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It is most important that top management be quality-minded. In the absence of sincere manifestation of interest at the top, little will happen below.
Sep 10, 2025
. . . top management should spend 40 to 50 percent of its time educating and motivating its people . . .
The worker is not the problem. The problem is at the top! Management!
Make your top managers rich and they will make you rich.
If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.
Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.
What's absolutely unforgivable is the financial benefit top management people get for laying off people. There's no excuse for it. No justification. No explanation. This is morally and socially unforgivable, and we'll pay a very nasty price.
When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.
Unlike top management at Enron, exemplary leaders reward dissent. They encourage it. They understand that, whatever momentary discomfort they experience as a result of being told they might be wrong, it is more than offset by the fact that the information will help them make better decisions.
Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet
Top management as a function and as a structure was first developed by Georg von Siemens (1839-1901) in Germany between 1870 and 1880, when he designed and built the Deutsche Bank and made it, within a very few years, into continental Europe's leading and most dynamic financial institution.
Managing innovation will increasingly become a challenge to management, and especially to top management, and a touchstone of its competence.
It is not enough that top management commit themselves for life to quality and productivity. They must know what it is that they are committed to - that is, what they must do. These obligations cannot be delegated. Support is not enough; action is required.
One of the things I've had the advantage of, growing up and being close to the top management of this company and other companies for most of my life, is seeing how CEOs start to believe in their own infallibility. And that really scares me.
If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don't have to manage them.
Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.
One cannot expect to coast along and rise automatically to the top, no matter what friends you may have in the company. There may have been a time when, in large corporations, a person could rise simply because he had a stock interest or because he had friends in top management. That's not true today. Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you're not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.
In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way.
Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.
In life and business, there are two cardinal sins, the first is to act precipitously without thought, and the second is to not act at all. Unfortunately the board of directors and top management of Times Warner already committed the first sin by merging with AOL, and we believe they are currently in the process of committing the second; now is not a time to move slowly and suffer the paralysis of inaction.
Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.
The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
The only beef Enron employees have with top management is that management did not inform employees of the collapse in time to allow them to get in on the swindle. If Enron executives had shouted, "Head for the hills!" the employees might have had time to sucker other Americans into buying wildly over-inflated Enron stock. Just because your boss is a criminal doesn't make you a hero.
Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
The kind of people I look for to fill top management spots are the eager beavers, the mavericks. These are the guys who try to do more than they're expected to do - they always reach.
The biggest barriers to strategic renewal are almost always top management's unexamined beliefs.
Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere as long as the policy you've decided upon is being carried out.
Power is like being a lady... if you have to tell people you are, you aren't.
A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.
I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.
To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace.
In reality, that was going to be very messy from an antitrust standpoint and meet a lot of resistance from the top management at Hasbro. That was a whole different story.
The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.
The resource allocation task of top management has received too much attention when compared to the task of resource leverage.
You're at your best when you don't know what you're doing.
Pressure is something you feel when you do not know what you are doing.
When you don't know what you're doing, fake it.
Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.
It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
Don't wait. The time will never be just right.
If you believe in what you're doing, you'll be successful.
Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.
Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.
Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
If you always do what you did, you'll always get what you got.