit any system of controls devised by management." (Douglas McGregor, "The Human Side of Enterprise", 1960)

"The key question for top management is what are your assumptions (implicit as well as explicit) about the most effective way to manage people?" (Douglas McGregor, "The Human Side of Enterprise", 1960)

🖌️Alan Pennington - Collected Quotes

"At its most basic level trust can be described as acceptance of the truth of a statement without the need for evidence – clearly this happens over time: initially evidence is required that you will do as you say you will and then, over time, you accept that this will happen without the need for evidence on each occasion." (Alan Pennington, "The Customer Experience Book", 2016)

"Data can be a scary subject for an organisation to come to terms with: it is often seen as confusing, steeped in mystery and only truly understood by a few highly technical experts." (Alan Pennington, "The Customer Experience Book", 2016)

"Data from the customer interactions is the lifeblood for any organisation to view, understand and optimise the customer experience both remotely and on the front line! In the same way that customer experience experts understand that it’s the little things that count, it’s the small data that can make all the difference." (Alan Pennington, "The Customer Experience Book", 2016)

"[…] deliver a customer experience where the customer sees real value from how you use the data that they share with you and they will keep interacting/sharing that data and their consent for you to use it!" (Alan Pennington, "The Customer Experience Book", 2016)

"Evidence is freely available which demonstrates a gap between what the company thinks is important to customers and what customers actually deem to be the most important when it comes to making their choices. The failure to understand what is really important leads to customers receiving a sub-optimal experience and the company sub-optimising its commercial position." (Alan Pennington, "The Customer Experience Book", 2016)

"Information or data is only valuable if it can be used to provide insights which then actually drive change. Sadly the most effort and expertise and applause is given to those who design and deliver incredibly complex statistical reviews of data over time – the beauty is in the complexity and the presentation not in the usability." (Alan Pennington, "The Customer Experience Book", 2016)

"It is not about deep data analysis to predict behaviour, it is about actively designing experiences and then applying data to enable the delivery. Cumulatively making lots of little changes using very specific pieces of data will aggregate to a bigger impact." (Alan Pennington, "The Customer Experience Book", 2016)

"Remember that at the heart of the issue is that business leaders, often unintentionally, miscommunicate the goal – the challenge is how to articulate and describe what you are setting out to achieve and then to manage our human reaction to it." (Alan Pennington, "The Customer Experience Book", 2016)

"Remember that for change to happen it has to be relevant at a local and individual level" (Alan Pennington, "The Customer Experience Book", 2016)

"Remember the ultimate question you are answering is not how much data do you have, but who has it and how is it used?" (Alan Pennington, "The Customer Experience Book", 2016)

"The bad news is that companies tend to focus on three out of the four elements of the balanced scorecard and emphasis is skewed away from the customer component, which is the least understood and believed by many to be the least quantifiable." (Alan Pennington, "The Customer Experience Book", 2016)

🖌️Joseph O’Connor - Collected Quotes

"A model is an edited, distorted and generalised copy of the original and therefore there can never be complete. A model is not in any sense ‘true’: it can be judged only by whether it works or doesn’t work. If it works, it allows another person to get the same class of results as the original person from whom the model was taken." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"All actions have a purpose. Our actions are not random; we are always trying to achieve something, although we may not be aware of what that is." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"An effective leader leaves a legacy; they leave their footprints on the road for others to follow. A good leader develops themselves and they develop others. They bring people together rather than divide them." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Authority alone is like pushing from behind. What automatic reaction do you have when pushed from behind? Resistance - unless you are travelling in that direction anyway and you experience the push as helpful. When you do not know what lies ahead and you are not sure whether you want to move forward, resistance is completely understandable. [...] Authority alone pushes. Leadership pulls, because it draws people towards a vision of the future that attracts them." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Authority works best where you have an accepted hierarchy [...]. Then people move together because of the strong implicit accepted values that everyone shares. If you are trying to lead people who do not share similar goals and values, then authority is not enough." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Beliefs are those ideas we take as true and use to guide our actions. We all have beliefs about what sort of people we are and what we are capable of. These beliefs act as permissions for or limitations on what we do. When we believe something is possible, we will try it; if we believe it impossible, we will not." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Every time we push the boundary on the outside world we also push the boundary on our inner world. We open a larger ‘idea space’. Every advance in science, art and technology means we have gone beyond the limiting ideas that have stopped us advancing in the past." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Good leaders are ethical, responsible and effective. Ethical because leadership connects you to others through shared values. Responsible because leadership means self-development and not simply giving orders, however charismatically, to get others to do what you want. Effective because shared values and goals give the strongest motivation for getting tasks done. There are no guarantees, but this sort of leadership will bring you closer to people and give you the greatest chance of success." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Having a choice is better than not having a choice. Always try to have a map for yourself that gives you the widest and richest number of choices. Act always to increase choice. The more choices you have, the freer you are and the more influence you have." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Leadership comes from our natural striving to constantly reinvent ourselves. You do not need external permission to be a leader. Nor do you need any qualifications or position of authority. Leadership does not depend on what you do already. Many people in positions of authority are not leaders; they may have the title but not the substance. Others have the substance, but no title. Leadership comes from the reality of what you do and how you think, not from your title or nominal responsibilities. Leadership blooms when the soil and climate is right, but the seed comes from within." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Leadership has long been associated with authority - we tend to concentrate on the leader, to think of them as innately superior in some way, and take the followers for granted. But formal authority is only one possible part of leadership. Many leaders do not have it. In some cases, perhaps ‘companionship’ better describes the relationship between leader and followers." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Leadership is about inspiring people through a shared set of values." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Management keeps existing systems running smoothly. It is a skill; leadership more an identity issue. Leaders innovate, they change or modify existing procedures, and they focus on transformation. Leaders motivate people through their beliefs and values, pushing the edges of the current organizational culture; management accepts the current organizational culture and makes it work. Management gets people to do things and leaders get people to want to do things. Management works within boundaries and leaders work with boundaries (not without boundaries!) Managers are people who do things right. Leaders are people who do the right thing." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Managers sometimes justify the stick by pointing to better results, with the assumption that the threats caused the improvements. Alas, this is unlikely. One event coming before another does not automatically mean that the first is the cause of the second; the rooster does not make the sun rise every morning, although it may think it does. Bad results are much more likely to improve than get worse due to the simple law of statistics known as regression: results average out over time. Poor performance will eventually improve even when left to itself." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Managing [...] used to be about planning and control. Top management decided what was to be done, middle management worked out how to do it and everyone else did as they were told. This model assumed, of course, that top management knew what needed to be done, that the orders had time to percolate their way down and that, like a good army, the lower ranks would obey." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Neuro-Linguistic programming is the study of our subjective experience; how we create what passes for reality in our minds. [...] NLP also studies brilliance and quality - how outstanding individuals and organisations get their outstanding results." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"People respond to their experience, not to reality itself. We do not know what reality is. Our senses, beliefs, and past experience give us a map of the world from which to operate." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"The meaning of the communication is not simply what you intend, but also the response you get." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

🖌️James D Mooney - Collected Quotes

"Failure to delegate causes managers to be crushed and fail under the weight of accumulated duties that they do not know and have not learned to delegate." (James D Mooney, "Onward Industry!", 1931)

"In every organization there must be some function that decides or determines the objective and the procedure necessary to its attainment [...] may be called the determinative [...] in secular government always known as the legislative." (James D Mooney, "Onward Industry!", 1931)

"In organization it means the graduation of duties, not according to differentiated functions, for this involves another and distinct principle of organization, but simply according to degrees of authority and corresponding responsibility." (James D Mooney, "Onward Industry!", 1931)

"It is sufficient here to observe that the supreme coordinating authority must be anterior to leadership in logical order, for it is this coordinating force which makes the organization. Leadership, on the other hand, always presupposes the organization. There can be no leader without something to lead." (James D Mooney, "Onward Industry!", 1931)

"Leadership is the form that authority assumes when it enters into process. As such it constitutes the determining principle of the entire scalar process, existing not only at the source, but projecting itself through its own action throughout the entire chain, until, through functional definition, it effectuates the formal coordination of the entire structure." (James D Mooney, "Onward Industry!", 1931)

"No advance in human knowledge will ever exclude the leader's need for the counsel of elemental human wisdom, and especially of collective wisdom, in the making of all important decisions." (James D Mooney, "Onward Industry!", 1931)

"Organization is the form of every human association for the attainment of a common purpose." (James D Mooney, "Onward Industry!", 1931)

"The staff function in organization means the service of advice or counsel, as distinguished from the function of authority or command. This service has three phases, which appear in a clearly integrated relationship. These phases are the informative, the advisory, and the supervisory." (James D Mooney, "Onward Industry!", 1931)

"The reason for the phenomenon we call organization is as fundamental as human life itself. It has its roots in the fact that man, in every fiber of his being, with the full force of every motive he has brought with him through the ages, is stamped indelibly as a social creature." (James D Mooney, "Onward Industry!", 1931)

"The supreme coordinating authority must rest somewhere and in some form in every organization, else there could be no such thing as organized." (James D Mooney, "Onward Industry!", 1931)

"Coordination, therefore, is the orderly arrangement of group efforts, to provide unity of action in the pursuit of a common purpose. As coordination is the all inclusive principle of organization it must have its own principle and foundation in authority, or the supreme coordination power. Always, in every form of organization, this supreme authority must rest somewhere, else there would be no directive for any coordinated effort." (James D Mooney, "The Principles of Organization", 1947)

"Delegation means the conferring of a specified authority by a higher authority. In its essence it involves a dual responsibility. The one to whom responsibility is delegated becomes responsible to the superior for doing the job. but the superior remains responsible for getting the Job done. This principle of delegation is the center of all processes in formal organization. Delegation is inherent in the very nature of the relation between superior and subordinate. The moment the objective calls for the organized effort of more than one person, there is always leadership with its delegation of duties." (James D Mooney, "The Principles of Organization", 1947)