Organizational Behavior Quotes

“Growing a culture requires a good storyteller. Changing a culture requires a persuasive editor.”
― Ryan Lilly

“The nonessential employees, the type of workers whom remain at home when it snows, are the quickest to complain about how the talented persons of an organization behave.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“So what exactly is HOW?
For many, business and life has always been about the pursuit of What: “What do we do? What’s on the agenda? What do we need to accomplish?” Whats are commodities; they are easily duplicated or reverse-engineered and delivered faster and at a lower cost by someone else.

How is a philosophy. It's a way of thinking about individual and organizational behavior. And How we do what we do – our behavior – has become today’s greatest source of our advantage. In this world, How is no longer a question, but the answer to what ails us as people, institutions, companies, nations. How we behave, how we consume, how we build trust in our relationships and how we relate to others provides us with the power to not just survive, but thrive and endure.”
― Dov Seidman

“Good managers don't set a goal to increase efficiency, but rather an implementation of business process improvements that result in higher efficiency as well.”
― Eraldo Banovac

“Success is mainly the result of hard work.”
― Eraldo Banovac

“No matter how narrow our perceptions become in the daily obsessions of the organization, there is no such thing as a life lived only within an organization. There are other necessities calling us to a much greater participation than any corporation can offer. The most efficiently run, streamlined organization, the best-groomed, most-organized executive is interwoven with the ragged vagaries of creation, and despite our best attempts to anchor ourselves in the concrete foundations of profitability and permanence, we remain forever at the whim, mercy, and pleasure of the wind-blown world.

Ironically, we bring more vitality into our organizations when we refuse to make their goals the measure of our success and start to ask about the greater goals they might serve, and when we stop looking to them as parents who will supply necessities we can only obtain when we wrestle directly with our own destiny.

In a sense, we place the same burdens on our organizational life as we place on the rest of our existence. We feel there is something wrong at the center of it all, and we have to put it right. We are forever looking for a cure for our ills. We do this by placing ourselves in the position of manager, of thus managing change. Unless it is managed, something is wrong. But our real unconscious and underlying wish is to find a cure for the impermanence of life, and for that there is no remedy. Most of the difficulties we confront at work are no different from those human beings have been dealing with for millenia. Life is full of loneliness, failure, grief, and loss to an extent that terrifies us, and we will do anything to will ourselves another existence.”
― David Whyte, The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America

“Organizational culture is simply the response of an organization to its political influences, both internal and external.”
― Larrie D. Ferreiro

“We all pay a price for unethical organizational behaviour.”
― Johnson Craig

“Good units walk a thin line between indiscipline and ineffectiveness. Ignore the rules too often and you’ve got a mob, but enforce the rules too strictly and you’ve got a herd.”
― Henry V. O'Neil, Orphan Brigade

“Knowing that an asteroid is going to hit the earth is not really useful if you are not planning to launch missiles to knock it out of the sky. You have to work massively overtime on the belief that innovation or massive change is going to happen.' — Tom Martin, former VP of marketing”
― Heather Simmons

“Truth be told, nobody thought Dell’s direct business model would work, at least back in the early 90s. As Bill Sharpe, head of the advertising agency that held the Dell Canada account from 1996 to 2006, told me, “I had a business partner in California who said, we have a client, Dell. It sells computers over the phone, and ships them to you. I said, ‘There’s no way, who’s gonna buy a computer over the phone? They’re complicated.”
― Heather Simmons

“Regarding quality, the following rule is very important: do each activity right at the first time with the aim of saving money and time. Regardless of the process under consideration, the activities that were carried out badly may cause repetitions with considerable additional costs.”
― Eraldo Banovac

“Do you want to resolve a conflict successfully? Don't wait, start a conversation.”
― Eraldo Banovac

“(from Acknowledgments)
For some years I have profited from an in-house, informal but ongoing seminar on organizational behavior, a seminar comprising my wife, our three children, and three children-in-law. They have shared their insights into the functions and dysfunctions of the organizational settings in which they have worked, which include government, education, and medicine. I am indebted to all of them, though none are responsible for the uses to which I have put their observations. Eli Muller first drew my attention to the larger themes of The Wire (episodes of which he can quote chapter and verse), and his acute analysis of institutional dynamics finds its echoes in the pages of this book, which he also helped to edit. Thanks go to Joseph Muller, M.D., for orienting me in the literature of medicine and healthcare, as well as his sage advice about the tone and direction of the book. My wife, Sharon, was the first reader and editor of every chapter, and many of the book's ideas were born or refined in our daily conversations (when we weren't talking about the immeasurable pleasures of grandparenthood--but that's the subject of another book).

Completion of this book was eased by the support of my parents. I'm saddened to note that this is the last project that I was able to discuss with mt father, Henry Muller, who passed away when the manuscript was nearing completion: his memory is a blessing. My mother, Bella Muller, remains a vigorous source of wisdom, encouragement, and humor in my life.”
― Jerry Z. Muller, The Tyranny of Metrics

“When the spark of sarcasm ignites the fire of cynicism, you might find yourself on the harlequin-pyre before even noticing it.”
― Andreas Steiner

“Stories are powerful and memorable. That is why I have told so many in this book. But an individual anecdote can only serve as an illustration. To really convince yourself, much less others, we need to change the way we do things: we need data, and lots of it. [...] People become overconfident because they never bother to document their past track record of wrong predictions, and then they make things worse by falling victim to the dreaded confirmation bias - they only look for evidence that confirms their preconceived hypotheses. The only protection against overconfidence is to systematically collect data, especially data that can prove you wrong. [...] "If you don't write it down, it doesn't exist". In addition, most organizations have an urgent need to learn how to learn, and then commit to this learning in order to accumulate knowledge over time. At the very least this means trying new things and keeping track of what happens. Even better would be to run actual experiments. [...] The ideal organizational environment encourages everyone to observe, collect data, and speak up.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

“In essence, use logic to guide your actions, but don't neglect the emotional undercurrents that drive people's behavior.”
― Damian Mingle