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Mary Parker Follett

Mary Parker Follett Books

Social Worker

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“the point of educating instead of blaming seems to me very important. For nothing stultifies one more than being blamed. Moreover, if the question is, who is to blame?, perhaps each will want to place the blame on someone else, or on the other hand, someone may try to shield his fellow-worker. In either case the attempt is to hide the error and if this is done the error cannot be corrected.”

IfsWantTryingMayImportantDoneHandsSeemsLeadershipCasesFellowsBlameErrorsWorkersShieldsFellow Workers
Book:Mary Parker Follett--prophet of management: a celebration of writings from the 1920s
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“while the executive should give every possible value to the information of the specialist, no executive should abdicate thinking on any subject because of the expert. The expert's information or opinion should not be allowed automatically to become a decision. On the other hand, full recognition should be given to the part the expert plays in decision making.”

ThinkingGivingShouldPlayHandsValuesGivenDecisionBusinessOpinionSubjectsInformationRecognitionExpertsDecision MakingExecutivesSpecialists
Book:Dynamic administration: the collected papers of Mary Parker Follett
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“if you wish to train yourself for higher executive positions, the first thing for you to decide is what you are training for. Ability to dominate or manipulate others? That ought to be easy enough, since most of the magazines advertise sure ways of developing something they call 'personality.' But I am convinced that the first essential of business success is the capacity for organized thinking.”

IfsThinkingWayFirstsEnoughWishEasyAbilityBusinessPositionPersonalityOughtHigherEssentialsTrainingCapacityTrainConvincedMagazinesDevelopingOrganizedExecutivesBusiness SuccessManipulate
Book:Dynamic administration: the collected papers of Mary Parker Follett
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“There is too great a tendency (perhaps encouraged by popular journalism) to deal with the dramatic moments, forgetting that these are not always the most significant moments. ... To find the significant rather than the dramatic features of industrial controversy, of a disagreement in regard to policy on board of directors or between managers, is essential to integrative business policies.”

MomentsForgetDealsBusinessPolicyDirectorsEssentialsRegardSignificantTendenciesJournalismManagersFeaturesBoardsDramaticControversyDisagreementBoard Of DirectorsSignificant Moments
Book:Mary Parker Follett--prophet of management: a celebration of writings from the 1920s
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“A fatal defect in majority rule is that by its very nature it abolishes itself. Majority rule must inevitably become minority rule: the majority is too big to handle itself; it organizes itself into committees ... which in their turn resolve themselves into a committee of one.”

BigsTurnsDemocracyMajorityHandleMinoritiesResolveOrganizeCommitteesDefectsAbolishMajority Rule
Book:The New State: Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government
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“a little of the ready reliance on the expert comes from the desire to waive responsibillity, comes from the endless evasion of life instead of an honest facing of it. The expert is to many what the priest is, someone who knows absolutely and can tell us what to do. The king, the priest, the expert, have one after the other had our allegiance, but so far as we put any of them in the place of ourselves, we have not a sound society and neither individual nor general progress.”

KnowsLittlesDesireIndividualSoundProgressHonestReadyKingsEndlessExpertsPriestsRelianceAllegianceEvasion
Author:Mary Parker Follett
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“The ignoring of differences is the most fatal mistake in politics or industry or international life: every difference that is swept up into a bigger conception feeds and enriches society; every difference which is ignored feeds on society and eventually corrupts it.”

DifferencesMistakeIndustryBiggerInternationalConceptionIgnoredFatal Mistakes
Book:The New State: Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government
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“Give your difference, welcome my difference, unify all difference in the larger whole - such is the law of growth. The unifying of difference is the eternal process of life - the creative synthesis, the highest act of creation, the at-onement.”

GivingWholeLawProcessGrowthDifferencesCreativeCreationEternalHighestUnityWelcomeSynthesisUnifyingProcess Of Life
Book:The New State: Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government
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“The ablest administrators do not merely draw logical conclusions from the array of facts of the past which their expert assistants bring to them, they have a vision of the future.”

FactsPastLeadershipVisionDrawsConclusionExpertsLogicalAssistantsAdministratorsVisions Of The Future
Book:Mary Parker Follett--prophet of management: a celebration of writings from the 1920s
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“Leader and followers are both following the invisible leader - the common purpose. The best executives put this common purpose clearly before their group. While leadership depends on depth of conviction and the power coming therefrom there must also be the ability to share that conviction with others, the ability to make purpose articulate. And then that common purpose becomes the leader.”

PurposeLeadershipAbilityCommonLeaderGroupsShareDependsDepthFollowingConvictionInvisibleExecutivesFollowersCommon Purpose
Book:Freedom and Co-ordination (RLE: Organizations): Lectures in Business Organization
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“We often tend to think that the executive wishes to maintain standard, wishes to reach a certain quality of production, and that the worker has to be goaded in some way to do this. Again and again we forget that the worker is often, usually I think, equally interested, that his greatest pleasure in his work comes from the satisfaction of worthwhile accomplishment, of having done the best of which he was capable.”

ThinkingWayDoneCertainWishLeadershipForgetPleasureQualityCapableStandardsWorkersSatisfactionProductionsAccomplishmentExecutivesWorthwhileAgain And AgainGreatest Pleasures
Author:Mary Parker Follett
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“many rules could be made for the giving of orders. Don't preach when you give orders. Don't discuss matters already settled unless you have fresh data. Make your direction so specific that there will be no question whether they have been obeyed or not. Find out how to give directions and yet to allow people opportunity for independent thinking, for initiative. And so on and so on. Order-giving requires just as much study and just as much training as any other skill we wish to acquire.”

PeopleThinkingGivingHas BeensMadeMatterOrderOpportunityWishLeadershipStudySkillsTrainingIndependentManagementDataAcquireInitiativeIndependent Thinking
Author:Mary Parker Follett
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“An order then should always be given not as a personal matter, not because the man giving it wants the thing done, but because it is the demand of the situation. And an order of this kind carries weight because it is the demand of the situation.”

MenWantGivingShouldKindMatterDoneOrderGivenLeadershipSituationHe ManDemandWeightManagementCarrieThings DonePersonal Matter
Book:Freedom and Co-ordination (RLE: Organizations): Lectures in Business Organization
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“The foreman today does not merely deal with trouble, he forestalls trouble. In fact, we don't think much of a foreman who is always dealing with trouble; we feel that if he is doing his job properly, there won't be so much trouble.”

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Book:Freedom and Co-ordination (RLE: Organizations): Lectures in Business Organization
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“the leader releases energy, unites energies, and all with the object not only of carrying out a purpose, but of creating further and larger purposes. And I do not mean here by larger purposes mergers or more branches; I speak of larger in the qualitative rather than the quantitative sense. I mean purposes which will include more of those fundamental values for which most of us agree we are really living.”

MeanPurposeValuesEnergySpeakLeadershipLeaderObjectsCreatingAgreeFundamentalsReleaseBranchesMergersQualitativeReally Living
Book:Dynamic administration: the collected papers of Mary Parker Follett
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