Many people tell me what I ought to do and just how I ought to do it, but Few have made me want to do something. Mary Parker Follett More Quotes by Mary Parker Follett More Quotes From Mary Parker Follett I wish we could understand the word expert as expressing an attitude of mind which we can all acquire rather than the collecting of information by a special caste. ... Many of us are calling for experts because, acutely conscious of the mess we are in, we want someone to pull us out. Mary Parker Follett special mind attitude The conflict of chemistry we do not think reprehensible. If we could look at social conflict as neither good nor bad, but simply a fact, we should make great strides in our thinking. Mary Parker Follett facts looks thinking The manager cannot share his power with division superintendent or foreman or workman, but he can give them opportunities for developing their power. Mary Parker Follett helping-others opportunity people In the small group then is where we shall find the inner meaning of democracy, its very heart and core. Mary Parker Follett groups democracy heart many rules could be made for the giving of orders. Don't preach when you give orders. Don't discuss matters already settled unless you have fresh data. Make your direction so specific that there will be no question whether they have been obeyed or not. Find out how to give directions and yet to allow people opportunity for independent thinking, for initiative. And so on and so on. Order-giving requires just as much study and just as much training as any other skill we wish to acquire. Mary Parker Follett independent leadership opportunity We are sometime truly to see our life as positive, not negative, as made up of continuous willing, not of constraints and prohibition. Mary Parker Follett prohibition entrepreneur negative The ablest administrators do not merely draw logical conclusions from the array of facts of the past which their expert assistants bring to them, they have a vision of the future. Mary Parker Follett visions-of-the-future leadership past An order then should always be given not as a personal matter, not because the man giving it wants the thing done, but because it is the demand of the situation. And an order of this kind carries weight because it is the demand of the situation. Mary Parker Follett leadership men order We have thought of peace as the passive and war as the active way of living. The opposite is true. War is not the most strenuous life. It is a kind of rest-cure compared to the task of reconciling our differences. Mary Parker Follett opposites war peace The foreman today does not merely deal with trouble, he forestalls trouble. In fact, we don't think much of a foreman who is always dealing with trouble; we feel that if he is doing his job properly, there won't be so much trouble. Mary Parker Follett leadership jobs thinking there is a pernicious tendency to make the opinions of the expert prevail by crowd methods, to rush the people instead of educating them. Mary Parker Follett crowds experts people When leadership rises to genius it has the power of transforming, of transforming experience into power. And that is what experience is for, to be made into power. The great leader creates as well as directs power. Mary Parker Follett great-leader genius leadership we certainly do not want to abolish power, that would be abolishing life itself, but we need a new orientation toward it. Mary Parker Follett power would-be needs We can never catch up with life ... we shall always be eating the soft part of our melting ice and meanwhile the nice hard part is rapidly melting too. Mary Parker Follett melting-ice nice eating I am free when I am functioning here in time and space as the creative will. ... freedom by our definition is obedience to the law of one's nature. Mary Parker Follett space creative law The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows. Mary Parker Follett democracies-have women opportunity while the executive should give every possible value to the information of the specialist, no executive should abdicate thinking on any subject because of the expert. The expert's information or opinion should not be allowed automatically to become a decision. On the other hand, full recognition should be given to the part the expert plays in decision making. Mary Parker Follett business play thinking Responsiblity is the great developer of men. Mary Parker Follett developers responsibility men administrative purpose usually outruns the facts. Indeed the administrative official's ardor for facts usually begins when he wants to change the facts! Mary Parker Follett purpose want facts Majority rule rests on numbers; democracy rests on the well-grounded assumption that society is neither a collection of units nor an organism but a network of human relations. Mary Parker Follett majority-rule women numbers
