Management Quotes

The board does not exist to advise or assist management, but to empower, charge, and evaluate management. A board might “ask good questions” or advise, but these do not constitute its job. They wouldn’t for a CEO with respect to his or her subordinates and they don’t for a board. A governancedestroying CEO-centrism quickly turns the board’s commanding role into the feckless one of advisor. The board does not exist to react to CEO requests, to have its agenda management-driven, or to be either management’s adversaries or its cheerleaders any more than the CEO’s job exists for these reasons with respect to his or her subordinates.
— John Carver

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Corporate Governance

America’s Sarbanes-Oxley Act, UK’s Higgs Review, and Ontario’s Bill 198 do not promote good governance and, therefore shareholder value, as pointed out recently by Boardroom’s Brian Lechem, so much as they protect investors from unseemly conduct. Like speed limits and stop signs they are useful to protect, but in no way do they constitute guidance for skillful, wise driving. One look at the unending stream of codes, particularly since Cadbury’s 1990 report, is convincing evidence that there will continue to be more. While new prescriptions of practice are not without value, they have sharpened boards’ interest in lawful compliance more than in better governance.
— John Carver, Brian Lechem

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Corporate Governance

It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that know neither victory nor defeat.
— Theodore Roosevelt

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Achievement and Success

A demand and supply curve is a useful fiction, just a story we tell ourselves. It’s not how markets operate. Demand and supply only works when there are enough people in the market, and you need an awful lot of people. Finding out how many is a problem we’re trying to solve. Game theory has become the tool for understanding interactions in markets with a small number of players.
— Martin Cripps, Jeroen Swinkels

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Economics

[Adam] Smith believed that much of human behavior was under the influence of the “passions” - emotions such as fear and anger, and drives such as hunger and sex - but these passions were moderated by an internal “voice of reason,” which he called an “impartial spectator.” The impartial spectator allows one to see one’s own feelings and the pulls of immediate gratification from the perspective of an external observer. In the area of self-control and self-governance, the impartial spectator takes the form of a long-term interest (i.e., I won’t have that cookie today because I can see that I will regret it down the road). In the area of social interaction, the impartial spectator allows us to see things from another’s perspective rather than to be blinded by our own needs.
— Nava Ashraf

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Personality / Behavior

What you’re saying with jargon is: A) You belong, and B) If you don’t get it, you don’t belong.
— John Simmons

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Communication and Organizational Behavior

When a customer says, “Your price is too high,” the salesperson needs to look to himself as the likely problem, not the product. There are two possibilities: 1) the customer is not experiencing a significant absence of value and the solution should never have been offered; therefore, the price is too high. Or 2) the absence of value is there and the customer does not recognize it. The burden of proof is on the salesperson, and he hasn’t done his job.
— Jeff Thull

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Sales

Cooperation always improves, without added metrics or incentives, when poor cooperation becomes a constraint for those who do not cooperate - when they cannot externalize the consequences of poor cooperation to third parties. And engagement always imporves when better performance becomes a means, or a resource, to attain one’s own goals and aspirations.
— Yves Morieux

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Change Management and Organizational Behavior

Behaviors are the solutions people find to deal with their problems, given their resources and constraints. Treat with suspicion any explanations alluding to people’s irrationality or to their “mentality.” These are tautological explanations at best. What is necessary is to understand the problems (operational challenges, personal goals or aspirations), resources (skills, power, interpersonal network), and constraints (dependence on others, rules to abidy by) fromthe employee’s perspective.
— Yves Morieux

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Organizational Behavior and Personality / Behavior

When we approach negotiations by tactically reacting to customers’ requests, by merely giving in because they ask us to do so, seemingly disparate transactions have the effect of “rolling upward” and defining our negotiation strategy. We teach the marketplace, our customers and our competitors, who we are based on the deals we do. By rolling over in negotiations, we run into several problems:
1. Customers believe the initial offer was a lie and don’t know where the truth really begins.
2. We fan the fire of irrational marketplace competition by setting up bidding wars.
3. We prove through our actions that while we sell on value, we negotiate on price.
— Brian Dietmeyer

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Negotiation and Sales