Sunday, August 17, 2008

INTELLECTION quotations & proverbs

Please post your favorite quotes or proverbs around the Intellection theme.
Le gustarĂ­a escribir una cita o proverbio que hable sobre el talento Intelectual?

10 comments:

Matthias said...

"The first rule in decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement. ... The only way to break out of the prison of special pleading and preconceived notions is to make sure of argued, documented, thought-through disagreements.
Second, disagreement alone can provide alternatives to a decision. And a decision without an alternative is a desperate gambler's throw, no matter how carefully thought through it might be."

Peter Drucker in "The Effective Executive", p 148ff.

Matthias said...

The greatest part of mankind have no other reason for their opinions than that they are in fashion.

Samuel Johnson

I have Intellection and I believe that it (in combination with my Command) often triggers me to question conventional wisdom and "fashion opinions".

Matthias said...

Where all think alike, no one things very much.

Hank Halpern

Matthias said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Matthias said...

This is one of my favorite nuggets of wisdom, unfortuntately I don't recall where I have read it and who the author is. I think it applies especially to Learner, Input and Intellection:

"Reading is like eating; although most of what goes in eventually goes out again, we still need to do it in order to be alive"

Matthias said...

"The second-level generals who emerged as the great men of World War II - a Rommel, a Bradley, a Zhukov - were all "middle managers" who thought through genuine decisions, rather than the dashing cavalry generals, the "beaux sabreurs" of earlier wars."

Peter Drucker in "The Effective Executive", p. 162

People with Intellection love to "think through" decisions and may get irritated when they have to work together with "dashing cavalry generals", some of which may be blessed with large amounts of Activator, Adaptor, Arranger, Positivity and/or Woo.

The next quotation is also about this tension:

Matthias said...

"The effective decision-maker always assumes initially that a problem is generic. He always assumes that the event that clamours for his attention is in reality a symptom. He looks for the true problem. He is not content with doctoring the symptoms alone."
...
"This (= the most common mistake to treat a generic situation as if it were a series of unique events) was clearly shown, I think, by the failure of most of the policies, whether domestic or foreign, of the Kennedy administration. ... The main reason was surely what its members called "pragmatism"; that is, its refusal to develop rules and principles, and its insistence of treating everything "on its merits".

Peter Drucker in "The Effective Executive", p. 125

I have the feeling that many people with Intellection almost instinctively assume that a problem is generic, and that what they are dealing with may only be symptoms of a deeper problem. For example, I believe to have strong Intellection and in moments like these, I withdraw into my inner world and get into some serious "ruminating". Or to use a biblical image: I withdraw to a lonely desert and fast until the real issue at stake dawns on me. The bad news is that in the fast-paced and highly extraverted business world today, it is hard to find such quality time!

Matthias said...

"The pressures of his job drive a manager to be superficial in his actions - to overload himself with work, encourage interruption, respond quickly to every stimulus, seek the tangible and avoid the abstract, make decisions in small increments, and do everything abruptly."

Henry Mintzberg

Matthias said...

One of my favorite proverbs is:

"A country with many laws is a country of incompetent lawyers".

I like to adapt it in the following way "A company with (too) many procedures and policies is a company of incompetent managers". I think this resonates with my Intellection and Ideation talents, maybe also with Strategic. I prefer entrepreneurial organizations with a minimum of sensible rules, rather than too much structure.

Matthias said...

A word of caution to people with strong business Intellection and generally strong thinking talents:

"We see this problem particularly when highly intellectual staff people or consultants want to move into high-level line jobs. They frequently come from the best business schools, from consulting firms and from internal jobs in finance, accounting, and strategic planning. The trouble is, they have never been tested in mobilizing line people to execute. They haven't had the experience that develops business instinct."

Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan in "Execution - The Discipline of Getting Things Done", p. 120