Quotes About Competence

Either an executive can do his job or he can't.

I think that business leaders today have to be more rounded than they used to be, they have to be completely multi-functional and fast-moving.

Being properly prepared is one of the biggest assets in business and in athletic competition.

Know the business you're in for whatever you do, know it and understand how it works so you can be successful.

Always hire people who are better than you. Hiring dummies is shortsighted. You can't move up the ladder until everyone is comfortable with your replacement.

People trust I know what I'm doing. I have lots of credibility. I've had years of learning. I know and understand my business.

I like knowing about everything, and I think that really helps me in my business.

Cream always rises to the top...so do good leaders".

When you are on top of your game you don't have to talk about it, the world will do that for you.

It is not the crook in modern business that we fear but the honest man who does not know what he is doing.

I would prefer not to be in a car with someone who can't really drive that well!

Janet's a serious racer with some good race-car stuff. She can get the job done. I respect her as a racer.

If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.

Bluntly put, there's no chance that your doctor, dentist, or attorney is a high-school dropout. Your stockbroker, however, just might be.

A person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone on something one cannot do at all.

A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.

No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.

Effectiveness must be learned.

It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence

A young man who has the right strength for one organization may be a total misfit in another, which from the outside looks just the same.

A company that is not able to attract, motivate, and hold men of talent and competence will not survive. Increasingly, this will mean attracting, motivating, and holding the knowledge worker. Unlike the manual worker of yesterday, the knowledge worker does not, however, look just for a job. He looks for a career. He looks for an opportunity.

Management by drive, like management by 'bellows and meat ax,' is a sure sign of confusion. It is an admission of incompetence. It is a sign that management does not know how to plan. But, above all, it is a sign that the company does not know what to expect of its managers – that, not knowing how to direct them, it misdirects them.

Good intentions are no excuse for incompetence. And the manager who believes that social consciousness is a substitute for managing his business—or his hospital or his university—so that it produces the results for the sake of which it exists, is either a fool or a knave or both.

Energy, resources, and time should go instead to making a competent person into a star performer.