Thanks to everyone who shared your metaphoric one-lines related to life in organizations. They aren't all one-liners but they're all worth thinking about. The first set is from Kodak where they made this a group exercise something that might be interesting in other places as well.

From: dana.wolcott@kodak.com
To handle yourself, use your head;
To handle others, use your heart.

Anger is only one letter short of danger.

If someone betrays you once, it is his fault;
If he betrays you twice, it is your fault.

Great minds discuss ideas;
Average minds discuss events;
Small minds discuss people.

He who loses money, loses much;
He who loses a friend, loses much more;
He who loses faith, loses all

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature,
But beautiful old people are works of art.

Learn from the mistakes of others.
You can't live long enough to make them all yourself.

Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow is mystery.
Today is a gift.
That's why it is called The Present.

From: PKWENDEL@aol.com
How about:
Short term smart, Long term dumb.
Or
Settling for what we can get instead of focusing on what we want.

From: jim_knickerbocker@hp.com
When members of a group do not appear to be listening to each other:
"This is a marketplace in which everyone is selling and no one is buying"

When a group is trying to accomplish something that is not reasonable given the context: "They're trying to order pizza in a Chinese restaurant"

From: Mike Goran, corpjester@ibm.net
'If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, then what am I?
If not now, when?'
-Talmudic saying.

From: CWPRATHER@aol.com
My one-liner about risk-taking which I made up while in a money-losing business at DuPont:
"Isn't it amazing how your view of the kitchen changes when you're going down the disposal!"

From: G. Lynne Snead, projectguru@prodigy.net
One of my favorite quotes I use as a reminder to myself when I am working with my clients, comes from Steve Smith of Franklin Covey. "You can't meet a need you don't understand."

From: Marc Bridgham, thebridghams@home.com
"The Universe is not made of atoms, it's made of stories." Anon.
"Never do for a group what it can do for itself." Dennis Dennis

From: Peter Lakanen, lakanen@platinumweb.com
One my father's favorites (I'm not sure but I think my dad may have come up with this one on his own):
"Your criticism of my work indicates a gap in your understanding."
And, of course, this oldie but goodie is always great:
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence" - Napoleon Bonaparte

From: Les Lizama GreatHawk@aol.com and John Nelson, jonelson@chibardun.net
"All hat, no cattle"
(Heard as a description of Texan and Republican Presidential Candidate George W. Bush)

From: Dan.Norton@adidas.de
Here is one that I use to describe timelines often given for many of our advanced development projects in the athletic shoe industry.
"Never enough time to do it right...but always enough time to do it over."

From: Macklon Dominic, macde0@bol.co.uk
A one-liner from Conoco in Aberdeen, Scotland :
"A peasant must stand a long time on a hillside with his mouth open before a roast duck flies in." [Chinese Proverb]

From: NAlston237@aol.com
"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it." -- Pablo Picasso

From: Laura Hauser, laurahauser@earthlink.net
"Horse Sense: Personal Lessons from an Unlikely Mentor". This great one-liner was inspired by my Innovation University (IU) friends and fellows, during last week's session in Tampa. Their thoughtful and creative ideas were invaluable in expanding my thinking about how to market an innovative workshop called "Risk the Reins" that is offered as a pre-workshop at Convergence 2000. "Horse Sense: Personal Lessons from an Unlikely Mentor" is also the title of a new article submitted for publication in Pepperdine University's Career and Business Journal. Feel free to preview it now on the Innovation Network's web site. Thanks IU pals!

From: Jason Miller, jasonm@cfcl.com.au
When your work colleagues have lapsed into a concerted effort on projects that are going nowhere fast, "buffing the turd" is the term that comes to mind.

From: Margot Silva, margot.silva@mindspring.com
"The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

From: "Mason, Howard" <howardm@metrouw.org>
My favorite Einstein quote is
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
My second favorite Einstein
"Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler."
My favorite Gandhi and just about my favorite overall is
"You must be the change you wish to see."
How about these two:
"People only see what they are prepared to see." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"You know you've achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away."
--Antoine de Saint Exupery

From: "Evans, Don", Don.Evans@bullivant.com
"only the mediocre are at their best" -- Jonathon Winters

From: "Connery, Margaret", mconnery@CalOPTIMA.ORG
Here's a one-liner which, sad but true, was told to me in all seriousness last week:
"I haven't been to training in two years. I certainly don't see why any of my people need to attend."

From: "Herrera, Constance (on Outlook)" cherrera@monroecc.edu
"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got."
And
"Success is never final." -- Winston Churchill
And
"If you don't improve your process, you can't improve your outcome."

From: ACIAlison@aol.com
Here's one Garrison Keilor whipped off on Prairie Home Companion Saturday night while Ted and I were discussing the metaphorical theme of your meeting in Tampa. It may not be one you'd use on your list, but it cracked us up!
"He couldn't pour piss out of a boot if you put instructions on the sole."
Paula Underwood also has a wonderful metaphor for left brain/right brain. She says in an interview I found on her website:
"He (her dad) was always looking at the wholeness: balancing left brain logical sequence with right brain wholeness. In my tradition it's called the forest and the path. If you only walk the path "logical sequence" and never take time to look at the forest "the wholeness of your circumstance" where are you going? You don't know where to find fresh water or beechnuts. On the other hand, if you get so entranced with the radiant beauty of the wholeness that you never move down the path of life, what have you done with your time? The idea is to go back and forth."
Whole interview is at learningway.com/articles/interview.html. It's worth reading.

From: mfzettel@mmm.com
Breathing is to Life as Profit is to Business: both are necessary to exist but are not the objective of our existence. - Unknown
If a senior executive hasn't screamed at you lately for grossly exceeding your authority, you're probably not doing your job. - former IBM president
The job of leadership today is not just to make money. It's to make meaning. - John Seely Brown of Xerox Parc

From: JBrons@aol.com
The beatings will stop as soon as morale improves.
The company always ends up paying for what it needs, whether it intends to or not.

From: "Garn, Jeff", JGarn@moen.com
Here are couple of my old favorites: ( sources are unknown for some of these)
1. None of us is as smart as all of us.
2. We are perfectly designed for the results we get.
3. If you come to a fork in the road, take it. --Yogi Berra.
4. You have a responsibility for the excitement you create.
5. Everything seems to work somewhere and nothing works everywhere.
6. We are drowning in information and starving for knowledge. -- John Naisbitt.
7. There's no limit to what can be achieved if you're willing to share the credit. - Wilson Wyatt, Sr.
8. To get people to think for themselves, don't give them all the answers. -- Irene Nolan, editor.
9. Achievement is in direct proportion to the magnitude of the dream!

From: "Coleman,Philip D", philip.coleman@dhs.state.tx.us
"90% of the game is half mental." -- Yogi Berra

From: Lisa Binns lbinns@northlich.com and Jonathan Vehar, JVEHAR@aol.com
Seagull Management:
Managers who soar so high above that they don't really know what's going on down below, yet at the last moment they swoop down and shit all over everything.

From: Tommy Cates, tcates@utm.edu
"A severe case of cerebro-anal insertion" is used to describe a particluar manager here.

From: Ed Bernacki, great.idea@start.com.au
Here is one that I heard in Australia about the old management approach (at least, I hope it is the old system)
"Near enough is good enough."
This describes that way mediocre work was acceptable.
Or the all time classic
"She'll be right!" used to make any average effort acceptable.

From: David Kaiser, dkaiser@uswest.net
No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
from Aesop -- The Lion and the Mouse

From: celesta.busch@att.net
I'd love to work for a manager who embodies all suggested by the following:
If it takes a lot of words to say what you have in mind, give it more thought. DENNIS ROTH
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly. - Buckminster Fuller
The creed you really believe is not spoken by your lips, but by your life. Anon

From: Sandra Boeschen, currie@cwia.com
This applies more to ego-driven community muck-rakers (which we have plenty of in Marin): "overeducated, underemployed"

From: "Gates, Christopher [OMP]", CGates@OMPPR.JNJ.com
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw
"To be an innovator, you can't be worried about making mistakes." -- Julius Erving
"I always saw better when my eyes were closed." -- Tom Waits
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from poor judgment." -- Will Rogers
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." - Wayne Gretsky

From: "Brown, Robert C", BROWNRC@sce.com
"Even the best knife doth grow dull with misuse."
A close enough paraphrase from, I believe, Shakespeare.

From: Phan Trong Q GS-13 SA-ALC/LDAE, TRONG.PHAN@KELLY.AF.MIL
"99% of organizational problems is managerial" -- Dr. Deming

From: "Patrick, Robert (Bob)", bobpatrick@lucent.com
Here are a few that work for me...
"For those who are full of themselves and think the world would stop turning if they were not there to run the show, reflect on this... The graveyards are full of indispensable men [ & women ]."
-- Charles DeGaulle
On basic tenets of leadership...
"I'm slowly becoming a convert to the principle that you can't motivate people to do things, you can only demotivate them. The primary job of the manager is not to empower but to remove obstacles."
-- Scott Adams
"The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority."
-- Kenneth Blanchard
"A leader is a dealer in hope."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte
So does that make a good manager a "HOPE DEALER" to whom you just say Yes?
On opportunity ...
"When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us." -- Alexander Graham Bell
On making the most of whatever ...
"Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men [& women] ! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for power equal to your tasks." -- Phillips Brooks
Just fer fun ....
"Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours." --Yogi Berra

From: "Hendry, Slamet", shendry@usa.capgemini.com
"God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we will listen twice as much as talk." (I think it was by Rev. Billy Graham)

From: Mike Bull, gj1335@hotmail.com
It's better to be superficially disorganized than superficially organized.

From: Franzia7@aol.com
The one-liner I'm most known for is "It is what it is" when dealing with difficult or painful management issues/decisions. It's my way of reminding others and myself to deal with the situation and move on. -Laura Franz

From: angie woodward, leaderky@mis.net
You're not what you think you are; what you think, you are.

From: Ross Wirth, rwirth@entarga.com
"When a paradigm shifts everyone goes back to zero; your past guarantees nothing in the future if the rules change." -- Joel Barker
"What is impossible today, that if made possible would change everything?" -- Joel Barker

From: Stephen.Milverton@txu.com.au
After having a discussion with a manager one day in regard to the increasing work load and decreasing time in which to perform it, his response was this:
"As long as you still have half a nostril out of water you can breathe."
As this is physically impossible, it was his equivalent to learning to breathe under water I guess. Needless to say the cause of the workload problem was never discovered as we were too busy trying to become amphibians.

From: optix@inov.com
Each man is to himself his own best lover, His worst enemy, and his only Teacher.
--from the book "The sacred Giraffe" by the Spaniard de Madarviaga (spelling?)
professor Emeritus at Oxford U. 1960's?
"Experience does not err, it is only your judgment that errs in promising itself results that are not caused by your experiments."
-- Leonardo da Vinci

From: djconrad@jlg.com
Most often a key ingredient in success is knowing what advice to completely ignore.

From: Susan Palmer, susan.palmer@telus.com
Organizing is what you do before you do something so that when you do it, it's not all mixed up. A.A.Milne

From: Tan Jimmy, TanJi@thmulti.com.sg
1. Opportunity often knocks on our doors more than once. It's just that we're usually not in.
2. Ambition is like the sun. It rises from the least and sets in the best.
3. Success is loving what you do so much that you'll do it for free, but doing it so well that you get paid for it.

From: DONNA FITZGERALD, donfitz@theramp.net
"Ships are safe in harbours, but that's not where they were meant to be"
~ John Shedd

From: Gail Sutton, LEVI11046@aol.com
"Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you are a cheese."
-- Billie Burke

From: MRTD, mrtd@chorus.net
Crisis du jour

From: KarlMLowe@eaton.com
"It's not what the vision is, it's what the vision does."
-- Peter Senge

From: Gary Noseworthy, nose@admin.humberc.on.ca
The best I've come across (at least the one that I remember most often) is one that I keep throwing at my students:
"Success depends more on I WILL than on IQ"

From: Pamela W. Elicker, pmla@olypen.com
Praise in public, criticize in private.

From: "Kerbaj, Mona (MK)", mkkerbaj@dow.com
I believe it when I see it.

From: Mara Siksna, m.siksna@uq.net.au
When accountability became the in-word in our University, a lot of time and energy was spent on gathering information, statistics and writing evaluative reports about administrative and educational processes. The one-liner that kept things in perspective for me was " evaluate to improve, not to prove" (anything to anyone)

From: rparent@amanet.org
"We must be the change we want to see in the world"
-- Mahatma Gandhi
"The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives-the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself."
-- Norman Cousins
"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
-- Charles Darwin

From: Cosmulescu Sorin, scosmulescu@rodae.ro
I think even the old-style "one-liners" can be influenced by reasonable explanation of the "new' introduced in business management. I give one example from the ancient Rome history:
Cato, the famous orator, was a fierce adversary of Greek culture and customs that influenced the life of the Romans at that time. He said he would never allow Greek teachers for his children. But at the age of 80 he learned himself Greek language in order to teach personally his children and he finally understood the elegance and refinement of Greek culture, although never confessed it.
What is the conclusion of this example?
- Even the most obvious "enemies" of NEW CONCEPTS finally become the promoters of new ideas (not all the cases). The most important is to show the advantages of the new technology or method. I would name this concept: "CATO Concept". Maybe you can provide more obvious example in this respect.