Unmotivated Employees Quotes

Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.

A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.

If you have a reputation as a big, stiff bureaucracy, you're stuck.

When I left school at 14, I thought I had better get a job. I got one in a factory where I sewed on buttons. It was so boring and we weren't allowed to talk or sing. I lasted a day.

I had a terrible manager once who described my career as 'spiraling downward.'

Bureaucrats: they are dead at 30 and buried at 60. They are like custard pies; you can't nail them to a wall.

One of the problems with industries that have been in relatively long-term declines is that, very often, the managements in those industries develop a kind of loser mentality. And when you ask them what's wrong with the business, they'll point to extraneous forces.

I had a great time as a teacher, but I was just treading water, as a lot of us do.

The reason nobody else in my business has any impact is because they're all comatose.

The Civil Service rewards those who do no more than sit at their desks and say no.

How many people are not as good as they could be at their job because they don't love it? They're not passionate about it. If you don't like something, why are you doing it?

A lot of times in our jobs, we go day-to-day, we're in a routine, we sometimes become robots.

For more than three months, I had been president and primary owner of Spellman Investigations, and I can say with complete certainty that I had more power in this office as an underling. My title, it seemed, was purely decorative. I was captain of an unfashionable and sinking ship.

I worked from 8 A.M. to 12 A.M., and sometimes until 2 A.M. There were no shifts, just a few dozen people, and we all polished glass. I didn't enjoy it.

Most managers were trained to be the thing they most despise - bureaucrats.

The culture of undermining sends signals of disrespect. This approach not only saps motivation and undermines teamwork, it also lowers the motivation to work extra hours anticipating what can go wrong.

I had a holiday job in a kitchen, but I think we'll draw a polite veil over that. There was nothing joyous or creative about it. And none of this helped my studies.

Work has become like prison because of the way we treat it. If you are trapped with people who you do not care for, it feels like a concentration camp.

Rotten bosses don't get better. Any strategy that assumes they can is doomed.

Pessimism doesn't grow your business or even maintain the status quo. The pessimists on your staff make the job harder for everyone around them. They make difficulties out of opportunities.

There is little incentive for initiative just now: the [State] Department seems to take no interest; we never receive comments on our work and many of our questions go unanswered.

Startups on the inside are always badly broken.

Having no choice doesn't result in innovation and performance improvement.

It's horrible when you go to work and you're not happy.

Work is making a living out of being bored.