Quotes & Sayings About Ceos

I think to some degree one of the strengths of the high tech industry is that people are actually willing to tell you things. When I went to Novell, I didn't know how to be a CEO, so I went in and I called all sorts of CEOs I knew. I called in a favor. I wanted to come by and listen to them tell me what it's like to be a CEO. — Eric Schmidt

If there's a big problem and you've got the right people with you, usually the answer emerges and you do what's the obvious thing to do. I don't think of myself as some great manager or great leader. I've been very lucky to be in the positions that I've been in. I meet a lot of people and I've grown a lot of companies, and I meet a lot of CEOs at big enterprises. I'm always so surprised at how much they seem to know. It doesn't always seem to be correlated to how well they actually do. — Larry Brilliant

You don't characterize CEOs as dealmakers or in any one particular area. An important characteristic of a CEO is leader. That's probably the most important characteristic. — Michael Ramsey

CEOs hate variance. It's the enemy. Variance in customer service is bad. Variance in quality is bad. CEOs love processes that are standardized, routinized, predictable. Stamping out variance makes a complex job a bit less complex. — Marcus Buckingham

The church is not a campus but a community. Pastors are not CEOs; they are shepherds. — Dillon Burroughs

Sometimes it takes a lowly, title-less man to humble the world. Kings, rulers, CEOs, judges, doctors, pastors, they are already expected to be greater and wiser. — Criss Jami

It's pretty rare to have CEOs or high level executives at big companies who are social activists. They tend not to be drawn to those areas of life. — Jerry Greenfield

I was also encountering CEOs who felt that their grip on social media was under control because they had an intern managing a Twitter feed. And I disagreed. — Jennifer Janson

I think most CEOs think their stock is undervalued, probably. — Richard Kinder

CEOs and employers at for-profit corporations should not be able to prevent women from access to health care simply because of their own personal religious objections. — Dan Maffei

The best CEOs I know are teachers, and at the core of what they teach is strategy. — Michael Porter

The shining star in the world is Shanghai. That's what CEOs from big companies say - 'if I want mathematical analytical work done, it's done in China.' — Hans Rosling

Am I as experienced, or mature, or smart as others CEOs? No probably not, but there's something, I think, very useful about having a founder as the CEO. — Andrew Mason

I don't feel I'm at liberty to speak about the actions of any one CEO. That's not fair; given CEOs have duties to their shareholders. — Kenneth C. Griffin

If we bring our injury rates down, it won't be because of cheerleading or the nonsense you sometimes hear from other CEOs. — Charles Duhigg

Working with people from all walks of life, from full-time moms to CEOs at large companies, I've distilled many universal truths about success. There's a secret I've learned that works quite well at helping you to achieve what you want: Decide what you want. — Jack Canfield

You as the leader should have a Function Accountability Chart (FAC) to help CEOs and managers to see clearly the person who is accountable for each role and key positions. It should also show the metrics or key performance indicators assigned for each of the main functions of the business. Each item on the Profit & Loss, and Balance Sheet should be assigned to specific people who are accountable for these roles. Each team should know their responsibilities, accountabilities and who they are answerable — Emily Goldstein

thousand CEOs, business owners, and highly successful entrepreneurs about their businesses and how they lead companies through good times and bad. One of the most important questions I ask them is "What's the biggest worry keeping you awake at night? — Jason Jennings

CEOs who can hire properly, that's the most important part of the job. The CEO's job is really to hire the right team and execute the vision second. — Bill Maris

Money often determines not only who gets elected, but what gets done. Which voices do lawmakers listen to, the banks or home owners, coal companies, or asthma sufferers, the CEOs or the unemployed? — Madeleine M. Kunin

At a small dinner with other business executives, the guest of honor spoke the entire time without taking a breath. This meant that the only way to ask a question or make an observation was to interrupt. Three or four men jumped in, and the guest politely answered their questions before resuming his lecture. At one point, I tried to add something to the conversation and he barked, "Let me finish! You people are not good at listening!" Eventually, a few more men interjected and he allowed it. Then the only other female executive at the dinner decided to speak up
and he did it again! He chastised her for interrupting. After the meal, one of the male CEOs pulled me aside to say that he had noticed that only the women had been silenced. He told me he empathized, because as a Hispanic, he has been treated like this many times. — Sheryl Sandberg

News flash, lady. There are no queens anymore," Shane said. He loaded shells in a shotgun and snapped it shut, then searched for a place to strap it on that didn't interfere with the flamethrower. "No queens, no kings, no emperors. Not in America. Only CEOs. Same thing, but not so many crowns. — Rachel Caine

CEOs hired from the outside get paid more than those hired from the inside and that they don't perform as well. I suspect that the reason for this is the same heightened expectations that come with lack of knowledge - when someone is relatively unknown we tend to fill in the gaps in overoptimistic ways, — Dan Ariely

Today we have a health insurance industry where the first and foremost goal is to maximize profits for shareholders and CEOs, not to cover patients who have fallen ill or to compensate doctors and hospitals for their services. It is an industry that is increasingly concentrated and where Americans are paying more to receive less. — Dianne Feinstein

I see a role for specialized knowledge, but I think that it's important for there to be an arena where it is shared, where it is communicated. It's not that somebody shouldn't have specialized knowledge. The ability to dig a trench and lay a cable is a kind of specialized knowledge. Farmers have specialized knowledge, too. The question is: what sort of knowledge is privileged in our societies? I don't think that a CEO is more valuable to society and ought to be paid ten million dollars a year, while farmers and laborers starve.
The range of what is valued has become so extreme that one lot of people have captured it and left three-quarters of the world to live in unthinkable poverty, because their work is not valued. What would happen if the sweepers of the city went on strike or the sewage system didn't work? A CEO wouldn't be able to deal with his own shit. — Arundhati Roy

Hindsight is especially unkind to decision makers who act as agents for others - physicians, financial advisers, third-base coaches, CEOs, social workers, diplomats, politicians. We are prone to blame decision makers for good decisions that worked out badly and to give them too little credit for successful moves that appear obvious only after the fact. There is a clear outcome bias. When — Daniel Kahneman

'Commercial' is not the word that has to be said only by CEOs. It has to be something that is maybe the essence of design, because design has some sort of art in it and creation, but it's also some object that you have to use. There is also this pragmatic end to it. — Alber Elbaz

The deck is still stacked in favor of those already at the top. And there's something wrong with that. There's something wrong when CEOs make 300 times more than the typical worker. — Hillary Clinton

ObamaCare is working. I talk to a lot of CEOs of hospitals. It is working. — Magic Johnson

Whenever teenage girls and corporate CEOs covet the same new technology, something extraordinary is happening. — Michael J. Saylor

A man cannot possess anything that is better than a good wife, or anything that is worse than a bad one. — Simonides Of Ceos

If we're going to actually come up with robots that will do our laundry or tidy up the kitchen, we're going to have to make sure that whatever replaces capitalism is based on a far more egalitarian distribution of wealth and power - one that no longer contains either the super-rich or desperately poor people willing to do their housework. Only then will technology begin to be marshaled toward human needs. And this is the best reason to break free of the dead hand of the hedge fund managers and the CEOs - to free our fantasies from the screens in which such men have imprisoned them, to let our imaginations once again become a material force in human history. — David Graeber

In my new business, this is one of the things we work actively with CEOs to see: how one idea from the top can spiral into 100 projects for the team and overwhelm them in ways the CEOs can't even imagine. But — Jonathan Raymond

At the heart of quantum mechanics is a rule that sometimes governs politicians or CEOs - as long as no one is watching, anything goes. — Lawrence M. Krauss

It's interesting that there's so many different sides of this: Women get frustrated that we don't get paid enough; and then the Republicans or the CEOs that are men say, "Well, it's because women take off time for maternity leave." — Jennifer Lawrence

I think from a moral issue, CEOs should not be making - whether it's 270 or 300 times more than their workers are making. — Hillary Clinton

People sometimes say that we will know feminism has done its job when half the CEOs are women. That's not feminism; to quote Catharine MacKinnon, it's liberalism applied to women. Feminism will have won not when a few women get an equal piece of the oppression pie, served up in our sisters' sweat, but when all dominating hierarchies - including economic ones - are dismantled. — Lierre Keith

Everything ultimately becomes the CEO's problem, no matter where it starts. I can see why some CEOs crack under the pressure. — Yishan Wong

Power relations between men and women must change profoundly, men must be partners in the pursuit of gender equality, in their decision-making roles, as heads of state, CEOs, religious and cultural leaders, and as partners and parents. — Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

The world is full of CEOs that think that just because they write a memo or they write a letter inside an annual report or they give a little video speech that gets sent around the company, they think that's what's really going to affect employees. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

The Fed has got to become a more democratic institution that is responsive to the needs of the middle class, not just Wall Street CEOs. — Bernie Sanders

We did not flinch but gave our lives to save Greece when her fate hung on a razor's edge. — Simonides Of Ceos

IT - especially with its role so greatly enlarged by the arrival of the Internet - has changed not only how we work and conduct business, but also how we (and our customers) play, how we consume, and how we educate our next generations. And yet the IT phenomenon, so evident in the expenditures of every organization, has not yet achieved management attention equal to other areas, such as finance, marketing, operations, and human resources. In far too many companies, IT remains a black box that business managers rarely try to see inside. When business managers do engage in IT discussions, often they bring little expertise to bear. Few feel apologetic about their IT inadequacies. But the time is coming when "I'm not an IT person" will be no more adequate as a manager's defense in the aftermath of a major corporate problem than Jeff Skilling's now notorious "I'm not an accountant" - that CEOs effort to explain his failure to foresee or prevent Enron's spectacular implosion. — Robert D. Austin

In life, everybody faces choices between doing what's popular, easy, and wrong vs. doing what's lonely, difficult, and right. These decisions intensify when you run a company, because the consequences get magnified 1,000 fold. As in life, the excuses for CEOs making the wrong choice are always plentiful. — Ben Horowitz

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. — William Clay Ford Jr.

This book [ "Win"] is based on the interviews with three dozen Fortune 400 - or Forbes 400, the richest people, and a couple dozen of the top CEOs.I wanted to know what language they use to be successful, and I wanted to know the attributes that could then be applied to the average individual. — Frank Luntz

CEOs believe that the most important skill needed to navigate today's complex business world is creativity. — Emma Seppala

A CEO is known by the company he reaps. — Brian Spellman

Many CEOs and leaders think that silence is indeed golden, that consensus is bliss. It is - sometimes. But more often what it signifies is that there are no respected processes for surfacing concerns and dissent. — Margaret Heffernan

Look around. Oil companies guzzle down the billions in profits. Billionaires pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries, and Wall Street CEOs, the same ones the direct our economy and destroyed millions of jobs still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them. Does anyone here have a problem with that? — Elizabeth Warren

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me. I mean, there are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, 'That person I see is a savage monster'; instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do. If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees. But then you take a look at what the corporation does, the effect of its legal structure, the vast inequalities in pay and conditions, and you see the reality is something far different. — Noam Chomsky

Ninety-seven percent of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 are white men, and what they do radiates all the way down into poor areas and cities around our country. Like predatory lending and misallocation of municipal services. These guys get municipal service, poor areas don't. So they run the economy into the ground, and who suffers the most? The poor pay more and they die earlier. — Ralph Nader

We can either save the planet from catastrophic warming, or protect fossil fuel CEOs. Not both. Do the math(s) — Bill McKibben

Once America's CEOs get back to the business of growing their companies rather than growing their share prices, shareholder value will take care of itself, and all Americans will share in the higher wages and other benefits of a renewed era of economic growth. — Nick Hanauer

Most female CEOs have been more understanding than their male counterparts, of the stress that new mothers experience to 'do it all,' which often means, 'all by themselves.' Why? They've been there. They understand the policies needed to keep women in the workforce. — Madeleine M. Kunin

The best CEOs in our research display tremendous ambition for their company combined with the stoic will to do whatever it takes, no matter how brutal (within the bounds of the company's core values), to make the company great. Yet at the same time they display a remarkable humility about themselves, ascribing much of their own success to luck, discipline and preparation rather than personal genius. — James C. Collins

Maybe back in the day you didn't need to be the greatest looking to be on TV and you didn't need to speak the best, but in this day and age, I think you need to be the package. You need to look the part for your sponsors, you need to be able to speak the part for the media and to big CEOs. — Danica Patrick

Of earth's goods, the best is a good wife; a bad, the bitterest curse of human life. — Simonides Of Ceos

Without question, CEOs, executives and employees in companies in the United States and around the world have rallied to face the challenge of a social media marketplace. — Simon Mainwaring

Last year, the journalist Malcolm Gladwell conducted a survey of chief executive officers of Fortune 500 companies for his book Blink. He discovered that while in the US population 14.5 per cent of all men are 6ft (1.83m) or taller, among CEOs of Fortune 500 companies the proportion is 58 per cent. And while 3.9 per cent of American adults are 6ft 2in or taller, almost a third of the CEOs were that tall. — Daniel Finkelstein

Most execs, particularly first-time CEOs who get good at one thing, can only dance what they know how to dance. — Brad Stone

As a CEO, you get sucked into dealing with all the tasks of being a CEO. There's a big meeting, a big discussion, and you get into all the big issues, which is your job. But what CEOs often lose sight of is that it's all about the people who work for you. For every 1,000 decisions, 999 were being made when I was not in the room. — Douglas Conant

Startup CEOs should not play the odds. When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it. It matters not whether your chances are nine in ten or one in a thousand; your task is the same. — Ben Horowitz

CEOs are hired for their intellect and business expertise - and fired for a lack of emotional intelligence. — Daniel Goleman

You should have seen the costumes for the last few prom themes: Pimps and their srteet ho's; CEOs and their office ho's; GI Joes and their combat ho's; Gardeners and their garden hose;Firemen and their fire hose ... If you ask me, a 'masquerade' theme isn't flattering for anyones features, nor does it define the apppropriate gender roles very clearly. — The Harvard Lampoon

I am far more a fan of aggressive entrepreneurs than I am of major CEOs. You look at major CEOs, and they are almost to a person quite timid. They don't act to defend the free market principles that are vital to growth. — Ted Cruz

The argument that the chemical and drug companies often make, to counter the growing movement of natural or alternative medicine is similar to my warning about kissing cobras. They will say things like, "Not all things natural are good for you" and "Even walking to the bathroom in the morning carries risks!" They then trot out extreme, obvious examples like drinking hemlock, or kissing cobras, people falling down stairs in their house, and the like. Okay Mr. Chemicalman, some natural things can kill you, like CEOs of chemical companies who poison almost everything they touch with their products? That's assuming of course that CEOs are natural. — Steve Bivans

They want more production and they want it cheaper. But no matter what happens, the creative idea will be perpetuated by somebody who comes up with a vision. I don't care if there are three ceos - it takes one guy with an idea. — Joe Grant

We are beginning to see a fundamental outrage at the whole interconnected mess of a system: at energy companies who record massive profits, yet allow pensioners to struggle to stay warm in winter; at CEOs who can earn up to a 1,000 times the salary of their average worker; and soon, any day now, at those politicians who allowed this to happen. — Noreena Hertz

To make good decisions, CEOs need the courage to seek out disagreement. Alfred Sloan, the longtime CEO and chairman of General Motors, once interrupted a committee meeting with a question: "Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here?" All the committee members nodded. "Then," Sloan said, "I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what this decision is about. — Chip Heath

CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature. — James Hansen

There's something to be said for CEOs' entering politics: In theory, they have management expertise and financial savvy. Then again, it didn't work so well with Dick Cheney. — Nicholas Kristof

Daniel Goleman has proven that two-thirds of the success in business is based upon our Emotional Intelligence as opposed to our IQ or our level of experience. As we look for the next crop of future CEOs, maybe it's time for America's corporations to start interviewing grads from the psychology master's programs rather than the M.B.A. programs. — Chip Conley

Successful succession is more than selecting someone with an appropriate skill set - it's about finding someone who is in lockstep with the original cause around which the company was founded. Great second or third CEOs don't take the helm to implement their own vision of the future; they pick up the original banner and lead the company into the next generation. That's why we call it succession, not replacement. There is a continuity of vision. — Simon Sinek

Too many people hold the idea that psychopaths are essentially killers or convicts. The general public hasn't been educated to see beyond the social stereotypes to understand that psychopaths can be entrepreneurs, politicians, CEOs and other successful individuals who may never see the inside of a prison. — Robert D. Hare

It seems some CEOs who pay extremely large acquisition premiums ... come to believe their own press. — Chip Heath

CEOs resign when the internal dynamics of the company and the external dynamics of the company actually come together to say it is appropriate. When the internal dynamics ask you whether you have a replacement. I think the transition from CEOships have also become cartoonish. — Ursula Burns

... CEOs are the ghost writers of the political discourse ... — Paulo Da Costa

The gods do not fight against necessity. — Simonides Of Ceos

We got CEOs making 200 times the worker's pay, but they'll fight like hell against raising the minimum wage. — Iris Dement

Companies who have been able to groom CEOs internally have done significantly better. We came to the conclusion that the quality of several of the reviewed internal candidates was so high that it did not merit to go outside. — Jorma Ollila

Twenty years ago, you might have been pessimistic and said there's no hope. But these days, some of our very biggest companies are acting remarkably cleanly. And in some cases, although not all cases, the CEOs are the driving forces behind that. — Jared Diamond

From this irritating reality comes The First Law of Corporate Survival for ambitious CEOs who pile on leverage and run large and unfathomable derivatives books: Modest incompetence simply won't do; it's mindboggling screw-ups that are required. — Warren Buffett

Countries with high levels of atheism are also the most charitable both in terms of the percentage of their wealth they devote to social welfare programs and the percentage they give in aid to the developing world. The dubious link between Christian literalism and Christian values is belied by other indices of social equality. Consider the ratio of salaries paid to top-tier CEOs and those paid to the same firms' average employees: in Britain it is 24:1; in France, 15:1; in Sweden, 13:1; in the United States, where 80 percent of the population expects to be called before God on Judgment Day, it is 475:1. Many a camel, it would seem, expects to pass easily through the eye of a needle. — Sam Harris

It was another example of a phenomenon I call "the talking dog syndrome." Some people are still amazed that any woman (this includes Governors' wives, corporate CEOs, sports stars and rock singers) can hold her own under pressure and be articulate and knowledgeable. The dog can talk! — Hillary Rodham Clinton

Willpower is that thing CEOs and professional athletes tell us they used to make it to the top. — Joyce Meyer

Errors in decision-making lead young people to under-save for retirement, doctors to miss tumours, CEOs to make catastrophic investments, governments to engage in needless wars, and parents to irreversibly traumatize their children. — Noreena Hertz

CEOs are worried they're going to get fired any minute. They're worried about their portfolios. — Dan Jenkins

CEOs make hard decisions; sometimes, the least worst is the right one. — Mark McKinnon

We find that firms with award-winning CEOs subsequently underperform, in terms both of stock and of operating performance. At the same time, CEO compensation increases, CEOs spend more time on activities outside the company such as writing books and sitting on outside boards, and they are more likely to engage in earnings management. — Daniel Kahneman

I advise other companies' CEOs, don't fall into the trap where you go, 'Where's the growth? Where's the growth?' Where's the growth?' They feel a tremendous pressure to grow. Well, sometimes you can't grow. Sometimes you don't want to grow. In certain businesses, growth means you either take on bad clients, excess risk, or too much leverage. — Jamie Dimon

In a bravura demonstration of stonewalling, righteousness, and hurt sincerity, Steve Jobs successfully took to the stage the other day to deny the problem, dismiss the criticism, and spread the blame among other smartphone makers.". "This is a level of modern marketing, corporate spin, and crisis management about which you can only ask with stupefied incredulity and awe: How do they get away with it? Or, more accurately, how does he get away with it?" Wolff attributed it to Jobs's mesmerizing effect as "the last charismatic individual." Other CEOs would be offering abject apologies and swallowing massive recalls, but Jobs didn't have to. "The grim, skeletal appearance, the absolutism, the ecclesiastical bearing, the sense of his relationship with the sacred, really works, and, in this instance, allows him the privilege of magisterially deciding what is meaningful and what is trivial. — Walter Isaacson

It is hard to be truly excellent, four-square in hand and foot and mind, formed without blemish. — Simonides Of Ceos

The rich and large corporations get richer, the CEOs earn huge compensation packages, and when things get bad, don't worry; Uncle Sam and the American taxpayers are here to bail you out. But when you are in trouble, well, we just can't afford to help you, if you are in the working class or middle class of this country. — Bernie Sanders

If you look at the CEOs of some the most successful companies in the world like IKEA, they never fly first class. They always go economy. — Gene Simmons

The CEOs of every major Wall Street firm were also on the wrong end of the gamble. All of them, without exception, either ran their public corporations into bankruptcy or were saved from bankruptcy by the United States government. They all got rich, too. — Michael Lewis

Another thing I've observed is how critical the role of the CEO is when a technology truly is disruptive. In looking back on companies that have successfully launched independent disruptive business units, the CEO always had a foot in both camps. Never have they succeeded when they spin something off in order to get it off the CEO's agenda. The CEOs that did this had extraordinary personal self-confidence, and almost always they were the founders of the companies. — Clayton Christensen

If men's wages too have been depressed, if there literally aren't enough jobs, or enough money to pay for them (what with the dire need to pay CEOs so many more times more than anyone else, not to mention the precious shareholders), then the category 'woman' remains a useful one for the 'first fired, last hired' policy that has characterized the employment market for much of the last hundred years or so. — Nina Power

Public hangings are teaching moments. Every company has to do it. A teaching moment is worth a thousand CEO speeches. CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It's just cultural. People just don't want to do it. — Jack Welch

The best board members aren't elected by default. CEOs that set themselves up with their choice of board member - which means getting more than one term sheet and doing extensive reference checking - are better off. — Scott Weiss