"We discovered our one competitive advantage. Other companies could match our products, but no one could match our people. We'd spent 20 years building a workplace where everybody is treated like a grownup and encouraged to think and act like an owner. We'd created an entire management system to help us do it. The result was a company of good, smart business people with great values. Call it 'human capital' or 'intellectual capital' or whatever term you choose. Our people are the best reason to do business with us.
- Jack Stack

"People can be encouraged to change, but if the structure of the system in which the individuals work does not support them or allow enough flexibility, improvement efforts will fail. Similarly, if the organization's management, policies, structures, time frames, and resource allocation are changed but the individuals within the organization do not have opportunities to learn how to work within the new system, the improvement effort will fail."
- Todnem & Warner (1994)

A learning organization sees the business environment as messy, complex and volatile. It picks and chooses it's way attempting to use certain events as catalysts for action, turn constraints into opportunities, and blunt or minimize the impositions that do not make sense...because they know that this is the only way to survive and prosper in a complex environment.
- Michael Fullan

Joint Ventures, Alliances, and other Corporate Partnering are fueling the growth of the world's most successful companies. The demand to deliver more new products, more quickly, and at lower prices has never been greater. Joint Ventures and other collaborative business arrangements are revolutionizing how winning companies compete. They permit companies to enter new markets and field new products that they otherwise couldn't do on their own. They are the quickest way to grow your company, particularly in times of change."
- Curtis E. Sahakian

"In motivation theory, our attention is shifting from the enticement of external rewards to the intrinsic motivators that spring from the work itself. We are refocusing on the deep longings we have for community, meaning, dignity, and love in our organizational lives....As we let go of the machine models of work, we begin to step back and see ourselves in new ways, to appreciate our wholeness, and to design organizations that honor and make use of the totality of who we are."
- Margaret Wheatley from Leadership and the New Science

Mediation of workplace disputes is the way of the future. It achieves the most satisfactory, timely and cost-effective resolution of disputes. It is also helpful in creating a collaborative workplace culture. Employers interested in bringing these benefits to their workplaces should incorporate mediation into their dispute resolution programs.
- Margaret Wheatley from Leadership and the New Science