Dee Ward Hock (March 21, 1929 – July 16, 2022) was the founder and CEO of the Visa credit card association.
[4][5][6] In May 1984, Hock resigned his management role with Visa,[4] retiring to spend almost ten years in relative isolation working a 200-acre (0.81 km2) ranch on the Pacific coast to the west of Silicon Valley in Pescadero, California.
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.Hock had built Visa as a deliberately decentralized organization.
In February 1994, Hock accepted a grant from the Joyce Foundation for his travel expenses to study the possibilities of implementing chaordic organizations.