Quotes About Teamwork

Two heads are definitely better than one and by sourcing ideas from each other, you have a better chance of coming up with a strategy that will allow your business to overcome a setback or challenge.

You know, Scooter's going to do the first separation burn; I'm going to do the second separation burn.

Getting a chance to practice six months against my own teammates, who I consider the best soccer players in the world, there's no way I couldn't improve.

Baseball serves as a good model for democracy in action: Every player is equally important and each has a chance to be a hero.

If you have talent with teamwork, you've got a chance to be a championship team.

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.

Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals and shared values. Without such commitment there is no enterprise; there is only a mob. The enterprise must have simple, clear, and unifying objectives. The mission of the organization has to be clear enough and big enough to provide common vision. The goals that embody it have to be clear, public, and constantly reaffirmed. Management's first job is to think through, set, and exemplify those objectives, values, and goals. Management

The focus on contribution by itself supplies the four basic requirements of effective human relations: communications; teamwork; self-development; and development of others.

Two hundred people, of course, can do a great deal more work than one man. But it does not follow that they produce and contribute more.

Around here, I am only the guy who is responsible. If these men don't know what to do when they run into an enemy in the jungle, I'm too far away to tell them. My job is to make sure they know. What they do depends on the situation which only they can judge. The responsibility is always mine, but the decision lies with whoever is on the spot." In

The first secret of effectiveness is to understand the people you work with and depend on so that you can make use of their strengths, their ways of working, and their values. Working relationships are as much based on the people as they are on the work.

Strong decision makers often put somebody they trust into the number two spot as their adviser—and in that position the person is outstanding. But in the number one spot, the same person fails. He or she knows what the decision should be but cannot accept the responsibility of actually making it.

Follow these five decision steps when hiring someone: Understand the job, consider three to five people, study candidates performance records to find their strengths, talk to the candidates' colleagues about them, and once hired, explain the assignment to the new employee.

Each member of the enterprise contributes something different, but they must all contribute toward a common goal.

No member will make a decision with regard to a matter for which he does not have primary responsibility. Should such a matter be brought to him, he will refer it to the colleague whose primary responsibility it is. Indeed it is a wise precaution for members of the top-management team not even to have an opinion on matters that are not within their own areas of primary responsibility.

Teams fail—and the failure rate has been high—primarily because they do not impose on themselves the self-discipline and responsibility that are required precisely because of the high degree of freedom team organization gives. No task force can be "permissive" and function. This is the reason why the same young educated people who clamor for team work tend so often in reality to resist it. It makes tremendous demands on self-discipline.

What is demanded of the top man is indeed a great deal. He has to accept that he no longer can be the virtuoso performer. Instead he has to become the "conductor.

Indeed, everyone familiar with business today has seen situations in which a manager's attempt to avoid misdirection through changing his manners has converted a fairly satisfactory relationship into a nightmare of embarrassment and misunderstanding. The manager himself becomes so self-conscious as to lose all easy relationship with his men. And the men in turn react with: "So help us, the old man has read a book; we used to know what he wanted of us, now ,we have to guess.

Now the effectiveness of the individual depends increasingly on his or her ability to be effective in an organization, to be effective as an executive.

Resist the temptation to redesign seats on the bus to specific personalities (except for the exceptionally rare genius)

When people in organizations focus only on their position, they have little sense of responsibility for the results produced when all positions interact. Moreover, when results are disappointing, it can be very difficult to know why. All you can do is assume that "someone screwed up.

Organizations learn only through individuals who learn.

To empower people in an unaligned organization can be counterproductive.