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Organizational Culture Quotes

Browse 107 quotes about Organizational Culture.

Organizational Culture Quotes

“The system that rewards performance over substance is the water the organization swims in, and the fish that most clearly perceives the water is not the fish that survives the competition — it is the fish that stops swimming.”

“Among the organizational means that humans have used to commit aggression against each other, those recognized as governments have been by far the most harmful. However they have not been the only institutional instruments of aggression. Other institutions – churches, corporations, groups such as the mafia and the narco-cartels, etc. – have also committed aggression on a scale that exceeds the individual capacity for evil. Although they did not call themselves governments, one could say they acted governmentally. Meanwhile, though rarely, some governments have mostly left people in peace. Therefore I say that government is as government does.”

“If your business is anything like our exemplar firm, or indeed like most companies we have worked with, the projects you have committed to complete represent over 100 percent of your carrying capacity. This can have surprising effects on the length of time each project takes to complete. For instance, imagine a project that will take a skilled software developer six months to complete. The lead time to completion if this person is working full-time on the project is six months. Divide this person’s time between four projects, however, and three-quarters of the time, each project is being ignored by the person. The lead time to completion of all four projects stretches to two years! Delays like this can be deadly in a world where speed matters.”

“This much being said, don’t get trapped into microallocating people’s time. Allocating personnel-months is sufficient for most projects of any strategic significance.”

“if we honor and value the complex ways in which people engage in organizational work, we are honoring the person and showing them kindness. At the end of the day, kindness in a meeting environment is about valuing the human before us: their time, their perspectives, and their personalities.”

“Lose your excuses: You don’t want to feel bad. You feel held hostage. It’s just a small thing. I can’t hold this person accountable. My high performers will pick up the slack. It’s always been this way. All are excuses to tolerate stuff you shouldn’t. All of them are costly.”

“How organizations deal with failures or accidents is particularly instructive. Pathological organizations look for a “throat to choke”: Investigations aim to find the person or persons “responsible” for the problem, and then punish or blame them. But in complex adaptive systems, accidents are almost never the fault of a single person who saw clearly what was going to happen and then ran toward it or failed to act to prevent it. Rather, accidents typically emerge from a complex interplay of contributing factors. [...] Thus, accident investigations that stop at “human error” are not just bad but dangerous. Human error should, instead, be the start of the investigation. Our goal should be to discover how we could improve information flow so that people have better or more timely information, or to find better tools to help prevent catastrophic failures following apparently mundane operations.”

“The first step out of the gate has to be knowing where you want to end up. What do you really want from your company?”

“Work/life balance is not about escaping work. It’s about living exactly the way you want to when you’re at work.”

“True leaders live their values everywhere, not just in the workplace.”

“Values are deeply held personal beliefs that form your own priority code for living.”

“Values are the individual biases that allow you to decide which actions are true for you alone.”

“Success means: I want to know the work I do means something to somebody and helps make the world, if not a Better place, not a worse one.”

“Success for Managers means: I want to be in healthy relationships. I want a real connection with people I spend so much time with.”

“Your values are your essence: an undistorted mirror showing you at your pure, attractive best.”

“Careful now: even a financially rewarding, intellectually stimulating work environment isn’t the same as living your own values.”

“Let’s get right on top of the bottom line: You must live your personal values at work.”

“Management controls performance in people because it impacts skills; it’s a matter of monitoring, analyzing and directing.”

“Leadership creates performance in people because it impacts willingness; it’s a matter of modeling, inspiring, and reinforcing.”

“Any expert will tell you that if you want emotionally committed relationships then people must be allowed to be true to who they are.”

“Companies should be the best possible place to practice fulfillment, to live out values and to realize deep connectivity and purpose.”

“When you’re not on your own agenda, you’re prey to the agenda of others.”

“When you don’t know what true for you, everyone else has unusual influence.”

“Why live my personal values at work? This is an excellent question to ask. If your attorneys are planning an insanity defense.”

“This is your one and only precious life. Somebody’s going to decide how it’s going to be lived and that person had better be you.”

“Hard-core results come from igniting the massive power of emotional commitment. Are your people committed?”

“Do you think your people struggle with being true to themselves? Do their values match up with their work?”

“The heart of a company’s performance is hardwired to the hearts of its managers.”

“The high quality of a company’s customer experience rarely has anything to do with the high price of their product.”

“To integrate one’s experiences around a coherent and enduring sense of self lies at the core of creating a user’s guide to life.”

“Leaders are people who know exactly who they are. They know exactly where they want to go. They’re hell-bent on getting there.”

“Leaders make a lot of mistakes but they admit those mistakes to themselves and change because of them.”

“Managers know what they want most: to be allowed to achieve success by leveraging who they are, not by compromising it.”

“Most managers have plenty of emotional commitment to give to their jobs. If they can be convinced it’s safe and sensible to give it.”

“Emotional commitment is a personal choice. Managers understand this even if their companies don’t.”

“A manager’s emotional commitment is worth more than their financial, intellectual and physical commitment combined.”

“What managers want most from companies they stop themselves from getting. What companies want most from managers they stop them from giving.”

“Instead of waiting for a leader you can believe in, try this: Become a leader you can believe in.”

“You can’t sell it outside if you can’t sell it inside.”

“The purpose of leadership is to change the world around you in the name of your values, so you can live those values more fully.”