Quotes About Leadership

The most important figures needed for management of any organization are unknown and unknowable.

It is not enough that top management commit themselves for life to quality and productivity. They must know what it is that they are committed to- that is what they must do.

MBWA (management by walking around) is hardly ever effective. The reason is that someone in management, walking around, has little idea about what questions to ask, and usually does not pause long enough at any spot to get the right answer.

The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job.

Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody's job.

A new president came, talked with the head of sales, design, manufacturing, consumer research, and so forth. Everybody was doing a superb job, and had been doing so for years. Nobody had any problems. Yet somehow or other the company was going down the tube. Why? The answer was simple. Each staff area was sub-optimizing its own work, but not working as a team for the company.

The job of management is to replace work standards by knowledgeable and intelligent leadership.

The superintendent is afraid to make a decision. If he does nothing, he has nothing to explain to his superiors. No explanation is required if a man in management for doing nothing.

A supervisor comes in and is gone in five weeks. Another one comes in. He likewise knows nothing about this job and has no intention to learn much about it, as he too will move on any day.

What good comes of making a suggestion to foreman? He just smiles and walks away.

The pay and privilege of the captains of industry are now so closely linked to the quarterly dividend that they may find it personally unrewarding to do what is right for the company.

He shaped and molded that office to the contours of his own heroic stature.

Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,- criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led, - this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society

Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.

I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.

Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good -- we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know -- and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them.

Expect no help from others, for who Talk sense to princes or refer to The scorpion in official speeches As they unveil some granite Progress Leading a child and holding a bunch Of lilies?

I don't have to give [Donald Trump] a chance.

If a sufficient number of management layers are superimposed on top of each other, it can be assured that disaster is not left to chance.

A chance, as a coach, to take a team to the World Cup finals is probably as high up the tree as it gets, certainly with one-day cricket.

Super-ambitious goals tend to be unifying and energizing to people; but only if they believe there's a chance of success.

When we started out in '64, um, I was playing Number One, which was a woman second in command of a star ship.

This business is always changing. If you're going to be a leader, you've got to take chances.

We stand a better chance with aristocracy, whether hereditary or elective, than with monarchy.