Management Quotes

The reliance on open borders, transnational alliances, and global markets for capital, goods, and services has generated a “just in time” economy, which, although remarkably cost-efficient, leaves companies open to a range of discontinuities that can affect operations, reputation, customer habits, legal standing, regulatory compliance, earnings performance, and ultimately shareholder value. We call these new vulnerabilities, collectively, interdependence risk, and define it as unanticipated risk exposure across the extended enterprise that is beyond an individual organization’s direct control.
— Randy Starr, Jim Newfrock, and Michael Delurey

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / International and Risk

Addicted to a reigning ideology — that “persuasion is not a science, but an art,” as the renowned advertising executive Bill Bernbach once put it — marketing executives, almost from the beginning of mass marketing, have believed that they should intuit the “Big Idea,” and all else would follow. In fact, though, they have been trapped in a cycle of assumption, approximation, and acceptance.

They assume that one answer works everywhere — because surely tailored strategies can’t possibly pay off against the complexity involved in designing and implementing them.

They approximate the return on their massive selling and marketing expenses — because one can never know with certainty which half works.

They accept that their marketing and sales organizations will be in constant opposition because of this inherent imprecision — and that the job of the business leader is to force the brutes to stay on strategy.

Worst of all, they miss the Big Idea when it clubs them in the nose. Without precision and understanding, all ideas are simultaneously big and small — big if they work, and small if they don’t.
— Leslie H. Moeller, Sharat K. Mathur, and Randall Rothenberg

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Marketing

Firms are typically driven by the competing objectives of the marketing and sales departments. Sales personnel are rewarded for volume increases, yet marketing frequently owns the P&L. At many companies, an “iron curtain” goes up between these units, with marketing executives centralizing authority in a vain attempt to control and improve sales promotion and local marketing; meanwhile, out in the “real world,” sales pushes volume at any cost. Linkages between brand strategy and sales promotion plans are not fully considered, and account-specific profit objectives are deemed a pipe dream, too difficult to set and track. The constant bickering leads to a cultural stalemate: Marketing executives are considered the brains, while sales executives are considered the brawn (or salespeople are thought of as the pragmatists, and marketers the pointy-headed intellectuals). Wherever the truth lies, the concept of working together toward a common goal is lost among the battles for budget and primacy.
— Leslie H. Moeller, Sharat K. Mathur, and Randall Rothenberg

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Marketing and Sales

A sales pitch based on rational economic efficiency is a supplier’s argument, not something that is compelling to a consumer.
— Wouter Rosingh, Adam Seale, and David Osborn

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Sales

…hierarchical organizational structures, with companies divided into functional areas, isolate both functions and people and diminish the vital exchange of ideas.
— Arun N. Maira and Robert M. Curtice

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Organizational Behavior

Peter Senge told us, “Mission instills the passion and patience for the long journey.” If we can summon both the passion to pursue that journey and the patience to stop for travelers we meet along the way, our organizations will be well served indeed.
— Frances Hesselbein, Peter Senge

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Leadership and Mission

Pursuing a mission without achieving results is dispiriting; achieving results without a mission is meaningless.
— Frances Hesselbein

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Leadership and Mission

A vision without a task is but a dream,
a task without a vision is drudgery,
a vision and a task is the hope of the world.
— 18th-century inscription from a church in Sussex, England

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Strategy and Vision

Talented people don’t want you to come to them and say, “Here’s what I’m going to do. What do you think?” They want you to set up issues in terms of, “Here are the challenges we face. What do you think?”
— Joseph Neubauer

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Leadership and Management

I keep running into highly capable people all over this country who literally never give a thought to the well-being of their community. And I keep wondering who gave them permission to stand aside! I’m asking you to issue a wake-up call to those people — a bugle call right in their ear. And I want you to tell them that this nation could die of comfortable indifference to the problems that only citizens can solve. Tell them that.
— John Gardner

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Social Responsibility