Executive Mindset Quotes

No executive devotes effort to proving himself wrong.

Most CEOs are patriotic and most CEOs can see the problems in front of them, and they want to do something about it. We don't always agree about the ways and means, but the objective? We're totally together.

Every adviser told me to study the company, learn the business for the first 90 days and don't make any decisions. I couldn't resist seeing broken things and immediately taking action.

Be serious. You've got to do the job you were hired to do well, but there's always more you can do. When I was an assistant, I would say to myself, 'You may not be an executive, but act like one.' I would volunteer for any creative assignment - read scripts, do 'coverage,' write notes.

In very big companies, you find less entrepreneurialism than you really want to see. Success is defined as 'don't make a mistake.' And you get to be the C.E.O. by outlasting everybody else, then you're there for five or six years, and you want to get your bonus on the way out.

Sports executives are great at convincing themselves whatever they believe is right and simply has to be.

Corporate executives are not all that conservative….They are not interested in the social issues and the big boys and girls are not interested in fighting regulation because that’s what keeps the little boys and girls from becoming big boys and girls.

As a studio executive, I took the approach that people are competent until proven otherwise. But when you make a movie, because there is so little time to fix things when they break, you have to almost come to it with the mindset that everyone is incompetent until proven otherwise.

Too many executives I've met over the years have the mentality of a bodybuilder; they've come to accept the idea that growth is synonymous with success.

I'm very director oriented.

The biggest barriers to strategic renewal are almost always top management's unexamined beliefs.

Coaching was something I've never had much interest in. I've always been a big-picture guy, like a manager has to be.

Clearly [Donald] Trump likes the way business executives and generals think and talk much more than policy professionals.

CEOs of top companies could probably use a dose of not-asking-for-raise behavior and less self-entitlement, rather than us trying to change girls in order to fit into the common mold of what we think a CEO looks like.

In a conversation with a male executive, he tells me that he doesn't hire women because 'it's not worth the trouble.' I mentally blacklist him.

Most executives I know are so action-oriented, or action-addicted, that time for reflection is the first casualty of their success.

From the Olympian heights of an executive suite, in an atmosphere where your success is judged by the extent to which you can maximise profits, the overwhelming tendency must be to see people as units of production, as indices in your accountants' books.

An executive should be a realist; and no one is less realistic than the cynic.

Executives do not on the whole do well with comedy. They can't understand it, they can't read it, they can't spot it.

My goal is to always be a transformational leader, and to go big. And when you go big, you don't always win. And I'm OK with that.

It was once rumored that fledgling executives walked around their offices backwards so they wouldn't have to face an issue.

A risk-taking environment starts at the top of a corporation. If the CEO doesn't have this spirit, chances are you won't find it anywhere else in the organization.