Collapse or Collapse · 20 quote cards
Quotes from Collapse or Collapse
“Four men’s handwriting on one page is the whole history of management.”Chapter 2: The Department Was a Workaround
“The business school taught the workaround as a science.”Chapter 2: The Department Was a Workaround
“Every time an outcome crosses from one desk to the next, three things leak.”Chapter 2: The Department Was a Workaround
“Reengineering was the collapse attempted thirty years early, without the machine that makes it possible.”Chapter 2: The Department Was a Workaround
“Any term at zero makes the outcome zero, however large the other two.”Chapter 3: Where Outcomes Leak
“Very few have an intention that holds, day after day, when nobody is watching, towards a result that is not their own.”Chapter 3: Where Outcomes Leak
“Give a department an agent and it will use the agent to improve the number it is measured by, which is the only rational thing for it to do.”Chapter 4: A Motor Where the Steam Engine Stood
“Describe any AI initiative in your company in one sentence, by saying what it makes faster. If your answer begins with the name of a department, you are paving.”Chapter 4: A Motor Where the Steam Engine Stood
“The gain came when the factory was rebuilt around the new machine.”Chapter 4: A Motor Where the Steam Engine Stood
“The words were built for the workaround, and they rebuild it every time they are used.”Chapter 5: A New Vocabulary
“The cockpit is designed on one rule: the machine carries the complexity, and the human is never burdened with it.”Chapter 6: The Cockpit
“Machines hold the baseline; humans supply the peaks.”The Twelve Tenets
“Every agent reports its own flow; a vector that can stall unseen is a department with software.”The Twelve Tenets
“Skill is in the chain and cheap. Intention that holds is rare, and is paid very highly, far above the market.”The Twelve Tenets
“The old company bought time and hoped for attention. The collapsed company buys intention and measures attention.”Chapter 11: Pay for Intention, Measure Attention
“A career in a collapsed company goes deeper, not higher, and “deeper” has an exact meaning.”Chapter 14: The Ladder Is Gone
“The ladder, in other words, took the firm’s best producer off the work, put him over people, and lost on both counts.”Chapter 14: The Ladder Is Gone
“A signature that can be overruled is not a signature; it is a recommendation, and a recommendation has no owner.”Chapter 17: Accountability, Authority and the Signature
“Nothing in this book asks the reader to believe it. It asks for one month and one vector.”Chapter 20: The Reader’s Month
“Collapse your organisation now, or your organisation will collapse.”Chapter 21: A Letter to the World