Quotes About Management

Dead people are bad for business." She gave a half smile. "Except for in your business.

The lesson of the last year is this: foreign policy can't be managed through the politics of personality, and our President would do well to take note of an observation John F. Kennedy made once he was in office - that all of the world's problems aren't his predecessor's fault.

The reason that common AD/HD strategies alone don't always work is because they usually focus on merely controlling the negative and difficult part of the AD/HD. You want to focus on supporting the new growth, not just taking care of the difficulties. As you grow and become more and more successful, you'll constantly think of new ways to form cushions of support and structure underneath you. The emphasis should be on nourishing your successes, not just managing your deficits.

One way some women mask their AD/HD symptoms is to anchor their lives with extensive systems and controls. They may seriously limit the amount of activities in their lives in order to keep things under control.

The truth is that banks are the last feudal kingdoms, their rulers omnipotent, divine warlords. Their key lieutenants are 'ronin' (wandering mercenary samurai) who roam financial markets ready to ally themselves to any warlord for a share of plunder. This is not the place to apply the latest management theory.

Risk management seemed to have completed its transformation into pure entertainment. Dudley seemed the epitome of a risk manager who would drown crossing a river that was 12 inches in depth on average .

Tactics is knowing what to do when there is something to do. Strategy is knowing what to do when there is nothing to do.

The basic concept of the Dilbert Principle is that the most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management.

Remind people that profit is the difference between revenue and expense. This makes you look smart.

Professional management was born from the desire to optimize and control, not to lead waves of change.

Much of what bad managers do is assume their job is simply to find new things to jam and new places to jam them into, without ever believing they need to understand how the system—the system of people known as culture—works.

We develop ulcers, high blood pressure, headaches, and other physical problems in part because our stress systems aren't designed to handle the "dangers" of our brave new world: computer crashes, micromanaging bosses, 12-way conference calls, and long commutes in rush-hour traffic.

Defensive management is blind to recognizing how obsessing about preventing bad things also prevents good things from happening or sometimes even prevents anything from happening at all.

Negotiation is useful not only in a crisis situation, but also in management. Good negotiators work from people's interests, not their positions.

Self-motivated people thrive when granted independence. Managers who want better performance must provide what their staff needs.

Most of the work of project management is correctly prioritizing things and leading the team in carrying them out.

As a rule, everyone who launched something was expected to stay online for a few hours to ensure things went smoothly.

Being a good lead is all about switching hats: knowing which level of abstraction to work at to solve a problem. It's rarely a question of intelligence; instead, it's picking the right perspective to use on a particular challenge.

Schneider and Mullenweg went to great lengths to keep support roles, like legal, human resources, and even IT, from infringing on the autonomy of creative roles like engineering and design. The most striking expression of this is that management is seen as a support role.

I couldn't help but consider what Washington Roebling, one of the engineers of the Brooklyn Bridge, once wrote: "Man is after all a finite being in capacities and powers of doing actual work. But when it comes to planning, one mind can in a few hours think out enough work to keep a thousand men employed for years."2

No matter how many golden lectures a leader gives imploring people to "Be collaborative" or "Work as a team," if the people hired have destructive habits, the lecture will lose.

Projects are complex non-linear systems and have significant inertia. If you wait to see acute problems before taking action, you will be too late and may make things worse.

It's a great bullshit test of any boss who says, "X is important." If she doesn't match that statement with resources, she's incompetent, insincere, or both.

a leader in a crisis situation has better odds of success if she can see emotional patterns and make use of different ways to manage them.