Quotes About Management

If he gave an assignment, he didn't really care how it was done or who did it or what problems they had. It just had to get done, and that was that.

It is understood that when we speak of history we do not allude to the unspeakable trash contained in public school text-books (which in general resemble a cellar junk-shop of chronologies, epaulettes, bad drawings, and silly tales, and are a striking instance of the corrupting influence of State management of education, by which the mediocre, nay the absolutely empty, is made to survive)….

senior managers' goal here should be to manage their portfolio of businesses to wisely balance between profitable growth and cash flow at a given point in time.

The planning process doesn't produce strategy

If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.

A bad system will beat a good person every time.

The worker is not the problem. The problem is at the top! Management!

If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you are doing

Inspection to improve quality is too late, ineffective, costly. Quality comes not from inspection, but from the improvement of the production process.

Any substantial improvement must come from action on the system, the responsibility of management. Wishing and pleading and begging the workers to do better was totally futile.

Performance of management should be measured by potential to stay in business, to protect investment, to ensure future dividends and jobs through improvement of product and service for the future, not by the quarterly dividend.

Failure of management to plan for the future and to foresee problems has brought about waste of manpower, of materials, and of machine-time, all of which raise the manufacturer's cost and price that the purchaser must pay. The consumer is not always willing to subsidize this waste. The inevitable result is loss of market. Loss of market begets unemployment.

As long as management is quick to take credit for a firm's successes but equally swift to blame its workers for its failures, no surefire remedy for low productivity can be expected in American manufacturing and service industries.

Short-term profits are not reliable indicator of performance of management. Anybody can pay dividends by deferring maintenance, cutting out research, or acquiring another company.

Divided responsibility means that nobody is responsible.

quality control departments have taken the job of quality away from the people that can contribute most to quality—management, supervisors, managers of purchasing, and production workers.

To manage, one must lead. To lead, one must understand the work that he and his people are responsible for.

No one has all the answers. Fortunately, it is not necessary to have all the answers for good management.

Management of a system, cooperation between components, not competition. Management of people.

Schools of business responded to popular demand for finance and creative accounting. The results are decline.

Management must understand design of product and of service, procurement of materials, problems of production, process control, and barriers on the job that rob the hourly worker of his birthright, the right to pride of workmanship.

The wealth of a nation depends on its people, management, and government, more than on its natural resources.

Experience alone, without theory, teaches management nothing about what to do to improve quality and competitive position, nor how to do it.

Experience alone, without theory, teaches management nothing about what to do to improve quality and competitive position, nor how to do it. Experience will answer a question, and a question comes from theory.