Jerry Garcia Quotes

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

At a school in Massachusetts where I once worked, we managed early on through consensus. Which sounds wonderful, but it was just a very, very difficult way to sort of manage anything, because convincing everybody to do one particular thing, especially if it was hard, was almost impossible.

The market turns out to be just one special case of collective decision-making.

My predecessor, P. W. Botha, had an inner circle, and I did not like it. I preferred decisions to evolve out of cabinet discussions. That way, we achieved real co-ownership of our policies.

Deliberation is the work of many men. Action of one alone.

At State Bank, all decisions are collective decisions. I have created the comfort zone.

A swarm finds the solution people best agree upon. It optimizes collective support, whereas a poll tells us how we disagree.

Some mistakes will be made along the way. That's good. Because some decisions are being made along the way. We'll find the mistakes. We'll fix them.

There is no name for all who participate in group decision-making or the organization which they form. I propose to call this organization the Technostructure.

No man who has not sat in the assemblies of men can know the light, odd and uncertain ways in which decisions are often arrived at.

Make more decisions. That's the only way to get better at it.

You have a meeting to make a decision, not to decide on the question.

In Japanese organizations, before you have a meeting and you've got an idea that you want to get across, you go talk to everyone and list them. And then the meeting, you don't do it American style where everyone gets up and advocates and conflicts and decides, you get up and formalize agreements.

If an important decision is to be made, they [the Persians] discuss the question when they are drunk, and the following day the master of the house where the discussion was held submits their decision for reconsideration when they are sober. If they still approve it, it is adopted; if not, it is abandoned. Conversely, any decision they make when they are sober, is reconsidered afterwards when they are drunk.

How many small decisions accumulate to form a habit? What a multitude of decisions, made by others, in other times, must shape our lives now.

When I made the decision - when my team-mates made that decision, when the whole peloton made that decision - it was a bad decision and an imperfect time. But it happened.

You [as a president] have to have a strong team around you. You have to have respect for institutions and the process to make good decisions because you are inherently reliant on other folks.

No decision has been made unless carrying it out in specific steps has become someone's work assignment and responsibility.

I mean, it really has a lot to do with who is actually physically doing a lot of talking. And we've just noticed that as we've evolved we're still making all the decisions from this, like, "cave."

It's not just the manager who makes the decision, it's the player who makes the decision. They both decide fifty-fifty to make a decision.

I made the decision. I'm accountable.

In order to get past disagreements, you just can't have one person with power decide. In other words, so just because I'm a boss, it would be terrible if I then said, "Okay, we're gonna go do this." That's why, after that thoughtful disagreement, there has to be a process of an idea meritocracy. That means okay, now you have to vote, not that the decision resides with power. And then you vote and move beyond it.

They [the Persians] are accustomed to deliberate on matters of the highest moment when warm with wine; but whatever they in this situation may determine is again proposed to them on the morrow, in their cooler moments, by the person in whose house they had before assembled. If at this time also it meet their approbation, it is executed; otherwise it is rejected. Whatever also they discuss when sober, is always a second time examined after they have been drinking.

Men first make up their minds (and the smaller the mind the sooner made up), and then seek for the reasons; and if they chance to stumble upon a good reason, of course they do not reject it. But though they are right, they are only right by chance.

It is all here. You make the choice.