If corporate leaders and their acolytes are not slaves to some meritorious social purpose, they run the risk of being enslaved by their own ignoble appetites. – Gary Hamel
Online hierarchies are inherently dynamic. The moment someone stops adding value to the community, his influence starts to wane. – Gary Hamel
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. – Gary Hamel
In most organizations, change comes in only two flavors: trivial and traumatic. Review the history of the average organization and you’ll discover long periods of incremental fiddling punctuated by occasional bouts of frantic, crisis-driven change. – Gary Hamel
Top-down authority structures turn employees into bootlickers, breed pointless struggles for political advantage, and discourage dissent. – Gary Hamel
If organized religion has become less relevant, it’s not because churches have held fast to their creedal beliefs – it’s because they’ve held fast to their conventional structures, programs, roles and routines. – Gary Hamel
Trust is not simply a matter of truthfulness, or even constancy. It is also a matter of amity and goodwill. We trust those who have our best interests at heart, and mistrust those who seem deaf to our concerns. – Gary Hamel
You have to train people how to be business innovators. If you don’t train them, the quality of the ideas that you get in an innovation marketplace is not likely to be high. – Gary Hamel
Most of us understand that innovation is enormously important. It’s the only insurance against irrelevance. It’s the only guarantee of long-term customer loyalty. It’s the only strategy for out-performing a dismal economy. – Gary Hamel
Power has long been regarded as morally corrosive, and we often suspect the intentions of those who seek it. – Gary Hamel
The fact is, society is made more hospitable by every individual who acts as if ‘do unto others’ really was a rule. – Gary Hamel
In most languages, ‘control’ is the first synonym for the word ‘manage.’ Control is about spotting and correcting deviations from pre-defined standards; thus to control, one must first constrain. – Gary Hamel
A well-conceived product excels at what it does. It’s close to being functionally flawless – like a Ziploc bag, a radio from Tivoli Audio, a Philips Sonicare toothbrush, a Nespresso coffee maker or Google’s home page. – Gary Hamel
You can’t build an adaptable organization without adaptable people – and individuals change only when they have to, or when they want to. – Gary Hamel
Building human-centered organizations doesn’t imply a return to the paternalistic, corporate welfare practices of the 19th century. Most of us don’t want to be nannied. – Gary Hamel
While one should never underestimate the ability of risk-besotted financiers to wreak havoc, the real threat to capitalism isn’t unfettered financial cunning. It is, instead, the unwillingness of executives to confront the changing expectations of their stakeholders. – Gary Hamel
Truth be told, there are lots of companies that provide exemplary phone support. DirecTV, Virgin America and Apple are a few that regularly exceed my expectations. – Gary Hamel
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
Management innovation is going to be the most enduring source of competitive advantage. There will be lots of rewards for firms in the vanguard. – Gary Hamel
It’s not just that individuals have lost faith in the integrity of their leaders, it’s that they no longer believe society’s most powerful institutions are acting in their interests. – Gary Hamel
I am an ardent supporter of capitalism – but I also understand that while individuals have inalienable, God-given rights, corporations do not. – Gary Hamel
I’m a capitalist by conviction and profession. I believe the best economic system is one that rewards entrepreneurship and risk-taking, maximizes customer choice, uses markets to allocate scarce resources and minimizes the regulatory burden on business. – Gary Hamel