Quotes About Management

One study calculated that people spend 3,680 hours in their lifetime looking for lost items, which works out to 150 twenty-four-hour days.

Innovation is a bottoms-up, decentralized, and unpredictable thing, but that doesn't mean it cannot be managed.

In my Toyota interviews, when I asked what distinguishes the Toyota Way from other management approaches, the most common first response was genchi gembutsu—whether I was in manufacturing, product development, sales, distribution, or public affairs. You cannot be sure you really understand any part of any business problem unless you go and see for yourself firsthand. It is unacceptable to take anything for granted or to rely on the reports of others.

There is a reason all past management revolutions have been led by engineers: management is human systems engineering.

No es suficiente con pedir a los traabajadores que se esfuercen más. Nuestros problemas actuales están provocados por esforzarnos demasiado en las cosas equivocadas

The one envelope at a time approach is called "single-piece flow

The Toyota Way

Stop production so that production never has to stop.

Si yo eligiera un empleado al azar de cualquier nivel, departamento o región, y ese empleado tuviera una idea absolutamente brillante que abriera una fuente de crecimiento radicalmente nueva, ¿qué tendría que hacer para llevar su idea a la práctica? ¿Dispone la empresa de las herramientas de gestión necesarias para ampliar esa idea a fin de que genere el máximo impacto, aun cuando no se ajuste a ninguna de las líneas de negocio actuales?

Some people are natural inventors who prefer to work without the pressure and expectations of the later business phases. Others are ambitious and see innovation as a path toward senior management. Still others are particularly skilled at the management of running an established business, outsourcing, and bolstering efficiencies and wringing out cost reductions. People should be allowed to find the kinds of jobs that suit them best.

in general management, a failure to deliver results is due to either a failure to plan adequately or a failure to execute properly. Both are significant lapses, yet new product development in our modern economy routinely requires exactly this kind of failure on the way to greatness.

the first object of any good system must be that of developing first-class men; and under systematic management the best man rises to the top more certainly and more rapidly than ever before.

Building an adaptive organization, in other words, requires executive leadership to sponsor and support the process.

A startup is an institution, not just a product, and so it requires a new kind of management specifically geared to its context of extreme uncertainty.

Wealthfront

Entrepreneurship is a kind of management. No, you didn't read that wrong.

Once a team is set up, what should it do? What process should it use? How should it be held accountable to performance milestones?

Although the primary changes that are required in an adaptive organization are in the mind-set of its employees, changing the culture is not sufficient. As we saw in Chapter 9, lean management requires treating work as a system and then dealing with the batch size and cycle time of the whole process. Thus, to achieve lasting change, the QuickBooks team had to invest in tools and platform changes that would enable the new, faster way of working.

The Principles of Scientific Management,

Internal startup teams require support from senior management to create these structures. Internal or external, in my experience startup teams require three structural attributes: scarce but secure resources, independent authority to develop their business, and a personal stake in the outcome. Each of these requirements is different from those of established company divisions.

Most tools from general management are not designed to flourish in the harsh soil of extreme uncertainty in which startups thrive. The future is unpredictable, customers face a growing array of alternatives, and the pace of change is ever increasing. Yet most startups—in garages and enterprises alike—still are managed by using standard forecasts, product milestones, and detailed business plans.

Did they hire superstar entrepreneurs from outside the company? No, they assembled a team from within Intuit. Did they face constant meddling from senior management, which is the bane of innovation teams in many companies? No, their executive sponsors created an "island of freedom" where they could experiment as necessary. Did they have a huge team, a large budget, and lots of marketing dollars? Nope, they started with a team of five.

In 1911 Taylor wrote: "In the past, the man has been first; in the future, the system must be first." Taylor's prediction has come to pass.

The tremendous success of general management over the last century has provided unprecedented material abundance, but those management principles are ill suited to handle the chaos and uncertainty that startups must face.