If we do not let people do things the way they do, we will never know what they are really capable of and they will just follow our boarding school rules.

The purpose of work is not to make money. The purpose of work is to make the workers, whether working stiffs or top executives, feel good about life.

Forget socialism, capitalism, just-in-time deliveries, salary surveys, and the rest ... concentrate on building organizations that accomplish that most difficult of all challenges: to make people look forward to coming to work in the morning.

It is not socialist, as some of our critics contend. It isn't purely capitalist, either. It is a new way. A third way. A more humane, trusting, productive, exhilarating, and, in every sense, rewarding way.

The era of using people as production tools is coming to an end. Participation is infinitely more complex to practice than conventional corporate unilateralism, just as democracy is much more cumbersome than dictatorship. But there will be few companies that can afford to ignore either of them.

If you look at any kind of modern organization and you think, 'What are the foremost tools of power?' You will find that it is information.

If we do not let people do things the way they do, we will never know what they are really capable of and they will just follow our boarding school rules.