Quotes About Management

The ways in which senior executives allocate, manage and position their new digital assets and knowledge resources will have a strong bearing on the firm's ability to compete successfully in today's global digital economy.

My mother's psychologist says I have an overactive anger switch, but people just keep pissing me off.

I have run large organizations, I know what it takes to create a healthy business climate, and I have more experience than Jerry Brown doing that. So it'll be a stark contrast, a career politician vs. someone who has met a payroll, gotten a return on investment, knows how to use technology to do more with less.

my voice firm as I took charge. Keeping the surface polished.

Show me a clever nation; then I will show you a clever government!

So, in summary, if plants should be thinned to 12 inches apart, plant one per square foot. If plants should be thinned to 6 inches apart, plant four per square foot. If plants should be thinned to 4 inches apart then you can grow nine within the space of that 1 square foot. If plants are thinned to 3 inches apart, you can grow sixteen in that same square foot. Doesn't it all make sense and seem easy enough?

It's simply a matter of creative accounting.

It takes real planning to organize this kind of chaos.

My background was computer science and business school, so eventually I worked my way up where I was running product groups - development, testing, marketing, user education.

Even the best data-collection system is useless if there are no people available to manage it.

Taylor believed that the unique success of the 914 copier had inculcated Xerox management with the doctrine that good things derived only from hardware. He was determined to show them that this idea was obsolete. As PARC envisioned the office of the future, a single piece of equipment could be made to serve multiple uses simply by changes in its software.

the case method typically presents the problem to the student. It describes the situation facing a firm and then frames the decision that must be made. In real life, according to McNamara, the leader first must discover the problem.

Far too much research conducted at business schools today has little or no value to business leaders.

Database Development

manage the community outside of the CIA. An official observed, "The CIA director managed the CIA; it was the best job in the world. Managing the IC meant going out to the NRO and sitting through a three-hour meeting about satellite specifications. So it just was not done well."3

Shook and Verble, Managing to Learn.

Crises will come and go in all countries, more often in some than in others; at these moments, someone has to lead, has to make sure that while the crisis is addressed, it doesn't overwhelm the pre-existing agenda for change. Allow that, and failure beckons. Hence Harold Macmillan's famous lament about why he had not achieved more: 'Events, dear boy! Events.

it was one of those cases I found so common later in government, where the risk of acting was far less than the risk of doing nothing

Government is dysfunctional.

There is no business in America that would be prevented from taking results into account when making personnel decisions.

I've overseen over 150 presidentially declared disasters. I know what I'm doing, and I think I do a pretty darn good job of it.

Don't surprise your boss. It's no fun bringing your boss bad news. However, most bosses consider it a far greater sin not to report emerging problems early enough.

Build your team. If you are inheriting a team, you need to evaluate, align, and mobilize its members. You likely also need to restructure it to better meet the demands of the situation. Your willingness to make tough early personnel calls and your capacity to select the right people for the right positions are among the most important drivers of success during your transition and beyond.

The most important decisions you make in your first 90 days will probably be about people.