Dee Hock Quotes & Sayings

Only fools worship their tools — Dee Hock

What is a question but a moment of discontent in pursuit of understanding? What is an answer but a moment of illusion in our flight from ignorance? — Dee Hock

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

Do not get angry, stubborn, and imperious. Get curious. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

If you're in such a position of power and your ego is such that this is not possible, then its essential to have a small cadre of very bright, committed people who are questioning, exploring and understanding these emerging concepts. — Dee Hock

Intent is in the composer, interpretation is in the conductor, rendering is in the instrumentalist, perception is in the listener, sound is in the notes, and rhythm is in the intervals. Music is the harmonious relationship between them all. Relationship is beauty. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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

Education that gives priority to measurement rather than values, to efficiency rather than conscience, to information rather than ethics, provides no barrier to barbarity and violence. The Holocaust was perpetrated by a society of the most disciplined, highly educated people on earth. — Dee Hock

Far better than a precise plan is a clear sense of direction and compelling beliefs. And that lies within you. The question is, how do you evoke it? — Dee Hock

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? — Dee Hock

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

The greatest writers have no purpose but to incite in the minds of each reader the highest and best thought of which they are capable. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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

It is not making better people of others that management is about. It's about making a better person of self. Income, power, and titles have nothing to do with that. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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

Well, years and years ago, I started to ask myself three very simple questions, which dominated my life for many years. One of them was, "Why are organizations everywhere, whether commercial, social, or religious, increasingly unable to manage their affairs?" The second question was, "Why are individuals throughout the world increasingly in conflict with and alienated from the organizations of which they're a part?" And the third was, "Why are society and the biosphere increasingly in disarray?" — Dee Hock

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

We are now at a point in time when the ability to receive, utilize, store, transform and transmit data - the lowest cognitive form - has expanded literally beyond comprehension. Understanding and wisdom are largely forgotten as we struggle under an avalanche of data and information. — Dee Hock

Knowledge is never in doubt. Wisdom is never certain. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

No one can teach us the joy of living; we are endowed with it. So why are we continually waiting for the lecture? — Dee Hock

An organization, no matter how well designed, is only as good as the people who live and work in it. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

We are at that very point in time when a 400-year old age is rattling in its death bed and another is struggling to be born. — Dee Hock

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

If you don't understand that you work for your mislabeled 'subordinates', then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny. — Dee Hock

Every mind is a room packed with archaic furniture. — Dee Hock

The ultimate profanity is to invoke any deity in support of death or destruction in any form, particularly war. — Dee Hock

Certainty is the place where questions go to die. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

Preserve substance; modify form; know the difference. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

One of the more curious facts about human beings is that they can spend a day of introspection without discovering what is obvious to anyone who has spent a half hour in their company. — Dee Hock

Great achievements would be few and far between without gross overestimation of the advantages and pleasures to be expected from them. — Dee Hock

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

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. — Dee Hock

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

Life will never surrender its secrets to a yardstick. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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

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

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. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

It is far too late and things are far too bad for pessimism. — Dee Hock

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

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. — Dee Hock

What will become compellingly important is absolute clarity of shared purpose and set of principles of conduct sort of institutional genetic code that every member of the organization understands in a common way, and with deep conviction. — Dee Hock

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

Of this we can be certain: at no time, in no place, and in no way is anything in the universe separate, independent, or unrelated. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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

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

If you think you can't, why think — Dee Hock

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

Making good judgments when one has complete data, facts, and knowledge is not leadership - it's bookkeeping — Dee Hock

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

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

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. — Dee Hock

You learn nothing form your successes except to think too much of yourself. It is from failure that all growth comes, provided you can recognize it, admit it, learn from it, rise above it, and then try again. — Dee Hock

An illustration I use to get people to understand it is this: I'll ask major corporate audiences: Why don't you just take all your traditional beliefs about organizations, and apply them to the neurons in your brain? — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

Community is composed of that which we don't attempt to measure, for which we keep no record and ask no recompense. Most are things we cannot measure no matter how hard we try. — Dee Hock

Given the right circumstances, from no more than dreams, determination, and the liberty to try, quite ordinary people consistently do extraordinary things — Dee Hock

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

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. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

We don't have to remain in this radically destructive mind-set and institutional-set. We can change, and the natural order of things could emerge in all of our societal organizations-government, commerce, religion-it's right there, waiting to happen. I often tell people that every mind is like a room in an old house, stuffed with very old furniture. Take any space in your mind and empty it of your old conceptions and new ones will rush in, good or bad. So change is more a getting rid of rather than an adding to or an acquiring. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

Reality cannot be captured by language - not even the language of mathematics - since all language, by its very nature, is man-made, self-referent ambiguity. — Dee Hock

There is nothing that dictates behavior more than what we want others to think of us. When that happens, we become a reflection in our own mind of what we believe is reflected in the mind of another, neither of which has the slightest chance of being correct. Talk about dogs chasing tails. — Dee Hock

Particularity and separability are infirmities of the mind, not characteristics of the universe. — Dee Hock

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. — Dee Hock

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." — Dee Hock

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

Substance is enduring, form is ephemeral. — Dee Hock