Quotes About Management

Strategy per se did not separate the good-to-great companies from the comparison companies. Both sets had strategies, and there is no evidence that the good-to-great companies spent more time on strategic planning than the comparison companies.

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. The old adage "People are your most important asset" turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are.

The difference is simply this: A micro-manager doesn't trust his people, and seeks to control every single detail and decision; he believes that ultimately only he will make the right choices. A personal-touch leader, on the other hand, trusts his people to make basically good choices; he respects their abilities.

Most companies (we believe that most organizations do indeed lack clarity of vision) let crises, firefights, and tactical decisions drive the company. We refer to this as "tactics-driving strategy." Vision should drive strategy and strategy, in turn, should drive tactics, not the other way around.

The executives who ignited the transformations from good to great did not first figure out where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there. No, they first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it.

If you have the right people on the bus, they will be self-motivated. The real question then becomes: How do you manage in such a way as not to de-motivate people? And one of the single most de-motivating actions you can take is to hold out false hopes, soon to be swept away by events.

The pressures of command were clearly weighing on him. He had insufficient authority, but he was no longer sure he wanted more of it.

If there's one thing that's certain in business, it's uncertainty.

Business is all about risk taking and managing uncertainties and turbulence.

There's so much uncertainty within certain players and the organization.

Whether baseball or football, we're tasked in front offices with making decisions under uncertainty. How do you corral that uncertainty in a way to make more consistently better decisions? That's very similar.

Rio will have to look after the legacy of infrastructure. But it's unclear who will run the sports centres after the Olympics.

I'm normally running three to 10 meetings at a time. I just pile them all up. I have no schedule and everybody just kind of meets at the same time. It sometimes makes people who are really important in their minds very uncomfortable because they're used to getting an automatic three hours alone.

I'm not on social media because I feel like that would be just such another level of responsibility that I don't feel up to. It's not uncommon now to have personal and public intertwined, and I don't know how people are able to manage that. I don't know where you go when you want to be alone if everything is out there.

We shouldn't have politicians micromanaging this war because it is complex and unconventional.

I don't think you can underestimate the impact of the gaffer.

If someone thinks that education, health, infrastructure all are different sectors and issues and they ought to be fought independently, then they are mistaken. There is an underlying pattern in the process. And that is bad governance.

The underlying principles of strategy are enduring, regardless of technology or the pace of change.

A lot of the dysfunction that exists underneath the surface of a lot of big business corporations is really profound.

What I'm trying to say is that for the average investor, what I would encourage them to do is to understand that there's inflation and growth. It can go higher and lower and to have four different portfolios essentially that make up your entire portfolio that gets you balanced.

We need a new generation of executives who understand how to manage and lead through data. And we also need a new generation of employees who are able to help us organize and structure our businesses around that data.

You know, one of the things I think you understand as president is you're held responsible for everything, but you don't always have control of everything, right?

You have to give employees a lot of autonomy to think more creatively and out of the box. You need to hire people who are going to understand how to do this responsively and strategically.

Land is becoming a diminishing resource for agriculture, in spite of a growing understanding that the future of food security will depend upon the sustainable management of land resources as well as the conservation of prime farmland for agriculture.