Akio Morita Quotes

We treat the management-to-workforce relationship as very important and will continue to invest in that relationship.

I can't tell you how many thousands of small moments that I've had with employees in our company that have been nothing more than a one-on-one. I'll see the baggage-services person, he or she is by himself. I'll pull them off to the side and have a 15-minute conversation about their history, their life, that kind of thing.

If you fire people, you fire customers.

Everyone talks about building a relationship with your customer. I think you build one with your employees first.

The way management treats associates is exactly how the associates will treat the customers.

On a personal level, I send out about 20 thank-you notes a day to staffers, on all levels. And every six weeks I have lunch with a group of a dozen or so employees, to get their perspective on the business, to address problems and to get feedback.

Corporate culture matters. How management chooses to treat its people impacts everything - for better or for worse.

At HBO, my leadership had to inspire and gain the respect of employees in a large company with over 100 external business relationships in dozens of countries.

I think Tesla doesn't sound like it has a very collaborative culture.

If you don't go to every level of your company, you distance yourself from the marketplace and from your people.

Management by Walking Around

A company's employees are its greatest asset and your people are your product

The people inside the company, generally two to three levels down, they know best what's wrong and how to fix it. It's just that their voices aren't being heard. I listen for words, tonality, and language.

No matter what the figures are in the workplace in terms of wages, you either feel a valued member of your staff, or you don't.

Never stop listening to people at all levels of the company. Be physically out and about so that you always have your finger on the pulse and know, at the ground level, the truth of how people are feeling.

When leaders throughout an organization take an active, genuine interest in the people they manage, when they invest real time to understand employees at a fundamental level, they create a climate for greater morale, loyalty, and, yes, growth.

Onboarding starts with satisfying the most basic of Maslow's psychological needs: belonging. New hires shouldn't arrive to an empty cube and be forced to forage through corridors searching for a computer and the bare necessities of office life. A new hire isn't a surprise visitor from out of town. Plan for their arrival.

There are real people on the pitch. We're not commodities. Well, maybe we are to some degree, but it's the team which creates business. Some people don't appreciate that.

My job is to hire the best and brightest employees and empower them to do their best work. As a manager, I am not a mind reader nor an expert at every job function. Therefore, it is incumbent on all hires to feel empowered to tell me what resources they need to do their job.

At Manhattan GMAT, I had done my best to create a positive work environment and culture, and I further believed in rewarding people financially at or above the market rate for a job well done.

If you're thinking about your brand over your people, you've lost yourself.

We greatly value the contributions of all of our employees.

If you run a global business, it's so important that you understand what happens in each place, and you can't do that remotely. I don't want to go anywhere and leave and not have seen the people who work for us. That doesn't feel good.

We take such good care of our employees. What I do is think about what I would want my employer to be like. We started helping our employees with every facet of their lives, and our HR problems went from A to Z in reverse.

I don't know anything about Amazon's culture; I've never worked there.