This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Meridel Le Sueur, born Meridel Wharton
What happens in a strike happens not to one person alone.... It is a crisis with meaning and potency for all and prophetic of a future. The elements in crisis are the same, there is a fermentation that is identical. The elements are these: a body of men, women and children, hungry; an organization of feudal employers out to break the back of unionization; and the government Labor Board sent to "negotiate" between this hunger and this greed.
Body | Government | Hunger | Labor | Meaning | Organization | Government | Crisis |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Without respect, the subtle alchemy that binds an organization or that serves as the impetus for a business transaction would dissolve into mutual suspicion and hostility.
Alchemy | Business | Organization | Suspicion | Business |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
An ideal organization is one in which each worker's potentialities find room for expression.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
A paycheck is a sufficient impetus to motivate some employees to do the minimum amount to get by, and for others, the challenge of getting ahead in the organization provides a satisfactory focus for a while. But these incentives alone are rarely strong enough to inspire workers to give their best to their work. For this a vision is needed, an overarching goal that gives meaning to the job, so that an individual can forget himself in the task and experience flow without doubts or regrets. The most important component of such a vision is an ingredient we call soul.
Challenge | Enough | Experience | Focus | Important | Individual | Meaning | Organization | Vision |
Nelson Mandela, fully Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
The majority of South Africans, black and white, recognize that apartheid has no future. It has to be ended by our own decisive mass action in order to build peace and security. The mass campaign of defiance and other actions of our organization and people can only culminate in the establishment of democracy.
Action | Defiance | Majority | Order | Organization | Peace | People |
People with AIDS Coalition NULL
The People with AIDS Coalition (PWAC) was founded in New York City in 1985 by a group of nine people who had contracted AIDS. The founders were inspired by the Denver Principles, a manifesto adopted in 1983 by PWAs at the National Lesbian and Gay Health Conference held in Denver. The Denver Principles proclaimed the need for self-empowerment and self-reliance by PWAs as well as the necessity of their taking an active role in the formulation of decisions affecting their lives. During thealmost eight years of its corporate existence PWAC became the largest self-help organization of people living with AIDS/HIV in America. Projects developed by PWAC include the Community Research Initiative (CRI), a network of medical doctors and patients who undertook their own drug studies; the People With AIDS Health Group, a not-for-profit buyer's club set up to provide easier access to drugs and other therapeutic substances difficult to obtain; a national telephone hotline; and a newsletter.
Existence | Health | Initiative | Necessity | Need | Organization | People | Principles | Research | Self-reliance |
Oswald Spengler, fully Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler
The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious.
Teamwork remains a sustainable competitive advantage that has been largely untapped because it is hard to measure (teamwork impacts the outcome of an organization in such comprehensive and invasive ways that it’s virtually impossible to isolate it as a single variable) and because it is extremely hard to achieve (it requires levels of courage and discipline that few executives possess) – ironically, building a strong team is very simple (it doesn’t require masterful insights or tactics).
Courage | Discipline | Organization |
If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.
Organization | People |
Building a cohesive leadership team is the first critical step that an organization must take if it is to have the best chance at success.
Chance | Organization | Leadership |
Well, one of the things we’ve done at my institute is we’ve created a website called wiserearth.org precisely to create, in a sense, an information commons for this unnamed movement that is also the fastest-growing movement in the world, and where you can put in your organization profiles, events and so forth, and a website, Democracy Now! or any other, can sit right on top of the data and pull it up, so that we’re trying to create more or less something that feeds these NGOs and the ability for them to recognize, contact, connect and collaborate or coalesce in different ways. That is missing right now.
Ability | Democracy | Events | Organization | Right |
The organization of American society is an interlocking system of semi-monopolies notoriously venal, an electorate notoriously unenlightened, misled by a mass media notoriously phony.
Organization | Society | System | Society |
The organization of American society is an interlocking system of semi-monopolies notoriously venal, an electorate notoriously unenlightened, misled by a mass media notoriously phony.
Organization | Society | System | Society |
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete - the things that should have worked but did not, the things that once were productive and no longer are.
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
The only things that evolve by themselves in an organization are disorder, friction, and mal-performance.
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
The real development I've seen of people in organizations, especially in big ones, comes from their being volunteers in a nonprofit organization -- where you have responsibility, you see results, and you quickly learn what your values are. There is no better way to understand your strengths and discover where you belong than to volunteer in a nonprofit. That is probably the great opportunity for the social sector -- and especially in its relationship to business.
Better | Opportunity | Organization | People | Relationship | Learn | Understand |
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
The purpose of an organization is to enable common men to do uncommon things.
Men | Organization | Purpose | Purpose |
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
Every knowledge worker in modern organization is an executive if, by virtue of his position or knowledge, he is responsible for a contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organization to perform and to obtain results.
Capacity | Knowledge | Organization | Position | Virtue | Virtue |
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
No organization can depend on genius; the supply is always scarce and unreliable. It is the test of an organization to make ordinary human beings perform better than they seem capable of, to bring out whatever strength there is in its members, and to use each man's strength to help all the others perform. The purpose of an organization is to enable common men to do uncommon things.
Better | Men | Organization | Purpose | Purpose | Strength |