Quotes from Lee G. Bolman

The essence of leadership is not giving things or even providing visions. It is offering oneself and one's spirit.

A vision without a strategy remains an illusion.

On some deep level, we may choose to fill our days with busy work as a way to avoid the inevitable pain and disappointment in accepting that who we are may not be who we thought we were.

Strong cultures are vigorously and widely supported, and they are difficult to change.

Learning is relatively easy when the link between cause and effect is clear. But complex systems often sever that connection: causes remote from effects, solutions detached from problems, and feedback delayed or misleading (Cyert and March, 1963; Senge, 1990).

conceptual heart. But we have incorporated new research and revised our case examples extensively to keep up with the latest

The members of Team Six "are bound together not only by sworn oaths, but also by the obligations of their brotherhood" (Pfarrer, 2011, p. 28). As one team member described it, "My relationship with Team Six has been more important than my marriage" (Wadsin and Templin, p. 254). Published

Targeting individuals, while ignoring larger system failures, oversimplifies the problem and does little to prevent its recurrence.

Owen tried to convince fellow capitalists that investing in people could produce a greater return than investments in machinery. But the business world dismissed him as a wild radical whose ideas would harm the people he wanted to help (O'Toole, 1995). Owen was at least 100 years ahead of his time.

Teams often get launched in a vacuum, with little or no training or support, no changes in the design of their work, and no new systems like e-mail to help communication between teams. Frustrations mount, and people wind up in endless meetings trying to figure out why they are a team and what they are expected to do.