Corporate Hierarchy Quotes

I think I understand the relationships between different people within the company: people who are straightforward employees, people who can impact the bottom line, and people who share in the bottom line. I don't think you can understand inequality in America unless you understand what's driving profitability.

Remember: your bosses prefer to keep you in dependent positions. It is in their interest that you do not become self-reliant, and so they will tend to hoard information. You must secretly work against this and seize this information for yourself.

I'm thinking, That's Barack Obama. He doesn't go to work. He doesn't go down to Congress and make a deal. What the hell's he doing sitting in the White House? If I were in that job, I'd get down there and make a deal. Sure, Congress are lazy bastards, but so what? You're the top guy. You're the president of the company. It's your responsibility to make sure everybody does well. It's the same with every company in this country, whether it's a two-man company or a two-hundred-man company... . And that's the pussy generation - nobody wants to work.

The path to the CEO's office should not be through the CFO's office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It needs to be through engineering and design.

Of all the subjects on this planet, I think my parents would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

All managers are losers, they are the most expendable pieces of furniture on the face of the Earth.

Nobody really likes large-scale organizations; nobody likes to take orders from a superior who takes orders from a superior who takes orders.

Policy bubbles up from the bottom. Decisions are made at the top.

At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top - I'm afraid that's not quite right.

Corporation: a miniature totalitarian state governed by a hierarchy of unelected officials who take a dim view of individualism, free speech, equality and eggheads. The backbone of all Western democracies.

The White House staff [under Richard Nixon] viewed Congress in much the same way that the chairman of the board of a huge corporation regards his regional sales managers.

Occasionally I get fed up, going to visit a factory, when I am being shown around by the chairman, who clearly hasn't got a clue, and I try to get hold of the factory manager, but I can't because the chairman wants to make sure he's the one in all the photographs.

A record company used to be a very good thing, but they ended up soul-destroyingly trapping people in the accounting department. And you couldn't get any further, and the heads of each department were changing all the time, so you couldn't have any permanent relationship within the corporation.

I learned in business that you had to be very careful when you told somebody that's working for you to do something, because the chances were very high he'd do it. In government, you don't have to worry about that.

The cavemen are still in charge at the networks. They're all white males, and you can't get away from that.

Directors assume I'm, like, establishment.

On ships they call them barnacles; in business they attach themselves to desks and are called vice presidents.

In a corporation, there can only be one guy in the end: the CEO.

Every employee in a company depends on the C.E.O. to make fast, high-quality decisions.

Big bureaucracies in business and government—they fail too.

The CEO era gave rise to the CFO (not certified flying object, as you might imagine, but chief financial officer) and, most recently, the CIO, chief investment officer, a nice boost for the bookkeeper you can't afford to give a raise . . .

I think 'Dilbert' will remain popular as long as employees are frustrated and they fear the consequences of complaining too loudly. 'Dilbert' is the designated voice of discontent for the workplace. I never planned it that way. It just happened.

I don't actually have problems dealing with corporate situations. There are times I've railed against it, but there are other times when I'm like, 'I'll take your money, no problem.'

When I was leader of the GLC, by the time I had been in control for three years, the difference in pay between the cleaner and the director general was a four-to-one ratio. I find that attractive.

In 1964, when Lee Iacocca said, 'Shelby, I want you to make a sports car out of the Mustang,' the first thing I said was, 'Lee, you can't make a race horse out of a mule. I don't want to do it.' He said, 'I didn't ask you to make it; you work for me.'