Management Philosophy Quotes

When someone is made the head of an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain, I send him a Matrioshka doll from Gorky. If he has the curiosity to open it, and keep opening it until he comes to the inside of the smallest doll, he finds this message: If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.

Many leaders are tempted to lead like a chess master, striving to control every move, when they should be leading like gardeners, creating and maintaining a viable ecosystem in which the organization operates.

Managing by values - not by profits - is a powerful process that will set your business on the path to becoming what I call a 'Fortunate 500' company.

Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet

Chuck Noll knew how he could help people. He was a teacher. He was a guy that was very good at selecting people, getting them to fit in. He wasn't the guy that was going to sit there and motivate you, intrinsically. That wasn't what he was best at. So he hired people that were good at that.

Management is a far more homely business than its would be scientists suggest, more closely allied to cookery than any other human activity. Like cooking, it rests on a degree of organisation and on adequate resources. But just as no two chefs run their kitchens the same way, so no two managements are the same.

I grew up in the IBM school of management.

Forget socialism, capitalism, just-in-time deliveries, salary surveys, and the rest ... concentrate on building organizations that accomplish that most difficult of all challenges: to make people look forward to coming to work in the morning.

When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out.

I'm slowly becoming a convert to the principle that you can't motivate people to do things, you can only demotivate them. The primary job of the manager is not to empower but to remove obstacles.

I don't think I was talking specifically about Steve Jobs. It was just a general philosophy about one person grows up and he's kind of managing companies and every day he's working making sure this is in place and that's in place.

All good management is the expression of one great idea

Management is a curious phenomenon. It is generously paid, enormously influential, and significantly devoid of common sense

The subordinate's job is not to reform or reeducate the boss, not to make him conform to what the business schools or the management book say bosses should be like. It is to enable a particular boss to perform as a unique individual.

I won't close down a business of subnormal profitability merely to add a fraction of a point to our corporate returns. I also feel it inappropriate for even an exceptionally profitable company to fund an operation once it appears to have unending losses in prospect. Adam Smith would disagree with my first proposition and Karl Marx would disagree with my second; the middle ground is the only position that leaves me comfortable.

Headship is not rulership; it is leadership.

A network marketing business is based upon the leaders pulling people up, while a traditional corporate or government business is based upon only promoting a few and keeping the masses of employees content with a steady paycheck.

Empowerment is what managers do to people. Engagement is what managers do with people.

One of the strong principles that I believe in is that you're always learning, whether you're a commissioner, a current general manager, a president or an owner, or somebody that's trying to become a general manger or a coach in the NFL.

My father has been my role model. And I always looked up to him - be it his management philosophy or his approach towards life.

Ferguson, as a manager, and Ken, as a director, are very similar. One's a great manager, the other a great director, but both have a lot of humanity and a lot of humility. They always give you the energy... with Ferguson when we played a game it was like it was his first game - he's so passionate and gives you ambition every time. And Ken works the same way - they're very similar.

I don't believe in just ordering people to do things. You have to sort of grab an oar and row with them. My philosophy is to stay as close as possible to what's happening. If I can't solve something, how the hell can I expect my managers to.

Every managerial act must be seen as an unequivocal support for urgency in pursuit of constant testing, change, and improvement.

A boss wants to pay for results, an employee wants recognition for effort. If a boss recognizes effort, they will get even better results.

People talk about managers having certain styles and philosophies... well, Benitez manages by conflict. Look right through his career and you will see it everywhere.