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Quotes and Soundbites
Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
- John F Kennedy
When you look at the gaps in productivity between Britain and the rest of the world, too often it is poor management of production processes and poor management of people that accounts for the gap.
- Patricia Hewitt, Trade and Industry Sec, FT, October 2002
Leadership is the wise use of power. Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it.
- Warren Bennis
The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.
- Theodore Roosevelt
We trained hard but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form into teams we would be re-organised. I was keen to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by re-organising, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.
- Gaius Petronius (AD 66)
Leaders create an environment in which everyone has the opportunity to do work which matches his potential capability and for which an equitable differential reward is paid.
- Elliott Jacques
Leadership is not magnetic personality—that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not ‘making friends and influencing people’ - that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.
- Peter F Drucker
The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.
- Dr Theodore Rubin
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
- Carl Jung
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
- George S. Patton, American military leader
Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful see it for what it really is - the strong horse that pulls the whole cart.
- Winston Churchill
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln
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.
- Charles M. Schwab
We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.
- Galileo Galilei
Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.
- Robert Frost
The harder I work, the luckier I get
- Sam Goldwyn
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
- Albert Einstein
We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees.
- a multinational telecoms firm
We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people to learn.
- Peter F. Drucker
A leader leads by example, whether he intends to or not.
- Anon
The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important - and then get out of their way while they do it.
- Jack Welch
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
- Charles Darwin
Change does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change.
- Henry Steele Commager (American historian)
The things we fear most in organisations - fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances - are the primary sources of creativity.
- Margaret J Wheatley (organisational consultant)
...Teaching 23-year-olds in an MBA programme strikes me as largely a waste of time. They lack the background of experience. You can teach them skills - accounting and what have you - but you can’t teach them management.
...Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank.
...The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit…. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.
- Peter Drucker
I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?
- Benjamin Disraeli
Self-security will be a hallmark of the leaders and exceptional organizations of the future. Self-security in an individual or a system brings a high ratio of coherence. Leaders or organizations with self-security can push power and authority downstream and develop centers of innovation and excellence at all levels of the organization.
- Doc Childre and Bruce Cryer, From Chaos to Coherence
A leader is a dealer in hope.
- Napoleon Bonaparte
The question, ‘Who ought to be boss?’ is like asking, ‘Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?' Obviously, the man who can sing tenor.
- Henry Ford
Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men - the other 999 follow women.
- Groucho Marx
Anyone can be called a manager, but that doesn't mean he is a manager. You have to be in charge of people to be a manager.
- Sir Alan Sugar (The Guardian, May 11 2005)
I believe the real difference between success and failure in a corporation can be very often traced to the question of how well the organization brings out the great energies and talents of its people.
- Thomas J. Watson, Jr. (A Business and its Beliefs (1963))
An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.
- Ken Blanchard
Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got.
- Peter F. Drucker
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.
- Peter Drucker
Focus on a few key objectives ... I only have three things to do. I have to choose the right people, allocate the right number of dollars, and transmit ideas from one division to another with the speed of light. So I'm really in the business of being the gatekeeper and the transmitter of ideas.
- Jack Welch
Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others may receive your orders without being humiliated.
- Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary-General of the United Nations 1953-1961
Leaders who make it a practice to draw out the thoughts and ideas of their subordinates and who are receptive even to bad news will be properly informed. Communicate downward to subordinates with at least the same care and attention as you communicate upward to superiors.
- LB Belker, author of The First-Time Manager
If you want loyalty and commitment from your employees, you must show them yours first.
- The Guardian, Saturday February 4, 2006
*Researchers asked employees how they felt about their jobs. They also surveyed customer attitudes and looked at how profitable they were to the company. The results were clear. The companies with the happiest and most engaged employees had the most satisfied, highest-spending customers.
...This applies at work, too. According to a study by the Conference Board, the business research organisation, only half of Americans are satisfied with their jobs. A quarter said they were simply “showing up to collect a paycheck”. Those earning more than $50,000 a year were only slightly happier than those earning less than $15,000.*
- Michael Skapinker: How to engage your employees May 31 2005
Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.
- Donald Trump
It is widely thought that wages are the key, if not the sole, reason we work. But... there's no real evidence that cash either motivates or makes us happy.
- The Guardian, Saturday February 4, 2006
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
Winston Churchill
If you can't describe your strategy in twenty minutes, simply and in plain language, you haven't got a plan. 'But,' people may say, 'I've got a complex strategy. It can't be reduced to a page.' That's nonsense. That's not a complex strategy. It's a complex thought about the strategy.
Larry Bossidy, Chairman, Honeywell International, in 'Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done'
If you know what businesses you're in, strategic planning is a piece of cake.
Alan Michaels (Strategic planning consultant)
Knowing what businesses you're in is not always a piece of cake.
Alan Michaels
Enron paid good wages and recruited from America's top universities, but worked its staff hard…. Employees were usually young, inexperienced and lacking in job options, since they lived in Houston, where Enron had few rivals. The company's cut-throat working culture destroyed morale and internal cohesion but also made workers afraid to question their superiors, let alone blow the whistle on sharp practices. This, in the end, would be Enron's undoing.
The Observer, July 28, 2002