Quotes About Leadership

By embracing decision-focused planning, companies will almost certainly find that the quantity and quality of their decisions will improve.

Corporations that do a better-than-average job of developing leaders put an emphasis on creating challenging opportunities for relatively young employees.

what should he do to make strategic planning drive more, better, and faster decisions? Like

More than anything else, this disconnect—between the way planning works and the way decision making happens—explains the frustration, if not outright antipathy, most executives feel toward strategic planning.

use the strategy development process to drive decision making.

What the railroads lack is not opportunity but some of the managerial imaginativeness and audacity that made them great.

Because major change requires people across an entire organization to adapt, you as a leader need to resist the reflex reaction of providing people with the answers. Instead, force yourself to transfer, as Roosevelt did, much of the work and problem solving to others. If you don't, real and sustainable change won't occur. In addition, it's risky on a personal level to continue to hold on to the work that should be done by others.

Leadership has many voices. You need to be who you are, not try to emulate somebody else.

When told that future promotions will depend to some degree on their ability to nurture leaders, even people who say that leadership cannot be developed somehow find ways to do it.

There are five degrees of initiative that the manager can exercise in relation to the boss and to the system: wait until told (lowest initiative); ask what to do; recommend, then take resulting action; act, but advise at once; and act on own, then routinely report (highest initiative).

Transformations often begin, and begin well, when an organization has a new head who is a good leader and who sees the need for a major change.

The most dramatic change will be the marketing department's reinvention as a "customer department." The first order of business is to replace the traditional CMO with a new type of leader—a chief customer officer. The

helping people overcome their limitations to become more successful at work is at the very heart of effective management.

Executives also owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs. It may not be the employees' fault that they are underperforming, but even so, they have to be removed.

But Welch also thought through another issue before deciding where to concentrate his efforts for the next five years. He asked himself which of the two or three tasks at the top of the list he himself was best suited to undertake. Then he concentrated on that task; the others he delegated. Effective executives try to focus on jobs they'll do especially well. They know that enterprises perform if top management performs—and don't if it doesn't.

Articulate each meeting's purpose (Making an announcement? Delivering a report?). Terminate the meeting once the purpose is accomplished. Follow up with short communications summarizing the discussion, spelling out new work assignments and deadlines for completing them. General Motors CEO Alfred Sloan's legendary mastery of meeting follow-up helped secure GM's industry dominance in the mid-twentieth century.

In both small and large organizations, a successful guiding team may consist of only three to five people during the first year of a renewal effort. But in big companies, the coalition needs to grow to the 20 to 50 range before much progress can be made in phase three and beyond.

Vision and Priorities In the press of day-to-day activities, leaders often fail to adequately communicate their vision to the organization, and in particular, they don't communicate it in a way that helps their subordinates determine where to focus their own efforts. How often do I communicate a vision for my business? Have I identified and communicated three to five key priorities to achieve that vision? If asked, would my employees be able to articulate the vision and priorities?

Strong networks of informal relationships—the kind found in companies with healthy cultures—help coordinate leadership activities in much the same way that formal structure coordinates managerial activities.

The best way to build a great team is not to select individuals for their smarts or accomplishments but to learn how they communicate and to shape and guide the team so that it follows successful communication patterns.

Our research indicates that of the six leadership styles, the authoritative one is most effective, driving up every aspect of climate. Take clarity. The authoritative leader is a visionary; he motivates people by making clear to them how their work fits into a larger vision for the organization. People who work for such leaders understand that what they do matters and why. Authoritative leadership also maximizes commitment to the organization's goals and strategy.

One can lead with no more than a question in hand.

In one midsize European company, the first pass at a vision contained two-thirds of the basic ideas that were in the final product.

Over the years, 3M has had a policy that at least 25% of its revenue should come from products introduced within the last five years. That encourages small new ventures, which in turn offer hundreds of opportunities to test and stretch young people with leadership potential.