Quotes & Sayings About Running A Company

In ancient Rome, when a victorious general paraded through the streets, legend has it that he was sometimes trailed by a servant whose job it was to repeat to him, " Memento Mori": Remember you will die. A reminder of mortality would help the hero keep things in perspective, instill some humility. Job's memento mori had been delivered by his doctors, but it did not instill humility. Instead he roared back after his recovery with even more passion. The illness reminded him that he had nothing to lose, so he should forge ahead full speed. " He came back on a mission," said Cook. " Even though he was now running a large company, he kept making bold moves that I don't think anybody else would have done. — Walter Isaacson

My biggest fear is that we [Unilever company] at one point in time will not be able to attract the best and brightest [workers]. I don't worry so much about the business, the strategy. If we can continue to attract the best, I know they will ultimately figure out how to run the company in a very tough environment. — Paul Polman

As difficult as it is to build a team, it is not complicated. In fact, keeping it simple is critical, whether you run the executive staff at a multi-national company, a small department within a larger organization, or even if you are merely a member of a team that needs improvement. — Patrick Lencioni

I try to get people to see what I have ... When you run a computer company, you have to get people to buy into your dreams. — Steve Jobs

Years later, I found myself running
a network television division and then a
movie studio and now an entire entertainment
company. But, much of the success I've achieved
can be traced to the direct and metaphorical
lessons I learned in building those campfires.
I can hardly think of an aspect of my life
that wasn't positively affected by my camping
experience. — Michael Eisner

Women are leaders everywhere you look - from the CEO who runs a Fortune 500 company to the housewife who raises her children and heads her household. Our country was built by strong women and we will continue to break down walls and defy stereotypes. — Nancy Pelosi

I made so many mistakes in running the company so far, basically any mistake you can think of I probably made. I think, if anything, the Facebook story is a great example of how if you're building a product that people love you can make a lot of mistakes — Mark Zuckerberg

Running a company is pretty demanding. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

No matter how much long-distance running might suit me, of course there are days when I feel kind of lethargic and don't want to run. Actually, it happens a lot. On days like that, I try to think of all kinds of plausible excuses to slough it off. Once, I interviewed the Olympic running Toshihiko Seko, just after he retired from running and became manager of the S&B company team. I asked him, "Does a runner at your level ever feel like you'd rather not run today, like you don't want to run and would rather just sleep in?" He stared at me and then, in a voice that made it abundantly clear how stupid he thought the question was, replied, "Of course. All the time! — Haruki Murakami

A Scotch half-breed took charge of him and his mates, and in company with a dozen other dog-teams he started back over the weary trail to Dawson. It was no light running now, nor record time, but heavy toil each day, with a heavy load behind; for this was the mail train, — Jack London

I think the fact that father is running now as opposed to in 2012 where he didn't that he's had enough faith in myself and my siblings to be able to run the company.We've got tens of thousands of people that are under his direct employ. Those people, he wouldn't leave a company and leave those people and their lives and everything they've put into it at risk if he didn't think there was competent leadership to take over after him. — Sean Hannity

I'm not running a cat repair company — Fredrik Backman

Playing the lead in a film where you shoot for three months away from home is not an easy thing for me when my children are in school and my husband is running a theatre company. — Cate Blanchett

As noted in About ESC Electrol Specialties Company began fabricating CIP System components as a vendor to one of the nations largest suppliers of cleaning chemicals to the Dairy industry more than 50 years ago. This vendor was a major provider of the engineering services, components and skilled personnel required to design and install CIPable automaed processes, for dairies initialy, and later food and beverage processors. This vendor was actively involved with new facility construction, but more importantly, also developed and applied the methodos of applying such new technology equally well to "recycle old dairies" via rennovation projects planned to provide the exisitng facility increased capacity, efficiency and quality capabilities, and keep it running during the rennovation process. This vendor worked on a design and install" basis and used its own wsanitary welding crews, even Internationally, through the mid 70s. — John Franks

Any business owner or entrepreneur knows that there is no luck or good fortune about keeping a company up and running. It's nothing but hard work, consistency, determination, courage, staying focused, accepting failure, making changes, and simply keeping on with the grind. — Enaka Yembe

Almost any mistake you can make in running a company, I've probably made — Mark Zuckerberg

I'm a highly, highly, highly creative human being. I write music all the time. I write scripts constantly. I run my own production company. I'm also a very determined businesswoman. I've a town to deal with. I've got a lot of things to do and I don't have time to be classified as difficult, and I don't have time to care. — Kim Basinger

But I'm really trying to run this company like it is going to be here a hundred years from now. That's what's important. — Yvon Chouinard

Private companies have a lot of capital. They can run things efficiently and get projects built. — Steve Martin

I'm not sure I was a typical head of a company. Most people that run big companies come out of sales and they come out of marketing and they're quite serious and they have MBA's from very good schools and things like that. I'm an accidental CEO, thank the Disney Company. — Michael Eisner

I run my company according to feminine principles, principles of caring, making intuitive decisions, not getting hung up on hierarchy or all those dreadfully boring business-school management ideas; having a sense of work as being part of your life, not separate from it; putting your labor where your love is; being responsible to the world in how you use your profits; recognizing the bottom line should stay at the bottom. — Anita Roddick

Obviously in a work capacity I've been tremendously busy running The Trump Organization now that my father's on the campaign trail and my own company and the growth of that. So it's been an amazing time, a wild experience, and an incredible one. — Ivanka Trump

Growth isn't central at all, because I'm trying to run this company as if it's going to be here a hundred years from now. And if you take where we are today and add 15% growth, like public companies need to have for their stock to stay up in value, I'd be a multi-trillion-dollar company in 40 years. Which is impossible, of course. — Yvon Chouinard

No leader can possibly have all the answers ... The actual solutions about how best to meet the challenges of the moment have to be made by the people closest to the action ... The leader has to find the way to empower those frontline people, to challenge them, to provide them with the resources they need, and then to hold them accountable. As they struggle with ... this challenge, the leader becomes their coach, teacher, and facilitator. Change how you define leadership, and you change how you run a company. — Steve Miller

The reality is the world is a really, really big place, and there's a lot of people running around with a lot on their mind. And you really have to figure out how to build a company that can put on a message that can actually reach people and have an impact globally. — Marc Andreesen

When you're running a company, you have employees - lots of them - that can interrupt your schedule. You have customers that can interrupt your schedule. You have a certain obligation to wave the flag because people expect to get out and wave the flag. The number of ways that others can command your time is high. At this stage, I get to pick and choose a little more. Not that there aren't some things that have to be done, but I get a little more control over my time. — Steve Ballmer

You read these management books that say, 'These are the hard things about running a company.' But those aren't really the hard things. The hard things are when you have to layoff half your company, or you have to fire your best friend. Or you have to figure out a way not to go bankrupt. — Ben Horowitz

An Incoherent Strategy When a company's value curve looks like a bowl of spaghetti - a zigzag with no rhyme or reason, where the offering can be described as "low-high-low-low-high-low-high" - it signals that the company doesn't have a coherent strategy. Its strategy is likely based on independent substrategies. These may individually make sense and keep the business running and everyone busy, but collectively they do little to distinguish the company from the best competitor or to provide a clear strategic vision. This is often a reflection of an organization with divisional or functional silos. — W.Chan Kim

I don't think I'd enjoy running a public company. We haven't needed to go to the market to fund expansion. — Martin Naughton

Americans are sick of the idea of the government taking over everything and trying to run it. We don't know how to run a bank, a car company. — Lamar Alexander

The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company. — Ben Horowitz

I learned that focus is key. Not just in your running a company, but in your personal life as well. — Tim Cook

George paid for college by working for Cutco. Cutco is a company that makes and sells knives. Their salespeople go door-to-door. George Pinkman talked his way into peoples' homes with a big bag of knives and sold them potential murder weapons. Do I have to add that he was their top salesman three years running? I do not. — MaryJanice Davidson

1. Project What is the project? Why is it unique? Why is the business needed? Why will customers love your product? 2. Partners Who are you? Who are the partners? What are your educational backgrounds? How much experience do you all have? How are you and your partners qualified to make the project a success? 3. Financing What is the total cost of the project? How much debt and how much equity is there? Are partners investing their own money? What is the investor's return and reward for their risk? What are the tax consequences? Who is your CFO or accounting firm? Who is responsible for investor communications? What is the investor's exit? 4. Management Who is running your company? What is their experience? What is their track record? Have they ever failed? How does their experience relate to your industry? Do you believe this is the strongest management team you can assemble? Can you pitch them with confidence? — Donald J. Trump

I used to wonder if running a large industrial company would really square with my values. — William Clay Ford Jr.

I'm a chairman on the Board of Governors for the East-West Players, the longest-running Asian-American theater company in America. — George Takei

The company should be run from a creative point of view rather than a financial point of view. — Michael Eisner

Like isolated apartment dwellers running the TV for company, we sense a deeper isolation beneath the babble of voices, the poverty of our communications. — Mark Slouka

If you can run the company a bit more collaboratively, you get a better result, because you have more bandwidth and checking and balancing going on. — Larry Page

I care more about the people than about the company. That's why I don't want to own it. I don't want to run a business. People do it better than I do. — Karl Lagerfeld

As much as you need a strong personality to build a business from scratch, you also must understand the art of delegation. I have to be good at helping people run the individual businesses, and I have to be willing to step back. The company must be set up so it can continue without me. — Richard Branson

What we need very badly these days is a company of Christians who are prepared to trust God as completely now as they know they must do at the last day ... It would be better to invite God now to remove every false trust, to disengage our hearts from all secret hiding places and to bring us out into the open where we can discover for ourselves whether or not we actually trust Him. That is a harsh cure for our troubles, but it is a sure one. Gentler cures may be too weak to do the work. And time is running out on us. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

If you had told me when I was at high school that one day I would be working for a for-profit company, let alone running one, I would have said you were crazy. But I am interested in how you can empower individuals to make change, and Causes is doing just that. — Joe Green

Running a successful, growing company in Silicon Valley can create an ironic sort of depression and delusion. The better you're doing, the higher the stakes, and higher expectations for you to win. Maybe that's why people say it's so hard. But that doesn't make it hard. That just makes it distracting. — David Ulevitch

No. 1 thing is that life is just not as interrupt-driven as when you're running a company. — Steve Ballmer

I have my own theory about why decline happens at companies like IBM or Microsoft. The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesmen, because they're the ones who can move the needle on revenues, not the product engineers and designers. So the salespeople end up running the company. — Walter Isaacson

If the person who runs a company has a belief system and everything he does stays fairly truly to that system, it will attract like-minded people who buy into it and then keeps selling itself in concentric circles. — Donny Deutsch

Innovation is the fuel for growth. When a company runs out of innovation, it runs out of growth. — Gary Hamel

Firing people is one of the worst parts of running a company. Actually in my own experience, I think it is the worst. — Sam Altman

You need to aim beyond what you are capable of. You must develop a complete disregard for where your abilities end. Try to do things that you're incapable of ... If you think you're incapable of running a company, make that your aim ... Make your vision of where you want to be a reality. Nothing is impossible. — Paul Arden

The hardest thing about starting a company and running a company is, there's just so many expectations on you, and there are so many people who have things that they want you to do. It's a lot like life about that. — Ben Horowitz

You coming?"
She hesitated, weighing her options. Risk running back down the flaming aisles to find another exit? Or trust the guy who'd been stalking her all afternoon?
The fire spread to the nearby shelves. The heat was growing unbearable.
"You cut me deep," he said. "You'd actually choose a fiery death over the prospect of my company. I have to admit, that stings a bit. — Jena Leigh

Think about it: if you were running a multi-million dollar company, and your database of customer information was stolen, would you want to tell your clients? No. Most companies did not until the laws required them to. It's in the best interest of organisations - when they're attacked and information is stolen - to tell nobody. — Kevin Mitnick

I start with people's growth, my own growth included. I don't start with the company's strategy or products. I start with people's growth because I believe that if the people who are running and participating in a company grow, then the company's growth will in many respects take care of itself. — James McNerney

If tomorrow all of America were to become paternalistic, we would beat the Japanese every day of the week. I think that the concept of accusing someone of running a paternalistic company, that's not an accusation. One should compliment someone on that. — Leonard Lauder

The thief who is in prison is not necessarily more dishonest than his fellows at large, but mostly one who, through ignorance or stupidity [or racism or poverty! - Draffan] steals in a way that is not customary. He snatches a loaf from the baker's counter and is promptly run into gaol. Another man snatches bread from the table of hundreds of widows and orphans and similar credulous souls who do not know the ways of company promoters; and, as likely as not, he is run into Parliament. — George Bernard Shaw

I kiss her long and deep and hard until I feel like I'm running on the fringes of my emotions; they're tearing away at me like hands in Hell reaching out for me as I leap over the flames, trying to pull me down with them into sin, and as hard as I try to get away, a part of me wants them to take me. I want to sin. I want to kiss her.
And so I do.
And I don't stop. — J.A. Redmerski

You learn every single day when you're running a company. You learn as you go. — Kevin Spacey

A team may have some great players, but typically, the team that works best together does the best. I look at running Broadcom in the same way. We have a culture where people have different skill sets, but they are happy to leverage their skills to help others and to help the company. — Henry Samueli

A lot of productivity is capturing ideas. I use a wiki - it's more valuable than e-mail for running a company - and I have a page for every person with whom I interact frequently. — Garrett Camp

I would have been fired a hundred times at a company run by M.B.A.'s. But I never went into business to make money. I went into business so that I could do interesting things that hadn't been done before. — Amar Bose

Having a higher purpose is more than just about profits. You actually end up making more profits in the long run because employees really are a lot more engaged and customers see the higher purpose in the company. — Tony Hsieh

In 2000, when my partner Ben Horowitz was CEO of the first cloud computing company, Loudcloud, the cost of a customer running a basic Internet application was approximately $150,000 a month. — Marc Andreessen

Where you have complexity, by nature you can have fraud and mistakes. You'll have more of that than in a company that shovels sand from a river and sells it. This will always be true of financial companies, including ones run by governments. If you want accurate numbers from financial companies, you're in the wrong world. — Charlie Munger

When you're running a company, creating jobs is the last thing you want to. When you're running a company you want to employ as few people as possible, and yet you inadvertently create jobs. — Robert Metcalfe

There is an increasing gap between academic research and business application. Sometimes the incentives for success in the academic world are not consistent with what it takes to run a company. — Dave Ulrich

Intrapreneurs work and lead with the Producer mindset. They run their department, team, or company with an abundance mentality, an attachment to true principles, and a fearless and informed faith in people and quality. — Oliver DeMille

Dear God, master of the universe, compassionate and merciful: we who are steeped in sin, kneel in supplication before your throne and beseech you to recall from this world Saadat Hasan Manto, son of Ghulam Hasan Manto, who was a man of great piety. Take him away, Lord, for he runs away from fragrance and chases after filth. He hates the bright sun, preferring dark labyrinths. He has nothing but contempt for modesty but is fascinated by the naked and the shameless. He hates sweetness, but will give his life to taste bitter fruit. He will not so much as look at housewives but is in seventh heaven in the company of whores. He will not go near running waters, but loves to wade through filth. Where others weep, he laughs; and where others laugh, he weeps. Faces blackened by evil, he loves to wash with tender care to make visible their real features. He never thinks about you but follows Satan everywhere, the same fallen angel who once disobeyed you. — Saadat Hasan Manto

Everyone wants to call wrestling 'the business.' Why don't you treat it like a business? I don't care if you're running a diner, if you're running a car wash or a wrestling company. It's all business. — Kevin Nash

I think Google's founders are both a couple of guys with some high ideals which have been to some degree reflected in the way the company has been run in terms of its having a very good workplace and good employee programs, and now that they're going public they want in some ways to be able to ensure that that kind of approach continues. So they've effectively put in place this notion of "Don't Be Evil". — Joel Bakan

Our business is not based on having information about you. You're not our product. Our product are these, and this watch, and Macs, and so forth. And so we run a very different company. I think everyone has to ask, how do companies make their money? Follow the money. And if they're making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think you have a right to be worried. — Tim Cook

When top executives get huge pay hikes at the same time as middle-level and hourly workers lose their jobs and retirement savings, or have to accept negligible pay raises and cuts in health and pension benefits, company morale plummets. I hear it all the time from employees: This company, they say, is being run only for the benefit of the people at the top. So why should we put in extra effort, commit extra hours, take on extra responsibilities? We'll do the minimum, even cut corners. This is often the death knell of a company. — Robert Reich

Being an entrepreneur is not about being in love with an idea, it's about being in love with running a company. — Max Levchin

As a first time director it's interesting, but not all that different from what I did before. A lot of parts of this job seem to be very similar to running a big company. — Timothy Miller

The final test of greatness in a CEO is how well he chooses a successor and whether he can step aside and let the successor run the company. — Peter Drucker

With joint-stock corporations, investors can place bets on the success of many different companies, without having to play a central management role in any one of them. This allows investors to diversify their financial holdings. It also allows them to capture profits on their investments, without having to get involved in the dirty, troublesome business of actually running a company. — Jim Stanford

Running a company on market research is like driving while looking in the rear-view mirror. — Anita Roddick

Many companies operate from more of a command-and-control environment - they decide what's going to happen at headquarters and have the organization execute. That doesn't work here because it's the community of users who really have control.

So we enable, not direct. We think of our customers as people, not wallets. And that has implications for how we run the company. We partner with our customers and let them take the company where they think it's best utilized. — Meg Whitman

To understand Cerutty you have to see him as a multifaceted personality. He could be both charming and very abusive. He was extremely amusing and darn good company providing you weren't quarrelling with him. — John Landy

Every business, like a painting, operates according to its own rules. There are many ways to run a successful company. What works once may never work again. What everyone tells you never to do may just work, once. — Richard Branson

I've been a professional athlete, I've directed films, I've run a company with 150 employees, and nothing compares to writing a screenplay. Just the second I think I know what I'm doing, the rug gets pulled out and I have no idea what I'm doing. Because there are so many problems to solve. — Stacy Peralta

At 88 years old - with every intention of living decades longer - I'm still running a company, writing articles, launching new ventures, and fully enjoying life. — David H. Murdock

Any company run by unknowing and mechanistic minds is in jeopardy and faces a limited life. Specifically, the pursuance of policies that focus on cost reduction and a continued optimisation of the bottom line just accelerate progress towards sudden death — Peter Cochrane

Show me a chief executive who's on five boards and who lends his or her name, prestige and time to 15 community activities - and I'll show you a company that's underperforming. A chief executive is paid to run the company. That's the CEO's job. — Albert J. Dunlap

I'm not running a Fortune 500 company here. I'm not a bank controller. I run a gym. You have to expect a certain amount of sex. We're dealing with bodies, and trainers are very into being beautiful, so you're going to have people who are attracted to each other. — Jackie Warner

If I were running a company today, I would have one priority above all others: to acquire as many of the best people as I could. I'd put off everything else to fill my bus. Because things are going to come back. My flywheel is going to start to turn. And the single biggest constraint on the success of my organization is the ability to get and to hang on to enough of the right people. — James C. Collins

Every telecomm company is as big a corporate welfare bum as you could ask for. Try to imagine what it would cost at market rates to go around to every house in every town in every country and pay for the right to block traffic and dig up roads and erect poles and string wires and pierce every home with cabling. The regulatory fiat that allows these companies to get their networks up and running is worth hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars.
If phone companies want to operate in the "free market," then let them: the FCC could give them 60 days to get all their rotten copper out of our dirt, or we'll buy it from them at the going scrappage rates. Then, let's hold an auction for the right to be the next big telecomm company, on one condition: in exchange for using the public's rights-of-way, you have to agree to connect us to the people we want to talk to, and vice-versa, as quickly and efficiently as you can. — Cory Doctorow

A young financial writer once brought ridicule upon himself by stating that a certain company had nothing to commend it except excellent earnings. Well, there are companies whose earnings are excellent but whose stocks I would never recommend. In selecting investments, I attach prime importance to the men behind them. I'd rather buy brains and character than earnings. Earnings can be good one year and poor the next. But if you put your money into securities run by men combining conspicuous brains and unimpeachable character, the likelihood is that the financial results will prove satisfactory. — B.C. Forbes

Now I have no doubt that Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips - whether he was going to have enough of them to hand out because his company Bain Capital with all the jobs that they killed, I'm sure he was worried that he'd run out of pink slips. There is something inherently wrong when getting rich off failure and sticking it to someone else is how you do your business and I happen to think that's indefensible. If you're a victim of Bain Capital's downsizing, it's the ultimate insult for Mitt Romney to come to South Carolina and tell you he feels your pain, because he caused it. — Rick Perry

Hours are long. Wages are pitiful. But sweatshops are the symptom, not the cause, of shocking global poverty. Workers go there voluntarily, which means - hard as it is to believe - that whatever their alternatives are, they are worse. They stay there, too; turnover rates of multinational-owned factories are low, because conditions and pay, while bad, are better than those in factories run by local firms. And even a local company is likely to pay better than trying to earn money without a job: running an illegal street stall, working as a prostitute, or combing reeking landfills in cities like Manila to find recyclable goods. — Tim Harford

Companies, as they grow to become multi-billion-dollar entities, somehow lose their vision. They insert lots of layers of middle management between the people running the company and the people doing the work. They no longer have an inherent feel or a passion about the products. The creative people, who are the ones who care passionately, have to persuade five layers of management to do what they know is the right thing to do. — Steve Jobs

Running a successful company is all about embracing the talent of the individuals you have at your disposal. if that's where your talents and your interests lie, then you structure the company to enable that ... Christian Grey — E.L. James

I'm not real good at the administrative part of running a company. — Jimmy Wales

America is the largest corporation on the planet. You wouldn't hire a novice to run a similarly sized company in the private markets. My father has created more jobs through his private businesses than certainly any of the candidates. Mitt Romney has executive experience, but it's a different type. He didn't run entrepreneurial businesses. — Ivanka Trump

The 2 hardest things you'll have to do when running a company are recruiting and talking people out of leaving. — Marc Andreessen

By late-2000 Wal-Mart's losses were running in excess of £150 million a year in Germany from its 95 stores, and the company was ranked bottom of all retailers in Germany in an annual customer satisfaction survey. — Nigel F. Piercy

It's not enough to make time for your children. There are certain stages in their lives when you have to give them the time when they want it. You can't run your family like a company. It doesn't work. — Andy Grove

Rich dad explained to me that the hardest part of running a company is managing people. — Robert T. Kiyosaki

I was amazed at how the life of a freelancer differed from running a remote studio for another company. I thought I knew what I was doing in 2004 when I left Eidos because I had run Ion Storm Austin, which was my own independent studio. I had run a business unit inside Origin, but being part of a startup is crazy. — Warren Spector

Tomorrow always arrives. It is always different. And even the mightiest company is in trouble if it has not worked on the future. Being surprised by what happens is a risk that even the largest and richest company cannot afford, and even the smallest business need not run. — Peter Drucker