John Hoover - Organization Quotes

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Hierarchical organizations are typically run by…little Napoleons and Napoleonettes; especially at mid-organization level.... A hierarchical organizational design draws leadership focus and energy away from problem solving and progressive thinking by encouraging those climbing the organizational food chain to focus instead on protecting their positions, perks, and territory.

John Hoover
How would your organization perform if everyone accepted leadership responsibility?... if leadership were... not an exception for the anointed few? The most distinguishing characteristic between thriving enterprises and struggling enterprises is the presence and quality of leadership at all levels.

John Hoover
When dumb and dumber are running organizations, corporations, and government agencies, it's not funny anymore.

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
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
A well-designed and engineered leadership system ties everyone in your organization to the truth of the past, the irreplaceability of the moment, and the promise of the future. Without these things, much... will be wasted in an effort that might take you someplace you had no intention of going, at a price you had no intention of paying, and with more unintended than intended consequences.

John Hoover
Even the most mechanical organizations can design and deploy a people-centered culture, even if it happens one department at a time and takes a flying squirrel to champion the change.

John Hoover
One of the things [good] ringleaders encourage is the uncensored free-flow of information and ideas, both within their circles and within the biggest circle of all, the one drawn around the entire organization.

John Hoover
Bullwinkle believed that business was a mechanized process and that people were incidental to that process—a disposable yet necessary annoyance to the enterprise.... Bullwinkle managed to aggravate, antagonize, and alienate everyone he dealt with, inside and outside the organization.

John Hoover
People in organizations get ticked and become increasingly cynical every time a new change initiative, continuous process improvement, leadership development program, customer service seminar, internal and/or external communication initiative is brought in; and nothing improves.

John Hoover
If compensation is merely tied to the organizational money chart, the real contributions of many in the organization are not being recognized or rewarded. Such neglect kills enthusiasm and effort.

John Hoover
The cost of downsizing, re-sizing, or right-sizing eclipses what it would have cost to unleash the pent up leadership already inside the organization.

John Hoover
Machiavellian Bosses view the universe as an enormous pyramid. There is one spot at the top and it belongs to them, by divine right.... It is not about you. And it will never be about you, except for the moment you are actually in their way.... they will leave no maneuver or weapon of mass destruction unused in their quest for the top.... They are not clueless, except for things that don't matter to them—like the health and well-being of other people or the goals and objectives of the organization.

John Hoover
The vast majority of your organization's leadership potential is probably locked up behind the bars of bureaucracy or staggering under the weight of organizational inertia.... The cultural dragon you're fighting feeds on old school notions about leadership that grew out of a Napoleonic, hierarchical military organizational model.

John Hoover
Any attempt you make to change your organization, its performance, or outcomes will be, by design, positive. Now, if we can only get things to consistently work the way we design them.... sometimes they do, often, they don't.

John Hoover