Quotes from Carol Bartz

I like banks because they keep my money safe, but I don't want to talk about banks 12 times a year.

It's very, very hard to affect culture. And you can get surprised thinking you're farther down the path of change than you really are because, frankly, most of us like the way things are.

If you think you can't, you're right.

It'll take a smart person with passion over someone with years of experience any day. People with intelligence and passion will get the problem solved, no matter what.

The fact that you can crawl the web is a commodity.

If I had my way, I wouldn't do annual reviews, if I felt that everybody would be more honest about positive and negative feedback along the way. I think the annual review process is so antiquated.

Everybody on my team - I couldn't do their jobs. I could not. I really mean that. So I figured out early on that the way you're successful is you hire really successful people.

I have a belief that life isn't about balance, because balance is perfection Rather, it's about catching the ball before it hits the floor.

You need not feel guilty about not being able to keep your life perfectly balanced. Juggling everything is too difficult. All you really need to do is catch it before it hits the floor.

I became a sales manager at Digital Equipment, promoted from within the sales team. My peers were less than excited that I had gotten the job, especially one of my male peers who said he just wasn't going to work for a woman.

I always do my firing in the morning because that's when I'm fresh.

My grandmother raised me. She was a real no-nonsense but very funny lady. I drove tractors, made hay, milked cows, fed the chicken, fed the pigs.

I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin. I never thought I'd be where I am. I never thought I'd have bling that I bought.

Any leader needs to be constantly interested in what's going on in the world, and constantly ready - even when things are going well - to change.

I'm kind of a Midwestern snob. I think we're just nice people and have a great work ethic.

Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997 - the iPod came out 4 years later. 3 years after that is the first time his market cap grew. It took 7 years.

Google is a fierce competitor. I wish I was worth a bazillion dollars; that would be really nice. They're a fierce competitor, and they're very good in search. They're very good with their global map thing.

The way you manage your company and the way you manage your people has to be totally different.

My first day as a manager was at Digital Equipment in Atlanta. I was a sales rep. I was promoted from among my peers, so one day I was a peer, and the next day I was their boss.

I hug employees all the time. I'm a huge contact person. Touch is an extremely important part of the human condition.

Managing is a tough job. When you're young, you just think it's a natural progression - I'm good at this, so I'm going to be good at that - and it's not that way at all.

If people really don't want ads, they can go find their information however it is they want. It's a free world on that matter.

Social does not just equal Facebook. Social is how people interact anywhere.

Back when 'social' had a broad definition, you could almost say that Yahoo Finance chat was the first social product.