Quotes About Management

It is simply a manifestation of the "first who" principle: It's not how you compensate your executives, it's which executives you have to compensate in the first place.

First Who … Then What. We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats—and then they figured out where to drive it.

To be rigorous means consistently applying exacting standards at all times and at all levels, especially in upper management. To be rigorous, not ruthless, means that the best people need not worry about their positions and can concentrate fully on their work.

What is the purpose of budgeting? Most

If you have the wrong people, it doesn't matter whether you discover the right direction; you still won't have a great company. Great vision without great people is irrelevant.

the single most important skill for building a great company is making superb people decisions. Without the right people, you simply cannot build a great company, period.

Look, I don't really know where we should take this bus. But I know this much: If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we'll figure out how to take it someplace great.

Bureaucratic cultures arise to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline, which arise from having the wrong people on the bus in the first place.

We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats - and then they figured out where to drive it.

Practical Discipline #2: When you know you need to make a people change, act.

first who... then what" start-up.

Larger-than-life, celebrity leaders who ride in from the outside are negatively correlated with taking a company from good to great. Ten of eleven good-to-great CEOs came from inside the company, whereas

Reichardt kept people relentlessly focused on the simple hedgehog idea

if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away. The right people don't need to be tightly managed or fired up; they will be self-motivated by the inner drive to produce the best results and to be part of creating something great.

The good-to-great companies paid scant attention to managing change, motivating people, or creating alignment. Under the right conditions, the problems of commitment, alignment, motivation, and change largely melt away.

Darwin Smith stands as a classic example of what we came to call a Level 5 leader—an individual who blends extreme personal humility with intense professional will.

The main point is to first get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it. The

We hire five, work them like ten, and pay them like eight.

Do first things first—and second things not at all. The alternative is to get nothing done. Peter F. Drucker

If you must have more than one priority, then keep it to a maximum of three—any more than three priorities is an admission that you don't really have any priorities.

About 50 percent of great leadership is what you do with the unexpected.

the purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline—a problem that largely goes away if you have the right people in the first place.

The most constrained resource in your company is your time.

Kenneth Atchity, president of Atchity Entertainment International, observed that there is a vital difference between managing time and managing work: work is infinite; time is finite. Work expands to fill whatever time is allotted to it. To be productive, therefore, you must manage your time, not your work. The key question to ask yourself is not "What am I going to do?" but "How am I going to spend my time?