Quote

Communication is the essential medium of a creative culture: the communal sea in which we all swim. A company that can't communicate is like a jazz band without instruments: Music just isn't going to happen.

John Kao

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Kao
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: January 1
Author
Writer
Band
Communicate
Going
Management
Like
Happen
Essential
Company
Instruments
Creative
Essentials
Communal
Culture
Jazz
Medium
Happens
Communication
Mediums
Music
Sea
Swim
Without

More quotes by John Kao

Image
The impresario's job is to pick the right people who can pick the right people. He picks the people who can pick artists and relate to them. People who know what the market craves.
John Kao
Image
The C.E.O.'s job in a creativity-driven company is to be an impresario, not a manager.
John Kao
Image
Creativity is not like the weather: You can do something about it. And you can measure it well enough to determine its effect on sales and profits.
John Kao
Image
In the end it is the musician who actually plays the notes. The impresario - or the project leader - is only there to make sure that happens. That is a very different type of management mind-set.
John Kao
Image
Companies have to take risks to get new knowledge, in a manner similar to how jazz musicians take risks when they go after a new approach to a tune or a performance.
John Kao
Image
The manager's job - the impresario's job - is to preside over the company's efforts to jam so the business runs really well.
John Kao
Image
If you come up with a new product, you can very easily track its contribution to the bottom line. But often the challenge can be both large and subtle.
John Kao
Image
The conventional asset-allocation method is like sheet music. It is prescribed, it has right answers and wrong answers and it sounds about the same every time. But jamming is different. Jamming is when you make the music. When you improvise and adapt to conditions. When you are creative.
John Kao
Image
The mark of the developed intellect is that it could accommodate two contradictory ideas at the same time.
John Kao
Image
Instead of command and control, managing the creative process is about facilitating and permitting.
John Kao
Image
The capacity to creatively improvise is an important factor that differentiates successful companies - or teams - from those that are not successful.
John Kao
Image
The traditional managerial mind-set is an analytical mind-set. It is about creating accountability and defining responsibilities.
John Kao
Image
People must get respect for their new ideas.
John Kao
Image
Organizations are about putting ideas through one or more types of gating procedures. In this way, ideas go from being a whim to becoming a project, from being a skunk works effort to becoming an official, mainstream effort, from being an unfounded program to a funded process, and so on.
John Kao
Image
The creative process is different from the traditional production and work-flow process. It is not so linear.
John Kao
Image
The imagination is like a muscle: it strengthens through use.
John Kao
Image
Obviously businesses do not operate like an artists' commune. Business involves deploying finite resources to achieve goals in a competitive environment to make money. That is something creative people understand.
John Kao
Image
You are able to create an environment so that the creative process can take place and that you can get people to perform at their highest levels.
John Kao
Image
Creativity, my students learn, is as natural a function of the mind as breathing or digestion are natural functions of the body.
John Kao
Image
Coca-Cola can get really fresh output because it is getting people who are outside the traditional model and they are combining ideas in very novel ways.
John Kao