Quotes from Harold Geneen

When I come upon a man who has a gleaming, empty, clear desktop, I am dealing with a fellow who is so far removed from the realities of his business that someone else is running it for him.

In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.

Do you want my one-word secret of happiness? It's growth - - mental, financial you name it.

Uncertainty will always be part of the taking charge process.

Better a good decision quickly than the best decision too late.

A true leader has to have a genuine open-door policy so that his people are not afraid to approach him for any reason.

I think it is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance is reality

The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success are concentration, discrimination, organization, innovation and communication.

Management manages by making decisions and by seeing that those decisions are implemented.

I don't believe in just ordering people to do things. You have to sort of grab an oar and row with them.

Every company has two organizational structures: The formal one is written on the charts; the other is the everyday relationship of the men and women in the organization.

It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises but only performance is reality.

Management manages by making decisions and by seeing that those decisions are implemented.

Performance is your reality. Forget everything else.

The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.

You can't run a business or anything else on a theory.

Uncertainty will always be part of the taking charge process.

In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.

Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions.

You can know a person by the kind of desk he keeps. If the president of a company has a clean desk then it must be the executive vice president who is doing all the work.

If you keep working you'll last longer. I'd hate to spend the rest of my life trying to outwit an 18-inch fish.

The highest art of professional management requires the literal ability to 'smell' a 'real fact' from all others.

It's better to take over and build upon an existing business than to start a new one.

You read a book from beginning to end. You run a business the opposite way. You start with the end, and then you do everything you must to reach it.