Management Quotes

“Your comfort zone is a place where you keep yourself in a self-illusion and nothing can grow there but your potentiality can grow only when you can think and grow out of that zone.”
― Rashedur Ryan Rahman

“Management cares about only one thing. Paperwork. They will forgive almost anything else - cost overruns, gross incompetence, criminal indictments - as long as the paperwork's filled out properly. And in on time.”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“Why doesn’t every fire once kindled, survive and thrive? Why doesn’t every person accomplish her dreams? The simple answer is that the Firestarter’s life is a constant fight against extinction.”
― Raoul Davis Jr., Firestarters: How Innovators, Instigators, and Initiators Can Inspire You to Ignite Your Own Life

“If you want to make a difference, you must live like no one else and strive to achieve goals that others view as impossible to reach.”
― Raoul Davis Jr., Firestarters: How Innovators, Instigators, and Initiators Can Inspire You to Ignite Your Own Life

“Little by little the agents have taken over the world. They don't do anything, they don't make anything, they just stand and take their cut.”
― Mœbius

“What it takes to do a job will not be learned from management courses. It is principally a matter of experience, the proper attitude, and common sense — none of which can be taught in a classroom... Human experience shows that people, not organizations or management systems, get things done.”
― Hyman G. Rickover

“When you manage people, you must first convince them they need managing. So you create the problems and then let the people cry for solutions.”
― Barbara Marciniak, Family of Light: Pleiadian Tales and Lessons in Living

“The goal of management is to remove obstacles.”
― Paul Orfalea, Copy This!: Lessons from a Hyperactive Dyslexic who Turned a Bright Idea Into One of America's Best Companies

“Delegating your accountabilities is abdication”
― Michael E. Gerber

“A baseball manager recognizes a nonphysical talent, hustle, as an essential gift of great players and great teams. It is the characteristic of running faster than necessary, moving sooner than necessary, trying harder than necessary. It is essential for great programming teams, too.”
― Frederick P. Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering

“As I have earlier noted, the most important things in life and in business can’t be measured. The trite bromide 'If you can measure it, you can manage it' has been a hindrance in the building a great real-world organization, just as it has been a hindrance in evaluating the real-world economy. It is character, not numbers, that make the world go ‘round. How can we possibly measure the qualities of human existence that give our lives and careers meaning? How about grace, kindness, and integrity? What value do we put on passion, devotion, and trust? How much do cheerfulness, the lilt of a human voice, and a touch of pride add to our lives? Tell me, please, if you can, how to value friendship, cooperation, dedication, and spirit. Categorically, the firm that ignores the intangible qualities that the human beings who are our colleagues bring to their careers will never build a great workforce or a great organization.”
― John C. Bogle, Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life

“Early on I realized that I had to hire people smarter and ore qualified than I was in a number of different fields, and I had to let go of a lot of decision-making. I can't tell you how hard that is. But if you've imprinted your values on the people around you, you can dare to trust them to make the right moves.”
― Howard Schultz, Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time

“Management is proving beyond a shadow of a doubt they don't have enough to do," she murmured back. "So they've invented a new acronym.”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“Managers receiving hundreds of thousands a year—and setting their compensation for themselves—are not being paid wages, they are appropriating surplus value in the guise of wages. ”
― Michael Harrington

“In the business world, there is no gray. Either you are black, or you are white-washed.”
― Sameer Kamat (Author), Business Doctors: Management Consulting Gone Wild

“You can actually recreate your world with the Word of the Creator in your mouth.”
― Jaachynma N.E. Agu, The Prince and the Pauper

“Fortune crowns the bold before the worthy”
― Agona Apell, The Success Genome Unravelled: Turning men from rot to rock

“You don't get time.
You create time.”
― Sanhita Baruah

“If humans can live for 100 years, why do companies die so young.”
― Sukant Ratnakar, Open the Windows

“When the management iceberg is shaped like a huge phallus, you know that there are a lot of tossers that the top penguin has had to climb over to reach the tip and that there is no shortage of the same caliber of penguin in the balls and shaft of the corporation, just waiting for their chance to get a spurt to the top. Should I sugar coat this a little more? or tell it like it is?”
― Daniel Prokop, Leaving Neverland: Why Little Boys Shouldn't Run Big Corporations

“That's why I bake. To fill fairies with goodness."

And it was true, she realized. She didn't run the kitchen just to boss other fairies around. She didn't give orders just to make herself feel important. Well, at least she wouldn't anymore. No. The day before, she hadn't missed that part of her job at all. She had missed the baking. She had missed creating something for others to enjoy.

And, oh, how she wanted to go back to work!”
― Gail Herman, Dulcie's Taste of Magic

“...every time you make a rule you take away a choice and choice, with all of its illuminating repercussions, is the fuel for learning.”
― Marcus Buckingham, First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently

“Shenanigans is a financial model on the catwalk.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“... although the future is not predictable in any detail, it is manageable as an aggregate phenomenon.”
― Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial

“If you are paying someone to motivate you (seriously), you should rather pay to a psychiatrist.”
― Anupam S Shlok

“Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
“Most of my time is spent in doing as well as I can the work immediately at hand. One hopes that by doing quietly and without parade as solid work as one can when one is occupied, one makes the best contribution possible to one's state.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.,

“Versuche dein Bestes - und scheitere. Das ist die Realität.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“When I worked in high altitude astronomy, I had no idea how dangerous the management teams were.”
― Steven Magee

“As a manager in the Ivy League, I discovered that the upper management team were seriously undermining my ability to manage my own staff. It was so bad that I eventually left. I now advise people not to work for the Ivy League.”
― Steven Magee

“Most of my time is spent in doing as well as I can the work immediately at hand. One hopes that by doing quietly and without parade as solid work as one can when one is occupied, one makes the best contribution possible to one's state.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.,