Timothy Hutton Quotes

As anyone who has covered the company for any length of time knows, Yahoo's record on major decision-making has been akin to a hippie commune - a lot of wrangling internally in a culture where everyone seems to have a voice and a reticence to push the button to launch.

It's good to have a leader, otherwise we argue too much.

I think that in any group activity - whether it be business, sports, or family - there has to be leadership or it won't be successful.

The problem with communicating without a coordinator is that everyone has to read everyone else's mind.

If three come together let them pick a leader.

Maybe because I've worked in the BBC for so long I am completely allergic to meetings.

Collaborative decision-making is very poor in crises.

If you let too many cooks in the kitchen it could cloud your vision of what you want to do.

Most bands don't work out. A small unit democracy is very, very difficult.

I think people fail to realize that teams and organizations have been stacking teams since way back in the day.

What I've learned is that unless it's an emergency, like a fire or brain surgery, hierarchy is not necessary and may be damaging. If you have a hierarchy, you're repeating the strengths and weaknesses of one person without allowing for the accumulative strength of a group.

Directing, what little I know, is as much knowing when to step in as when to step out.

You can't serve on every committee. But you can know what happened, what the debate was, who said what.

The optimum committee has no members.

I worked with a group of people who argued day and night - professors, officials, the Minister of Finance - but there were decisions that I had to make.

Anytime you get nine people together, whether it's at a party or it's in the conference room of the Supreme Court, you do have to maintain some order, or it does kind of degenerate into squabbling pretty quickly.

Even within the band, if I cannot manage to persuade the members of what I see to be the next course of action, how do you expect the group to deal with the expectations of thousands of people. It is not possible.

Democracy can tie your hands in a rock 'n' roll band, you know? It can be a great thing, but if you've got a certain amount of vision and you write a lot of songs, it's sometimes better to have your own band and make your own decisions.

A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.

And David consulted with the captains of thousands and hundreds, and with every leader.

There is little leadership or followership on the Hill.

The best … Committees consist of three persons, two of whom are always absent!

For running a country, team work is important, and the person at the helm has to enjoy teamwork.

When we come into the NSC, everybody has different opinions. At the end of the day, we present the president with all the facts. We let him make the decision. And we all, as a team, go out and support that decision.

If you give the boss all the decision-making power, they see the world through their eyes. The big innovations are generally such a shift that they won't see it. For a long time, it looked like it was just inevitable that you would get slow and bureaucratic.