Organizational Hierarchy Quotes

People who reach the top of the tree are only those who haven't got the qualifications to detain them at the bottom.

History reports that the men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.

In the Navy when you say right full rudder and everyone goes right. It's wonderful. In the private sector [and government] no one pays any attention to you.

Leadership starts at the top.

Management has no divine rights.

What's funny about that office is it's entirely dependent on how close you are to the president, because the president decides what your role will be. If you get on with the president, that's great; if you fall out with the president, power can go away.

In matters of business deal only with the commander of the army, column, or party in which you serve. Never give orders to anyone at all, and reserve your directions or advice for the C.O., however great the temptation (for efficiency’s sake).

Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives' decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake.

To be right and overruled is not forgiven to persons in responsible positions.

Nobody really likes large-scale organizations; nobody likes to take orders from a superior who takes orders from a superior who takes orders.

Responsibility without power, the fate of the secretary through the ages.

All parties have one leader at the top who is the first among equals.

In the modern corporation the decisive power, that of the managers , is derived from no one but the managers themselves controlled by nobody and nothing and responsible to no one. It is in the most literal sense unfounded, unjustified, uncontrolled and irresponsible power.

Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering.

An official man is always an official man, and has a wild belief in the value of Reports.

If the boss is a jerk, get over it. First of all, don't you think there's a good chance that your boss's boss knows what's going on? If so, just keep your head down and do the work. Usually, if you put in maximum effort and produce excellent results, someone in the company is going to take notice. Either you will get promoted or your jerky boss will get the heave-ho. It happens all the time.

I have never issued an order since I have been the operating head of the corporation.

Power always works from the corner office.

The buck stops with me, but I can tick off dozens of very good senior executives that are responsible for hundreds or thousands of people who work for me.

Before 20 or 25 employees, most companies are structured with everyone reporting to the founder. It's totally flat.

The real damper on employee engagement is the soggy, cold blanket of centralized authority. In most companies, power cascades downwards from the CEO. Not only are employees disenfranchised from most policy decisions, they lack even the power to rebel against egocentric and tyrannical supervisors.

Bureaucracy, the rule of nobody.

All organizations are hierarchical. At each level people serve under those above them. An organization is therefore a structured institution. If it is not structured, it is a mob. Mobs do not get things done, they destroy things.

To whom one reports is a unit of measure. It measures the exact distance between the player and the center of power. It is the closest we can get to a calibrated answer to the question 'How big am I?' More than the size of an executive's office or even his title, which no one remembers anyway, the fewer people between the player and a 'yes,' the more powerful he is.

The Catholic Church is and has been one of the strongest and most consistent counter-revolutionary forces in society. In [our] struggles we find this organization a formidable opponent. The reason for this is its ideological unity and its organizational centralization. If we revolutionists have not already learned these lessons in our experience, we could learn the value of ideological unity and organizational centralization from the Catholic Church.