Lee Iacocca Quotes

The person who knows "how" will always have a job. The person who knows "why" will always be his boss

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.

Management teams aren't good at asking questions. In business school, we train them to be good at giving answers.

The day I left baseball, I became smart. When I was in baseball, I played for the love of the game. I'd sign any contract they gave me. But then I stopped playing and began doing interviews with the players at the ball park. I began to see the light.

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.

My biggest thing is, I'm learning what it's like to carry myself in a personal way and also a professional way: how I can be a leader and do multitasking.

The way to develop decisiveness is to start right where you are, with the very next question you face.

Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.

Problem-solving becomes a very important part of our makeup as we grow into maturity or move up the corporate ladder.

Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge.

The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

The amount of meetings I've been in - people would be shocked. But that's how you gain experience, how you can gain knowledge, being in meetings and participating. You learn and grow.

Good thinkers are always in demand. A person who knows how may always have a job, but the person who knows why will always be his boss.

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.

Objective leaders identify their unproductive mental models and tweak them for greater effectiveness.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

I've been fortunate to work with some really smart people. Larry Page is an extremely smart guy, most probably one of the smartest people I've worked with.

Intellectual capital will always trump financial capital.

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

Men of power have no time to read; yet the men who do not read are unfit for power.

I learned hard lessons, and I've taken that lesson and it's helped me become a better business person and a better leader.

Men of routine or men who can do what they are told are not hard to find; but men who can think and plan and tell the routine men what to do are very rare.

The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another thing to open the box.

People are powerfully moved by imagination, belief, and knowledge. They can consider the past and future. They can make changes in their behavior out of reason in a way that animals can't do.

The most obvious purpose of college education is to help students acquire information and knowledge by acquainting them with facts, theories, generalizations, principles, and the like. This purpose scarcely requires justification.