Rick Wagoner Quotes

I find that many entrepreneurs are trying to do everything when it would be cheaper and more time-efficient to delegate, even if there are monetary costs associated with that.

We're reviewing everything to see how we can do it better, faster, and more efficiently.

While looking ahead, we know challenges remain, but we are encouraged by the strategies we have in place to improve our operational efficiencies and performance.

As I've evolved, I'm capable of doing a lot of things at once, but really, as an entrepreneur and business person, it's more about adding the right structure to be able to handle scaling all those things as opposed to being at the forefront of doing a lot of them.

In the private sector, there is always innovation. There's always change. There's always improving productivity, and if you're not leading that, you'll be passed and ultimately go out of business. So there's an urgency to constantly update and renew and to rethink your enterprise.

Unlike the objective of far too many companies, manufacturing is not about a quick 'exit.' It is centered on long-term value creation.

Heavy lifting doesn't need to be heavy spending if we do the job right.

Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.

My view is that, as management, the focus has to be on having a strategy and executing it. As you do the strategy and execution, it is important to communicate it consistently.

In every business, in every industry, management does matter.

The key to Operations at Wal-Mart is their ability to maintain the highest standards while at the same time getting things done with lockstep execution.

Generally speaking, if you control matter more precisely, you can get more efficiency out of any process.

Like most entrepreneurs, getting motivated to work has never been a problem for me; focus comes through delegating tasks to the best people you can find.

Good management has helped me find much of the success I've got.

Leadership is inspiring people. Management is keeping the trains running on time.

I think any time you increase focus, increase speed, all those are going to help any business.

As CEO of Cold Stone Creamery, we used a concept called 'search and reapply,' which meant that if we found better ways of doing something, then we would do it.

Benchmarking is an ongoing exercise in any company that aspires for leadership.

To be a good manager, a manager tries to constantly fight to reduce waste.

I'm a very big believer that the primary focus for any organization at any point in time should always be smarter, better, faster.

Six Sigma is a quality program that, when all is said and done, improves your customers' experience, lowers your costs, and builds better leaders.

The aim should be to work on the method of management.

The aim of leadership should be to improve the performance of man and machine, to improve quality, to increase output, and simultaneously to bring pride of workmanship to people. Put in a negative way, the aim of leadership is not merely to find and record failures of men, but to remove the causes of failure: to help people to do a better job with less effort.

Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank.

You need to have proper management if you're going to move forward.