Clayton Christensen Quotes

Effective management always means asking the right question.

If I'm in my position at a company, I may not have the knowledge of the C.E.O., I may not know what's possible, or I may not have the creativity, but if I can identify a problem, that's a valuable thing.

The experience of learning how to get straight to the core of a problem proved to be of immense value later when I had a long succession of responsibilities in large, complex government departments.

There is no substitute for accurate knowledge. Know yourself, know your business, know your men.

As a goalkeeper you need to be good at organising the people in front of you and motivating them. You need to see what's going on and react to the threats. Just like a good manager in business.

The quality of a leader cannot be judged by the answers he gives, but by the questions he asks.

The successful business executive can handle challenges and solve problems at a remarkable clip.

I was a general business major, which meant that in any business school and particularly at Smith School, which is a very good school, you do a lot of team projects. Well I was the guy who gave the presentations for the team projects.

What do you need to succeed in business? You need the ability to think critically and communicate, and those things you can get just as easily out of a philosophy degree.

I think that business leaders today have to be more rounded than they used to be, they have to be completely multi-functional and fast-moving.

We mislead ourselves when we pretend we can make someone into an effective manager by putting them through a few courses in business school.

Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.

Debates measure abilities you don't need to govern, like glibness. To govern you should be thoughtful, not glib. A debater has a sense of humor, but what's it got to do with governing? The ability to think on your feet. You make a budget sitting on your tush.

In my experience, the most effective professionals in business and government have the ability to get things done. They're trained to work with multiple stakeholders, to understand how to identify a problem, devise solutions, to compromise and work well with others.

Dad was an outstanding leader. He'd bring in top thinkers from a wide array of fields - how to fix the Detroit schools, for example. I watched him in these meetings. He listened and probed.

Candidates need to demonstrate strategic thinking and strong problem solving skills. And, just as importantly, they need to know when and how to ask for help.

The path to success isn't through my lizard brain, it's through high quality collaboration and making good stuff and understanding difficult situations fully enough to come up with good (or even great) solutions quickly.

Chess is a game that benefits people of all ages, especially kids, in any area of life, business, problem solving, and social skills. Chess has the unique ability to combine focus, concentration, imagination, coordination, teamwork, and leadership all at the same time.

There's a conventional wisdom that says that strategic thinking is much more important than relationship building, which doesn't seem to be nearly as highly valued as it should be, based on what some of the leaders that I've spoken with have said to me.

I have picked the very, very best deputy that I could. David Parker is a fantastic guy. He's a person who I trust absolutely. He's got a wonderful sense for policy. He will be great on organisation, and I know that I could not have a better deputy.

Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.

I.B.M. was my college education, effectively. They were very good at teaching you management.

I don't really have preferred roles except those with some complexity.

Football, that's just athletics. But in the business world - doing everything - people are competing. So you need good work ethics, and I think it helped me to develop good work ethics, being in a small town.

Well, the first quality of being a good leader is you have to be able to follow. See, a good leader can't just be the leader all the time, I have to be able to follow.