Organizational Flexibility Quotes

True flexibility is a symbiotic partnership between employer and employee and between technology and culture.

So companies have to be very schizophrenic. On one hand, they have to maintain continuity of strategy. But they also have to be good at continuously improving.

What's true for churches is true for other institutions: the older and more organized they get, the less adaptable they become. That's why the most resilient things in our world - biological life, stock markets, the Internet - are loosely organized.

Unlike private enterprise which quickly modifies its actions to meet emergencies — unlike the shopkeeper who promptly finds the wherewith to satisfy a sudden demand — unlike the railway company which doubles its trains to carry a special influx of passengers; the law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances at its habitual rate. By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements.

My contract with my teachers is fair, and is two pages. The union contract is 200 pages. You cannot manage your business when you cannot make any decision without going back to 200 pages worth of stuff.

The difference between management and administration (which is what bureaucrats used to do exclusively) is the difference between choice and rigidity.

Singing is not indulged in by Rotary clubs of some countries and all clubs are given full privilege to do as they please about including it in their programs.

In large organizations there are discrete functions. I do this; you do that. I swim in my lane; you swim in your lane. That can be very effective for certain processes and in certain stable conditions. But it doesn't work in unstable conditions.

Managers tend to treat organizations as if they are infinitely plastic. They hire and fire, merge, downsize, terminate programs, add capacities. But there are limits to the shifts that organizations can absorb.

There can be no one best way of organizing a business.

Usually, the biggest companies are not the most dynamic.

It is a popular error that bureaucracy is less flexible than private enterprise. It may be so in detail, but when large scale adaptations have to be made, central control is far more flexible. It may take two months to get an answer to a letter from a government department, but it takes twenty years for an industry under private enterprise to readjust itself to a fall in demand.

I think there's definitely a potential there for a congregation to survive without the Crystal Cathedral. The congregation is the people. It's not the building.

There's no reason any company should be limited by its physical environment.

The Islanders and their owner, Garth Snow, were very generous with me and let me do some cool stuff inside the organization.

Many things are linked to being able to live with uncertainty, ...with paradoxes. But this can be a strength of an organisation and a situation.

Traditionally, the role of the individual was to conform to the organization. In the future the organization will have to conform to the needs of the individual.

It may be uncomfortable to bend itself to the marketplace, but more institutions are trying.

Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however originally alien.

What I find in a creative company is while there is a desire to build a management foundation that can feel clear and consistent, the unique product we're in Illumination Entertainment making doesn't always allow for that. So rather than following management strategy that talks about building your structure and then staffing that structure, I tend to build the structure around the strengths of the individual people we have.

Unlike private enterprise which quickly modifies its actions to meet emergencies — … the law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances at its habitual rate. By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements.

That versatility, those sudden evolutions, which have sometimes derogated from the credit of all public professions, are things not so easy in large bodies, as when men act alone, or in light squadrons.

To survive in modern times, a company must have an organizational structure that accepts change as its basic premise, lets tribal customs thrive, and fosters a power that is derived from respect, not rules. In other words, the successful companies will be the ones that put quality of life first. Do this and the rest - quality of product, productivity of workers, profits for all - will follow.

The needs of people are more important than the constraints of bureaucracy.