Quotes about Management

Too often, companies focus on systems and structures that facilitate cultural change at the mid-management level, overlooking problems closer to the top.

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works

We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.

As much as Tim blamed himself during the next morning's postmortem, I recognized it as a systems failure—and a failure on my part to put those who worked under me in a position to succeed.

In other words, if you wanted good government, then expertise mattered. You needed public institutions stocked with people whose job it was to pay attention to important stuff so the rest of us citizens didn't have to.

Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out

The clock represents our commitments, appointments, schedules, goals, activities—what we do with, and how we manage our time.

Efficient management without effective leadership is, as one individual has phrased it, "like straightening deck chairs on the Titanic." No

But is it possible that under that apparently disloyal behavior, these employees question whether I really act in their best interest? Do they feel like I'm treating them as mechanical objects? Is there some truth to that?

While the word proactivity is now fairly common in management literature, it is a word you won't find in most dictionaries. It means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen.

Management is a bottom line focus: How can I best accomplish certain things? Leadership deals with the top line: What are the things I want to accomplish? In the words of both Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis, "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall. You

We're into managing with efficiency, setting and achieving goals before we have even clarified our values.