Organizational Evolution Quotes

Throughout history, the organizational evolution of the military has been inextricably linked with that of the business world.

In my opinion, neither organisms nor organizations evolve slowly and surely into something better, but drift until some small change occurs which has immediate and overwhelming significance. The special role of the human being is not to wait for these favorable accidents but deliberately to introduce the small change that will have great significance.

Businesses that grow by development and improvement do not die.

Every year the identity of a team changes to some degree.

The organization that can't communicate can't change, and the corporation that can't change is dead.

We live under the illusion that organizations are 'them' when, in reality, they are 'us.' If we wish to work in evolved organizations, we must each be the first to start the journey.

I think one of the major themes in 'Escape Fire,' really, if you break it down, is that huge institutions, the military, the Safeway Corporation and others, are being forced to change.

Today's environment is beginning to threaten today's organizations, finding them seriously deficient in their nervous system design... The degree of coordination, perception, rational adaptation, etc., which will appear in the next generation of human organizations will drive our present organizational forms, with their clumsy nervous systems, into extinction.

The church wasn't an organization in the first century. They weren't writing checks or buying property. The church has matured and developed over the years. But for some reason, the last thing to change is the structure of leadership.

All the companies I've worked for have this deep problem of devolving to something like the hunting and gathering cultures of 100,000 years ago. If businesses could find a way to invent 'agriculture,' we could put the world back together and all would prosper.

Very often, we think of leadership being at the very top of an organisation. I think what's unique about ABG is that we have a very strong cadre of leaders across the organisation who are highly empowered and therefore play a very major role in the growth and evolution of the organization.

The society of organizations is new-only seventy years ago employees were a small minority in every society.

SK will evolve and develop based on its corporate culture and human resources.

The only things that evolve by themselves in an organization are disorder, friction and malperformance.

KIND has gone through many iterations as it deepens its social impact. When you're selling a million dollars a year, the impact you can have is very different than when you are selling over a billion dollars a year. Scale has allowed us to do things we never thought possible.

One must also acknowledge that there are moments in an organisation's development when fresh blood and new vision are required, which may imply that an outsider may be better suited to the leadership role.

It's like in biological evolution: The population will evolve, even though individuals can't. The same thing happens in the corporate world: The population of business units within corporations evolves, even though individual business units can't. That's because the capabilities of business units reside in their processes and their values, and by their very nature, processes and values are inflexible and meant not to change.

None of us, no matter how perfect, can claim that the building of a new society and the marshalling of a former liberation movement into a modern political party all happen in a straight line.