Betty Friedan Quotes

Many Chinese companies are run like military camps with military discipline. We do not run a company that way. It does not help the creative process.

It was Grant's company and he made all the decisions. And that was just fine.

Back when I was looking for my next step and was researching Gannett, I was interested in who was leading the various businesses within the organization: Are there a lot of women and minorities in important, operational roles, senior management and the board of directors?

Old-style management is irrelevant.

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

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

If tomorrow all of America were to become paternalistic, we would beat the Japanese every day of the week. I think that the concept of accusing someone of running a paternalistic company, that's not an accusation. One should compliment someone on that.

I think, in any workplace environment, the atmosphere trickles down from the top.

Unfortunately, as you hire more people, the casual, informal 'do what it takes' culture, which worked so well at less than 40 people, becomes chaotic and less effective.

I grew up in the IBM school of management.

I don't like the sort of hierarchical, totalitarian type of room a lot of directors can find themselves in.

One of the reasons I wanted to start a company is because I wanted an environment that I wanted to work in. I wanted people to be able to have a life - for it to be OK to leave for a lacrosse game or a doctor's appointment. So I think women do work differently; it's important to have both men and women. They offer different things.

Good people have always been at the heart of the Virgin business, and that's largely because we have tried to keep our business small, and our management teams tight-knit. I feel that small, compact companies, are better run. That is partly because people feel more connected in small companies.

A shared choice movement sees the fetus as the genes of a woman and the genes of a man; the flesh of the woman, the flesh of the man; the bone of a woman, the bone of a man; the responsibility of a woman, the responsibility of a man; the rights of a woman, the rights of a man. It desires a transition to equality.

I think having a daughter is just terrifying. Women in the world get the short end of the stick all the time in many, many ways, and so it's just terrifying to be like, "Well, this is the world we chose to bring you into. I'm sorry." It's not knowing how to prepare for that.

When I hear a company is being run by a team, my heart sinks, because you need to have that leader with a vision and heart that can move things forward.

As long as society tells men to be the salespersons of sex, it is sexist for society to put only men in jail if they sell well. We don't put other salespersons in jail for buying clients drinks and successfully transforming a "no" into a "maybe" into a "yes." If the client makes a choice to drink too much and the "yes" turns out to be a bad decision, it is the client who gets fired, not the salesperson.

There's a tremendous loss of talent to businesses who cannot make room for their employees to attend to family responsibilities. It really amounts to corporate waste: They hire really talented women and then lose them because they can't find ways to keep them productive and content the minute they can't "lean in."

I think it's tremendously important that women continue to be full participants in the corporate environment, and that they continue to seek the same responsibilities, opportunities and rewards in that environment that in the past have only been available to men.

I gave a talk on gender stuff at Facebook one morning and a man didn't come. It was optional; he didn't have to come. But he sent a note saying, "I missed your meeting because I drove my kids to school so my wife could do something else. Thank you for making that possible." I think that employee is a loyal employee for Facebook and I think more companies should want that kind of loyalty.

And I'm not a micromanagement guy. I prefer to spend my time doing other stuff than that.

The first thing I'd say to women is put aside the guilt. I think we're all genetically programmed to feel guilty for not giving total effort at the job.

Personally I have never been able to understand why the head of a big business, whether it be the Nation, the State or the Army, or Navy should not desire to have very strong and positive people under him.

Men and boys, we show our manhood through the way we treat our women. Our wives, our sisters, our mothers.

Sometimes you have to make decisions that necessarily exclude the collective. It's more difficult to be a friend - even though they know each other and they treat each other like friends, it's more of a challenge for them. It's just institutional fact; the two characters that are the most aloof are the ones who have the most responsibility.