Quote

Because the better an organization is at fulfilling its purpose, the more it attracts people who see the organization as an opportunity to advance themselves.

Certainly businesses the world over are facing greater competitive pressure than ever before, and this leads to executive stress which, in turn, tends to bring out authoritarian tendencies in many bosses. To balance this, we now know a lot more about how we can successfully cope with a situation that is not likely to improve in the near future.

Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.

But the more an organization succeeds and prospers, the more it is likely to be diverted from its original ideals, principles and purposes.

We've organized ourselves as cultures, to a large degree, around what we agree we know. And when you have multiple ways of knowing, multiple ways of organizing, the society loses one of its deepest organizational principles.

I have seen how leaders rule by intimidation. Leaders who demonize and dehumanize entire groups of people often do so because they have nothing else to offer. And I have seen how places that stifle the voices and dismiss the potential of their citizens are diminished: how they are less vital, less hopeful, less free.

There's a time that may come in an organization where leading by influence is not enough. When things are not going the way they need to go, there's a time when one has to step up... to set the organization back on the right direction.

Organizations that empower folks further down the chain or try to get rid of the big hierarchal chains and allow decision making to happen on a more local level end up being more adaptive and resilient because there are more minds involved in the problem.

Unless you have a sense of values that's shared by people and turns them loose to do certain things on their own within those sets of values, the organization, whether a nation or corporation or citizen group, just doesn't work very well.