Quotes About Management

one of the manager's key tasks is to settle six important questions in advance: •  What decision needs to be made? •  When does it have to be made? • Who will decide? •  Who will need to be consulted prior to making the decision? •  Who will ratify or veto the decision? •  Who will need to be informed of the decision?

To put a man on the moon, NASA asked several major contractors and many subcontractors to work together, each on a different aspect of the project. An unintended consequence of the moon shot was the development of a new organizational approach: matrix management.

information-gathering is the basis of all other managerial work, which is why I choose to spend so much of my day doing it.

The output of a manager is the output of the organizational units under his or her supervision or influence

As for cultural values, management has to develop and nurture the common set of values, objectives, and methods essential for the existence of trust. How do we do that? One way is by articulation, by spelling out these values, objectives, and methods. The other, even more important, way is by example. If our behavior at work will be regarded as in line with the values we profess, that fosters the development of a group culture.

Which five would they be? Put another way, which five pieces of information would you want to look at each day, immediately upon arriving at your office?

Organizations in the valley of death have a natural tendency to drift back into the morass of confusion. They are very sensitive to obscure or ambiguous signals from their management

Most people use their calendars as a repository of "orders" that come in. Someone throws an order to a manager for his time, and it automatically shows up on his calendar. This is mindless passivity. To gain better control of his time, the manager should use his calendar as a "production" planning tool, taking a firm initiative to schedule work that is not time-critical between those "limiting steps" in the day.

But at least you know that alternatives do exist: equipment capacity, manpower, and inventory can be traded off against each other and then balanced against delivery time.

As a rule of thumb, a manager whose work is largely supervisory should have six to eight subordinates; three or four are too few and ten are too many. This range comes from a guideline that a manager should allocate about a half day per week to each of his subordinates.

we should try to make our managerial work take on the characteristics of a factory, not a job shop. Accordingly, we should do everything we can to prevent little stops and starts in our day as well as interruptions brought on by big emergencies.

But because you must coordinate your work with that of other managers, you can only move toward regularity if others do too. In other words, the same blocks of time must be used for like activities. For example, at Intel Monday mornings have been set aside throughout the corporation as the time when planning groups meet.

Manufacturers turn out standard products. By analogy, if you can pin down what kind of interruptions you're getting, you can prepare standard responses for those that pop up most often.

Also, if you use the production principle of batching—that is, handling a group of similar chores at one time—many interruptions that come from your subordinates can be accumulated and handled not randomly, but at staff and at one-on-one meetings, the subject of the next chapter. If such meetings are held regularly, people can't protest too much if they're asked to batch questions and problems for scheduled times, instead of interrupting you whenever they want.

the definition of "manager" should be broadened: individual contributors who gather and disseminate know-how and information should also be seen as middle managers, because they exert great power within the organization.

the key definition here is that the output of a manager is a result achieved by a group either under her supervision or under her influence. While the manager's own work is clearly very important, that in itself does not create output. Her organization does.

e-mail is also the first manifestation of a revolution in how information flows and how it is managed.

Because the art and science of forecasting is so complex, you might be tempted to give all forecasting responsibility to a single manager who can be made accountable for it. But this usually does not work very well. What works better is to ask both the manufacturing and the sales departments to prepare a forecast, so that people are responsible for performing against their own predictions.

Because it is easier to monitor something with which you are familiar, if you have a choice you should delegate those activities you know best. But recall the pencil experiment and understand before the fact that this will very likely go against your emotional grain.

How is this done? By applying Grove's Principle of Didactic Management, "Ask one more question!" When the supervisor thinks the subordinate has said all he wants to about a subject, he should ask another question.

How you handle your own time is, in my view, the single most important aspect of being a role model and leader.

A real time-saver is using a "hold" file where both the supervisor and subordinate accumulate important but not altogether urgent issues for discussion at the next meeting.

as a manager in such a workplace, you need to develop a higher tolerance for disorder.

Andy introduces management with this classic equation: A manager's output = the output of his organization + the output of the neighboring organizations under his influence.