Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes

When leaders throughout an organization take an active, genuine interest in the people they manage, when they invest real time to understand employees at a fundamental level, they create a climate for greater morale, loyalty, and, yes, growth.

The secret of successful managing is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the four guys who haven't made up their minds.

You can employ men and hire hands to work for you, but you must win their hearts to have them work with you.

Do you have a real interest in people who work for you? Most good leaders have that - it's hard to get someone to follow you if they feel like you hate 'em.

When I want to choose to work with someone, you know, I definitely have to do some research on their background and how they were raised as people.

The way management treats associates is exactly how the associates will treat the customers.

After 'Psychonauts,' we could have laid off half our team so that we'd have more money and time to sign 'Brutal Legend.' But doing so would have meant breaking up a team that had just learned how to work well together. And what message would that have sent to our employees? It would say that we're not loyal to them, and that we don't care.

Since most startups operate at a break-neck pace, with a concept to prove or a product to launch within a rapidly shortening runway of financing, company culture often gets shoved aside. This is a big, big mistake: Nobody serious about their business should put culture in the corner.

Corporate culture matters. How management chooses to treat its people impacts everything - for better or for worse.

Previous experience, key skills, and education. They're undoubtedly all important things you consider when filtering through applicants in order to make a new hire. But, what's another major determining factor of whether or not that hopeful interviewee deserves an offer letter? Cultural fit.

Many managers feel, somewhat cynically, that people are being paid to do their jobs and that's that. This attitude reflects an insensitivity to people that is a trademark of many hockey-style managers.

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.

I choose to work with every single person that I work with. That ends up being the most important factor. I don't interact with people I don't like or admire. That's the key. It's like marrying.

Management by Walking Around

One of the things that unfortunately happens in organizations that become dysfunctional is that the very first thing to go is the amount of care and attention that you place on the workplace and the environment within which people work.

I always tell people that you should only hire people to be on your team if you would work for them.

You want to show your people that you value them, and you're not going to hurt them just to get a little more money in the short term. Not furloughing people breeds loyalty. It breeds a sense of security. It breeds a sense of trust.

I think, for me, it's very important to have a good team and to feel comfortable in the environment.

I was the personnel director there with the Cowboys.

You have to let the team develop. You can't say, 'Oh, I got empty seats, I'm going to change the team.' It just doesn't work that way.

I work with CEOs and their executive teams... and very few of these people are really indifferent about their employees or their customers.

What really makes your business is your workers - their commitment, their knowledge, how you train them, how you treat them. They have to make the entity a winning entity.

Allegri is an easy coach to understand, as he doesn't like to work with stupid people.

At City, I didn't realise how much we had to do until we got there. Here, I didn't need to change the staff because there is quality already. So they certainly don't need me getting in the way in training by trying to show I can still play. No way.

We treat the management-to-workforce relationship as very important and will continue to invest in that relationship.