Dee Hock Quotes

The essence of business to me is great people run great companies. Mediocre people don't do a very good job.

A company is only as good as the people it keeps.

You can't run a company simply by the numbers. So if you're going to bet on someone, you bet on someone you want to be in business with for a long time.

The employer generally gets the employees he deserves.

People are definitely a company's greatest asset. It doesn't make any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps.

Just about anyone can make a good product, but it's the people that count. In the end, it's the employees who will take it from a kitchen-table idea to the next level. There are a lot of important things in business, but the people portion comes first.

In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first... The first object of any good system must be that of developing first class men.

You are only as successful as the people who work for you want you to be.

Companies are not ingenious, it's the people in them that are.

As a CEO, you get sucked into dealing with all the tasks of being a CEO. There's a big meeting, a big discussion, and you get into all the big issues, which is your job. But what CEOs often lose sight of is that it's all about the people who work for you. For every 1,000 decisions, 999 were being made when I was not in the room.

I have a foundational belief that business results start with culture and your people.

No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.

Know what your people are like, and make sure they do their jobs excellently.

The players make the manager, it's never the other way.

A company is a group organized to create a product or service, and it is only as good as its people and how excited they are about creating. I do want to recognize a ton of super-talented people. I just happen to be the face of the companies.

people are all there is to an organization

Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization's makeup and success - along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like... I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.

Morale in an organization does not mean that "people get along together"; the test is performance not conformance.

The Panda mission really speaks to our philosophy. It is, 'Deliver exceptional Asian dining experiences by building an organization where people are inspired to better their lives.' I'm talking about everyone who works at Panda. They're inspired to better their own lives.

Today, no leader can afford to be indifferent to the challenge of engaging employees in the work of creating the future. Engagement may have been optional in the past, but it's pretty much the whole game today.

Creative ideas flourish best in a shop which preserves some spirit of fun. Nobody is in business for fun, but that does not mean there cannot be fun in business.

If there is such a thing as good leadership, it is to give a good example. I have to do so for all the Ikea employees.

When you are a successful business person, you are only as good as your team. No one can do every deal alone.

How do leaders serve their people? They may pay good wages and treat employees with respect.

When you hire good people, and you provide good jobs and good wages and a career, good things are going to happen.