Tom DeMarco Quotes

A manager is not a person who can do the work better than his men; he is a person who can get his men to do the work better than he can.

A good leader should focus on making sure everyone is being given the tools to do their job, not just expecting - poof! - that they're going to produce great work.

My idea of management is that what your job is as the boss is to find really good people and empower them and leave them alone.

The one word that makes a good manager - decisiveness.

Leadership is an active role; 'lead' is a verb. But the leader who tries to do it all is headed for burnout, and in a powerful hurry.

Of all the things I've done, the most vital is coordinating those who work with me and aiming their efforts at a certain goal.

There's no way a director can communicate with every single person on the set and yet they need to motivate and instill an ambition to want to do their best work.

The secret to success is good leadership, and good leadership is all about making the lives of your team members or workers better.

Delegating doesn't mean passing off work you don't enjoy, but letting your employees stretch their skills and judgment.

The great irony of management is that the higher up you go, the less actual control you have. When you are but a humble coder, you make the computer do exactly what you want; when you're a manager, you only hope that people understand what you want, and then trust/pray that they do it both correctly and in a timely manner.

True leadership isn't about having an idea. It's about having an idea and recruiting other people to execute on this vision.

To be an effective leader, you have to have a manipulative streak - you have to figure out the people working for you and give each tasks that will take advantage of his strength.

I'm not really a management-type person. It doesn't suit my personality to be bossing people around.

Basically, a manager's job is to make other people more productive. What's one really good way to do that? Do the work that is getting in their way. Which means find out what kind of important work your developers dislike the most, and do it for them.

I am learning how to delegate and how to empower people.

Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere as long as the policy you've decided upon is being carried out.

The most important thing I've done at work has been to surround myself with amazing people who I trust and empower fully to do stuff better than I could.

A good leader has to at some point trust those around him; otherwise, nothing constructive is going to get done.

The best thing you can do as a leader when people are pressed is get the obstacles out of their way.

Management is nothing more than motivating other people.

The one thing I've known and I've learned from the best managers, it's to stay positive.

When you're at the lower levels in the organization, you need to win and be right. But as you move up, you need to let other people win and be right, and become a manager and delegate responsibility.

Put the right people in the right places, and then you trust them to do the right stuff.

There are many elements to a campaign. Leadership is number one. Everything else is number two.

Teamwork makes the dream work, but a vision becomes a nightmare when the leader has a big dream and a bad team.