Quotes from Dee Hock

Life will never surrender its secrets to a yardstick.

Throughout history, it took centuries for the habits of one culture to materially affect another. Now, that which becomes popular in one country can sweep through others within months.

We are at that very point in time when a 400-year old age is rattling in its death bed and another is struggling to be born.

It won't do away with hierarchy totally, but the principal leader will be the person who most exemplifies the kind of organization and behavior required who is best able to create the conditions such organizations require.

Money motivates neither the best people, nor the best in people. It can move the body and influence the mind, but it cannot touch the heart or move the spirit; that is reserved for belief, principle, and morality.

An illustration I use to get people to understand it is this: I'll ask major corporate audiences: Why don't you just take all your traditional beliefs about organizations, and apply them to the neurons in your brain?

It is essential to employ, trust, and reward those whose perspective, ability, and judgment are radically different from yours. It is also rare, for it requires uncommon humility, tolerance, and wisdom.

If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself - your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers.

Lead yourself, lead your superiors, lead your peers, and free your people to do the same. All else is trivia.

Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it.

Make an empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it.

Far better than a precise plan is a clear sense of direction and compelling beliefs. And that lies within you. The question is, how do you evoke it?

As I like to say, the entire collective memory of the species - that means all known and recorded information - is going to be just a few keystrokes away in a matter of years.

If you're in such a position of power and your ego is such that this is not possible, then its essential to have a small cadre of very bright, committed people who are questioning, exploring and understanding these emerging concepts.

The prudent course is to make an investment in learning, testing and understanding, determine how the new concepts compare to how you now operate and thoughtfully determine how they apply to what you want to achieve in the future.

What will become compellingly important is absolute clarity of shared purpose and set of principles of conduct sort of institutional genetic code that every member of the organization understands in a common way, and with deep conviction.

The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out.

An organization, no matter how well designed, is only as good as the people who live and work in it.

Substance is enduring, form is ephemeral.

Preserve substance; modify form; know the difference.

The closest thing to a law of nature in business is that form has an affinity for expense, while substance has an affinity for income.

If you don't understand that you work for your mislabeled 'subordinates', then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny.

Make another list of things done for you that you loved. Do them for others, always.

Failure is not to be feared. It is from failure that most growth comes.