Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Strategy is a pattern in a stream of decisions
Learning is not doing; it is reflecting on doing.
Data don't generate theory - only researchers do that.
The prime occupational hazard of a manager is superficiality.
Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it.
Technologies tend to undermine community and encourage individualism.
Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet
An obsession with control generally seems to reflect a fear of uncertainty.
Organizations are communities of human beings, not collections of human resources
Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: its starting point.
An enterprise is a community of human beings, not a collection of "human resources".
Empowerment is what managers do to people. Engagement is what managers do with people.
While hard data may inform the intellect, it is largely soft data that generates wisdom.
Never set out to be the best. It's too low a standard. Set out to be good. Do Your best.
Anecdotal data is not incidental to theory development at all, but an essential part of it.
Corporations are social institutions. If they don't serve society, they have no business existing
Why does every generation have to think that he lives in the period with the greatest turbulence?
Strategies grow initially like weeds in a garden, they are not cultivated like tomatoes in a hothouse.
No generalizing beyond the data, no theory. No theory, no insight. And if no insight, why do research.
When the world is predictable you need smart people. When the world is unpredictable you need adaptable people.
To 'turn around' is to end up facing the same way. Maybe that is the problem, all the turning organizations around.
Management and leadership are not separate spheres. The two skills work together in the larger realm of “communityship.
Everyone is against micro managing but macro managing means you're working at the big picture but don't know the details.
Management is a curious phenomenon. It is generously paid, enormously influential, and significantly devoid of common sense
Often, M.B.A.s will parachute around from one company or industry to another, without really understanding what's behind it.
If the private sectors are about markets and the public sectors are about governments, then the plural sector is about communities.
We have great managers who havent spent a day in management school. Do we have great surgeons that havent spent a day in surgical school?
Most of the time, strategies should not be formulating strategy at all; they should be getting on with implementing strategies they already have.
That is the trouble with flying: We always have to return to airports. Thank of how much fun flying would be if we didn't have to return to airports.
My feeling about executive bonuses is that any candidate for a chief executive job who even raises the issue of bonuses should be dismissed out of hand.
Strategy-making is an immensely complex process involving the most sophisticated, subtle, and at times subconscious of human cognitive and social processes.
Organizational effectiveness does not lie in that narrow minded concept called rationality. It lies in the blend of clearheaded logic and powerful intuition
Corporations are economic entities, to be sure, but they are also social institutions that must justify their existence by their overall contribution to society.
Managers who don't lead are quite discouraging, but leaders who don't manage don't know what's going on. It's a phony separation that people are making between the two.
The idea that you can take smart but inexperienced 25-year-olds who never managed anything and turn them into effective managers via two years of classroom training is ludicrous.
Strategic planning is not strategic thinking. Indeed, strategic planning often spoils strategic thinking, causing managers to confuse real vision with the manipulation of numbers.
Companies are communities. Theres a spirit of working together. Communities are not a place where a few people allow themselves to be singled out as solely responsible for success.
Companies are communities. There's a spirit of working together. Communities are not a place where a few people allow themselves to be singled out as solely responsible for success.
This obsession with leadership... It's not neutral; it's American, this idea of the heroic leader who comes in on a white horse to save the day. I think it's killing American companies.
Effective managing therefore happens where art , craft, and science meet. But in a classroom of students without managerial experience, these have no place to meet there is nothing to do.
No job is more vital to our society than that of the manager. It is the manager who determines whether our social institutions serve us well or whether they squander our talents and resources.
We're all flawed, but basically, effective managers are people whose flaws are not fatal under the circumstances. Maybe the best managers are simply ordinary, healthy people who aren't too screwed up.
It is time to recognize conventional MBA programs for what they are - or else to close them down. They are specialized training in the functions of business, not general educating in the practice of management.
If you ask managers what they do, they will most likely tell you that they plan, organise, co-ordinate and control. Then watch what they do. Don't be surprised if you can't relate what you see to those four words.
What I have against M.B.A.s is the assumption that you come out of a two-year program probably never having been a manager - at least for full-time younger people M.B.A. programs - and assume you are ready to manage.
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.
So technologies, whether it is a telephone or an iPhone, computers in general or automobiles, television even, all individualize us. We all sit in front of our iPhones and communicating but are we really communicating?
The real challenge in crafting strategy lies in detecting subtle discontinuities that may undermine a business in the future. And for that there is no technique, no program, just a sharp mind in touch with the situation.
You can teach all sorts of things that improve the practice of management with people who are managers. What you cannot do is teach management to somebody who is not a manager, the way you cannot teach surgery to somebody whose not a surgeon.
What you get out of an M.B.A. programme, no matter how much experience, is functional tools and understanding in disciplines: you'll understand economics, you'll understand marketing, finance, accounting. That, M.B.A. programmes do very well.