Lisa Marie Presley Quotes

The inability to delegate is one of the biggest problems I see with managers at all levels.

I either delegate something, I dump it, or I deal with it.

Don't be a bottleneck. If a matter is not a decision for the President or you, delegate it. Force responsibility down and out. Find problem areas, add structure and delegate. The pressure is to do the reverse. Resist it.

Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind.

If you procrastinate when faced with a big difficult problem... break the problem into parts, and handle one part at a time.

The military can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.

Focusing on the right question is very different from having the right answers.

That's part of being President. You can't focus on any one thing to the exclusion of all other things.

The great problem now is that we don’t know what to do.

Most decisions are not binary, and there are usually better answers waiting to be found if you do the analysis and involve the right people.

If any successes has come to me, it came because I insisted on thinking things through. That's all I was capable of doing in life, was thinking pretty hard about trying to get the right answer, and then acting on it. I never learned to do anything else.

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.

What I'm looking for in my interaction is critical thinking on the part of the person pitching to me.

I'm a pretty good problem solver.

My favorite question is 'Why?' I think it can be really helpful - I also think it can be annoying to people at times; I'll admit that. But I really do try to understand why are we approaching it this way, does it makes sense, is this the right answer, why is it the right answer, are there other paths to getting there, could those be better.

You need good staff with their own opinions - Mick Jones has been a great No 2 as he's not a yes-man - but at the end of the day the buck stops with you and the good managers are the ones who make more good decisions than bad.

I think about issues. I use my economic training to devise solutions.

If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn't give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.

The game is about making the right decisions.

Your instinct when someone is busy is to give them the least amount of work so that they can do it.

Luckily, as a director I can just tell people what I need and I don't need to tell them how to get it.

It's extremely instructive to realize that you cannot do everything. You need to delegate, to find experts, to consult with them. A big part of the job of directing is knowing when to take something on and when you shouldn't.

Most business problems, you will have an intuitive idea on what to do.

I need something, Wax. A place to look. You always did the thinking.” “Yes, having a brain helps with that, surprisingly.

That's all managing is: just coming up with the right questions and getting the right answers.