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In most companies, the formal hierarchy is a matter of public record - it's easy to discover who's in charge of what. By contrast, natural leaders don't appear on any organization chart.

Gary Hamel

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Gary Hamel
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: January 1
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More quotes by Gary Hamel

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Over the centuries, religion has become institutionalized, and in the process encrusted with elaborate hierarchies, top-heavy bureaucracies, highly specialized roles and reflexive routines.
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Resilience is based on the ability to embrace the extremes -- while no becoming an extremist. ... **Most companies don't do paradox very well.** (emphasis by author) [2002] p.25f
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Are we changing as fast as the world around us?
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In a well-functioning democracy, citizens have the option of voting their political masters out of office. Not so in most companies.
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Discovery is the journey insight is the destination.
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This extraordinary arrogance that change must start at the top is a way of guaranteeing that change will not happen in most companies.
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At the heart of every faith system is a bargain: on one side there is the comfort that comes from a narrative that suggests human life has cosmic significance, and on the other a duty to yield to moral commands that can, in the moment, seem rather inconvenient.
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Somewhere out there is a bullet with your company's name on it. Somewhere out there is a competitor, unborn and unknown, that will render your strategy obsolete. You can't dodge the bullet – you're going to have to shoot first. You're going to have to out-innovate the innovators.
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Out there in some garage is an entrepreneur who's forging a bullet with your company's name on it. You've got one option now - to shoot first. You've got to out innovate the innovators.
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I'm not one of those professors whose office is encased floor-to-ceiling with books. By the way, I think academics do this to intimidate their visitors.
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It doesn't matter much where your company sits in its industry ecosystem, nor how vertically or horizontally integrated it is - what matters is its relative 'share of customer value' in the final product or solution, and its cost of producing that value.
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Any company that cannot imagine the future won't be around to enjoy it.
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You can't use an old map to see a new land.
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Like a child star whose fame fades as the years advance, many once-innovative companies become less so as they mature.
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As human beings, we are the only organisms that create for the sheer stupid pleasure of doing so. Whether it's laying out a garden, composing a new tune on the piano, writing a bit of poetry, manipulating a digital photo, redecorating a room, or inventing a new chili recipe - we are happiest when we are creating.
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There's a simple, but oft-neglected lesson here: to sustain success, you have to be willing to abandon things that are no longer successful.
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Top-down authority structures turn employees into bootlickers, breed pointless struggles for political advantage, and discourage dissent.
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In the age of revolution you have to be able to imagine revolutionary alternatives to the status quo. If you can't, you'll be relegated to the swollen ranks of keyboard-pounding automatons.
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Strategy is, above all else, the search for above average returns.
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An uplifting sense of purpose is more than an impetus for individual accomplishment, it is also a necessary insurance policy against expediency and impropriety.
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