George F. Kennan Quotes

Personnel is policy.

I had never been in charge of anything. I'd always worked for someone. I worked for a furniture warehouse. I did masonry. I always had a boss yelling at me. So I'd never been in charge of an organization.

Politics and power is a realm of relative influence.

I don't want to be a director, or to have responsibility for hundreds of people.

Clearly, as a CEO, you have other functions that are managed by other people.

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.

Politics exist in the boardroom, as well.

The President is going to benefit from me reporting directly to him when I arrive.

If the staff lacks policy guidance against which to test decisions, their decisions will be random.

Management must manage!

We had the controlling shares but we weren’t in control.

I micromanage the selection of the cabinet.

Structure is not about moving boxes around on a chart. Structure is about power.

Analysts can choose the problems that they want to study whereas the statesman’s problems are imposed on him.

I have to let the general manager do what makes the most sense, or I can't hold him accountable.

When you're the CEO, you take responsibility.

Control is the source of strategic power.

Look first at management. That's the key to a company.

If I was to become a manager, I would not want someone else to be signing the players for the team that my job depended on.

Being a president is being a CEO, essentially.

Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering.

When people say - 'Well, do you miss being a judge since you're in Congress,' I go - 'Only when I want people to sit down and shut up.'

We are ready to say that we rule the entire Elgin enterprise as irrelevant to the present.

I've never seen myself as a manager. As a manager, you have to put all your time into the job, and that would be difficult for me.

There has been only one manager, and his name is John McGraw.