"And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new." (Nicolo Machiavelli, cca. 1505)
"But when one comes to the effect of the engagement, where material successes turn into motives for further action, the intellect alone is decisive. In brief, tactics will present far fewer difficulties to the theorist than will strategy." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)
"We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery." (Samuel Smiles, "Facilities and Difficulties", 1859)
"We live in a system of approximations. Every end is prospective of some other end, which is also temporary; a round and final success nowhere. We are encamped in nature, not domesticated." (Ralph W Emerson, "Essays", 1865)
"The manager must never be lacking in knowledge of the special profession which is characteristic of the undertaking: the technical profession in industry, commercial in commerce, political in the State, military in the Army, religious in the Church, medical in the hospital, teaching in the school, etc. The technical function has long been given the degree of importance which is its due, and of which we must not deprive it, but the technical function by itself cannot endure the successful running of a business; it needs the help of the other essential functions and particularly of that of administration. This fact is so important from the point of view of the organization and management of a business that I do not mind how often I repeat it in order that it may be fully realized." (Henri Fayol, "Industrial and General Administration", 1916)
"Failure to succeed greatly in management usually occurs not so much from lack of knowledge of the important principles of the science of management as from failure to apply them. Most of the principles of successful management are old, and many of them have received sufficient publicity to be well known, but managers are curiously prone to look upon managerial success as a personal attribute that is slightly dependent on principles or laws." (Allan C Haskell, "How to Make and Use Graphic Charts", 1919)
"The making of decisions, as everyone knows from personal experience, is a burdensome task. Offsetting the exhilaration that may result from correct and successful decision and the relief that follows the termination of a struggle to determine issues is the depression that comes from failure, or error of decision, and the frustration which ensues from uncertainty." (Chester I Barnard, "The Functions of the Executive", 1938)
"Success in solving the problem depends on choosing the right aspect, on attacking the fortress from its accessible side." (George Polya, "How to Solve It", 1944)
"[System dynamics] is an approach that should help in important top-management problems [...] The solutions to small problems yield small rewards. Very often the most important problems are but little more difficult to handle than the unimportant. Many [people] predetermine mediocre results by setting initial goals too low. The attitude must be one of enterprise design. The expectation should be for major improvement [...] The attitude that the goal is to explain behavior; which is fairly common in academic circles, is not sufficient. The goal should be to find management policies and organizational structures that lead to greater success." (Jay W Forrester, "Industrial Dynamics", 1961)
"Business is a process which converts a resource, distinct knowledge, into a contribution of economic value in the market place. The purpose of a business is to create a customer. The purpose is to provide something for which an independent outsider, who can choose not to buy, is willing to exchange his purchasing power. And knowledge alone (excepting only the case of the complete monopoly) gives the products of any business that leadership position on which success and survival ultimately depend."
"The successful manager must be a good diagnostician and must value a spirit of inquiry." (Edgar H Schein, "Organizational Psychology", 1965)
"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)
"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."
"Effectiveness is the foundation of success - efficiency is a minimum condition for survival after success has been achieved. Efficiency is concerned with doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things."
"The task of building an ethical environment where leaders and all personnel are instructed, encouraged, and rewarded for ethical behavior is a matter of first importance. All decisions, practices, goals, and values of the entire institutional structure which make ethical behavior difficult should be examined, beginning with the following: First, blatant or subtle forms of ethical relativism which blur the issue of what is right or wrong or which bury it as a subject of little or no importance. Second, the exaggerated loyalty syndrome, where people are afraid to tell the truth and are discouraged from it. Third, the obsession with image, where people are not even interested in the truth. And last, the drive for success, in which ethical sensitivity is bought off or sold because of the personal need to achieve." (Kermit D Johnson, "Ethical Issues of Military Leadership", 1974)
"Organizations are social beings and their success depends on trust, subtlety and intimacy." (William Ouchi, "Theory Z", 1981)
"No matter how difficult or unprecedented the problem, a breakthrough to the best possible solution can come only from a combination of rational analysis, based on the real nature of things, and imaginative reintegration of all the different items into a new pattern, using nonlinear brainpower. This is always the most effective approach to devising strategies for dealing successfully with challenges and opportunities, in the market arena as on the battlefield." (Kenichi Ohmae, "The Mind Of The Strategist", 1982)
"Organizational values are best transmitted when they are acted out, and not merely announced, by the people responsible for training, or by the people who become role-models for recruits. The manager of an organization is a role-model ex officio and may have an astonishing ability to communicate organizational values to recruits in fleeting contacts with them. That is the age-old secret of successful generalship, and it is applied every day by charismatic leaders in other fields, whose commitments to their roles is so dramatic that they strike awe into the recruits who observe them in action." (Theodore Caplow, "Managing an Organization", 1983)
"Most managers are reluctant to comment on ineffective or inappropriate interpersonal behavior. But these areas are often crucial for professional task success. This hesitancy is doubly felt when there is a poor relationship between the two. [...] Too few managers have any experience in how to confront others effectively; generally they can more easily give feedback on inadequate task performance than on issues dealing with another's personal style." (David L Bradford & Allan R Cohen, "Managing for Excellence", 1984)
"No other area offers richer opportunities for successful innovation than the unexpected success." (Peter Drucker, "Innovation and Entrepreneurship", 1985)
"The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority." (Kenneth H Blanchard, "Managing By Influence", 1986)
"The opportunities and threats existing in any situation always exceed the resources needed to exploit the opportunities or avoid the threats. Thus, strategy is essentially a problem of allocating resources. If strategy is to be successful, it must allocate superior resources against a decisive opportunity." (William Cohen, "Winning on the Marketing Front: The corporate manager's game plan", 1986)
"Setting goals can be the difference between success and failure. [...] Goals must not be defined so broadly that they cannot be quantified. Having quantifiable goals is an essential starting point if managers are to measure the results of their organization's activities. [...] Too often people mistake being busy for achieving goals." (Philip D Harvey & James D Snyder, Harvard Business Review, 1987)
"[Successful organizations] comprehend uncertainty. They set direction, not detailed strategy. They are the best strategists precisely because they are suspicious of forecasts and open to surprise. They think strategic planning is greatas long as no one takes the plans too seriously." (Robert H Waterman, "The Renewal Factor", 1987)
"The most important reason for our success is we set our objectives and make sure we follow through on them." (Annette B Roux, The New York Times, 1987)
"The tendency to hide unfavorable information often occurs in companies that are quick to reward success and equally quick to punish failure." (Robert M Tomasko, "Downsizing", 1987)
"Managers are incurably susceptible to panacea peddlers. They are rooted in the belief that there are simple, if not simple-minded, solutions to even the most complex of problems. And they do not learn from bad experiences. Managers fail to diagnose the failures of the fads they adopt; they do not understand them. […] Those at the top feel obliged to pretend to omniscience, and therefore refuse to learn anything new even if the cost of doing so is success." (Russell L Ackoff, "A Lifetime Of Systems Thinking", Systems Thinker, 1999)
"Business success is less a function of grandiose predictions than it is a result of being able to respond rapidly to real changes as they occur." (Jack Welch, "Jack: Straight from the Gut", 2001)
"I've learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success." (Jack Welch, "Jack: Straight from the Gut", 2001)
"Organizations must know and understand the current organizational culture to be successful at implementing change. We know that it is the organization’s culture that drives its people to action; therefore, management must understand what motivates their people to attain goals and objectives. Only by understanding the current organizational culture will it be possible to begin to try and change it."
"The most basic issue for organizational success is correctly matching a system’s complexity to its environment. When we want to accomplish a task, the complexity of the system performing that task must match the complexity of the task. In order to perform the matching correctly, one must recognize that each person has a limited level of complexity. Therefore, tasks become difficult because the complexity of a person is not large enough to handle the complexity of the task. The trick then is to distribute the complexity of the task among many individuals." (Yaneer Bar-Yam, "Making Things Work: Solving Complex Problems in a Complex World", 2004)
"Whereas strategy is abstract and based on long-term goals, tactics are concrete and based on finding the best move right now. Tactics are conditional and opportunistic, all about threat and defense. No matter what pursuit you’re engaged in - chess, business, the military, managing a sports team - it takes both good tactics and wise strategy to be successful." (Garry Kasparov, "How Life Imitates Chess", 2007)
"Strategy is the serious work of figuring out how to translate vision and mission into action. Strategy is a general plan of action that describes resource allocation and other activities for dealing with the environment and helping the organization reach its goals. Like vision, strategy changes, but successful companies develop strategies that focus on core competence, develop synergy, and create value for customers. Strategy is implemented through the systems and structures that are the basic architecture for how things get done in the organization." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)
"Truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking." (Malcolm Gladwell, "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking", 2008)
"A blame culture is corrosive, eroding the team ethos that is vital for success. If they fear that they will be pilloried or punished for their mistakes, your colleagues will start worrying more about how to protect their back than doing what’s best for the team and wider organization. In the worst cases, this can even lead to lying, setting up fall guys, and other dysfunctional behavior." (Paul Butcher, "Debug It! Find, Repair, and Prevent Bugs in Your Code", 2009)
"A culture that believes that it is better to ask forgiveness afterward rather than permission before, that rewards people for success but gives them permission to fail, has removed one of the main obstacles to the formation of new ideas." (Tim Brown, "Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation", 2009)
"In leadership, there are no words more important than trust. In any organization, trust must be developed among every member of the team if success is going to be achieved."
"[Executives] make decisions based on delusional optimism rather than on a rational weighting of gains, losses, and probabilities. They overestimate benefits and underestimate costs. They spin scenarios of success while overlooking the potential for mistakes and miscalculations. As a result, they pursue initiatives that are unlikely to come in on budget or on time or to deliver the expected returns - or even to be completed." (Daniel Kahneman, "Thinking, Fast and Slow", 2011)
"Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the vital navigation instruments used by managers to understand whether their business is on a successful voyage or whether it is veering off the prosperous path. The right set of indicators will shine light on performance and highlight areas that need attention. ‘What gets measured gets done’ and ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’ are just two of the popular sayings used to highlight the critical importance of metrics. Without the right KPIs managers are sailing blind." (Bernard Marr, "Key Performance Indicators (KPI): The 75 measures every manager needs to know", 2011)
"An organization's strategy is simply its plan for success. It's nothing more than the collection of intentional decisions a company makes to give itself the best chance to thrive and differentiate from competitors." (Patrick Lencioni, "The Advamtage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business", 2012)
"Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It's about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others' success, and then standing back and letting them shine." (Chris Hadfield, "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth", 2013)
"Culture is an emergent phenomenon produced by structures, practices, leadership behavior, incentives, symbols, rituals, and processes. All those levers have to be pulled to have any chance of success. However, one driver of culture change is more important than the others. Culture change fails when the most visible symbols of it fail to change. Those key symbols are almost always the top leader’s behavior, which speaks much louder than anything they might say." (Paul Gibbons, "The Science of Successful Organizational Change", 2015)
"Key performance indicators (KPIs) are those indicators that focus on the aspects of organizational performance that are the most critical for the current and future success of the organization." (David Parmenter, "Key Performance Indicators: Developing, implementing, and using winning KPIs" 3rd Ed., 2015)
"Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in many organizations are a broken tool. The KPIs are often a random collection prepared with little expertise, signifying nothing. [...] KPIs should be measures that link daily activities to the organization’s critical success factors (CSFs), thus supporting an alignment of effort within the organization in the intended direction." (David Parmenter, "Key Performance Indicators: Developing, implementing, and using winning KPIs" 3rd Ed., 2015)
"Governance and leadership are the yin and the yang of successful organisations. If you have leadership without governance you risk tyranny, fraud and personal fiefdoms. If you have governance without leadership you risk atrophy, bureaucracy and indifference." (Mark Goyder, "What Matters in Corporate Governance?", 2015)
"No methodology can guarantee success. But a good methodology can provide a feedback loop for continual improvement and learning." (Ash Maurya, "Scaling Lean: Mastering the Key Metrics for Startup Growth", 2016)
"The field of big-data analytics is still littered with a few myths and evidence-free lore. The reasons for these myths are simple: the emerging nature of technologies, the lack of common definitions, and the non-availability of validated best practices. Whatever the reasons, these myths must be debunked, as allowing them to persist usually has a negative impact on success factors and Return on Investment (RoI). On a positive note, debunking the myths allows us to set the right expectations, allocate appropriate resources, redefine business processes, and achieve individual/organizational buy-in." (Prashant Natarajan et al, "Demystifying Big Data and Machine Learning for Healthcare", 2017)
"Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall." (Stephen R Covey)
"Strategy is a style of thinking, a conscious and deliberate process, an intensive implementation system, the science of insuring future success." (Pete Johnson)
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