We should place confidence in our employee. Confidence is the foundation of friendship. If we give it, we will receive it. Any person in a managerial position, from supervisor to president, who feels that his employee is basically not as good as he is and who suspects his employee is always trying to put something over on him, lacks the necessary qualities for human leadership - to say nothing of human friendship. Harry Humphreys

• leadership
• management
• people skills

If you wish to succeed in managing and controlling others - learn to manage and control yourself. William Boetcker

• leadership
• discipline
• management

Management is the art of getting three men to do three men's work. William Feather

• leadership
• management

When you find a man who knows his job and is willing to take responsibility, keep out of his way and don't bother him with unnecessary supervision. What you may think is cooperation is nothing but interference. Thomas Dreier

• management

Good leadership involves responsibility to the welfare of the group, which means that some people will get angry at your actions and decisions. It's inevitable, if you're honorable. Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity: you'll avoid the tough decisions, you'll avoid confronting the people who need to be confronted, and you'll avoid offering differential rewards based on differential performance because some people might get upset. Ironically, by procrastinating on the difficult choices, by trying not to get anyone mad, and by treating everyone equally "nicely" regardless of their contributions, you'll simply ensure that the only people you'll wind up angering are the most creative and productive people in the organization. Colin Powell

• leadership
• management
• decisiveness

Shift the power and the financial accountability to the folks who are bringing in the beans, not the ones who are counting or analyzing them. Colin Powell

• management

Don't measure busywork. Don't measure activity. Measure accomplishment. It doesn't matter what people do as much as it matters what they get done. Larry Winget

• management
• results
• accomplishment

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Any company that requires constant supervision is not a well-trained, well-managed, well-led company. Larry Winget

• leadership
• business
• management

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Firing is not something you do to someone: firing is something you do for someone. Larry Winget

• management

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It's better to spend money on a really good attorney than a really bad employee. You're better off fighting them on the outside of your company than from inside your company. Larry Winget

• business
• management

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When someone says, "I don't really like working with others," hire her and give her an office with a door and a lot of work to do and then watch it get done. Larry Winget

• management
• teamwork

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Prove you are smarter than everyone by hiring people who are smarter than you. Larry Winget

• business
• management

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Training is expensive, but stupid employees are more expensive. Larry Winget

• education
• management

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Reward life skills and personal growth. Good people do a good job and bad people do a bad job. Larry Winget

• management

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When a management team with a reputation for brilliance joins a business with poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact. Warren Buffett

• investing
• business
• management

The general feeling is, if you don't treat everyone the same you're showing partiality. To me, that's when you show the most partiality, when you treat everyone the same. You must give each individual the treatment that you feel he earns and deserves, recognizing at all times that you're imperfect and you're going to be incorrect oftentimes in your judgment. John Wooden

• management
• coaching
• fairness

You can't run a popularity contest and be successful. Ara Parseghian

• leadership
• management
• coaching

Good people are found not changed. They can change themselves, but you can't change them. You want good people, you have to find them. If you want motivated people, you have to find them, not motivate them. Jim Rohn

• leadership
• management
• motivation

The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work. Agha Abedi

• management

Don't ever ask a player to do something he doesn't have the ability to do. He'll just question your ability as a coach, not his as an athlete. Lou Holtz

• leadership
• management
• coaching

Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers. Stephen Covey

• management

Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things. Peter Drucker

• management

An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive business advantage. Jack Welch

• leadership
• business
• management

People are definitely a company’s greatest asset. It doesn't make any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps. Mary Kay Ash

• business
• management

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

• leadership
• management

Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers. Stephen Covey

• leadership
• business
• management

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Effective management is putting first things first. While leadership decides what "first things" are, it is management that puts them first, day-by-day, moment-by-moment. Management is discipline, carrying it out. Stephen Covey

• leadership
• management
• execution

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Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish. Sam Walton

• leadership
• self esteem
• confidence
• management

The primary test of managerial economic performance is the achievement of a high earnings rate on equity capital employed (without undue leverage, accounting gimmickry, etc.) and not the achievement of consistent gains in earnings per share. Warren Buffett

• business
• management

We do not view the company itself as the ultimate owner of our business assets but instead view the company as a conduit through which our shareholders own the assets. Warren Buffett

• business
• management

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

• leadership
• management

What gets measured gets managed. Peter Drucker

• management

It's amazing how someone's IQ seems to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them. Timothy Ferriss

• responsibility
• management

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The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency. Bill Gates

• management

Don't try to race sheep. Don't try to herd racehorses. Anonymous

• management

The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you've made a hiring mistake. The best people don't need to be managed. Guided, taught, led - yes. But not tightly managed. Jim Collins

• management

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I want employees to ask themselves whether they are willing to have any contemplated act appear the next day on the front page of their local paper, to be read by their spouses, children, and friends, with the reporting done by an informed and critical reporter. Warren Buffett

• management

Whenever I read about some company undertaking a cost-cutting program, I know it's not a company that really knows what costs are all about. Spurts don't work in this area. The really good manager does not wake up in the morning and say, "This is the day I'm going to cut costs," any more than he wakes up and decides to practice breathing. Warren Buffett

• business
• management

There are few things worse than close supervision by someone who doesn't understand what you're doing. Paul Graham

• management

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. Sir Winston Churchill

• leadership
• criticism
• management

You can't work individuals by general rules. Every man is a special case and needs a special pill. George Horace Lorimer

• leadership
• management

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Be slow to hire and quick to fire. The time to discover incompatibility of temper and curl-papers is before the marriage ceremony. But when you find that you've hired the wrong man, you can't get rid of him too quick. Pay him an extra month, but don't let him stay another day. George Horace Lorimer

• business
• management

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The great trouble with some fellows is that a little success goes to their heads. Instead of hiding their authority behind their backs and trying to get close to their men, they use it as a club to keep them off. And a boss with a case of big-head will fill an office full of sore heads. George Horace Lorimer

• leadership
• management

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Anything you hate to do, someone else loves. So find that person and let him do it. Derek Sivers

• management

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Weigh values and abilities more heavily than skills in deciding whom to hire. Ray Dalio

• business
• values
• management

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While individuals operating individually can choose whatever values and principles they like, when working in a group the people must agree on the group's values and principles. If the group is not clear about them, confusion and eventually gravitation toward the population's averages will result. If the group's values and principles are clear, their way of being (i.e., their culture) will permeate everything they do. Ray Dalio

• leadership
• values
• culture
• management

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Firing people is not a big deal—certainly nowhere near as big a deal as keeping badly performing people, because keeping a person in a job they are not suited for is terrible both for the person (because it prevents personal evolution) and our community (because we all bear the consequences and it erodes meritocracy). Ray Dalio

• business
• management

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The real sign of a master manager is that he doesn’t have to "do" practically anything. Of course, a great manager has to hire and oversee the people who do things; but a "supreme master" manager can even hire a person or two to do this and has achieved such leverage that things are effortlessly running superbly. Of course, there is a continuum related to this. The main message I'm trying to convey is that managers should strive to hire, train, and oversee in a way in which others can superbly handle as much as possible on their own. Managers should view the need to get involved in the nitty-gritty themselves as a bad sign. Ray Dalio

• management

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Make each person in your employ very aware that his or her well-being has a high priority with the organization and that the well-being of the organization must be his or her highest professional priority. Bill Walsh

• leadership
• management

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The highest-paid, most talented people that you can go out and hire will not perform to their potential unless they feel as if they are part of something special—a family that treats them right. Bill Walsh

• management

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People matter most—more than equipment, investors, inventions, momentum, or X's and O's. People are at the heart of achieving organizational greatness. Bill Walsh

• leadership
• management

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