Monday, September 20, 2010

Management thoughts...

 When we fail to plan, we plan to fail.



 What can’t be measured, can’t be managed.


 The word communication starts with ‘co’- two that is, it includes the audience.


 Knowledge brings confidence, skills bring competence, and the right attitude brings commitment.


 Hire for aptitude, train for skills and counsel for attitude.


 Problems are lack of innovative ideas.


 Leadership is when the leader achieves and the team says they did it.


 Recognize in public and reprimand in private.


 Leaders take blame and give credit.


 Successful leadership is about being high both on people orientation and task orientation.


 The only constant is change.


 If we do what we have always done, we will get what we have always got.


 Communication is not about what is said or how it is said but about what the others get.


 Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.


 Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.


 Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.


 A leader is a dealer in hope.


 I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?


 The leadership instinct you are born with is the backbone. You develop the funny bone and the wishbone that go with it.


 Delegating work works, provided the one delegating works, too."


 "The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.


 The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.


 The best example of leadership, is leadership by example.


 You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.


 All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people.


 The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.


 The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on. . . . The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation in which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.


 In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions.


 Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with the important matters.


 Life is change. Growth is optional.


 Don't be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small steps.


 There is no contest between the company that buys the grudging compliance of its work force and the company that enjoys the enterprising participation of its employees.


 Excellence is not an accomplishment. It is a spirit, a never-ending process.


 The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you.


 When what you are doing isn't working, you tend to do more of the same and with greater intensity.


 Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future.


 Leaders don't inflict pain. They bear pain.


 A new leader has to be able to change an organization that is dreamless, soulless and visionless ... someone's got to make a wake up call.


 I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it; it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation.


 When the effective leader is finished with his work, the people say it happened naturally.


 Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their jobs done


 Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their jobs done.


 I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.


 Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.


 To lead people, walk beside them ... As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate ... When the best leader's work is done the people say, "We did it ourselves!".


 Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes... but no plans.


 Good plans shape good decisions. That's why good planning helps to make elusive dreams come true.


 Understanding human needs is half the job of meeting them.


 Lead and inspire people. Don't try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be lead.


 We must become the change we want to see.


 A competent leader can get efficient service from poor troops, while on the contrary, an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops.


 The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.


 Where there is no vision, the people perish.


 Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.


 An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.


 Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.


 One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.


 We know not where our dreams will take us, but we can probably see quite clearly where we'll go without them.


 It is not a question of how well each process works, the question is how well they all work together.


 Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.


 The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.


 The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.


 The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and will to carry on.


 Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it.


 You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down.


 Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.


 People are more easily led than driven.


 Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together.


 The trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.


 No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.


 The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.


 Processes don't do work, people do.


 Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions.


 The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.


 The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.


 Jingshen is the Mandarin word for spirit and vivacity. It is an important word for those who would lead, because above all things, spirit and vivacity set effective organizations apart from those that will decline and die.


 Uncertainty will always be part of the taking charge process.


 Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.


 You can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it and use your own intelligence and judgment.


 The only real training for leadership is leadership.


 Quality has to be caused, not controlled.


 Probably my best quality as a coach is that I ask a lot of challenging questions and let the person come up with the answer.


 Don't be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can dream it, you can make it also.


 It is essential to employ, trust, and reward those whose perspective, ability, and judgment are radically different from yours. It is also rare, for it requires uncommon humility, tolerance, and wisdom.


 Our task is to create organizations that are sufficiently flexible and versatile that they can take our imperfect plans and make them work. That is the essential character of a learning organization.


 In matters of style, swim with the current; In matters of principle, stand like a rock.


 If you think you can do a thing or that you cannot do a thing, in either case you are right.


 If you think you can do a thing or that you cannot do a thing, in either case you are right.


 When nothing is sure, everything is possible.


 Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.


 The world is round and the place which may seem like the end, may also be only the beginning.


 The day your people stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.


 Celebrate what you want to see more of.


 It is the part of the cure to wish to be cured.


 All happy families are alike; an unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.


 The two most important words I ever wrote were on that first Wal-Mart sign, ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed’. They’re still up there, and they have made all the difference.


 It is difficult to wake up someone who is asleep. But it is extra difficult to wake someone who is awake and asleep at the same time.


 Increasingly the ability of organizations – and not only of business – will come to depend on their comparative advantage in making the knowledge worker productive.


 Leadership is action, not position.


 Be the change you want to see in the world.


 The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.


 I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.