Quotes About Organization

In this prudent way every portion of the Castle Gorka hogs was utilized: the good cuts for the banquet, the tougher ones in Pani Danusia's pierogi, the haslet in Anulka's kielbasa. This good husbandry was symbolic of the rational way in which Poland had organized itself in the year 1646, when magnates, gentry and peasants were about as happy as they had ever been.

Let a man start in business without having in his mind a perfectly formed plan to systematically pursue and he will be incoherent in his efforts and will fail in his business operations.

Those who build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, or technology, or competition, or products. It is one thing above all others: the ability to get and keep enough of the right people. The management team

need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don't need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don't need excessive controls.

The good-to-great companies built a consistent system with clear constraints, but they also gave people freedom and responsibility within the framework of that system. They hired self-disciplined people who didn't need to be managed, and then managed the system, not the people.

Second, if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away.

If you're involved in building and managing a company, we're asking you to think less in terms of being a brilliant product visionary or seeking the personality characteristics of charismatic leadership, and to think more in terms of being an organizational visionary and building the characteristics of a visionary company.

When you have disciplined people, you don't

It's not how you compensate your executives, it's which executives you have to compensate in the first place. If

The evidence does not support the idea that you need an outside leader to come in and shake up the place to go from good to great. In fact, going for a high-profile outside change agent is negatively correlated with a sustained transformation from good to great.

the primary challenge you face is not in increasing creativity per se, but in making your company receptive to the vast amounts of creativity that already exist. The point is not to build a company that depends on you for its innovation, but to continually work towards an organization that is as receptive to new ideas as if those ideas had come from you.

The point is not what core values you have, but that you have core values at all, that you know what they are, that you build them explicitly into the organization, and that you preserve them over time.

Overcome lack of centralized control with increased communication and informal coordination. People need to know what other decentralized sub-units are doing so that they can act in concert with them.

Avoid matrix structures. In an attempt to have the best of both worlds, some companies make the mistake of creating matrix organizations. Don't do this. Matrix structures remove the fire of personal ownership, not to mention accountability.

If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we'll figure out how to take it someplace great.

Third, if you have the wrong people, it doesn't matter whether you discover the right direction; you still won't have a great company. Great vision without great people is irrelevant.

It is simply a manifestation of the "first who" principle: It's not how you compensate your executives, it's which executives you have to compensate in the first place.

It requires the discipline to say, "Just because we are good at it—just because we're making money and generating growth—doesn't necessarily mean we can become the best at it." The good-to-great companies understood that doing what you are good at will only make you good; focusing solely on what you can potentially do better than any other organization is the only path to greatness.

If you have the wrong people, it doesn't matter whether you discover the right direction; you still won't have a great company. Great vision without great people is irrelevant.

Look, I don't really know where we should take this bus. But I know this much: If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we'll figure out how to take it someplace great.

Bureaucratic cultures arise to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline, which arise from having the wrong people on the bus in the first place.

To be effective, a vision must fulfill two key criteria: it must be clear (well understood) and shared by all the key people in the organization.

We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats - and then they figured out where to drive it.

First, at the top levels of your organization, you absolutely must have the discipline not to hire until you find the right people. The single most harmful step you can take in a journey from good to great is to put the wrong people in key positions. Second, widen your definition of "right people" to focus more on the character attributes of the person and less on specialized knowledge. People can learn skills and acquire knowledge, but