Richard Manuel Quotes

Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.

In England, your manager is like a boss.

I had to delegate authority to the people on my staff. That means you shave away the hierarchy.

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

You can call anyyne here or call me. We have no formal chain of command.

If you've been on top of the food chain in the Armed Forces, that's who you are. You're used to dealing with your life in a particular way.

When I was working in the Pentagon, I had to own the recommendations I made up the chain of command.

Once in a while there's wisdom in recognizing that the Boss is.

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

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.

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

A sailing ship is no democracy; you don't caucus a crew as to where you'll go anymore than you inquire when they'd like to shorten sail.

In most companies, the formal hierarchy is a matter of public record - it's easy to discover who's in charge of what. By contrast, natural leaders don't appear on any organization chart.

Roger Goodell is doing his job. He's front office. Whatever he says goes, and I'll leave it at that.

The way you manage your company and the way you manage your people has to be totally different.

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.

Like a good parent can't also be his child's best friend, a leader with authority requires some separation from subordinates.

Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything.

A critical question to ask when bringing in a new CEO to take the reins of a company you started is: Do you want someone who will maintain company culture or reinvent it?

Great companies in the way they work, start with great leaders.

Every company has two organizational structures: The formal one is written on the charts; the other is the everyday relationship of the men and women in the organization.

Directors are the captains of the ship, and it's your job as the lead actor to make sure that the rest of the cast understand that by doing whatever he says.

He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.

Even when you’re in charge, you’re not sure who’s in charge.

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