Every company that has an economist working for him has one employee too many.
Most companies are very quick to hire and slow to fire, when really it should be the other way around.
American labor will realize that its function is not to increase jobs, but to multiply the wealth and to expand the numbers benefited by the wealth at the swiftest possible rate.
The 1980s will seem like a walk in the park when compared to new global challenges, where annual productivity increases of 6% may not be enough. A combination of software, brains, and running harder will be needed to bring that percentage up to 8% or 9%.
We have to have workers that will produce more and will stop work when it is not needed.
People are not your most important asset....the right people are.
Management capability is always less than the organization actually needs.
Have the right people in the right places, working together
The corporate world is appallingly bad at capitalizing on the strengths of its people.
Good leaders must know how to reward those who succeed and know when to retrain, move, or fire ineffective staff.
The economy of human time is the next advantage of machinery in manufactures.
How unhappy are you that your dishwasher has replaced washing dishes by hand, your washing machine has displaced washing clothes by hand or your vacuum cleaner has replaced hand cleaning? My guess is this ‘job displacement’ has been very welcome, as will the ‘job displacement’ that will occur over the next 10 years. This is a good thing. Everyone wants more jobs and less work.
We need people who can actually do things. We have too many bosses and too few workers.
If we get the right people in the right job we've won the game.
Modern science and technology can relieve men of the necessity for specialized, imbecile labor. They may, in principle, provide the basis for a rational social order based on free association and democratic control, if we have the will to create it.
In manufacturing, we try to stamp out variance. With people, variance is everything.
Recessions are great because they unlock the best people.
As you grow, the productivity I think, goes down with the square of the number of employees if you don't make an effort.
When you're running a company, creating jobs is the last thing you want to. When you're running a company you want to employ as few people as possible, and yet you inadvertently create jobs.
Of all the decisions an executive makes, none is as important as the decisions about people, because they determine the performance capacity of the organization.
We need to make sure we have the best people we can in our operations, and that is a constant challenge. There is always room to improve.
If you ever find a man who is better than you are - hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself.
Some think that it is cruel or brutal to remove the bottom 10 percent of our people. It isn't. It's just the opposite. What I think is brutal and "false kindness" is keeping people around who aren't going to grow and prosper. There's no cruelty like waiting and telling people late into their careers that they don't belong - just when the options are limited and they're putting their children through college or paying off big mortgages.
As an economy measures performance in terms of the creation of money, people become a major source of inefficiency.
We want to get full value out of labour so that we may be able to pay it full value. It is use - not conservation - that interests us.
