Louis V. Gerstner Jr. Quotes

You basically get what you reward. If you want to achieve the goals and reflect the values in your mission statement, then you need to align the reward system with these goals and values.

Good customer service begins at the top. If your senior people don't get it, even the strongest links further down the line can become compromised.

Get the culture right, and everything else just falls into place.

For me, I've learned about what it means to focus on a culture, to build social responsibility, and the idea of a company as a super-organism.

You know, as most entrepreneurs do, that a company is only as good as its people. The hard part is actually building the team that will embody your company's culture and propel you forward.

Most people in an organization try very hard to do what the leadership wants them to do. That places a tremendous responsibility on leaders.

At Under Armour, we've created a very strong culture, a culture that first and foremost is built on people.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the one predictable thing in any organization is the crisis. That always comes. That's when you do depend on the leader: The job of the leader is to build an organization that is battle-ready, that has high morale, that knows how to behave, that trusts itself, and where people trust one another.

One of the most intriguing things in management and in business is the role of storytelling - people need the anecdotes to do the work that they do.

Managers have traditionally developed the skills in finance, planning, marketing and production techniques. Too often the relations with their people have been assigned a secondary role. This is too important a subject not to receive first-line attention. In this regard we could learn much from the Japanese. We must reinvest in the human side of management.

No company has a culture; every company is a culture.

The thing I have learned at IBM is that culture is everything.

Having a clear mission and making sure you know that mission and making sure that mission comes through the company is probably the most important thing you can do for both culture and values.

Empowerment is what managers do to people. Engagement is what managers do with people.

Some in management positions operate as if they are in a tree of monkeys. They make sure that everyone at the top of the tree looking down sees only smiles. But all too often, those at the bottom looking up see only asses.

You can't reward people who don't want to work with more money than they would make while they were working.

If you don't have good people, and you don't have a good process and you don't have, at some level, the basic reverence for [presidential] office, and an understanding of the incredible responsibilities and obligations, then, I think you can get into trouble.

A leader enables people to love and honor the role they play in the organization or group they are part of

When leaders care less about their people, their people will be careless.

If your incentives are set up wrong - if for some reason you reward people for behavior that's actually bad for your customers or your organization - then you're going to encourage that behavior.

I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game; it is the game.

I feel like my job as CEO is always to be pushing people ahead.

All companies have a culture, some companies have discipline, but few companies have a culture of discipline. When you have disciplined people, you don't need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don't need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don' t need excessive controls. When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great performance.

Innovation is the lifeblood of an organization. Knowing how to lead and work with creative people requires knowledge and action that often goes against the typical organizational structure. Protect unusual people from bureaucracy and legalism typical of organizations.

A network marketing business is based upon the leaders pulling people up, while a traditional corporate or government business is based upon only promoting a few and keeping the masses of employees content with a steady paycheck.