Herb Kelleher Quotes

I don't read many business books. I read good fiction. Business is about people, so my favorite business books are anything by Dickens.

people are all there is to an organization

No matter the organization, the goal, or the mission, you've got to do it through people. It's been that way for me since my first command. I work to understand the people, their views and needs, and how tasks are being carried out.That interaction might cause me to modify my guidance or the way I delegate. It also affords me an opportunity to learn what goals people have and how as their boss I can facilitate their future in ways that not only help them, but also help the ship or the organization.

We don’t have business problems we have people problems. When we take care of our people problems, most of our business problems are automatically resolved

When you choose a managerial path, you are choosing to devote your life to people. Period.

Empowerment is what managers do to people. Engagement is what managers do with people.

In your company or industry, work every job in that industry. It's the only way of having a complete understanding of your people and your company.

I like to have fun at work. It's okay if I don't. I've had that a few times. But generally, I'm someone who has a lot of fun at work, because I like my job. I think it's a fantastic job, at least that part of it is a fantastic job. And I like to have fun, and I personally feel that whether you're talking about the cast or the crew or the director or any combination thereof, that when people feel involved and comfortable and they feel like their work is being supported, that's the best environment to do good work.

And people is the most important part of my job. I spend one third of my time on people.

Good customer service begins at the top. If your senior people don't get it, even the strongest links further down the line can become compromised.

When you're working, you have so many people working around you and being involved. It can get a bit overwhelming. I've just gotten used to it.

All good leaders listen to their people and empower them to go away and turn any innovative ideas they have into a reality.

Corporate strategy is usually only useful if you get people engaged with helping you to make it work.

The more seriously you take your growth, the more seriously your people will take you.

A good executive is one who makes people contentedly settle for less than they meant to get, in return for more than they meant to give.

At the end of the day, when you are in the front office, your tenure is dictated by the people surrounding you.

The most important role of managers is to create environment in which people are passionately dedicated to winning in marketplace.

What I'm trying to do is to create excitement. So people looking at the Bloomberg's office building say, "My goodness, what's going on here? There's something different about this company." You want the employees to get psyched. And it's a chance to meet each other. My job is to get people to work together. With free food and no offices, even for Bloomberg, this might be considered one of the world's great corporate headquarters.

When you spend many hours a week working with the same people - I mean television operates on really amazing hours and the gift of that is the trust that you feel and the intimacy that you feel with the people who you're working with.

If you're excited about what you're doing, it's a lot more likely that your employees will also be excited. People want to work for a person, not a company. It's about relationships.

Organizational health is the single greatest competitive advantage in any business.

Managers have traditionally developed the skills in finance, planning, marketing and production techniques. Too often the relations with their people have been assigned a secondary role. This is too important a subject not to receive first-line attention. In this regard we could learn much from the Japanese. We must reinvest in the human side of management.

But I like to think that a lot of managers and executives trying to solve problems miss the forest for the trees by forgetting to look at their people -- not at how much more they can get from their people or how they can more effectively manage their people. I think they need to look a little more closely at what it's like for their people to come to work there every day.

If you're building a startup or any sort of organization, take a few moments to reflect on the qualities that the people you most enjoy working with embody and the user experience of new people joining your organization, from the offer letter to their first day.

The best bosses understand the people working for them. That's the first component: what makes my people tick? What are they in it for?