HAROLD S. GENEEN

It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises-but only performance is reality.

We must not be hampered by yesterday's myths in concentrating on today's needs.

The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success: Concentration, Discrimination, Organization, Innovation and Communication.

Management manages by making decisions and by seeing that those decisions are implemented.

Performance stands out like a ton of diamonds. Nonperformance can always be explained away.

In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.

The best way to inspire people to superior performance is to convince them by everything you do and by your everyday attitude that you are wholeheartedly supporting them.

A true leader has to have a genuine open-door policy so that his people are not afraid to approach him for any reason.

You can know a person by the kind of desk he keeps. If the president of a company has a clean desk then it must be the executive vice president who is doing all the work.

Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned.

If your desk isn't cluttered, you probably aren't doing your job.

You can't run a business or anything else on a theory.

I don't believe in just ordering people to do things. You have to sort of grab an oar and row with them.

Uncertainty will always be part of the taking charge process.

Facts from paper are not the same as facts from people. The reliability of the people giving you the facts is as important as the facts themselves.

The worst disease which can afflict business executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.

Every company has two organizational structures: The formal one is written on the charts; the other is the everyday relationship of the men and women in the organization.

He suffered from paralysis by analysis.

It is much more difficult to measure nonperformance than performance.

It's better to take over and build upon an existing business than to start a new one.

Managers in all too many American companies do not achieve the desired results because nobody makes them do it.

Management must manage!

Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions.

The most difficult thing for a manager to determine is when a fact is really a fact.

Do you want my one-word secret of happiness -- It's growth -- mental, financial, you name it.