Great Management Quotes & Sayings

The demagogue is usually sly, a detractor of others, a professor of humility and disinterestedness, a great stickler for equality as respects all above him, a man who acts in corners, and avoids open and manly expositions of his course, calls blackguards gentlemen, and gentlemen folks, appeals to passions and prejudices rather than to reason, and is in all respects, a man of intrigue and deception, of sly cunning and management. — James F. Cooper

The great challenge to management today is to make productive the tremendous new resource, the knowledge worker. This, rather than the productivity of the manual worker, is the key to economic growth and economic performance in today's society. — Peter Drucker

While he digs he is free to let his mind wander, and he dreams his kingdom of pear trees in the orchard across to his left, growing skywards, gnarling, putting forth fat green soft fruits with ease each year. The trees that already grow in the orchards he loves almost as women in his life; the Catherine pear, the Chesil or pear Nouglas, the great Kentish pear, the Ruddick, the Red Garnet, the Norwich, the Windsor, the little green pear ripe at Kingsdon Feast; all thriving where they were planted in his father's ground at Lytes Cary before the management of the estate became his own responsibility as the eldest son. So much has happened these last six years since his father handed over and left for his house in Sherborne: there have been births and deaths - Anys herself was taken from him only last year. But the pear trees live on, reliably flowering and yielding variable quantities as an annual crop that defines the estate, and he has plans to add more. — Jane Borodale

Once you expect great things from yourself, anything is possible. — Mark W. Boyer

China could easily emerge as the great winner if the Chinese leaders handle the situation well. On the other hand, they could also turn out to be the biggest losers if they handle it poorly. If the management turns out be wrong, this could lead to a political crisis in China. — George Soros

I call these lessons 'learned on the fly' because the knowledge gained from the experiences connected with them were very much akin to the spirit of the centerfielder in baseball running backward at full speed, looking towards the heavens, trying to not lose sight of the ball or fail to notice the sensation of gravel from the warning track under his cleats as he knowingly approaches the blindside impact of an outfield wall. His focused intention guides him into trying to make the catch that will save the game for his team, his city and the harmony of the moment, despite the foreboding threat of a pending collision. Decisions in these situations are made in an instant. One weighs the purpose of the game, the success of the catch and one's own safety of survival in a fleeting moment, and in all hopes one lives to tell about it in the glow of great success. — Michael Delaware

The Ministry places great importance and focus on the waste management issue as one of the most pressing priorities in the UAE, given its economic, social, environmental and medical effects. The Ministry addresses this issue through two approaches, the first in limiting the generation of waste form the source, by organizing awareness programs that target families and individuals, or by regulations and developing a national regulatory framework for waste management. The second revolves around the reuse and recycling of waste as a national commitment and one of the major objectives of the national agenda of the UAE Vision 2021. We all hope that we can strengthen the cooperation between the public and private sector in that domain, and encourage private companies to play a more vital role in waste management in a way that exceeds corporate social responsibility initiatives. — Anonymous

Lack of power is a great excuse for failure, but sufficient power is never a necessary condition of leadership. There is never sufficient power. In fact, it is success in the absence of sufficient power that defines leadership. — Tom DeMarco

The great myth is the manager as orchestra conductor. It's this idea of standing on a pedestal and you wave your baton and accounting comes in, and you wave it somewhere else and marketing chimes in with accounting, and they all sound very glorious. But management is more like orchestra conducting during rehearsals, when everything is going wrong. — Henry Mintzberg

I don't think I am very easy to work for because everything has to be just right or we don't put it out. But at the same time, all the people that work for me have a "no asshole" rule, if you're a jerk you're fired, so it's a great team and a lot of skillful people at the top of the game, anybody from management to the agents to the publicists to the day-to-day website stuff and it's just a great team. — Jeff Dunham

But such people (Moderate Conservatives) aren't liberal. What they are is corporate. Their habits and opinions owe far more to the standards of courtesy and taste that prevail within the white-collar world than they do to Franklin Roosevelt and the United Mine Workers. We live in a time, after all, when hard-nosed bosses compose awestruck disquisitions on the nature of 'change,' punk rockers dispense leadership secrets, shallow profundities about authenticity sell luxury cars, tech billionaires build rock'n'roll musuems, management theorists ponder the nature of coolness, and a former lyricist fro the Grateful Dead hail the dawn of New Economy capitalism from the heights of Davos. Coversvatives may not understand why, but business culture had melded with counterculture for reasons having a great deal to do with business culture's usual priority - profit. — Thomas Frank

It is not enough to have great qualities; We should also have the management of them. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We have great managers who havent spent a day in management school. Do we have great surgeons that havent spent a day in surgical school? — Henry Mintzberg

Renowned management guru Peter F.Drucker looked back at his 65-year consulting career shortly before he died. He concluded that great leaders could either be 'charismatic or dull' or 'visionary or numbers-orientated,' but the most inspiring and effective managers he knew all had said we rather than I. — Robert I. Sutton

The reason is that good management itself was the root cause. Managers played the game the way it was supposed to be played. The very decision-making and resource-allocation processes that are key to the success of established companies are the very processes that reject disruptive technologies: listening carefully to customers; tracking competitors' actions carefully; and investing resources to design and build higher-performance, higher-quality products that will yield greater profit. These are the reasons why great firms stumbled or failed when confronted with disruptive technological change. — Clayton M Christensen

One of the greatest lessons we can learn in life is how to keep mute when the boiling ring of anger is dropped within us — Ikechukwu Izuakor

Great management is about character, not technique. — Thomas Teal

We are all great landed proprietors, if we only knew it. What we lack is not land, but the power to enjoy it. Moreover, this great inheritance has the additional advantage that it entails no labor, requires no management. The landlord has the trouble, but the landscape belongs to everyone who has eyes to see it. — John Lubbock

Out of this unstable mix of technocracy and national security you have a nostalgia developing for colonialism or religion - atavistic in my opinion, but some people want them back. Sadat is the great example of that: he threw out the Russians, as well as everything else that represented Abdel Nasser, ascendant nationalism, and so forth - and said, "Let the Americans come." Then you have a new period of what in Arabic is called an infitah - in other words, an opening of the country to a new imperialism: technocratic management, not production but services - tourism, hotels, banking, etc. That's where we are right now. — Edward W. Said

One could say that someone who does nothing but wait is like a glutton whose digestive system processes great masses of food without extracting any useful nourishment. One could go further and say that just as undigested food does not strengthen a man, time spent in waiting does not age him. — Thomas Mann

Rwanda really did take very strong steps towards development. I mean, this place is unrecognizable. There's a very good management of economy and resources - it's a success story, and that's great. — Mo Ibrahim

There are some key elements to business being a success, and that's a smart visionary and great management behind the people that are going to build it. — Rob Dyrdek

Certain management policies-stretching of credit resources, for example-may lead to great progress in good conditions; but, like the Grand Prix car in comparison with the Land Rover, they may not be robust enough to survive when the going gets tough. — Anthony Stafford Beer

Economy denotes the the proper management of materials and of site, as well as a thrifty balancing of cost and common sense in the construction of works ... the architect does not demand things which cannot be found or made ready without great expense. For example: it is not everywhere that there is plenty of pitsand, rubble, fir, clear fir, and marble ... Where there is no pitsand, we must use the kinds washed up by rivers or by the sea ... and other problems we must solve in similar ways. — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

Now, everybody is searching for managers with a little dose of leadership (not too much but it should be clearly there). Some "bosses" say that their employees either have leadership skills or they don't, that this is an innate ability. Others think leadership can be learned and they train their employees through various courses on this topic. The main aspect to observe here is that the majority of employers do not train or want their employees to become "distinct" leaders and follow their path in the world. They want and train them to stay in their company and successfully deliver more to the company. Of course, the rule is validated by exceptions, so there are companies that give birth, from their environment and trainings, to great and very influential leaders. — Elena D. Calin

Perfectionism is an enemy of good time management. If you are one of those people who needs to finish every project with absolutely no imperfections, you are undoubtedly wasting a great deal of time. Learn to recognize what is "good enough" and which activities don't demand absolute precision, and revise your approach accordingly. — Ernest Christo

For the existing enterprise, whether business or public-service institution, the controlling word in the term 'entrepreneurial management' is 'entrepreneurial'. For the new venture, it is 'management'. In the existing business, it is the existing that is the main obstacle to entrepreneurship. In the new venture, it is its absence. The new venture has an idea. It may have a product or a service. It may even have sales, and sometimes quite a substantial volume of them. It surely has costs. And it may have revenues and even profits. What it does not have is a 'business', a viable, operating, organized 'present' in which people know where they are going, what they are supposed to do, and what the results are or should be. But unless a new venture develops into a new business and makes sure of being 'managed', it will not survive no matter how brilliant the entrepreneurial idea, how much money it attracts, how good its products, nor even how great the demand for them. — Peter F. Drucker

An undertaking of great magnitude and importance, the successful accomplishment of which, in so comparatively short a period, notwithstanding the unheard of unestimable difficulties and impediments which had to be encountered and surmounted, in an almost unexplored and uninhabited wilderness ... evinced on your part a moral courage and an undaunted spirit and combination of science and management equally exciting our admiration and deserving our praise. — John By

You see, in sports you have so many things that aren't expected. There's so much uncertainty. So when players find themselves in a situation where management has a great deal of integrity and they can depend on my word or anybody else's word in the organization, they feel secure. And if the players feel secure, they don't want to leave here. And if they don't want to leave here, they're going to do everything they can on the court to stay here. — Red Auerbach

That's not to say that all software project management books are crap. Just most of them. One of the few that I've found compelling enough to finish is Johanna Rothman's "Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management." She co-wrote it with Esther Derby. — Jeff Atwood

Business is war and your past clients and customer's great online reviews are your elite soldiers in battle. — Tom Kenemore

The trouble that public unions could potentially cause for citizens was one reason that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hero of Democrats and union organizers alike, opposed them for government workers. Republican Fiorello La Guardia, a great mayor of New York, opposed them, too. Unlike in the private sector, where unions were a needed counterweight to strong management, in the public sector unions had a big say in selecting management through the election process. As a result, they had a lot of power on both sides of the labor-management negotiating process. Roosevelt and La Guardia thus feared that, when government officials and unions battled over power, citizens could lose out. — Joel Klein

Multi-tasking is great in the kitchen when you are trying to time the chicken to be ready at the same time as the potatoes. But do not assume it is a great way to manage a workday. — Joanne Tombrakos

Although God allows the world to use His great wealth in order that their physical and material needs be met, it is not God's will for the devil's children to control all the money that is in the world. — Paul Silway

If you are in a competitive industry, great online reviews are not just nice to have, they are a requirement! — Tom Kenemore

My point is that focusing on the past, present or future can have both positive and negative effects. Excessive worry about the future can be bad, while hopes and dreams can be good. Regret because of the past can be destructive, but learning lessons from previous events and having good memories can be great. Focusing intently on the present is usually stress-relieving and liberating, but sometimes the present moment is too sad or horrible to dwell on. — Gudjon Bergmann

Lee's great gifts are teaching and inspirational guidance, not administration and management. — Cheryl Crawford

I think football management has obviously changed and evolved in terms of practices and methods, but I would say the values we strive to hold are the same as great men like Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley. — Brendan Rodgers

A baseball manager recognizes a nonphysical talent, hustle, as an essential gift of great players and great teams. It is the characteristic of running faster than necessary, moving sooner than necessary, trying harder than necessary. It is essential for great programming teams, too. — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

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

The administration of a great organized molar security has as its correlate a whole micro-management of petty fears, a permanent molecular insecurity, to the point that the motto of domestic policymakers might be: a macropolitics of society by and for the micropolitics of insecurity — Gilles Deleuze

All the great enterprises of the world are run by a few smart men: their aides and associates run down by rapid stages to the level of sheer morons. Everyone knows that this is true of government, but we often forget that it is equally true of private undertakings. In the average great bank, or railroad, or other corporation the burden of management lies upon a small group. The rest are ciphers. — H.L. Mencken

Simply put, this is one insight we heard echoed by tens of thousands of great managers:
People don't change that much.
Don't waste time trying to put in what was left out.
Try to draw out what was left in.
That is hard enough. — Marcus Buckingham

We do not spend a great deal of time talking to management. — Walter Schloss

All good management is the expression of one great idea — Robert Heller

What makes a scientist great is the care that he takes in telling you what is wrong with his results, so that you will not misuse them. — W. Edwards Deming

As I have earlier noted, the most important things in life and in business can't be measured. The trite bromide 'If you can measure it, you can manage it' has been a hindrance in the building a great real-world organization, just as it has been a hindrance in evaluating the real-world economy. It is character, not numbers, that make the world go 'round. How can we possibly measure the qualities of human existence that give our lives and careers meaning? How about grace, kindness, and integrity? What value do we put on passion, devotion, and trust? How much do cheerfulness, the lilt of a human voice, and a touch of pride add to our lives? Tell me, please, if you can, how to value friendship, cooperation, dedication, and spirit. Categorically, the firm that ignores the intangible qualities that the human beings who are our colleagues bring to their careers will never build a great workforce or a great organization. — John C. Bogle

[In management] you're getting an opportunity to meet and speak with the GMs, assistant GMs, owners, governors - all the way up the line. It's a great opportunity to understand the league a little better and the challenges it faces. — Chris Pronger

If you could not do much in the month of April with five letters, think of what really you can do with the month of May with three letters before you open the door of the month of June with four letters. Which is the break time for the entire twelve months of the year. Until you clearly understand how you are spending the year, you shall finish spending it and ponder over how you spent it, year after year! No one is absolutely free from excuses and the challenges of life. You just have to do something great with each day in the year! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Good time management is not about buying a great calendar or planner. It is not about learning tricks to move faster, or about doing everything with mechanical efficiency. It's about creating days that are meaningful and rewarding to you, and feeling a sense of satisfaction in each and every one of your tasks. — Julie Morgenstern

Cult (totalistic type): a group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea, or thing and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control (e.g., isolation from former friends and family, debilitation, use of special methods to heighten suggestibility and subservience, powerful group pressure, information management, suspension of individuality or critical judgement, promotion of total dependency on the group and fear of leaving it, etc) designed to advance the goals of the group's leaders, to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community. — Louis Jolyon West

Regard to good morals than to great abilities; for, since government is necessary to mankind, they believe, that the common size of human understanding is fitted to some station or other; and that Providence never intended to make the management of public affairs a mystery to be comprehended only by a few persons of sublime — Jonathan Swift

Knowledge management is a great oxymoron. — Thomas Petzinger

Management works in the system; leadership works on the system. — Stephen Covey

He wished he understood where they come from: all the terrorists, religious revolutionists
and hate-criminals. Did terrorizing entire communities of people help them sleep sound at
night? Did it make them happy? Or are they just in for the attention? Have they nothing to
lose? Or are they simply bored and spit balling issues that have always been there? Can all
global acts of violence and terror be summed up, as just a whole other level of a mixture of
bad parenting, psychological disorders and unattended anger management issues? Can they
be treated, medically or spiritually? Are we waiting for the birth of another great visionary
like Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ or Prophet Muhammad, who will 'make the world a better
place'? Or are we just too soaked in the idea that religion is a dying concept and spirituality
is overrated? Is it too late? Are we too far behind? He wanted to know. — Thisuri Wanniarachchi

And I'd say one of the great lessons I've learned over the past couple of decades, from a management perspective, is that really when you come down to it, it really is all about people and all about leadership. — Steve Case

It is a great presumption to ascribe our successes to our own management, and not to esteem ourselves upon any blessing, rather as it is the bounty of heaven, than the acquisition of our own prudence. — Joseph Addison

I have learned that nothing is certain except for the need to have strong risk management, a lot of cash, the willingness to invest even when the future is unclear, and great people. — Jeffrey R. Immelt

Product investment, quality management, and all the things that are key for a car company - great, there has been no compromise in those aspects. But I feel there's a lot we could do on communication, particularly from a Chinese perspective. — Li Shufu

In Egypt the neoliberal programs have meant statistical growth, like right before the Arab Spring, Egypt was a kind of poster child for the World Bank and the IMF [International Monetary Fund:] the marvelous economic management and great reform. The only problem was for most of the population it was a kind of like a blow in the solar plexus: wages going down, benefits being eliminated, subsidized food gone and meanwhile, high concentration of wealth and a huge amount of corruption. — Noam Chomsky

American foreign policy must be more than the management of crisis. It must have a great and guiding goal: to turn this time of American influence into generations of democratic peace. — George W. Bush

The great requisite for the prosperous management of ordinary business is the want of imagination. — William Hazlitt

I think integrative medicine, something I've pioneered, is the way of the future. Its great promise is that it can reduce healthcare costs by shifting the whole focus of healthcare away from disease management to health promotion and prevention. They can do that two ways: first, by focusing attention on lifestyle medicine, which is very deficient. And second, by bringing into the mainstream treatments that are lower cost because they are not dependent on expensive technology. — Andrew Weil

Great mentorship is priceless. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination. — Jonathan Swift

Black vintners in this country make some really great wines. Explore a wine list and you will find at least one of our wines in the best restaurants. Buy a bottle for your table, and let management know you appreciate them including a Black winemaker in their stock. — Andre Hueston Mack

While most of today's jobs do not require great intelligence, they do require greater frustration tolerance, personal discipline,organization, management, and interpersonal skills than were required two decades and more ago. These are precisely the skills that many of the young people who are staying in school today, as opposed to two decades ago, lack. — James P. Comer

Passing one of these boats at night, and seeing the great body of fire, exposed as I have just described, that rages and roars beneath the frail pile of painted wood: the machinery, not warded off or guarded in any way, but doing its work in the midst of the crowd of idlers and emigrants and children, who throng the lower deck: under the management, too, of reckless men whose acquaintance with its mysteries may have been of six months' standing: one feels directly that the wonder is, not that there should be so many fatal accidents, but that any journey should be safely made. — Charles Dickens

The great irony of management is that the higher up you go, the less actual control you have. When you are but a humble coder, you make the computer do exactly what you want; when you're a manager, you only hope that people understand what you want, and then trust/pray that they do it both correctly and in a timely manner. — Jon Evans

No amount of organization and time management will compensate for a lack of Christian character, not when it comes to this great calling of glory through good - bringing glory to God by doing good to others. — Tim Challies

Kitty, to her very material advantage, spent the chief of her time with her two elder sisters. In society so superior to what she had generally known, her improvement was great. She was not of so ungovernable a temper as Lydia; and, removed from the influence of Lydia's example, she became, by proper attention and management, less irritable, less ignorant, and less insipid. From the further disadvantage of Lydia's society she was of course carefully kept, and though Mrs. Wickham frequently invited her to come and stay with her, with the promise of balls and young men, her father would never consent to her going. — Jane Austen

I'm very content to have great management and a great label. But for me, success started when my managers came to me and told me, 'Go ahead and quit your job.' I told them, 'As long as I don't have to wash dishes anymore, I'm good.' — Leon Bridges

Atwater knew - as did everyone at Style, though by some strange unspoken consensus it was never said aloud - that this was the single great informing conflict of the American psyche. The management of insignificance. It was the great syncretic bond of US monoculture. — David Foster Wallace

When I left Bradford and got a phone call from Dave Parnaby asking 'did I want to come back in?', I was delighted to accept. The whole buzz at the club at the moment is great for someone like me who is still learning and wanting to hopefully go into management in my own right at some point. — Colin Cooper

And I was asked if I would come and help with the recovery of this great British company, Cable and Wireless, and I'm delighted to become part of the new and very talented management that have been brought in to that company as well. — Lord Robertson

On every show I've been on, it's just managing all the different responsibilities and time management. 'The Walking Dead' is a really well-oiled machine, and I have a great number of people who do a great number of things very well. — Scott M. Gimple

I never use hedge funds because I am well aware of what drives future performance, and hedge funds start out with a great disadvantage in every major category: taxes, fees, risk management, transparency and liquidity. — Peter Mallouk

People don't change that much. Instead of trying to put in what God left out, try drawing out what God left in! — Curt Coffman

Organization doesn't really accomplish anything. Plans don't accomplish anything, either. Theories of management don't much matter. Endeavors succeed or fail because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best people will you accomplish great deeds. — Colin Powell

The great secret of good management is to be more alert to prevent a man's going wrong than eager to punish him for it. — George Horace Lorimer

A market downturn, doesn't bother us. For us and our long term investors, it is an opportunity to increase our ownership of great companies with great management at good prices. Only for short term investors and market timers is a correction not an opportunity. — Warren Buffett

Success means leaving everything behind and standing persistently towards our aims with great determination. — Rajasaraswathii

On the basis of his work each person is fully entitled to consider himself a part owner of the great workbench at which he is working with everyone else. A way toward that goal could be found by associating labor with the ownership of capital joint ownership of the means of work, sharing by the workers in the management and/or profits of businesses, so-called shareholding by labor, etc. — Pope John Paul II

The first step toward the management of disease was replacement of demon theories and humours theories by the germ theory. That very step, the beginning of hope, in itself dashed all hopes of magical solutions. It told workers that progress would be made stepwise, at great effort, and that a persistent, unremitting care would have to be paid to a discipline of cleanliness. So it is with software engineering today. — Fred Brooks

The Four Keys of Great Managers:
1. "When selecting someone, they select for talent ... not simply experience, intelligence or determination."
2. "When setting expectations, they define the right outcomes ... not the right steps."
3. "When motivating someone, they focus on strengths ... not on weaknesses."
4. "When developing someone, they help him find the right fit ... not simply the next rung on the ladder. — Marcus Buckingham

Data is great, but strategy is better — Steven Sinofsky

I have a great management team and great agents that assist me, and I take roles in feature films that I hope will show my other talents other than just comedy. — Olivia Stuck

It is through aversion to hardship that great ideas are born, but it is only through acceptance of it that these ideas can be implemented — Agona Apell

People of great faith are almost always lacking in reason, while people possessed of great reason often suffer from a pitiful lack of faith. So it always happens that people of great faith can move the world but cannot steer it, while people possessed of great reason excel at steering the world but are hopeless at moving it — Agona Apell

I'm delighted to be joining INVESCO, an organization that has been growing both in terms of assets under management and the breadth of investment capabilities offered. I see great potential in working with the accomplished investment centers within INVESCO and providing expertise to help develop strategic solutions for our clients. — Diane Garnick

It has been said, and only half in jest, that a tough, professionally led union is a great force for improving management performance. It forces the manager to think about what he is doing and to be able to explain his actions and behavior. — Peter Drucker

Pitney's first management meeting of the new year typically consisted of about fifteen minutes discussing the previous year (almost always superb results) and two hours talking about the "scary squiggly things" that might impede future results.28 Pitney Bowes sales meetings were quite different from the "aren't we great" rah-rah sales conferences typical at most companies: The entire management team would lay itself open to searing questions and challenges from salespeople who dealt directly with customers.29 — James C. Collins

No great manager or leader ever fell from heaven, its learned not inherited. — Tom Northup

The great frothing waves broke into frothy as they slammed onto the rocks, but they kept rolling in, again and again. The sight of those persistent waves calmed him, and instead of anger, all he felt was a deep sadness. — Anamika Mishra

By the time I got to be director of product management at Thomas-Conrad, I was in a better negotiating position, as I had accumulated more accomplishments and gained a reputation for having a great work ethic. — Maynard Webb

I'm a great believer in the Arsene Wenger school of management - which is, you don't worry about the opposition, you just get your own act together — David Miliband

Sometimes servant leaders focus on the servitude part and forget the leader part. Great leadership isn't about abdication of power, it about the benevolent application of that power. — Scott Hammerle

If you show up late [for anger management], you don't get credit for the class, which made that car ride even more of a test of your temper. Being late was great-you could leave if you wanted to, but that wasn't going to help you at all. I was late a few times and I always stayed, hoping to get credit for good behavior. I never did, and that made me really fucking angry. Thank God I was learning how to deal with that. — Tommy Lee

Too many companies believe people are interchangeable. Truly gifted people never are. They have unique talents. Such people cannot be forced into roles they are not suited for, nor should they be. Effective leaders allow great people to do the work they were born to do. — Warren G. Bennis

Great leaders inspire greatness in others. — Lolly Daskal