Мы думаем, что книги, вместо того чтобы плесневеть за железной решеткой, вдали от любознательных глаз, должны приносить пользу, быть постоянно на виду у читателя. Поэтому-то книги у нас переходят из рук в руки, читаются и перечитываются, и зачастую книга год или два не возвращается на свое место.

Но любовник, увлеченный настоящим чувством, бывает счастлив лишь в то время, когда любуется или обладает предметом своей любви, но страдает, когда с ним разлучен

Your job is to make sure that the people can create their own rules together. And it’s their collaborative effort that allows the system to find its own way to the edge of chaos.

Bad relationships of people with their bosses lead to loss of motivation, loss of creativity, and increased turnover.

The goal of respecting people is not to make them happy. The goal is to increase productivity, creativity, and innovation. Happiness is a by-product and a welcome side-effect.

Complex adaptive systems are systems that can find their own way toward that sweet spot of complexity, right between order and chaos, where life blooms and creativity thrives.

But all you’ve read so far will have been for nothing if you have not addressed the two basic virtues that make empowerment work: trust and respect

After you delegate something to an employee, when things go wrong, a good response would be, “What did I do wrong?” Maybe your explanation of the goal wasn’t clear enough. Maybe you didn’t properly define the constraints. Perhaps there was nobody coaching the worker. Maybe you should have selected a different level of authority. Or you should have delegated the work to a team instead of just one person. When something bad happens after you delegate a task to a worker, do not take (back) responsibility for the task. Instead, take responsibility for the way you’ve delegated it.

Taking work back to do it yourself before workers are able to do that work without your supervision is like taking your money out of the bank before being paid interest.

What you are less aware of is that this micromanagement—even if you intend it to be temporary—often prevents the workers from being able to self-manage or otherwise show that they could handle more authority. So workers continue to act in a dependent way and you are trapped into an exhausting attempt to make all the decisions, while wondering why workers aren’t as responsible as you are.