Quotes About Execution

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

Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results.

Like so many brilliant people, he believes that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work.

Converting a decision into action requires answering several distinct questions: Who has to know of this decision? What action has to be taken? Who is to take it? And what does the action have to be so that the people who have to do it can do it? The first and the last of these are too often overlooked—with dire results.

The knowledge that we consider knowledge proves itself in action. What we now mean by knowledge is information in action, information focused on results.

Many brilliant people believe that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work.

Managers are action-focused; they are not philosophers and should not be.

bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work.

The greatest wisdom not applied to action and behaviour is meaningless data

1. The first is simply not to try to be clever. Innovations have to be handled by ordinary human beings, if they are to attain any size and importance at all, by morons or near-morons. Incompetence, after all, is the only thing in abundant and never-failing supply. Anything too clever, whether in design or execution, is almost bound to fail.

Planning and doing are separate parts of the same job; they are not separate jobs. There is no work that can be performed effectively unless it contains elements of both. One

Effectiveness as an executive demands doing certain—and fairly simple—things.

Effective executives, finally, make effective decisions

Without an action plan, the executive becomes a prisoner of events.

Gerenciar é fazer as coisas do jeito certo; liderar é fazer as coisas certas.

A decision has not been made until people know: • the name of the person accountable for carrying it out; • the deadline; • the names of the people who will be affected by the decision and therefore have to know about, understand, and approve it—or at least not be strongly opposed to it; and • the names of the people who have to be informed of the decision, even if they are not directly affected by it.

These apparently low-level decisions are extremely important in a knowledge-based organization.

But it is meaningless to speak of short-range and long-range plans. There are plans that lead to action today—and they are true plans, true strategic decisions. And there are plans that talk about action tomorrow—they are dreams, if not pretexts for nonthinking, nonplanning, nondoing. The

The aim of strategic planning is action now.

The effective executive therefore knows that he has to consolidate his discretionary time. He knows that he needs large chunks of time and that small driblets are no time at all. Even one quarter of the working day, if consolidated in large time units, is usually enough to get the important things done. But even three quarters of the working day are useless if they are only available as fifteen minutes here or half an hour there.

Knowledge is the capacity for effective action.

Refusing! And she is after me with a broom, trying to sweep my rotten carcass into the open. Why, shades of Gregor Samsa! Hello Alex, goodbye Franz! You better tell me you're sorry, you, or else! And I don't mean maybe either! I am five, maybe six, and she is or-elsing me and not-meaning-maybe as though the firing squad is already outside, lining the street with newspaper preparatory to my execution.

Never to let your enemy read your eyes. Do not think of an attack—just do it!

It is important to note that while goods are consumed, services are experienced. The professional service provider is (or should be) as much in the business of managing the client's experience with respect to professional services as in the business of executing technical tasks. Much