Management Quotes

Management is the process of assuring that the program and objectives of the organization are implemented. Leadership on the other hand has to do with casting vision and motivating people.

An executive should be a realist; and no one is less realistic than the cynic.

A good executive goes around with a worried look on his assistants.

Treat the large as the small and the few as the many.

Good people are not trained, they are found. If you are training too much, you may not have the right people.

Far too much reorganization goes on all the time. Organizitis is like a spastic colon.

A people unused to restraint must be led, they will not be drove.

No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.

In the successful organization, no detail is too small to escape close attention.

For example: (1) As if governed by Newton's First Law of Motion, an institution will resist any change in its current direction; (2) Just as work expands to fill available time, corporate projects or acquisitions will materialize to soak up available funds; (3) Any business craving of the leader, however foolish, will be quickly supported by detailed rate-of-return and strategic studies prepared by his troops; and (4) The behavior of peer companies, whether they are expanding, acquiring, setting executive compensation or whatever, will be mindlessly imitated.

As a manager you're paid to be uncomfortable. If you're comfortable, it's a sure sign you're doing things wrong.

It does not follow from the separation of planning and doing in the analysis of work that the planner and the doer should be two different people. It does not follow that the industrial world should be divided into two classes of people: a few who decide what is to be done, design the job, set the pace, rhythm and motions, and order others about; and the many who do what and as they are told.

The flatter the corporate hierarchy, the more likely it is that employees will communicate bad news and act upon it.

The wealth that cannot be administered is a burden.

It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.

My curse on playsThat have to be set up in fifty ways,On the day's war with every knave and dolt,Theater business, management of men.

My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects. And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be.

There is one qualification the manager cannot acquire but must bring to the task. It is not genius; it is character.

A legislator must know how to take advantage of even the defects of those he wants to govern. The art consists in making others work rather than in wearing oneself out.

Keep the boss aware. Bosses, after all, are held responsible by their own bosses for the performance of their subordinates. They must be able to say: "I know what Anne [or John] is trying to do."

It isn't given to man to be able to run a financial institution where different interest-rate scenarios will prevail on all of that so as to produce kind of smooth, regular earnings from a very large base to start with.

What gets measured gets managed.

The manager is a servant. His master is the institution he manages and his first responsibility must therefore be to it.

Sometimes I think of myself as a little bee. I go from one area of the studio to another and gather pollen and sort of stimulate everybody. I guess that’s the job I do.

You can't just let nature run wild.

Executives do many things in addition to making decisions. But only executives make decisions. The first managerial skill is, therefore, the making of effective decisions.

Work is a process, and any process needs to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work.

No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.

Absolute size by itself is no indicator of success and achievement, let alone of managerial competence. Being the right size is.

Tend to the people, and they will tend to the business.

No organization can depend on genius; the supply is always scarce and unreliable. It is the test of an organization to make ordinary people perform better than they seem capable of, to bring out whatever strength there is in its members, and to use each person's strength to help all the other members perform.

If you have a great manager, you want to pay him very well.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.

Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.

Management by objective works - if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don't.

Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could.

Teamwork is neither "good" nor "desirable." It is a fact. Wherever people work together or play together they do so as a team. Which team to use for what purpose is a crucial, difficult and risky decision that is even harder to unmake. Managements have yet to learn how to make it.

The extraordinary business does not require good management.

Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless.

The essence of management is to make knowledge productive.

I let the argument rip healthily between the departments. This is a very good way to finding out the truth.

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering.

I no longer think that learning how to manage people, especially subordinates, is the most important for executives to learn. I am teaching above all else, how to manage oneself.

As a leader you should always start with where people are before you try to take them to where you want them to go.

A man should never be appointed into a managerial position if his vision focuses on people's weaknesses rather than on their strengths.

No business can do everything. Even if it has the money, it will never have enough good people. It has to set priorities. The worst thing to do is a little bit of everything. This makes sure that nothing is being accomplished. It is better to pick the wrong priority than none at all.

An effective executive builds on strengths - their own strengths, the strengths of superiors, colleagues, subordinates, and on the strength of the situation.

It does not matter whether the worker wants responsibility or not, ...The enterprise must demand it of him.

The secret of success lies never in the amount of money, but in the relation of income to outgo.

The rule should be to minimize the need for people to get together to accomplish anything.

Effective organizations put people in jobs in which they can do the most good. They place people -- and allow people to place themselves -- according to their strengths.

What managers decide to stop doing is often more important than what they decide to do.

You cannot manage a decision you haven't made.

The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.

Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated.

Is management rational?

When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out.

Not to innovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing organizations. Not to know how to manage is the single largest reason for the failure of new ventures.