Don Edward Beck > Quotes

“Another approach is actually to build the job around the person, to create a virtual job portfolio to match what he/she does best. Say you find a highly competent human being. Rather than asking the person to conform, you find appropriate things for that person to do. This permits a great deal of mobility within the organization, breaks up the traditional hierarchy, unlinks the rigid chain-of-command, and uncovers new functional slots. Such an idea is disturbing to First Tier entities, quite natural in Second Tier structures.”
― Don Edward Beck, Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change

“Competency is more valued than seniority; knowledge is more useful than status.”
― Don Edward Beck, Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change

“Once again, it must be reiterated that beliefs and practices that developed in response to earlier, and presumably different, environmental pressures tend to persist, and the result may come to be far less than efficient utilization of an environment”
― Don Edward Beck, Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change

“Building everything from the bottom up is just as bad as top-down. In its egalitarian, power-to-the-people enthusiasm, GREEN sometimes puts too much of its energy into the lowest echelons. Everybody gets a say, whether competent or not. Nobody's opinion carries more weight than anyone else's. When misapplied, this noble philosophy only leads to a pooling of ignorance and wasted time. The one or two people with real expertise are shouted down by know-nothings getting their share of consensus.”
― Don Edward Beck, Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change

“For you, being patriotic may mean protesting against an unjust war and being willing to go to jail to save your country from a costly mistake. Which one of us is patriotic? Both of us. We just think differently about what is best for the country. And the reason we think differently is because each of us is operating under a different framework,”
― Don Edward Beck, Spiral Dynamics in Action: Humanity's Master Code