Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When you start thinking about leaving, choose your moment carefully. Go out while you’re still on top, not when you’re no longer in control of events.
If you have not been a villain at a certain point in time, you will never be a hero. And the day you are a hero, you may become a villain the next day.
What I worry about is not just Nissan, but Japanese manufacturers losing motivation to maintain production in Japan. The high yen is definitely a headwind.
You want to make sure this particular car is going to please the customer and then you're going to be rewarded with something that is going to please the shareholder.
More and more, in any company, managers are dealing with different cultures. Companies are going global, but the teams are being divided and scattered all over the planet.
Is Europe going to be breaking? I don't think so. I think the euro will stay. I think at the end of the day Europeans will find the solutions in order to hold Europe together.
Employees are your most valuable assets. They are the heart and guts of a company. This doesn't mean that from time to time, you aren't going to do what is good for the company.
In most companies people make a specific contribution to the company in their function. But it is not expressed in terms of profit, only in terms of performing their function better.
There are always lessons that can be learned from another manufacturer. You can learn from their successes and from their mistakes also. But you cannot replicate; you can only learn.
When a company is facing a problem, it always takes a stance and takes a decision, but at the same time it wants to make sure of what it can learn from it, what enhancements it can make.
I think we're going to have some difficulty in front of us. I have absolutely no doubt the next three, four years Europe are going to be at best stagnation. We are preparing for tough times.
You go to a plant not only to pat the people on the back, but to tell them about the opportunities they have to do a better job. Quality is one of the opportunities they have to do a better job.
When your results are good, you are obviously going to have a lot of press. And when you start to falter a little bit, you are going to have some criticism, and there is nothing abnormal in that.
Commitment. This is my favorite word because in some way, people who are committed are always much more interesting and much more reliable, and much more, I would say, deep than people who are not.
You have to listen to the people who have a negative opinion as well as those who have positive opinion. Just to make sure that you are blending all these opinions in your mind before a decision is made.
We are still keeping, as much as we can to the one million commitment that we made, hoping that at a certain point in time, the headwinds represented by the strength of the yen will be a little bit less strong.
We don't know where the markets are going....we have to observe what's going down, see the trends, look at every vibration on the market, prepare the technology and jump when consumers start to think one way or the other
I approve designs not because I think I am more gifted or somebody who can see ahead three or four years from now, but just to make sure that the design is a logical, rational decision, taken after analyzing pros and cons.
Cars have a large engine in the front and you have a gearbox, which is cumbersome. Electric cars don't have this problem. The motor is much smaller, the battery is below you. This will allow you to play with different shapes.
We have some worse scenarios for which we need to prepare as companies. For the moment, we're planning for the worst, and the worst is now, and the car market is down more than 15 percent in France. There is so much uncertainty.
Good is somebody who delivered and allowed the company to overcome obstacles, without leaving a profound impact on its culture. Great is somebody who leads his company to achievements and performance and value that nobody was expecting it had.
I would say a good leader brings results. A great leader writes a new story, it's different. Obviously a new story has to incorporate a lot of results. But a story is a chapter in the life of a company that people want to write and want to remember.
When you're CEO, you have to have two conditions: first, shareholders need to trust you and want you to head your company. The second is that you need to feel the motivation to do the job. So, as long as both are reunited, you continue to do the job.
Being in a multicultural environment in childhood is going to give you intuition, reflexes and instincts. You may acquire basic responsiveness later on, but it's never going to be as spontaneous as when you have been bathing in this environment during childhood.
You don't implement change easily in Japan unless you explain very clearly why you need to do this change, how you're going to do this change and what's going to be the outcome of this change. If you offset or you forget to explain one of these three steps you're not going to do it.
When you're C.E.O., you have to have two conditions: first, shareholders need to trust you and want you to head your company. The second is that you need to feel the motivation to do the job. So, as long as both are reunited, you continue to do the job. And today, they are reunited.
If we come to the conclusion after 90 days that the synergies are big enough to justify the efforts, then we can go to the second step, which consists of saying: what would be the best organization and conditions - including shareholdings - in order to make sure the synergies happen.
I think that the best training a top manager can be engaged in is management by example. I want to make sure there is no discrepancy between what we say and what we do. If you preach accountability and then promote somebody with bad results, it doesn't work. I personally believe the best training is management by example. Don't believe what I say. Believe what I do.