China Quotes

Sealed Management

When I was a CEO, the books on management that I read weren't very much help after the first few months on the job. They were all designed to give you directions on how not to screw up your company.

Multiple mergers can be challenging because people come from different backgrounds.

As a first-time CEO, I wasn't sure if I would scale to run IronPort long-term. But I wanted a legitimate shot at it.

I am fully supportive of the strategy and leadership team at Valeant.

Management is clearly different from leadership. Leadership is primarily a high-powered, right-brain activity. It's more of an art it's based on a philosophy. You have to ask the ultimate questions of life when you're dealing with personal leadership issues.

In business, there's a constant focus on developing strategies, reviewing executive performance against those strategies each year, engaging with opposing or different points of view, and having intellectual dialogue.

I think one of the main challenges that the World Bank faces is creating an organizational structure that doesn't get in the way of its staff. We have fantastic staff. People told me as I was coming into the organization that the greatest asset of the World Bank Group is its staff, and I think there's no question that that's the case.

Many corporate leaders and employees have the right intentions, but it can be overwhelming when you consider how everything is affected from leadership styles, to organizational structure, to employee engagement, to customer service an marketplace.

In a company, hundreds of decisions get made, but objectives and goals are thin.

The signs of outstanding leadership appear primarily among the followers. Are the followers reaching their potential? Are they learning? Serving? Do they achieve the required results? Do they change with grace? Manage conflict?

The lesson is that, No. 1, this management has to be at the highest class possible. No. 2, they have to have a succession plan.

Turning a culture around is very difficult to do because it's based on a series of many, many decisions, and the organization is framed by those decisions.

Innovation and corporate governance are extremely important to improve the profitability of Japanese companies and encourage them to increase wages, capital spending, and dividends.

As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge.

I used to think my job as a CEO meant managing metrics and meeting goals, but I've realised now that's it's about managing my board and employees.

I described the CEO job as knowing what to do and getting the company to do what you want. Designing a proper company culture will help you get your company to do what you want in certain important areas for a very long time.

Mistakes, after all, are endemic to foreign and military policy given the unpredictability of events and the difficulty of securing reliable information in a place like Iraq.

Companies need to have rules - that's a given - but they don't have to be shortsighted and lazy attempts at creating order.

By dedicating so much concentration to the issue of security, bilateral matters pass to a secondary level.

At IBM, if we kept our same leadership for 36 years, we'd be bankrupt.

I used to have a little saying I used when people said, 'What are your priorities?' I'd give them a bit of government alphabet soup. I'd say 'CTCPROW: Counterterrorism, counterproliferation, rest of the world.'

Somehow, the company must stay true to the founding vision while avoiding the pitfalls of rapid growth - and perhaps survive the hiring of a previously successful executive who doesn't work out.

If the staff lacks policy guidance against which to test decisions, their decisions will be random.

Managing a business, small or large, today requires an extremely disciplined, thoughtful approach with regard to the pressure that people are under.