#Management Quotes

“Things refuse to be mismanaged for long.”

“A man must keep an eye on his servants, if he would not have them rule him.”

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

“All resources are not obvious; great managers find and develop available talent.”

“In my experience of large enterprises, I have found it is often a mistake to try to settle everything at once.”

“The difference between mere management and leadership is communication.”

“I would rather train someone and lose them, than not train them and keep them”

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

“When I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing.”

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

“When management and labor (employer and employee) both understand they are all on the same side, then each will prosper more.”

“I am your servant. You have the right to dismiss me when you please. What you have no right to do is ask me to bear responsibility without the power of action.”

“The competent leader of men cares little for the niceties of other peoples' characters: he cares much--everything--for the exterior uses to which they may be put.... These are men to be moved. How should he move them? He supplies the power; others simply the materials on which that power operates.”

“I always say that in investing you want to buy stock in a company that has a business that's so good that an idiot can run it, because sooner or later one will. We have a country like that.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I certainly do believe anyone engaged in the management of money should have a standard of measurement, and that both he and the party whose money is managed should have a clear understanding why it is the appropriate standard, what time period should be utilized, etc.”

“I always invest in companies an idiot could run, because one day one will.”

“I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.”

“The extraordinary business does not require good management.”

“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.”

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

“Time is the capital of your life, so spend it wisely.”

“When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.”

“The managers at fault periodically report on the lesson they have learned from the latest disappointment. They then usually seek out future lessons.”

“You should invest in a business that even a fool can run, because someday a fool will.”

“Is management rational?”

“We also believe candour benefits us as managers. The CEO who misleads often in public eventually misleads himself in private.”

“We've got to fight against bigness. If a school gets too large, you lose an intimacy with the students; they begin to feel they're just part of a big complex. I don't think you can create too well in a big plant. That's why I always tried to avoid bigness in the studio.”

“You can't just let nature run wild.”

“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.”

“In short I must confide in you to take such care of the men under you as an economical householder would of his own family, doingevery thing within himself as far as he can, and calling for as few supplies as possible. The less you depend for supplies from this quarter, the less you will be disappointed.”

“Running a football team is no different than running any other kind of organization.”

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

“Praise in public; criticize in private.”

“When a highly successful leader retires after a long career, it is very unlikely that his successor will be of comparable caliber. Anyone of similar ability and drive would have gone somewhere else, instead of waiting in the wings for years for a chance to show his own leadership.”

“The only thing better than "hands-on" experience is hands-off experience - enough experience to understand that some things will turn out better if left alone.”

“Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson's administration, especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's brilliant 'whiz kids' tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results.”

“People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.”

“The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”

“The leader works in the open and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.”

“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.”

“Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere as long as the policy you've decided upon is being carried out.”

“Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can't afford to lose.”

“Personally I have never been able to understand why the head of a big business, whether it be the Nation, the State or the Army, or Navy should not desire to have very strong and positive people under him.”

“Manage the top line: your strategy, your people, and your products, and the bottom line will follow.”

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

“You cannot mandate productivity, you must provide the tools to let people become their best.”

“You're missing it. This is not a one-man show. What's reinvigorating this company is two things: One, there's a lot of really talented people in this company who listened to the world tell them they were losers for a couple of years, and some of them were on the verge of starting to believe it themselves. But they're not losers. What they didn't have was a good set of coaches, a good plan. A good senior management team. But they have that now.”

“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.”