Robert Heller - Collected Quotes

"As in war, strategic success depends on tactical effectiveness, and no degree of planning can lessen management's tactical imperatives. The first responsibility of the executive, anyway, is to the here and now. If he makes a shambles of the present, there may be no future; and the real purpose of planning - the one whose neglect is common, but poisonous - is to safeguard and sustain the company in subsequent short-run periods." (Robert Heller, "The Naked Manager: Games Executives Play", 1972)

"Before the computer, the task of gazing into the chasms of the future and juggling with its endless permutations would have chained every manager to his slide rule for eternity. Thanks to the computer, companies could now do their sums, right or wrong, in comfort." (Robert Heller, "The Naked Manager: Games Executives Play", 1972)

"But the greater the primary risk, the safer and more careful your secondary assumptions must be. A project is only as sound as its weakest assumption, or its largest uncertainty." (Robert Heller, "The Naked Manager: Games Executives Play", 1972)

"Don't start from statistical objectives and work backward. Begin from the premise that whatever the company is doing could be done better, and start moving forward by making the improvements that are always waiting to be grabbed." (Robert Heller, "The Naked Manager: Games Executives Play", 1972)

"Faced with a decision, always ask one implacable question: If this project fails, if the worst comes to the worst, what will be the result? If the answer is total corporate disaster, drop the project. If the worst possible outcome is tolerable, say, break-even, the executive has the foundation of all sound decision making - a fail-safe position." (Robert Heller, "The Naked Manager: Games Executives Play", 1972)

"How executives plan or what numbers they choose doesn't count; what does is the standard of performance they are ready to exact. The essence of any objective is that reaching it should be reasonable. The precondition is that you expect it to be met." (Robert Heller, "The Naked Manager: Games Executives Play", 1972)

"In the objectives system, the corporation's aims, or plans, are broken down into a hierarchy of lesser aims or plans; and the grand total of all those objectives adds up to those of the corporation. Then all the executives have to do is meet their planned and agreed objectives and - hey presto - the corporation does the same. Perfection in management, at last, has arrived, except that it hasn't and won't." (Robert Heller, "The Naked Manager: Games Executives Play", 1972)

"Management theory is obsessed with risks. Top executives bemoan the lack of risk-taking initiative among their young. Politicians and stockholders are advised (by directors) to make directors rich, so that they can afford to take risks. Theorists teach how to construct decision trees, heraldic devices of scientific management; and how to marry the trees with probability theory, so that the degree of risk along each branch (each branch and twig representing alternative results of alternative courses of action) can be metered. But the measuring is spurious, and, anyway, the best management doesn't take risks. It avoids them. It goes for the sure thing." (Robert Heller, "The Naked Manager: Games Executives Play", 1972)

"Planning and management by objectives have their point as devices for compelling thought, so long as executives don't forget that any plan worth making is inaccurate; the longer a plan takes to write, the worse it is - just because of its consumption of time. And the more they change plans to suit events, the better they will manage - if you've made a mistake, you had better admit it." (Robert Heller, "The Naked Manager: Games Executives Play", 1972)

"The dogma of delegation is simple - the Sixth Truth of Management again: either the delegatee is capable of running the operation successfully by himself or he isn't. This handy formula relieves the top executive of any responsibility except that of finding, supervising, and (at the appropriate time) moving the men who are doing all the work. He Can then truly manage by exception: he does not get worked up over operations that are going well, but concentrates on the plague spots, where everything, including the management, is going badly." (Robert Heller, "The Naked Manager: Games Executives Play", 1972)

"The Eighth Truth of Management is: if you are doing something wrong, you will do it badly. The reverse of this truth is that, if your decision is blindingly right, you will execute it well - or appear to do so, which is much the same thing. But any executive can massacre his own nonsensical project." (Robert Heller, "The Naked Manager: Games Executives Play", 1972)

"The future, however, is pure uncertainty, limited only by the constraints of possibility. The manager must understand those constraints, and he can limit that uncertainty by thoughtful anticipation. But, above all, if you want to master the future, you have to find out what is really and truly happening right now - arid to make sure that it is happening right." (Robert Heller, "The Naked Manager: Games Executives Play", 1972)

"The object of the honest manager is to fit the abstraction to the reality as neatly as he may. Any managers who toy with procedures to invent a higher profit must search their souls long and harshly. Will the change paint a truer likeness, or will it obscure the truth?" (Robert Heller, "The Naked Manager: Games Executives Play", 1972)

"The weakness of most mergers is not that ignorant managers enter unfamiliar businesses; it is that the price is wrong, regardless. If the price is right, the synergy and the management can look after themselves. If not, it will take years to close the gap by the workings of industrial logic." (Robert Heller, "The Naked Manager: Games Executives Play", 1972)

"Yet intelligent men plump for one project rather than another on the strength of a difference of a few decimal points in the rate of return calculated over the next decade. All such mind-stretching calculation comes under the lash of the Seventh Truth of Management: if you need sophisticated calculations to justify an action, it is probably wrong (the sophisticated calculations, anyway, are all too often based on simple false assumptions)." (Robert Heller, "The Naked Manager: Games Executives Play", 1972)

"You can teach the rudiments of cooking, as of management, but you cannot make a great cook or a great manager. In both activities, you ignore fundamentals at grave risk  - but sometimes succeed. In both, science can be extremely useful but is no substitute for the art itself. In both, inspired amateurs can outdo professionals. In both, perfection is rarely achieved, and failure is more common than the customers realize. In both, practitioners don't need recipes that detail timing down to the last second, ingredients to the last fraction of an ounce, and procedures down to the Just flick of the wrist; they need reliable maxims, instructive anecdotes, and no dogmatism." (Robert Heller, "The Naked Manager: Games Executives Play", 1972)

"What goes wrong [in long-range planning] is that sensible anticipation gets converted into foolish numbers: and their validity always hinges on large loose assumptions." (Robert Heller, "The Naked Manager: Games Executives Play", 1972)

"A good sign that either the meeting or some of the people are superfluous is when they try to get out of coming." (Robert Heller, "The Supermanagers", 1984)

"Effective management always means asking the right question." (Robert Heller, "The Supermanagers", 1984)

"No talent in management is worth more than the ability to master facts - not just any facts, but the ones that provide the best answers. Mastery thus involves knowing what facts you want; where to dig for them; how to dig; how to process the mined ore; and how to use the precious nuggets of information that are finally in your hand. The process can be laborious - which is why it is so often botched." (Robert Heller, "The Supermanagers", 1984)

"Decisions should be pushed down as far as possible, to the level of competence. This allows senior managers more time for making decisions of a more complex nature."(Robert Heller, "The Pocket Manager", 1987)

"[decision trees are the] most picturesque of all the allegedly scientific aids to making decisions. The analyst charts all the possible outcomes of different options, and charts all the latters' outcomes, too. This produces a series of stems and branches (hence the tree). Each of the chains of events is given a probability and a monetary value." (Robert Heller, "The Pocket Manager", 1987)

"Management: The definition that includes all the other definitions in this book and which, because of that, is the most general and least precise. Its concrete, people meaning - the board of directors and all executives with the power to make decisions - is no problem, except for the not-so-little matter of where to draw the line between managers who are part of 'the management' and managers who are not. (Robert Heller, "The Pocket Manager", 1987)

"No decision in business provides greater potential for the creation of wealth (or its destruction, come to think of it) than the choice of which innovation to back." (Robert Heller, "The Decision Makers", 1989)