Management Quotes

“We don’t have the right people” is an excuse that suits all times and all circumstances; it is a refuge for scoundrels. Moreover, it obscures leaders’ fundamental task of helping people do more together than they could individually.
— Peter M. Senge

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Leadership and Organizational Behavior

The dictionary — which, unlike the computer, is an essential leadership tool — contains multiple definitions of the word mission; the most appropriate here is, “purpose, reason for being.” Vision, by contrast, is “a picture or image of the future we seek to create,” and values articulate how we intend to live as we pursue our mission. Paradoxically, if an organization’s mission is truly motivating it is never really achieved. Mission provides an orientation, not a checklist of accomplishments. It defines a direction, not a destination. It tells the members of an organization why they are working together, how they intend to contribute to the world. Without a sense of mission, there is no foundation for establishing why some intended results are more important than others.

But, there is a big difference between having a mission statement and being truly mission-based. To be truly mission-based means that key decisions can be referred back to the mission — our reason for being. It means that people can and should object to management edicts that they do not see as connected to the mission…In most organizations, no one would dream of challenging a management decision on the grounds that it does not serve the mission. In other words, most organizations serve those in power rather than a mission.

[The mission] says rather, that the source of legitimate power in the organization is its guiding ideas…The cornerstone of a truly democratic system of governance is not voting or any other particular mechanism. It is the belief that power ultimately flows from ideas, not people. To be truly mission-based is to be democratic in this way, to make the mission more important than the boss, something that not too many corporations have yet demonstrated an ability to do.

While mission is foundational, it is also insufficient because, by its nature, it is extraordinarily difficult to assess how we are doing by looking only at the mission. For this we need to stick our necks out and articulate “an image of the future we seek to create.” Results-oriented leaders, therefore, must have both a mission and a vision. Results mean little without purpose, for a very practical and powerful reason: a mission instills both the passion and the patience for the long journey. While vision inspires passion, many failed ventures are characterized by passion without patience.
— Peter M. Senge

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Organizational Behavior and Vision

It is a funny thing about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.
— W. Somerset Maugham

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Attitude and Success

Companies that are successful avoid three deadly sins: 1. Arrogance that we will always be successful doing what we’ve always done. 2. Denial or not being realistic, looking in the mirror and saying there is something going on here. 3. Nostalgia for an old business model that has since decayed or is decaying.
— Peter Skarzynski (summarizing the thoughts of Gary

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Management and Organizational Behavior

I don’t think scale is the key, even though it’s much talked about. Global scale doesn’t give you the right to go into a country and make money. There’s plenty of evidence of that. Capabilities are more important than scale. That’s because value comes from serving customers well, which means that most of the added value is added locally.
— David Reid, deputy chairman of Tesco

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Management and Strategy

Now, here’s the dilemma: A lot has been said and written about capabilities — but most companies don’t really understand how to plan for them. And capability is a factor that still doesn’t have an equal place in the business-planning process: It’s not at the table along with finance and marketing. This goes beyond the old problem of the HR department not having equal standing in a company. This isn’t just about human resources. Capability is an issue that affects almost every function in a company. But when you sit through business-planning meetings, there’s an enormous amount of time and energy devoted to strategy, vision, finance, and marketing — and almost no time devoted to the issue of capability. And, in the end, it’s capabilities that carry the day.
— Judy Rosenblum

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Management and Organizational Behavior

Which questions guide our lives? Which questions do we make our own? Which questions deserve our undivided and full personal commitment? Finding the right questions is crucial to finding the right answers.
— Henri Nouwen

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Personal Development and Wisdom

American culture loves the myth of the lone individual hero. It is built into our cultural DNA as a nation and yet it’s not even supported by the evidence of our own history - the West was settled by groups of people not lone individuals; the great industrial advancements of the 1800s and early 1900s were not accomplished by lone geniuses but achieved by people working together who built systems of genius. History shows that it is groups that come together in a common purpose that get the real work done. Nonetheless American ideology and American culture centres on the great, epic heroic male.
— Jim Collins

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Culture and International

It was interesting to note that these good to great companies spent no time ‘motivating’ people as such - it just wasn’t something they wasted time and energy on. The very idea of motivating people doesn’t make any sense if you have self-motivated people.
— Jim Collins

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Best Practices and Organizational Behavior

The point is not just that leaders don’t need charisma; it’s that if they have it, it’s a problem they need to address and overcome. There are, of course, leaders who manage this, which doesn’t mean they must lose it, but they need to understand its liabilities. Chief among these is that charisma enables you to convince people to do the wrong things, hence to be charismatic and wrong is a bad combination because you can win arguments and persuade people to make the wrong choices. We saw the effects of this in any number of our comparison companies. Being charismatic and right, however, is a good combination. If people find your argument to be unpalatable - with charisma you can sway them. If, on the other hand, you are uncharismatic, you will need to win the argument based on its merits.

A charismatic leader poses another problem in that the company may feel it needs him or her in order to succeed. But what happens when that leader is no longer there? A charismatic leadership model is not good for building a great company over time because eventually that leader will leave or die. This is not an issue for an institution that does not depend on charisma.
— Jim Collins

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Leadership