Organizational Theory

"No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force."

"Every age has its peculiar folly: Some scheme, project, or fantasy into which it plunges, spurred on by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the force of imitation."

"Life is what happens to you, while you're busy making other plans."

"It is better to have a bad plan than no plan."

"I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself. Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. Hmmm? You know... You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!"

"You know what kind of plan never fails? No plan. No plan at all. You know why? Because life cannot be planned. Look around you. Did you think these people made a plan to sleep in the sports hall with you? But here we are now, sleeping together on the floor. So, there's no need for a plan. You can't go wrong with no plans. We don't need to make a plan for anything. It doesn't matter what will happen next. Even if the country gets destroyed or sold out, nobody cares. Got it?"

"This very remarkable man Commends a most practical plan: You can do what you want If you don’t think you can’t So don’t think you can’t if you can."

"And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time"

"The plans and schemes of tyrants are broken by many things. They shatter against cliffs of heroic struggle. They rupture on reefs of open resistance. And they are slowly eroded, bit by little bit, on the very beaches where they measure triumph, by countless grains of sand. By the stubborn little decencies of humble little men."

"You need to try to do the impossible, to anticipate the unexpected. And when the unexpected happens, you should double the efforts to make order from the disorder it creates in your life. The motto I'm advocating is — Let chaos reign, then rein chaos. Does that mean that you shouldn't plan? Not at all. You need to plan the way a fire department plans. It cannot anticipate fires, so it has to shape a flexible organization that is capable of responding to unpredictable events."

"You have the most information when you're doing something, not before you've done it. Yet when do you write a plan? Usually it's before you've even begun."

"Why don’t we just call plans what they really are: guesses."

"In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable."

"There is no fate that plans men's lives. Whatever comes to us, good or bad, is usually the result of our own action or lack of action."

"You can never plan the future by the past."

"The best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft a-gley; and leave us naught but grief and pain for promised joy"

"Plan in the real world."

"We have all heard the saying "the man with a plan is king." I believe a man without a plan is just a pawn to circumstance and embarking on a losing strategy."

"Whatever plans we may make, we shall find quite useless when the time for action comes. Revolutions are always full of surprises, and whoever thinks he can play chess with a revolution will soon find how terrible is the grasp of God and how insignificant the human reason before the whirlwind of His breath. That man only is likely to dominate the chances of a Revolution, who makes no plans but preserves his heart pure for the will of God to declare itself. The great rule of life is to have no schemes but one unalterable purpose. If the will is fixed on the purpose it sets itself to accomplish, then circumstances will suggest the right course; but the schemer finds himself always tripped up by the unexpected."

"As in a studio of creative Death The giant sons of Darkness sit and plan The drama of the earth, their tragic stage."

"The word competition itself is already dangerous; in it is expressed jealousy, in other words, a corrupt devotion. Therefore, it is best wherever possible to replace the concept of competition with that of perfectionment. 134."

"The world economic council (or whatever body represents the resources of the world) must free itself from fraudulent politics, capitalistic influence and its devious scheming; it must set the resources of the earth free for the use of humanity. This will be a lengthy task but it will be possible when world need is better appreciated. An enlightened public opinion will make the decisions of the economic council practical and possible. Sharing and cooperation must be taught instead of greed and competition."

"It is better to buy than compete."

"Most lobbying is pro-business, in the sense that it promotes the interests of existing businesses, not pro-market in the sense of fostering truly free and open competition."

"Now all the truth is out, Be secret and take defeat From any brazen throat, For how can you compete, Being honor bred, with one Who, were it proved he lies, Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his neighbors’ eyes? Bred to a harder thing Than Triumph, turn away And like a laughing string Whereon mad fingers play Amid a place of stone, Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult."

"There can be only one."

"Oliver E. Williamson has argued that markets and hierarchical organizations, such as firms, represent alternative governance structures which differ in their approaches to resolving conflicts of interest. The drawback of markets is that they often entail haggling and disagreement. The drawback of firms is that authority, which mitigates contention, can be abused. Competitive markets work relatively well because buyers and sellers can turn to other trading partners in case of dissent. But when market competition is limited, firms are better suited for conflict resolution than markets. A key prediction of Williamson's theory, which has also been supported empirically, is therefore that the propensity of economic agents to conduct their transactions inside the boundaries of a firm increases along with the relationship-specific features of their assets."

"Our species will not survive another 100 years if we don’t move from a competitive to a cooperative mode of existence. “Me first” is an obsolete, unsustainable perspective."

"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win you’re still a rat."

"I have an idée fixe that I am completely obsessed with on the business side — which is that if you are starting a company, if you are the founder entrepreneur starting a company, you always want to aim for monopoly. ... And you want to always avoid competition. ... Hence competition is for losers. ... What makes a business valuable? ... A business creates X dollars of value and captures Y% of X. X and Y are independent variables."

"You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits."

"Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant."

"Zero sum game implies winners and losers. If somebody wins, somebody gotta lose…. I don’t agree with that. Because all boats can rise on a rising sea. Good films help other good films. Different psychology. If you’re overly competitive, you say it is exclusionary, a zero sum game: I must win so he must lose. That’s not true. We can all win without forcing the other guy to lose."

"In economic life competition is never completely lacking, but hardly ever is it perfect."

"A person whose mind is distracted lives between the fangs of mental afflictions. ... They feel envy toward a superior, competitiveness with a peer, arrogance toward one who is inferior, conceit due to praise and anger due to reproach. When could there be any benefit from a fool?"

"A man with no friends, only live for revenge Live his life off the henge, cut, through a thousand men Blade swing with the force of a cyclone Cut crystal and bone, pistol and chrome Stand in my path, you're a dead man I cut the whole world in half for the Number One headband Quest of a lonely soul, on a lonely road."

"Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off."

"To my knowledge significant progress has never been born of competition. … In science, being 'better' than others is of little practical value. Examples of how absurd the idea of scientific competition is are abundant."

"You must not envy each other. But of course it depends on each of you to develop your capabilities. And the only lawful competition between members of the group may be a competition in the best direction of striving and understanding of the thought for the General Good. Each one should understand that this capacity in each individual consciousness is the only indicator of progress and that the spirit stands on a corresponding step-not higher and not lower."

"Success is whatever humiliation everyone has agreed to compete for."

"The truth is that economic competition is the very opposite of competition in the animal kingdom. It is not a competition in the grabbing off of scarce nature-given supplies, as it is in the animal kingdom. Rather, it is a competition in the positive creation of new and additional wealth."

"Whoever claims that economic competition represents "survival of the fittest" in the sense of the law of the jungle, provides the clearest possible evidence of his lack of knowledge of economics."

"Competition is a by-product of productive work, not its goal. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."

"The production of security should, in the interests of the consumers of this intangible commodity, remain subject to the law of free competition. ... No government should have the right to prevent another government from going into competition with it, or to require consumers of security to come exclusively to it for this commodity."

"Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning than the man who inherited his father's store or farm."

"Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased. The competitive spirit is merely an additive process which is not learning at all. We want the child to learn and not merely add knowledge to himself like a machine. To help the child to learn basically and fundamentally he must cease to compete, with all its implications... Competitiveness is destructive not only in the classroom but right through life."

"In business, the competition will bite you if you keep running; if you stand still, they will swallow you."

"The only way to beat the competition is to stop trying to beat the competition."

"Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly. Taste the relish to be found in competition — in having to put forth the best within you to match the deeds of risk-taking, hard-working competitors."

"Capitalist-private property relations are the source of class inequalities, which is the primary factor in my being a member of a class that bears all the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages. Under the influence of illegitimate-capitalist values, I was pursuing the alleviation of social-economic hardship through individual advancement. This is a wholly inadequate remedy to social problems because it doesn’t challenge the fundamental injustice of class-exploitation and class-oppression, which are responsible for creating the socio-economic ills in the first place. Unaware of my class interest, I was perpetuating my own oppression by engaging in competitive capitalist practices that ensure the smooth functioning of the system as the exploiting minority profits in more ways than one off the division and disunity engendered by competition, so prevalent amongst the exploited. Look around: competition, euphemistically called “individuality,” permeates and is systematically promoted to the masses of people while the corporate conglomerations and Fortune 500 are busy “merging and monopolizing.”"