Dean Acheson Quotes

Some magazines are run from the top down, where the editor-in-chief decides what every article is going to be and who's going to write them, and then they're doled out. My idea is to do it the opposite way, to do it from the bottom up.

You can't build a strong corporation with a lot of committees and a board that has to be consulted every turn. You have to be able to make decisions on your own.

Corporations, by their nature, do not function as democratic organizations.

I understand that bureaucracy, hierarchy and managing politics is not easy.

In a network situation, a vice president, while he's shaving, can decide your history.

In the larger companies, you have this tendency to get top-down direction.

In a corporation, there can only be one guy in the end: the CEO.

Let me control personnel, and I will ultimately control policy.

If it were up to the executives, they probably wouldn't have directors at all.

That the more authoritarian organizations survive and prevail goes generally unnoticed because people focus on the objectives of organizations, which are many and varied, rather than on their structures, which lend to be similar.

In Korea, the director is on top, and the power flows down vertically. On the set, I love to come up with ideas on the spot. But in Hollywood, if I were to come up with a certain idea on set, the idea had to be taken to all these different people who had to agree.

Collective management will build companies - not top-down decision-making.

Too many talk about a company's leadership, referring to the senior most executives in the organization. They are just that: senior executives. Leadership doesn't automatically happen when you reach a certain pay grade. Hopefully you find it there, but there are no guarantees.

You do not need 435 people playing commander-in-chief.

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

When the CEO makes a decision, people don't come back on it.

My predecessor, P. W. Botha, had an inner circle, and I did not like it. I preferred decisions to evolve out of cabinet discussions. That way, we achieved real co-ownership of our policies.

No matter how many or how few people you have reporting to you, you must remember that as you climb higher in the ranks, your words will be taken as commands even if you're just thinking out loud.

I'm not a policy and a strategy guy. I'm - you know, the military basically supports what the president wants, the decisions that he makes.

The problem with naming a No. 2 is you really want to throw all your weight behind the guy who is going to be the leader.

We have created trouble for ourselves in organizations by confusing control with order.

Most people associate command and control leadership with the military.

The last thing you want to do is read the latest poll and then make policy.

The day-to-day making of policy is arguing all the time.

Bureaucracy is widespread in the unemployed movement.... There is direct appointment and removals of Unemployed Council functionaries by the Party committees. These functionaries are responsible not to the masses but to the Party committees.