John Hoover Quotes

105 Sourced Quotes

When people's hopes and expectations are built up only to be demolished, they become a lot harder to motivate...

John Hoover
Telling God and Machiavellian Bosses what they want to hear is always your best bet.

John Hoover
Your I-Boss may have a greater emotional investment in getting things done right than he is willing or able to admit.

John Hoover
Masochistic Bosses make sure their departments fail so upper management will deal out punishment.

John Hoover
Lose the battles and win the war.... Ask for forgiveness.... Acknowledge his presence.... Don't make the mistake of ignoring him.... His ease is your ease. If your attitude is resentful, he will bring thunder and lightning on your head and on the heads of your coworkers.

John Hoover
People participate fully, with the best they have, when they feel necessary to the outcome. People want to participate, but only if they'll feel good about what they're doing.

John Hoover
In a sort of groupthink solitaire, Bullwinkle was all too eager to take up causes that would have been better left alone. Showing true executive potential, he moved forward boldly on ideas that had no merit, completely ignoring and avoiding anything to the contrary, regardless of how much sense it made.

John Hoover
Organizations with traditional, Napoleonic, military-style hierarchies tend to remain static. To loosely paraphrase Sir Isaac Newton... organizations at rest tend to stay at rest.

John Hoover
The organizational money chart enables people to isolate because they can always point upward when someone asks, Who's in charge?... over time, the motivation to do well dwindles.

John Hoover
If you are truly adverse to regular, meaningful conversation with your team members, you can skip straight to conflict.

John Hoover
Idiot Bosses are the mutant hiccups of organizational evolution with cockroach-like immunity to calamities that wipe out truly talented and creative people.

John Hoover
Business is first, last, and always about people.... People create the needs for business to fill; people design, produce, and deliver the goods and services...

John Hoover
You want to pay particular attention to inconsistencies in thinking and behavior.

John Hoover
Many people who avoid talking to one another are the people that need to be engaged in conversation the most.

John Hoover
There is nothing more miserable to a boss than a detractor.

John Hoover
Learning a new cadence will serve you better than forming your own drum line. You'll probably just frustrate yourself and you boss, who in turn will drum you out.

John Hoover
It's much easier to address important issues... if the conversation is continuous.... don't take your team member by surprise. Catching someone off guard produces instant defensiveness.

John Hoover
Once you have become a transcendent idiot—one who can reflect upon his personal condition and circumstances—you can no longer wander back into the idiot population and disappear.

John Hoover
Sometimes what appears to be an idiot is just a regular person with idiosyncrasies.

John Hoover
Fairness in the office simply means applying the rules fairly, equally, and without regard for workplace political alliances.

John Hoover
In a molecular organization the rings of responsibility are round and easily maneuvered. Power is handed off, shared, and reassigned as the need arises.

John Hoover
What purpose is being served by keeping idiots oblivious to the carnage they create?

John Hoover
Classical management theory would have us believe that the fastest way to get a square peg through a round hole is to use a bigger hammer.

John Hoover
What ever happened to boosting earnings by getting more out of the intellectual resources currently available?

John Hoover
Whether you like it or not, any time two or more people get together to do anything, a culture emerges.

John Hoover
An absence of effective communication will ultimately lead to conflict.

John Hoover
If you are equally as emotionally needy as your Buddy Boss, it could be a marriage made in heaven, although I would rather go to another heaven.

John Hoover
Never mind the stories of how one person, against all odds, proved the rest of the world wrong. Those things happen about as often as people are struck by lightning while cashing in their winning Lotto tickets.

John Hoover
Masochistic Bosses attract codependents like flies to a Sunday picnic.... they're about as uplifting as a boar anchor.... getting something accomplished might mean a reduction in pain and misery, so that's out.

John Hoover
Your Idiot Boss needs to feel that someone is on his side, in his corner, and has his back. Find times to support your Idiot Boss, especially in his times of uncertainty and doubt.

John Hoover