Quotes About Management

One of the functions of leadership is to lead, and weak managers may simply check and check and check with others because they are not capable of leading when it is required of them to lead. Benedict says that in matters of importance the abbot or prioress is to ask everyone in the community, 'starting with the youngest,' and then the abbot or prioress is to 'do what seems best.

And Louis XIV followed all these projects in the smallest detail. In May 1672, when Colbert wrote to ask if he was bothering the king with too many specifics, Louis XIV's reply was categoric: "I want to know everything about everything.

Growth is another widely embraced goal, along with its sister goal, market share. Like ROS, these fail to account for the capital required to compete in the industry. Too often companies pursue unprofitable growth that never leads to superior return on capital. As Porter notes wryly when he talks to managers, most companies could instantly achieve rapid growth simply by cutting their prices in half.

In the oft-told joke, one economist says to another, "Sure, it works in reality. But will it work in theory?" Porter's work endures—and is so widely cited and used—because it works in both realms, theory and practice.

Your cost advantage might come from lower operating costs or from using capital more efficiently (including working capital), or both.

Seeing that gate turnarounds are a significant cost driver, you would then dive a level deeper, to the many specific subactivities involved in gate turnarounds. Here you'd be looking for ways to lower your costs without sacrificing customer value. This is how you drive an even greater wedge between your performance and that of your rivals.

than from the product itself.

I'm in charge here, don't forget it," he stated. I nodded, mesmerized.

Positive reputation management. I Googled your name, and a few obnoxious articles popu up. I work with the leading reputation management company that can backlink to the positive articles to make a "firewall" which prevents negative pieces from ranking well on Google. Your first page of Google is key as 95% never go beyond the first Google page. Let's improve this. Easy to do.

Sometimes the best plays are performed behind the scenes

government policy.

Writing is mostly a case of mood management. The emotion you have is not absolute, it is temporary. It may be useful, but it is not the truth. It is not you.

A schedule defends from chaos and whim.

When possible, divide and conquer. Have the people who make the decisions to start things be different from the people who make the decisions to stop those things. For clients of mine who are institutional investors, I have suggested that type of strategy as a way to improve their sell-side decisions. Have the committee approving what to buy be different from the committee approving what and when to sell.

There is a well-known heuristic in management consulting that the right time to fire someone is the first time it crosses your mind. This heuristic is meant to get businesses to the decision sooner, because most managers are reluctant to terminate personnel, hanging on to them too long.

An obvious and high-value application of kill criteria has to do with funnel management for a business's sales function. A big problem for sellers is managing all the opportunities at the top of the funnel: Which do you pursue? And, once you've started pursuing a lead, when do you give up on it?

such as the one encapsulated in the seventh principle: whenever possible, we should manage our thinking by generating cognitive loops.

Accordingly, the ninth principle: whenever possible, we should manage our thinking by embedding extensions in our everyday environments.

We won't make a drama out of a crisis.

Every professional athlete owes a debt of gratitude to the fans and management, and pays an installment every time he plays. He should never miss a payment.

I'd like to run a professional football team. I'd love to run the USTA, be the sports editor of the 'New York Times.'

Professionally, I like doing one thing at a time and enjoy directing the most.

It's our job as marketers and brand professionals to nurture the brand and calm it down when it's angry and to encourage when it's trying to grow.

Authority doesn't have to be concentrated in me when I'm hiring outstanding professionals who know their jobs. I will be there if there's something that's not following what I want. But I also know that day to day, they're the ones that have to be accountable.