Proactive Management Quotes

I was on the board of the Mayo Clinic. I was diagnosed there, and I could pick up the phone and get a hold of whoever I wanted to. What I learned is that you really have to get proactive and manage your case.

Don't wait untill problems pile up and cause a lot of trouble before trying to solve them. Leaders must march ahead the movement, not lag behind it.

The great secret of good management is to be more alert to prevent a man's going wrong than eager to punish him for it.

Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.

You cannot manage an airline from a corner office in Willis Tower. That doesn't work. You've got to manage by walking around.

A lot of times in a record company environment, it's, 'All right, go out on the road, go get some experience, come back in six months, and we'll see where we are.' I've erased that. Now it's, 'This is what we're working on today. I expect you to come in tomorrow and address this and be better.'

The way you continue to be a successful business is you don't wait for the car to go off the cliff. You have to manage yourself. And make sure you do it in the right way so you are not making decisions in crisis.

Never rest on your oars as a boss. If you do, the whole company starts sinking.

The art of managing and leading comes down to a simple thing. Determining and facing reality about people, situations, products, and then acting decisively and quickly on that reality. Think how many times we have procrastinated, hoped it would get better. Most of the mistakes you've made have been through not being willing to face into it, straight in the mirror that reality you find, then taking action on it. That's all managing is, defining and acting. Not hoping, not waiting fro the next plan. Not rethinking it. Getting on with it. Doing it. Defining and doing it.

You need people who can walk their companies into the future rather than back them into the future.

You can't always wait for the guys at the top. Every manager at every level in the organization has an opportunity, big or small, to do something. Every manager's got some sphere of autonomy. Don't pass the buck up the line.

Conservation is a positive exercise of skill and insight, not merely a negative exercise of abstinence and caution.

And he will manage the cure best who has foreseen what is to happen from the present state of matters.

I demand pretty aggressive goal setting and a commitment to measured progress towards those goals because I don't like surprises. I don't even like good surprises.

Good managers have a bias for action.

I've always said manage in good times so that you're ready for the bad times.

I would like to think that during my time at Stoke - and other clubs I was at - I was always a manager that wanted to play in the right way, with purpose, with drive, and to try to dictate to the opposition if you could.

A system must be managed. It will not manage itself.

The foreman today does not merely deal with trouble, he forestalls trouble. In fact, we don't think much of a foreman who is always dealing with trouble; we feel that if he is doing his job properly, there won't be so much trouble.

The way to keep weeds from overwhelming you is to deal with them constantly and in their early stages.

An unsuccessful manager blames failure on his obligations; the effective manager turns them to his own advantage. A speech is a chance to lobby...a visit to an important customer a chance to extract trade information.