Quotes About Management

A leader should surround himself with persons who fit his requirements and standards—and then turn them loose to do their jobs.

Learn to cope with anger by avoiding stressful situations, to the extent that you can.

It's all matter of attitude. You could let a lot of things bother you if you wanted to But it's pretty much the same anywhere you go, you can manage.

I have never encountered an executive who remains effective while tackling more than two tasks at a time. Hence, after asking what needs to be done, the effective executive sets priorities and sticks

In our studies of managers, we have found that the difference between those who take the initiative and those who do not becomes particularly evident during phases of major change, when managerial work becomes relatively chaotic and unstructured.

Management must think of itself not as producing products but as providing customer-creating value satisfactions. It must push this idea (and everything it means and requires) into every nook and cranny of the organization. It has to do this continuously and with the kind of flair that excites and stimulates the people in it.

Harvard Business School Press

Effective strategy planners spread strategy reviews throughout the year rather than squeeze them into a two- or three-month window. This allows senior executives to focus on one issue at a time until they reach a decision or set of decisions.

Executives are doers; they execute. Knowledge is useless to executives until it has been translated into deeds. But before springing into action, the executive needs to plan his course. He needs to think about desired results, probable restraints, future revisions, check-in points, and implications for how he'll spend his time.

The measurement system cost more than $4 million per year, but the company made such significant progress in building customer loyalty that the company's management considers it one of the company's best investments.

By embracing decision-focused planning, companies will almost certainly find that the quantity and quality of their decisions will improve.

if management lets itself drift, it invariably drifts in the direction of thinking of itself as producing goods and services, not customer satisfactions.

what should he do to make strategic planning drive more, better, and faster decisions? Like

More than anything else, this disconnect—between the way planning works and the way decision making happens—explains the frustration, if not outright antipathy, most executives feel toward strategic planning.

they've also changed the nature of top management's discussions about strategy—from "review and approve" to "debate and decide

use the strategy development process to drive decision making.

Acquisition opportunities tend to emerge spontaneously, the result of changes in management at a target company, the actions of a competitor, or some other unpredictable event.

When you look across the good-to-great transformations, they consistently display three forms of discipline: disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action. When you have disciplined people, you don't need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don't need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don't need excessive controls.

Directors and management need to spearhead the strategy shift from transactions to relationships and create the culture, structure, and incentives necessary to execute the strategy. What

helping people overcome their limitations to become more successful at work is at the very heart of effective management.

Executives also owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs. It may not be the employees' fault that they are underperforming, but even so, they have to be removed.

When is the urgency rate high enough? From what I have seen, the answer is when about 75% of a company's management is honestly convinced that business as usual is totally unacceptable. Anything less can produce very serious problems later on in the process.

The profit lure of mass production obviously has a place in the plans and strategy of business management, but it must always follow hard thinking about the customer.

But Welch also thought through another issue before deciding where to concentrate his efforts for the next five years. He asked himself which of the two or three tasks at the top of the list he himself was best suited to undertake. Then he concentrated on that task; the others he delegated. Effective executives try to focus on jobs they'll do especially well. They know that enterprises perform if top management performs—and don't if it doesn't.