Judith M. Bardwick - People Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

View all Judith M. Bardwick Quotes
I think that very few people are ambitious in the sense of having a specific image of what they want to achieve. Most people's sights are only toward the next rung, the next increment of money.

Judith M. Bardwick
In organizations where nothing much happens regardless of whether you do something exceptional or just show up in the morning, the best people lose heart and motivation is reduced near the lowest common denominator.

Judith M. Bardwick
There's a large core of powerlessness which is balanced against the unwritten contract that says that if you behave, you'll be okay. No wonder people pay so much attention to knowing the rules, to knowing the right people, to not making waves, to never making errors — to not risking, trying, innovating.

Judith M. Bardwick
The message to organizations is this: You have to increase the number of categories of contributing, or the types of career paths, which people can experience as successful. You cannot restrict esteem to the fewer and fewer who will be climbing up the management ladder. You need to have the majority of your people feeling like winners.

Judith M. Bardwick
Institutions which have too much security... tend to become bureaucratic. They add layers of people and layers of rules in order to assure the security of not making mistakes.

Judith M. Bardwick
When people in organizations feel too secure, it's because there aren't any significant outcomes as a result of what they do. Whatever you do, nothing much different happens. This also means there are no important pay-offs if you risk by innovating. As there are no rewards for taking risks, then there's no sense of push in that institution's culture.

Judith M. Bardwick
I am impressed and distressed at how passive hierarchical organizations make people. There's often a lot of overt activity, but it's not going anywhere, it's game-playing. It's play-acting at work.

Judith M. Bardwick
In truth, it's usually failure, disappointment, and frustration that motivate people to reexamine that which they've taken for granted. It's rare to find big change without significant bad news.... In that sense, the pain of failure creates the largest opportunities for progress.

Judith M. Bardwick
If the mood is overly anxious, then anxiety must be reduced by lowering uncertainty. Very simply, uncertainty is reduced when people are told what's going on and what will happen to them. In the vacuum of no news, people imagine the worst. Since disappointment is much easier to handle than anxiety, then, good news or bad, honesty is honestly the best policy.

Judith M. Bardwick
We know that productivity suffers when uncertainty is high. But we've failed to realize the equally destructive effects of too little anxiety.... By protecting people from risk, we destroy their self-esteem. We rob them of the opportunity to become strong, competent people.

Judith M. Bardwick