Dee Hock Quotes

The ultimate insanity is to so organize society that power, wealth, and information are concentrated in the hands of so few people that they have the power, for whatever reason, to put to death our species and the living earth as well. But so we have.

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.

Children are easily taught, for they readily accept and believe lies told by their elders.

Language was a huge expansion of that capacity to deal with information.

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.

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.

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.

Think about technological float: it took centuries for the wheel to gain universal acceptance. Now any microchip device can be in use around the world in weeks.

The disgruntled are abundant among those who are idle, and to be idle is a matter of choice.

Accomplishment is one part commitment, one part ability, one part persistence, and one part circumstance. Circumstance we cannot control. The rest we might.

Religion claims we must obey the mandates of God and clergy can tell us what they are. Science claims we must obey the laws of nature and scientists can tell us what they are. Both claims are absurdly pretentious.

An organization's success has more to do with clarity of shared purpose, common principles and strength of belief in them than to assets, expertise, operating ability or management competence, important as they may be.

People are not "things" to be manipulated, labeled, boxed, bought, and sold. Above all else, they are not "human resources." They are entire human beings, containing the whole of the evolving universe, limitless until we start limiting them. We must examine the concept of leading and following with new eyes. We must examine the concept of superior and subordinate with increasing skepticism. We must examine the concept of management and labor with new beliefs. And we must examine the nature of organizations that demand such distinctions with an entirely different consciousness.

Great thought, great achievement, and great love have this in common: all involve great risk.

The reason is still difficult to explain, but it is not complicated. That inner voice that will not be denied, once we learn to listen to it, had whispered since the beginning, "Business is not what your life is about. Founding VISA and being its chief executive officer is something you must do, but it's only preparatory."

With the advent of genetic engineering the time required for the evolution of new species may literally collapse.

We never fully understand what we have been told until we experience it. Learning not embedded in experience is forever crippled. Unfortunately, our present society is schooled, not educated.

Only an unimaginative man would think that mechanistic, command-and-control organizations could ever produce an equitable, enduring, free society. Only a thoughtless man would create them. Only an arrogant man would run them. Only a cruel man would perpetuate them.

If you go back to the first single-cell form of life, it clearly possessed the capacity to receive, to utilize, to store, to transform, and to transmit information.

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.

The most common lesson of history is that the butchery of one mass of people by another is, in the minds of the butchers, sanctioned by their god.

Much of that which passes for conversation these days is the lobbing of small bombs of dogma and little clots of banality at one another.

Adam was the first man, Eve the first woman, Satan the first consultant, and God the first entrepreneur.

The essence of community, its heart and soul, is the non-monetary exchange of value; things we do and share because we care for others, and for the good of the place.

What we call originality is no more than ignorance of antecedents.

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

Heaven is purpose, principle, and people. Purgatory is paper and procedure. Hell is rules and regulations.

If a plethora of learning with a paucity of teaching is an approach to heaven and a plethora of teaching with a paucity of learning an approach to hell, the devil is hard at work in our educational systems.

For every difficult destination, there are thousands who stand aside and point the way for each one with courage and capacity to go before and show the way. The former are managers; the latter are leaders.

Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.

Life will never surrender its secrets to a yardstick.

Every mind is a room packed with archaic furniture.

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

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.

If Satan were twins, one the Republican nominee for president, the other the nominee of the Democrats, and God ran as an independent, can there be any doubt who would come in last?

All organizations are merely conceptual embodiments of a very old, very basic idea - the idea of community. They can be no more or less than the sum of the beliefs of the people drawn to them; of their character, judgements, acts and efforts.

We are at the very point in time when a 400-year old age is dying and another is struggling to be born - a shifting of culture, science, society, and institutions enormously greater than the world has ever experienced. Ahead, the possibility of the regeneration of individuality, liberty, community and ethics such as the world has never know, and a harmony with nature, with one another, and with the divine intelligence such as the world has never dreamed.

Life is not about control. It's not about getting. It's not about having. It's not about knowing. It's not even about being. Life is eternal, perpetual becoming, or it is nothing. Becoming is not a thing to be known, commanded, or controlled. It is a magnificent, mysterious odyssey to be experienced.

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.

It is common to learn from experience what we already believe, then repeat the experience to prove what we believe we learned. The process was invented by religion and perfected by science.

There is nothing at which government is more adept or diligent than relieving people of their money.

Make a careful list of all things done to you that you abhorred. Don't do them to others, ever.
Make another list of things done for you that you loved. Do them for others, always.

The relational aspect of all things is the music that sets life and the universe dancing.

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

It is impossible to conceive of idea apart from life. Every living thing has an idea of life, and every idea must have a living thing in which to arise.

Only fools worship their tools

Preserve substance; modify form; know the difference.

To put it another way, I believe that purpose and principle, clearly understood and articulated, and commonly shared, are the genetic code of any healthy organization. To the degree that you hold purpose and principles in common among you, you can dispense with command and control. People will know how to behave in accordance with them, and they'll do it in thousands of unimaginable, creative ways. The organization will become a vital, living set of beliefs.

Don't preach. Don't teach. Don't judge. Take a loved child by the hand and explore something fascinating together.

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.

The most abundant, least used, and most abused resource in the world is human spirit and ingenuity.

Nothing can be more violent and merciless than a group of true believers, no matter what they choose to believe.

Right is not this or that doctrine or opinion; right is rational discussion about shared experience between honorable people leading to mutual understanding and tolerance.

Just as bad money drives out good, the broad, deep, inclusive renaissance mind is being driven out by the narrow, specialized, technical mind.

If we pay great attention to the meaning of each moment of our unique life, the meaning of life in general will attend to itself.

Life is so uncertain that it is far better and more joyous to play your way through it than to plan or pray your way through it.

Nature is infinite innovation and beauty that never repeats itself. Only man-made artifacts are endlessly repetitious, which is a principal reason our lives are so boring, full of anxiety and devoid of meaning.

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

One of the more fascinating things about human behavior is the degree to which we conceive of countless boundaries that constrain and inhibit us in extraordinary ways, even though they are nothing but mental constructs that, in reality, do not exist.

Success follows those adept at preserving the substance of the past by clothing it in the forms of the future.

Substance is enduring, form is ephemeral.