Harold S. Geneen Quotes

I learned this early on in the variety business: You've got to give folks responsibility, you've got to trust them, and then you've got to check on them.

Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work.

Why - because as a oil and gas small business owner - I know if someone is not doing their job, they should not get paid. Again leadership by example.

In politics, as in business, leadership is crucial.

One thing is certain in business. You and everyone around you will make mistakes.

As a multisport athlete, I was always fascinated with competition and how to win. At HBS and later at the Harvard Department of Economics, I was drawn to the field of competition and strategy because it tackles perhaps the most basic question in both business management and industrial economics: What determines corporate performance?

I had learned many years ago in private business never to take responsibility without adequate authority; and the new Secretary of Defense, as budgets were sharply cut, quickly found that out.

What gets measured, gets done.

Being a cabinet minister is not like running a company. A country is not a company.

Not having a country with a financial crisis in the year is a pretty big deal to me. But something that didn’t happen is not something that people will focus on.

To have success, there must be a very clear mission, a staff who understands the mission, enough autonomy to do the mission, and accountability for the success of the mission..

You have to make your company idiot-proof because you may have an idiot running it some day.

Vision without execution is hallucination.

Corporate trading is vicious in principle. The directors of such companies, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own … Negligence and profusion must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company

The art of delegation is one of the key skills any entrepreneur must master.

In business, there's a saying: 'Disagree and commit.' It means that everyone should speak up before a decision is made. But once the boss has decided, you all get behind it to make it happen.

I just really love business.

I really try to handle my business on the floor.

I can sit across the table from somebody that worked with me and my company that I founded and say, 'Here are five things I don't like about what you're doing, and we have to fix it.'

Commercial organisations that operate responsibly have benefitted by increased revenues of 682% compared to 166% for those that don't

Sometimes, I think my most important job as a CEO is to listen for bad news. If you don't act on it, your people will eventually stop bringing bad news to your attention and that is the beginning of the end.

Leadership produces change. That is its primary function

There is no business on a dead planet

Profit is not the proper end and aim of management - it is what makes all of the proper ends and aims possible

As a manager the important thing is not what happens when you are there, but what happens when you are not there