Dee Hock (1929- )

Dee Hock (1929- )

Dee Ward Hock (born 1929) is the founder and former CEO of the VISA credit card association. In 1968, Hock convinced Bank of America to give up ownership and control of their BankAmericard credit card program. The new company, called National BankAmerica, was a non-stock membership corporation equally owned by its member banks. The name was changed to VISA in 1976.

In May 1984, Hock resigned his management role with Visa, retiring to spend almost 10 years in relative isolation working a 200-acre (0.81 km2) parcel of land to the west of Silicon Valley. He was inducted into Junior Achievement's U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1991, and the Money magazine hall of fame in 1992.

In his 1991 Business Hall of Fame acceptance speech Hock explained: "Through the years, I have greatly feared and sought to keep at bay the four beasts that inevitably devour their keeper -- Ego, Envy, Avarice, and Ambition. In 1984, I severed all connections with business for a life of isolation and anonymity, convinced I was making a great bargain by trading money for time, position for liberty, and ego for contentment -- that the beasts were securely caged."

On March 13, 1993, Hock gave a dinner speech at the Santa Fe Institute where based on his experiences founding and operating Visa International he described systems that are both chaotic and ordered, and used for the first time the term chaordic, a portmanteau combining the words chaotic and ordered.

In February 1994, Hock accepted a grant from the Joyce Foundation for his travel expenses to study the possibilities of implementing chaordic organizations for a year and to report back.

As a result the non-profit Alliance for Community Liberty was formed in 1994 by Hock to develop, disseminate and implement these new concepts of organization, and was renamed The Chaordic Alliance in 1996.

In spring 2001 The Chaordic Commons - a 501c3 nonprofit organization - was formed to supersede the Chaordic Alliance.

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Quotes·Quotations by Dee Hock

Advice

¶ Make a short list of things done to you that you abhorred. Don’t do them to others. Ever! Make another list of other things done to you that you loved. Do them to others. Always!

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dee_Hock