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 HockRead
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.
Interpretation
Effective management focuses on self-improvement rather than changing others.
This quote by Dee Hock emphasizes that true management is not about altering the behavior or capabilities of others, but rather about personal development and self-improvement. It points out that external measures of success like income, power, and titles are irrelevant compared to the growth of one's character and integrity, suggesting that genuine leadership stems from within.
In practice
In a leadership workshop to emphasize the importance of self-reflection.
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.
Making good judgments when one has complete data, facts, and knowledge is not leadership - it's bookkeeping
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.
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.
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.
Never hire or promote in your own image. It is foolish to replicate your strength and idiotic to replicate your weakness. 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.
If corporate leaders and their acolytes are not slaves to some meritorious social purpose, they run the risk of being enslaved by their own ignoble appetites.
The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important - and then get out of their way while they do it.
Leaders lead but in the end it's the people who deliver.
Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere as long as the policy you've decided upon is being carried out.
The measure of you as a leader is not what you do, but what others do because of what you do.
With opportunity comes responsibility.
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