Quotes About Effectiveness

The great accomplishment of Jobs's life is how effectively he put his idiosyncrasies - his petulance, his narcissism, and his rudeness - in the service of perfection.

Nothing in life is more important than the ability to communicate effectively.

If you do something and it saves your life, it was good taijutsu. In a real fight, you aren't worried about what's pretty.

Both had agreed that the British 'bobby' was able to police more effectively precisely because he was known to be unarmed. The point was for policing to be, and to be seen to be, by consent, not compulsion

He swore at us in German (which I should judge to be a singularly effective language for that purpose)...

No word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause. —Mark Twain

metric fixation has elements of a cult. Studies that demonstrate its lack of effectiveness are either ignored, or met with the assertion that what is needed is more data and better measurement.

So organizations measure what they've spent, rather than what they produce, or they measure process rather than product.

Documentation is never an end in itself; it is only a means to an end. Creating documentation for its own sake is not merely a waste of time—it can be counterproductive and demoralizing.

From our vantage point in a time when muck is being raked (and flung) vehemently and constantly twenty-four hours a day, the question of effectiveness is overwhelmed by the question of whether any person in America with access to the media remains shockable or persuadable.

Without information, deliberation, and the power to make one's decision effective, democratically expressed opinion is hardly more than the applause at a sports event.

All our words from loose using have lost their edge.

If exercising the right to vote were truly effective, the government would not be so eager to promote it.

If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time.

the real sign of malorganization is when people spend more than 25 percent of their time in ad hoc mission-oriented meetings.

Managerial productivity—that is, the output of a manager per unit of time worked—can be increased in three ways: 1.  Increasing the rate with which a manager performs his activities, speeding up his work. 2.  Increasing the leverage associated with the various managerial activities. 3.  Shifting the mix of a manager's activities from those with lower to those with higher leverage.

The first rule is that a measurement—any measurement—is better than none. But a genuinely effective indicator will cover the output of the work unit and not simply the activity involved. Obviously, you measure a salesman by the orders he gets (output), not by the calls he makes (activity).

a very important way to increase productivity is to arrange the work flow inside our black box so that it will be characterized by high output per activity, which is to say high-leverage activities.

High managerial productivity, I argue, depends largely on choosing to perform tasks that possess high leverage.

Thus, a very important way to increase productivity is to arrange the work flow inside our black box so that it will be characterized by high output per activity, which is to say high-leverage activities.

a genuinely effective indicator will cover the output of the work unit and not simply the activity involved.

the performance rating of a manager cannot be higher than the one we would accord to his organization!

as you review a manager, should you be judging his performance or the performance of the group under his supervision? You should be doing both. Ultimately what you are after is the performance of the group, but the manager is there to add value in some way.

For the feedback to be effective, it must be received very soon after the activity it is measuring occurs. Accordingly, an MBO system should set objectives for a relatively short period. For example, if we plan on a yearly basis, the corresponding MBO system's time frame should be at least as often as quarterly or perhaps even monthly.