"All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire." (Aristotle, 4th century BC)
"The important thing in strategy is to suppress the enemy's useful actions but allow his useless actions." (Miyamoto Musashi, "Go Rin No Sho" ["The Book of Five Rings"], 1645)
"The most absolute authority is that which penetrates into a man's innermost being and concerns itself no less with his will than with his actions." (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "On the origin of inequality", 1755)
"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)
"Strategy, or the art of properly directing masses upon the theater of war, either for defense or for invasion. […] Strategy is the art of making war upon the map, and comprehends the whole theater of operations. Grand Tactics is the art of posting troops upon the battle-field according to the accidents of the ground, of bringing them into action, and the art of fighting upon the ground, in contradistinction to planning upon a map. Its operations may extend over a field of ten or twelve miles in extent. Logistics comprises the means and arrangements which work out the plans of strategy and tactics. Strategy decides where to act; logistics brings the troops to this point; grand tactics decides the manner of execution and the employment of the troops." (Antoine-Henri Jomini, "The Art of War", 1838)
"The function of theory is to put all this in systematic order, clearly and comprehensively, and to trace each action to an adequate, compelling cause. […] Theory should cast a steady light on all phenomena so that we can more easily recognize and eliminate the weeds that always spring from ignorance; it should show how one thing is related to another, and keep the important and the unimportant separate. If concepts combine of their own accord to form that nucleus of truth we call a principle, if they spontaneously compose a pattern that becomes a rule, it is the task of the theorist to make this clear." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)
"The insights gained and garnered by the mind in its wanderings among basic concepts are benefits that theory can provide. Theory cannot equip the mind with formulas for solving problems, nor can it mark the narrow path on which the sole solution is supposed to lie by planting a hedge of principles on either side. But it can give the mind insight into the great mass of phenomena and of their relationships, then leave it free to rise into the higher realms of action." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)
"To manage is to forecast and plan, to organize, to command, to coordinate and to control. To foresee and plan means examining the future and drawing up the plan of action. To organize means building up the dual structure, material and human, of the undertaking. To command means binding together, unifying and harmonizing all activity and effort. To control means seeing that everything occurs in conformity with established rule and expressed demand." (Henri Fayol, 1916)
"Leadership is the form that authority assumes when it enters into process. As such it constitutes the determining principle of the entire scalar process, existing not only at the source, but projecting itself through its own action throughout the entire chain, until, through functional definition, it effectuates the formal coordination of the entire structure." (James D Mooney, "Onward Industry!", 1931)
"We make a difference between general and special principles of strategy. The general principles originate directly from the aim and the nature of Chess, and therefore they are constantly in force. It is, for instance, a general principle which goes without saying, that one has to procure the greatest possible freedom of action for one's men. The special principles apply only if the position shows certain peculiarities on account of which a special line of strategy has to be followed." (Dr. Max Euwe, "Strategy & Tactices in chess", 1937)
"The fine art of executive decision consists in not deciding questions that are not now pertinent, in not deciding prematurely, in not making decision that cannot be made effective, and in not making decisions that others should make. Not to decide questions that are not pertinent at the time is uncommon good sense, though to raise them may be uncommon perspicacity. Not to decide questions prematurely is to refuse commitment of attitude or the development of prejudice. Not to make decisions that cannot be made effective is to refrain from destroying authority. Not to make decisions that others should make is to preserve morale, to develop competence, to fix responsibility, and to preserve authority.
From this it may be seen that decisions fall into two major classes, positive decisions - to do something, to direct action, to cease action, to prevent action; and negative decisions, which are decisions not to decide. Both are inescapable; but the negative decisions are often largely unconscious, relatively nonlogical, "instinctive," "good sense." It is because of the rejections that the selection is good." (Chester I Barnard, "The Functions of the Executive", 1938)
"Planning starts usually with something like a general idea. For one reason or another it seems desirable to reach a certain objective, and how to reach it is frequently not too clear. The first step then is to examine the idea carefully in the light of the means available. Frequently more fact-finding about the situation is required. If this first period of planning is successful, two items emerge: namely, an 'over-all plan' of how to reach the objective and secondly, a decision in regard to the first step of action. Usually this planning has also somewhat modified the original idea. The next period is devoted to executing the first step of the original plan." (Kurt Lewin, "Action research and minority problems", 1946)
"All behavior involves conscious or unconscious selection of particular actions out of all those which are physically possible to the actor and to those persons over whom he exercises influence and authority." (Herbert A Simon, "Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-making Processes in Administrative Organization", 1947)
"Coordination, therefore, is the orderly arrangement of group efforts, to provide unity of action in the pursuit of a common purpose. As coordination is the all inclusive principle of organization it must have its own principle and foundation in authority, or the supreme coordination power. Always, in every form of organization, this supreme authority must rest somewhere, else there would be no directive for any coordinated effort." (James D Mooney, "The Principles of Organization", 1947)
"Behind every managerial decision or action are assumptions about human nature and human behavior." (Douglas McGregor, "The Human Side of Enterprise", 1960)
"Another approach to management theory, undertaken by a growing and scholarly group, might be referred to as the decision theory school. This group concentrates on rational approach to decision-the selection from among possible alternatives of a course of action or of an idea. The approach of this school may be to deal with the decision itself, or to the persons or organizational group making the decision, or to an analysis of the decision process. Some limit themselves fairly much to the economic rationale of the decision, while others regard anything which happens in an enterprise the subject of their analysis, and still others expand decision theory to cover the psychological and sociological aspect and environment of decisions and decision-makers." (Harold Koontz, "The Management Theory Jungle," 1961)
"A decision tree of any size will always combine (a) action choices with (b) different possible events or results of action which are partially affected by chance or other uncontrollable circumstances." (John F Magee, "Decision Trees for Decision Making", Harvard Business Review, 1964)
"The task of a comprehensive theory of action is to describe or prescribe the occasions for action, the alternative courses of action (or the means of discovering them), and the choice among action alternatives. The task of a comprehensive logic of action is to describe or prescribe the rules that govern reasoning about the occasions." (Herbert A Simon, "The Logic of Heuristic Decision Making", [in "The Logic of Decision and Action"] 1966)
"Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose." (Saul Alinsky, "Thirteen Tactics for Realistic Radicals: from Rules for Radicals", 1971)
"The definition of a problem and the action taken to solve it largely depend on the view which the individuals or groups that discovered the problem have of the system to which it refers. A problem may thus find itself defined as a badly interpreted output, or as a faulty output of a faulty output device, or as a faulty output due to a malfunction in an otherwise faultless system, or as a correct but undesired output from a faultless and thus undesirable system. All definitions but the last suggest corrective action; only the last definition suggests change, and so presents an unsolvable problem to anyone opposed to change." (Herbert Brün, "Technology and the Composer", 1971)
"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.
"Taking no action to solve these problems is equivalent of taking strong action. Every day of continued exponential growth brings the world system closer to the ultimate limits of that growth. A decision to do nothing is a decision to increase the risk of collapse." (Donella Meadows et al, "The Limits to Growth", 1972)
"The boss must first distinguish between action information and status information. He must discipline himself not to act on problems his managers can solve, and never to act on problems when he is explicitly reviewing status." (Fred P Brooks, "The Mythical Man-Month: Essays", 1975)
"[...] when a variety of tasks have all to be performed in cooperation, synchronization, and communication, a business needs managers and a management. Otherwise, things go out of control; plans fail to turn into action; or, worse, different parts of the plans get going at different speeds, different times, and with different objectives and goals, and the favor of the 'boss' becomes more important than performance." (Peter F Drucker, "People and Performance", 1977)
"In a production plant operation, data are highly regarded - but I consider facts to be even more important. When a problem arises, if our search for the cause is not thorough, the actions taken can be out of focus. This is why we repeatedly ask why. This is the scientific basis of the Toyota system."
"Overly optimistic goals nearly always result in one of two extremes. If the goal is seen as a must, then the division manager must 'go for broke. This can result in reckless risk taking. More commonly [...] ultraconservative action. The reasoning is: "Why take any chances to achieve an unattainable goal."(Bruce Henderson, "Henderson on Corporate Strategy", 1979)
"In other words, the output of the planning process is the decisions made and the actions taken as a result of the process." (Andrew S Grove, "High Output Management", 1983)
"Managerial accounting calls attention to problems and the need for action. It also aids in planning and decision making. It is aimed more at control and less at valuation than financial accounting." (John A Reinecke & William F Schoell, "Introduction to Business", 1983)
"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)
Law of Economic Unipolarity: "The only thing more costly than stretching the schedule of an established development program Is accelerating it, which is itself the most costly action known to man.
"Managers jeopardize product quality by setting unreachable deadlines. They don’t think about their action in such terms; they think rather that what they’re doing is throwing down an interesting challenge to their workers, something to help them strive for excellence."
"Visible management attention, rather than management exhortation, gets things done. Action may start with the words, but it has to be backed by symbolic behavior that makes those words come alive." (Robert H Waterman, "The Renewal Factor", 1987)
"The major fault in this process - and thus, in the way we were making decisions - is that it lacks an organizing framework. In pursuing a variety of goals and objectives, in whatever situation we manage, we often fail to see that some of them are in conflict and that the achievement of one might come at the expense of achieving another. In weighing up the actions we might take to reach our goals and objectives, we have no way to account for nature's complexity and only rarely factor it in." (Allan Savory & Jody Butterfield, "Holistic Management: A new framework for decision making", 1988)
"Knowledge is theory. We should be thankful if action of management is based on theory. Knowledge has temporal spread. Information is not knowledge. The world is drowning in information but is slow in acquisition of knowledge. There is no substitute for knowledge." (William E Deming, "The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education", 1993)
"Without a standard there is no logical basis for making a decision or taking action." (Joseph M Juran, "Managerial Breakthrough: The Classic Book on Improving Management Performance", 1995)
"Decision trees make decision-making easier by identifying a series of conditions and actions. They are used to determine actions in response to given situations. [...] One benefit of a decision tree is that it gives a visual depiction of all the conditions and actions of a decision. They are also easy to construct and follow, and they may be compressed into a decision table." (Ralph L Kliem & Irwin S Ludin, Tools and Tips for Today's Project Manager, 1999)
"The manager [...] is understood as one who observes the causal structure of an organization in order to be able to control it [...] This is taken to mean that the manager can choose the goals of the organization and design the systems or actions to realize those goals [...]. The possibility of so choosing goals and strategies relies on the predictability provided by the efficient and formative causal structure of the organization, as does the possibility of managers staying 'in control' of their organization's development. According to this perspective, organizations become what they are because of the choices made by their managers." (Ralph D Stacey et al, "Complexity and Management: Fad or Radical Challenge to Systems Thinking?", 2000)
"When we plan to win we take direct steps to ensure that we are building the right system at the best possible cost. Every action we take goes towards that end. Instead of trying to plan everything up front, we plan just the next few steps; and then allow customer feedback to correct our trajectory. In this way, we get off the mark quickly, and then continuously correct our direction. Errors are unimportant because they will be corrected quickly." (Kent Beck & Martin Fowler, "Planning Extreme Programming", 2000)
"Risk mitigation is the set of actions you will take to reduce the impact of a risk should it materialize. There are two not-immediately-obvious aspects to risk mitigation: The plan has to precede materialization. Some of the mitigation activities must also precede materialization."
"Blissful data consist of information that is accurate, meaningful, useful, and easily accessible to many people in an organization. These data are used by the organization’s employees to analyze information and support their decision-making processes to strategic action. It is easy to see that organizations that have reached their goal of maximum productivity with blissful data can triumph over their competition. Thus, blissful data provide a competitive advantage.". (Margaret Y Chu, "Blissful Data", 2004)
"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."
"No individual can achieve worthy goals without accepting accountability for his or her own actions." (Dan Miller, "No More Dreaded Mondays", 2008)
"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)
"The butterfly effect demonstrates that complex dynamical systems are highly responsive and interconnected webs of feedback loops. It reminds us that we live in a highly interconnected world. Thus our actions within an organization can lead to a range of unpredicted responses and unexpected outcomes. This seriously calls into doubt the wisdom of believing that a major organizational change intervention will necessarily achieve its pre-planned and highly desired outcomes. Small changes in the social, technological, political, ecological or economic conditions can have major implications over time for organizations, communities, societies and even nations." (Elizabeth McMillan, "Complexity, Management and the Dynamics of Change: Challenges for practice", 2008)
"And even if we make good plans based on the best information available at the time and people do exactly what we plan, the effects of our actions may not be the ones we wanted because the environment is nonlinear and hence is fundamentally unpredictable. As time passes the situation will change, chance events will occur, other agents such as customers or competitors will take actions of their own, and we will find that what we do is only one factor among several which create a new situation." (Stephen Bungay, "The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps between Plans, Actions, and Results", 2010)
"A strategy coordinates action to address a specific challenge. It is not defined by the pay grade of the person authorizing the action." (Richard Rumelt, "Good Strategy/Bad Strategy", 2011)
"Almost by definition, one is rarely privileged to 'control' a disaster. Yet the activity somewhat loosely referred to by this term is a substantial portion of Management, perhaps the most important part. […] It is the business of a good Manager to ensure, by taking timely action in the real world, that scenarios of disaster remain securely in the realm of Fantasy."
"Despite the roar of voices wanting to equate strategy with ambition, leadership, 'vision', planning, or the economic logic of competition, strategy is none of these. The core of strategy work is always the same: discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors." (Richard Rumelt, "Good Strategy Bad Strategy", 2011)
"The kernel of a strategy contains three elements: a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent action." (Richard Rumelt, "Good Strategy/Bad Strategy", 2011)
"Clearly, total feedback is Not a Good Thing. Too much feedback can overwhelm the response channels, leading to paralysis and inaction. Even in a system designed to accept massive feedback (such as the human brain), if the system is required to accommodate to all incoming data, equilibrium will never be reached. The point of decision will be delayed indefinitely, and no action will be taken."
"Companies leverage two basic pulleys of human behavior to increase the likelihood of an action occuring: the ease of performing an action and the psychological motivation to do it." (Nir Eyal, "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products", 2014)
"A software team can get severely constrained when a velocity target is imposed on it. Velocity works well as a measurement, not as a target. Targets limit choice of actions. A team may find itself unable to address technical debt if it is constrained by velocity targets. At a certain threshold of constraints, team members lose the sense of empowerment (autonomy)." (Sriram Narayan, "Agile IT Organization Design: For Digital Transformation and Continuous Delivery", 2015)
"Language influences thought, tools influence action. Therefore, it matters a lot how we choose our tools. We shape our tooling and access landscape, and thereafter they shape the contours of our collaboration. When we choose a lot of different specialty tools, they in turn nudge us into different specialty groups." (Sriram Narayan, "Agile IT Organization Design: For Digital Transformation and Continuous Delivery", 2015)
"Thinking strategically is the fun part of business. Great strategists think big thoughts about the purpose of their enterprises, the long-run visions for their firms, the big bets they plan to make, and the products, platforms, and ecosystems they hope to build. But it is not enough to think big thoughts. To become a great strategist, you must turn your vision and high-level ideas into tactics, actions, and organizations that reach the customer and fend off the competition." (David B Yoffie & Michael A Cusumano, "Strategy Rules", 2015)
"OKRs should never be created in a vacuum, but must be a reflection of the company’s purpose, its desired long-term goals, and its plan to successfully defend market space. In other words, they should translate your mission, vision, and strategy into action."
"Trust is fundamental to leading others into the dark, since trust enables fear to be 'actionable' as courage rather than actionable as anger. Since the bedrock of trust is faith that all will be OK within uncertainty, leaders’ fundamental role is to ultimately lead themselves. Research has found that successful leaders share three behavioral traits: they lead by example, admit their mistakes, and see positive qualities in others. All three are linked to spaces of play. Leading by example creates a space that is trusted - and without trust, there is no play. Admitting mistakes is to celebrate uncertainty. Seeing qualities in others is to encourage diversity." (Beau Lotto, "Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently", 2017)
"A system is a framework that orders and sequences activity within the organisation to achieve a purpose within a band of variance that is acceptable to the owner of the system. Systems are the organisational equivalent of behaviour in human interaction. Systems are the means by which organisations put policies into action. It is the owner of a system who has the authority to change it, hence his or her clear acceptance of the degree of variation generated by the existing system." (Catherine Burke et al, "Systems Leadership" 2nd Ed., 2018)
"An OBJECTIVE […] is simply WHAT is to be achieved, no more and no less. By definition, objectives are significant, concrete, action oriented, and (ideally) inspirational. When properly designed and deployed, they’re a vaccine against fuzzy thinking - and fuzzy execution." (John Doerr, "Measure what Matters", 2018)
"[...] strategy is about determining the problems and opportunities in front of you, defining them properly, and shaping a course of action that will give your business the greatest advantage. Balancing problem solving with creating and exploiting new opportunities through imagination and analysis is the cornerstone of a great strategy." (Eben Hewitt, "Technology Strategy Patterns: Architecture as strategy" 2nd Ed., 2019)
"An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage." (Jack Welch)
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