Management Quotes

Don't differentiate without a difference.

~ Andrew S. Grove

To unleash your full potential recognise and acknowledge the greatness in others.

~ Moonish Sood

The ability to seize initiative is the most essential quality of any truly successful manager.

~ Sumantra Ghoshal

The truly effective managers we've observed are purposeful, trust in their own judgement, and adopt long-term, big-picture views to fulfill personal goals that tally with those of the organization as a whole. They break out of their perceived boxes, take control of their jobs, ...

~ Sumantra Ghoshal

Effective managers proactively control their tasks and the expectations of their major stakeholders, which allows them to meet strategic goals rather than fight fires.

~ Sumantra Ghoshal

The customer always comes first.

~ Rajen Jani

Quality products and personalized attention secures retail customers.

~ Rajen Jani

Going out of the way for a customer increases sales.

~ Rajen Jani

Customer complaints need to be addressed effectively.

~ Rajen Jani

Do not tend to hire only people who see what you see. Such a tendency may lead to a decline in operating profit, and even bankruptcy.

~ Eraldo Banovac

Good management is the lifeblood of the healthy corporate body. Getting rid of it to save cost is like losing weight by giving blood.

~ Tom Demarco

Any vigorous competition will entail at least two elements: offense and defense. Offense is the effort you put into scoring against your opponents, and defense is the effort you apply to stop them from scoring against you. Those who suggest that a little healthy competition can't hurt are thinking only of the offense part....The offense component of internal competition is problematic, but the defense component is always injurious. When peer managers play defense against each other (try to stop each other from scoring), they are engaging in anticooperation.

~ Tom Demarco

There is no such thing as healthy competition within a knowledge organization; all internal competition is destructive. The nature of our work is that it cannot be done by any single person in isolation. Knowledge work is by definition collaborative.

~ Tom Demarco

This fits in with what I saw in staff in astronomical facilities and was reporting to the management team: 10-14% Oxygen: Emotional upset, abnormal fatigue, disturbed respiration.

~ Steven Magee

A measured response trumps a triggered reaction every time. Breathe first.

~ Rev. Alexander

A farmer's work is more like that of a horse trainer than a mechanic, more like that of a healer than a computer repairperson. It is not really accurate to say that farmers grow food or raise animals. Farmers alter environmental conditions in such a way as to maximize a plant's or an animal's innate ability to do its own growing -- in the same way that the best horse trainers seek to draw out abilities already within their horses or in the way the best healers know when to stand back and let their patients' bodies do the work. There is mystery in farming.

~ Ben Hartman

If you do not manage things, be prepared to face the consequences.

~ Eraldo Banovac

The measures themselves are easily distorted to suit reporting purposes.

~ John Seddon

Good management has considerable impact on engagement levels of the employees and drives them towards excellent performances.

~ Abhishek Ratna

A wise manager knows that it is sometimes more important to listen than to talk.

~ Eraldo Banovac

Everything God has given to us is “for rent.” We can only manage what we have but the right of ownership belongs to God.

~ Sunday Adelaja

A prudent ruler is distinguished by his ability to manage.

~ Sunday Adelaja

In terms of organisational models and human relationship models, humankind has not evolved much over the last millennia.

~ Miguel Reynolds Brandao

One conclusion is becoming more and more evident: The primary focus of any manager should be to energize people, to make sure that they actually want to do all that stuff. And doing all that stuff requires motivation.

~ Jurgen Appelo

Authenticity requires us to slow down. Fast times require us to slow down. To be effective, we need to slow down our pace of thought and action and focus on managing our attention. To be authentic leaders we need to act from intention and choice rather than from habit and impulse.

~ Henna Inam

Interesting office management skills, kind of a 'violence is not the answer so I'm going to beat the shit out of you philosophy.

~ Craig Johnson

An effective leader is also an effective listener.

~ Artika Tyner

The leader is always learning new things and gaining new insights.

~ Artika Tyner

Digital organization is essentially a dynamic, people-centered ecosystem.

~ Pearl Zhu

Molly. I have an opportunity for you.”“An opportunity?” I repeated, without enthusiasm. Oh, good. Next comes the part where he tells me to be a “team player” and then dumps some tedious task on me.“It’s a chance for you to show that you can be a team player,” Bill Vogel said.

~ Frankie Bow

I couldn’t bring myself to call him either “Bill,” which would signal friendly familiarity, or “Doctor Vogel,” which would imply respect.

~ Frankie Bow

A few of the managers we spoke with for this book worried that the tour of duty framework might give employees permission to leave. But permission is not yours to give or to withhold, and believing you have that power is simply a self-deception that leads to a dishonest relationship with your employees. Employees don't need your permission to switch companies, and if you try to assert that right, they'll simply make their move behind your back.

~ Reid Hoffman

Great leaders catch and correct problems while they’re still small and able to be managed without a lot of hassle. If ignored too long, small problems will morph into much bigger issues that will require more time and effort and at a high cost, causing a great deal of disruption and stress.

~ Beth Ramsay

Delegation is not a binary thing. There are shades of grey between a dictatorship and an anarchy.

~ Jurgen Appelo

To foster a solution mindset, tell employees that you are not interested in who or what caused the problem. You are only interested in hearing how we plan to go beyond the problem.

~ Jag Randhawa

Managers who inspire extraordinary loyalty from their people tend to be highly charismatic, humorous, good-looking, and tall. So, by all means, strive to be those things. If you don't feel able to improve any of those factors very much, you might consider holding on to your people by designing a little slack into their lives.

~ Tom Demarco

Now If diversity were inherently good, inherently valuable, inherently wonderful, why would we have to have the highly-paid profession know as 'diversity consultant' to manage it? Things that are inherently good, to enjoy them, or to make the most of them, you don't need a consultant. You don't need a consultant to make the most out of good-tasting food, beautiful weather, the affection of your friends. Those are inherently good things. Diversity required consultants because diversity is hard. Diversity is difficult. It's because it's difficult for people to try to work, to act, and live together with people are are unlike themselves.

~ Jared Taylor

Leadership is the influence of a person(s) on another person(s) which guides their efforts in a specific direction, with more purpose, clarity, and unity than they would have held on their own.

~ Michael A. Wood Jr.

It can be dangerous to be right at the outset. Managers in some LCD-first companies interpreted the pivot point as an unconditional endorsement of everything they had been doing. As a result, they failed to recognize the need to rethink some details of their technology, such as the importance of color displays, and their complacency helped former plasma companies pull ahead.

~ J. P. Eggers

The best predictor of how much work a knowledge worker will accomplish is not the hours that he or she spends, but the days. The twelve-hour days don't accomplish any more than the eight-hour days. Overtime is a wash.

~ Tom Demarco