Richard L Daft - Collected Quotes

"A mental model can be thought of as an internal picture that affects a leader's actions and relationships with others. Mental models are theories people hold about specific systems in the world and their expected behavior." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" , 2002)

"Systems thinking means the ability to see the synergy of the whole rather than just the separate elements of a system and to learn to reinforce or change whole system patterns. Many people have been trained to solve problems by breaking a complex system, such as an organization, into discrete parts and working to make each part perform as well as possible. However, the success of each piece does not add up to the success of the whole. to the success of the whole. In fact, sometimes changing one part to make it better actually makes the whole system function less effectively." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience", 2002)

"Systems thinking is a mental discipline and framework for seeing patterns and interrelationships. It is important to see organizational systems as a whole because of their complexity. Complexity can overwhelm managers, undermining confidence. When leaders can see the structures that underlie complex situations, they can facilitate improvement. But doing that requires a focus on the big picture." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience", 2002)

"A symbol is an object, act, or event that conveys meaning to others. Symbols can be considered a rich, non-verbal language that vibrantly conveys the organization’s important values concerning how people relate to one another and interact with the environment" (Richard L Daft & Dorothy Marcic, "Understanding Management" 5th Ed., 2006)

"Data are raw facts and figures that by themselves may be useless. To be useful, data must be processed into finished information, that is, data converted into a meaningful and useful context for specific users. An increasing challenge for managers is being able to identify and access useful information." (Richard L Daft & Dorothy Marcic, "Understanding Management" 5th Ed., 2006)

"The receiver decodes the symbols to interpret the meaning of the message. Encoding and decoding are potential sources for communication errors because knowledge, attitudes, and context act as filters and create noise when translating from symbols to meaning. Finally, feedback occurs when the receiver responds to the sender’s communication with a return message. Without feedback, the communication is one-way; with feedback, it is two-way. Feedback is a powerful aid to communication effectiveness because it enables the sender to determine whether the receiver correctly interpreted the message." (Richard L Daft & Dorothy Marcic, "Understanding Management" 5th Ed., 2006)

"A paradigm is a shared mindset that represents a fundamental way of thinking about, perceiving, and understanding the world." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)

"Synergy is the combined action that occurs when people work together to create new alternatives and solutions. In addition, the greatest opportunity for synergy occurs when people have different viewpoints, because the differences present new opportunities. The essence of synergy is to value and respect differences and take advantage of them to build on strengths and compensate for weaknesses." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)

"Synergy occurs when organizational parts interact to produce a joint effect that is greater than the sum of the parts acting alone. As a result the organization may attain a special advantage with respect to cost, market power, technology, or employee." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)