Management Author Quotes

We can't make people better by trying to eliminate their weaknesses, but we can help then perform better by building on their strengths.

[Management] has authority only as long as it performs.

There are companies that are good at improving what they're already doing. There are companies that are good at extending what they're doing. And finally there are companies that are good at innovation. Every large company has to be able to do all three - improve, extend, and innovate - simultaneously.

Cultivate a deep understanding of yourself - not only what your strengths and weaknesses are but also how you learn, how you work with others, what your values are, and where you can make the greatest contribution. Because only when you operate from strengths can you achieve true excellence.

To arrive at the definition of the problem he must begin by finding the 'critical factor'. This is the element (or elements) in the situation that has to be changed before anything else can be changed, moved, acted upon.

The better a man is, the more mistakes he will make, for the more new things he will try. I would never promote to a top-level job a man who was not making mistakes...otherwise he is sure to be mediocre.

Mission defines strategy, and strategy defines structure.

What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the institution I serve?

All earlier pluralist societies destroyed themselves because no one took care of the common good. They abounded in communities but could not sustain community, let alone create it.

[Entrepreneurship] is by no means hunch or gamble. But it also is not precisely science. Rather, it is judgment.

If a business is to be considered a continuous process, instead of a series of disjointed stop-and-go events, then the economic universe in which a business operates-and all the major events within it-must have rhyme, rhythm, or reason.

The concept of profit maximization is, in fact, meaningless.

Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Knowledge is power, which is why people who had it in the past often tried to make a secret of it. In post-capitalism, power comes from transmitting information to make it productive, not from hiding it.

No matter how deeply wedded one may be to the free enterprise system (and I, for one, am wedded for life), one has to accept the need for positive government; one has to consider government action on a sizable scale as desirable rather than as a necessary evil.

Yet there is nothing more dangerous than to be premature in exploiting a change in perception.

The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.

Knowledge is the source of Wealth. Applied to tasks we already know, it becomes Productivity. Applied to tasks that are new, it becomes Innovation.

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.

If you want to improve how you manage time - stop doing what doesn't need to be done!

Every first-rate editor I have ever heard of reads, edits and rewrites every word that goes into his publication.... Good editors are not 'permissive'; they do not let their colleagues do 'their thing'; they make sure that everybody does the 'paper's thing.' A good, let alone a great editor is an obsessive autocrat with a whim of iron, who rewrites and rewrites, cuts and slashes, until every piece is exactly the way he thinks it should have been done.

The single minded ones, the monomaniacs, are the only true achievers

A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.

The key to greatness is to look for people's potential and spend time developing it.

Brilliant men are often strikingly ineffectual. They fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not by itself achievement. They never have learned that insights become effectiveness only through hard systematic work.

The dilemma of modern society: the conflict between the need for capital formation at a high rate and the popular condemnation of interest and dividends as "unearned income" and "capitalist," if not as sinful and wicked.

An established company which, in an age demanding innovation, is not able to innovation, is doomed to decline and extinction.

Decision making is the specific executive task.

Listening is not a skill; it is a discipline.

Business enterprise is an organ of society. There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.

Planning is actually incompatible with an entrepreneurial society and economy. Planning is the kiss of death of entrepreneurship.

What people in business think they know about the customer and market is likely to be more wrong than right...the customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him.

The first step toward making the worker achieving is to make work productive.

The most important work of the executive is to identify the changes that have already happened. The important thing . . . is to exploit the changes that have already occurred and to use them as opportunities.

To make knowledge productive, we will have to learn to see both forest and tree. We will have to learn to connect.

Effective innovations start small. They are not grandiose. They try to do one specific thing.

Change is the norm; unless an organization sees that its task is to lead change, that organization will not survive.

Some of the best business and nonprofit CEOs I've worked with over a sixty-five-year consulting career were not stereotypical leaders. They were all over the map in terms of their personalities, attitudes, values, strengths, and weaknesses.

Do first things first, and second things not at all.

Thus, for those who are willing to go out into the field, to look and to listen, changing demographics is both a highly productive and a highly dependable innovation opportunity.

Business purpose and business mission are so rarely given adequate thought is perhaps the most important cause of business frustration and failure.

Follow effective action with quiet reflection.

The most common source of mistakes in management decisions is the emphasis on finding the right answer rather than the right question.

Time is totally perishable and cannot be stored. Yesterday's time is gone forever, and will never come back. Time is always in short supply. There is no substitute for time. Everything requires time.

Objectives are not fate; they are direction. They are not commands; they are commitments. They do not determine the future; they are a means to mobilize resources and energies of the business for the making of the future.

Management must take the lead in making obsolete its own products and services rather than waiting for a competitor to do so.

The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday's logic.

Free enterprise cannot be justified as being good for business. It can be justified only as being good for society.

Leadership is all hype. We've had three great leaders in this century-Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.

Business has only two basic functions - marketing and innovation.

The greatest challenge to organizations is the balance between continuity and change. You need both. At different times, the balance is slightly more over here, or slightly more over there, but you need both. And balance is basically the greatest task in leadership. Organizations have to have continuity, and yet if there is not enough new challenge, not enough change, they become empty bureaucracies, awfully fast.

The computer actually may have aggravated management's degenerative tendency to focus inward on costs.

Making changes to better appeal to customer is INNOVATION.

There is the risk you cannot afford to take, and there is the risk you cannot afford not to take.

The 1st question the effective decision-maker asks is: 'Is this a generic situation or an exception?'

Focus on opportunities, not problems.

Efficiency, which is doing things right, is irrelevant until you work on the right things.

I'm better about things than about people. I'm more interested in people, but I'm better at ideas.

Leadership is defined by results not attributes.