🖌️Carl von Clausewitz - Collected Quotes

"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)

"In a tactical situation one is able to see at least half the problem with the naked eye, whereas in strategy everything has to be guessed at and presumed." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)

"Everything in strategy is very simple, but that does not mean everything is very easy." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)

"Such cases also occur in strategy, since strategy is directly linked to tactical action. In strategy too decisions must often be based on direct observation, on uncertain reports arriving hour by hour and day by day, and finally on the actual outcome of battles. It is thus an essential condition of strategic leadership that forces should be held in reserve according to the degree of strategic uncertainty." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)

"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)

🖌️Tom DeMarco - Collected Quotes

"Anything you need to quantify can be measured in some way that is superior to not measuring it at all." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"As a general rule of them, when benefits are not quantified at all, assume there aren’t any." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"Human interactions are complicated and never very crisp and clean in their effects, but they matter more than any other aspect of the work." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"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." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"Most of us managers are prone to one failing: A tendency to manage people as though they were modular components." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"On the best teams, different individuals provide occasional leadership, taking charge in areas where they have particular strengths. No one is the permanent leader, because that person would then cease to be a peer and the team interaction would begin to break down." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"People who feel untrusted have little inclination to bond together into a cooperative team." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"People under time pressure don’​​​​​​t work better - ​​​​​​they just work faster. In order to work faster, they may have to sacrifice the quality of the product and of their own work experience." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"Programmers seem to be a bit more productive after they’​​​​​​ve done the estimate themselves, compared to cases in which the manager did it without even consulting them." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"[The common definition of estimate is] 'the most optimistic prediction that has a non-zero probability of coming true' [...] Accepting this definition leads irrevocably toward a method called what's-the-earliest-date-by-which-you-can't-prove-you-won't-be-finished estimating" (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"The major problems of our work are not so much technological as sociological in nature. Most managers are willing to concede the idea that they’​​​​​​ve got more people worries than technical worries. But they seldom manage that way. They manage as though technology were their principal concern. They spend their time puzzling over the most convoluted and most interesting puzzles that their people will have to solve, almost as though they themselves were going to do the work rather than manage it. […] The main reason we tend to focus on the technical rather than the human side of the work is not because it’​​​​​​s more crucial, but because it’​​​​​​s easier to do." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"The most obvious defensive management ploys are prescriptive Methodologies ('My people are too dumb to build systems without them') and technical interference by the manager. Both are doomed to fail in the long run." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"The need for uniformity is a sign of insecurity on the part of management. Strong managers don’t care when team members cut their hair or whether they wear ties. Their pride is tied only to their staff’s accomplishments." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"The obsession with methodologies in the workplace is another instance of the high-tech illusion. It stems from the belief that what really matters is the technology. [...] Whatever the technological advantage may be, it may come only at the price of a significant worsening of the team's sociology." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"The purpose of a team is not goal attainment but goal alignment." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"The [software] builders’​​​​​​ view of quality, on the other hand, is very different. Since their self-esteem is strongly tied to the quality of the product, they tend to impose quality standards of their own. The minimum that will satisfy them is more or less the best quality they have achieved in the past. This is invariably a higher standard than what the market requires and is willing to pay for." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"When you automate a previously all-human system, it becomes entirely deterministic."(Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"Whether you call it a 'team' or an 'ensemble' or a 'harmonious work group' is not what matters; what matters is helping all parties understand that the success of the individual is tied irrevocably to the success of the whole." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"Ability to change has to be an organic part of the organization. Change has to be going on all the time, everywhere. It needs to be everybody’s business."  (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"And the management team is not really a team. A team is a group of people who have joint responsibility for - and joint ownership of - one or more work products. People who own nothing in common may be called a team, but they aren’t. This is not to say that companies never form real management teams, only that they do so rarely. Most of what are called management teams are a mockery of the team concept." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Authoritarian management is obsessed with time. It is destructive of slack and inclined to goad people into outperforming their peers. And it makes learning impossible." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Change always implies abandonment. What you're abandoning is an old way of doing things. You're abandoning it because it's old, because time has made it no longer the best way. But it is also (again because it's old) a familiar way. And more important, it is an approach that people have mastered. So the change you are urging upon your people requires them to abandon their mastery of the familiar, and to become novices once again, to become rank beginners at something with self-definitional importance." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Each time you add automation, you choose some particularly mechanical component of the work (that’s what makes it a good candidate for automation). When the new automation is in place, there is less total work to be done by the human worker, but what work is left is harder. That is the paradox of automation: It makes the work harder, not easier. After all, it was the easy stuff that got absorbed into the machine, so what’s left is, almost by definition, fuzzier, less mechanical, and more complex. Whatever standard is now introduced to govern the work will dictate (often in elaborate detail) how the few remaining mechanical aspects are to be performed."  (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Growth is the rising tide that floats all boats. The period of growth is one in which people are naturally less change-resistant. It is therefore the optimal time to introduce any change. Specifically, changes that are not growth-related should be timed to occur during growth periods. This is not because they are strictly necessary then, but because they are more likely to be possible then. You need that advantage going up against Goliath." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"How people feel can be more a factor in the success of a change than what they think. Anxiety of any kind can only complicate the task of change introduction. That’s why the period of sudden decline of corporate fortunes is exactly the worst moment to introduce a change. People are uneasy about their jobs, worried about lasting corporate health, perhaps shocked by the vitality of the competition. In retrospect, a far better time to introduce the change would have been back in the period of healthy growth. Growth always carries with it a certain necessity for change. You may have to hire more people, expand to larger quarters, diversify or centralize, all to accommodate your own burgeoning success. But growth feels good; it feels like winning. It even feels good enough to reduce the amount of change resistance." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"In order to enable change, companies have to learn that keeping managers busy is a blunder. If you have busy managers working under you, they are an indictment of your vision and your capacity to transform that vision into reality. Cut them some slack." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"In the most highly stressed projects, people at all levels talk about the schedule being 'aggressive', or even 'highly aggressive'. In my experience, projects in which the schedule is commonly termed aggressive or highly aggressive invariably turn out to be fiascoes. 'Aggressive schedule', I’ve come to suspect, is a kind of code phrase - understood implicitly by all involved - for a schedule that is absurd, that has no chance at all of being met." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Lack of power is a great excuse for failure, but sufficient power is never a necessary condition of leadership. There is never sufficient power. In fact, it is success in the absence of sufficient power that defines leadership." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Leadership is the ability to enroll other people in your agenda. Meaningful acts of leadership usually cause people to accept some short-term pain (extra cost or effort, delayed gratification) in order to increase the long-term benefit. We need leadership for this, because we all tend to be short-term thinkers." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Management is hard, and not because there is so much work to do (an overworked manager is almost certainly doing work he/she shouldn’t be doing). Management is hard because the skills are inherently difficult to master. Your mastery of them will affect your organization more than anything going on under you." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Meaningful acts of leadership usually cause people to accept some short-term pain (extra cost or effort, delayed gratification) in order to increase the long-term benefit. We need leadership for this, because we all tend to be short-term thinkers." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Ownership of the standard should be in the hands of those who do the work." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Process standardization from on high is disempowerment. It is a direct result of fearful management, allergic to failure. It tries to avoid all chance of failure by having key decisions made by a guru class (those who set the standards) and carried out mechanically by the regular folk. As defense against failure, standard process is a kind of armor. The more worried you are about failure, the heavier the armor you put on. But armor always has a side effect of reduced mobility. The overarmored organization has lost the ability to move and move quickly. When this happens, standard process is the cause of lost mobility. It is, however, not the root cause. The root cause is fear." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Quality takes time and reduces quantity, so it makes you, in a sense, less efficient. The efficiency-optimized organization recognizes quality as its enemy. That's why many corporate Quality Programs are really Quality Reduction Programs in disguise." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Risk management is the explicit quantitative declaration of uncertainty. But in some corporate cultures, people aren’t allowed to be uncertain. They’re allowed to be wrong, but they can’t be uncertain. They are obliged to look their bosses and clients in the face and lie rather than show uncertainty about outcomes. Uncertainty is for wimps." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"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." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Significant organizational learning can’t happen in isolation. It always involves the joint participation of a set of middle managers. This requires that they actually talk to each other and listen to each other, rather than just taking turns talking to and listening to a common boss." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Slackless organizations tend to be authoritarian. When efficiency is the principal goal, decision making can't be distributed. It has to be in the hands of one person (or a few), with everyone else taking direction without question and acting quickly to carry out orders. This is a fine formula for getting a lot done, but a dismal way to encourage reinvention and learning." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"The premise here is that the hierarchy lines on the chart are also the only communication conduit. Information can flow only along the lines. [...] The hierarchy lines are paths of authority. When communication happens only over the hierarchy lines, that's a priori evidence that the managers are trying to hold on to all control. This is not only inefficient but an insult to the people underneath." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"The right way to think about domain knowledge is as a corporate capital asset, as dollars of investment in the head of each knowledge worker, put there by organizational investment in that employee. When that person leaves, the asset is gone. If you did a rigorous accounting of this human capital, you would be obliged to declare an extraordinary loss each time one of your people quit." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"The rule is (as with children) that trust be given slightly in advance of demonstrated trustworthiness. But not too much in advance. You have to have an unerring sense of how much the person is ready for. Setting people up for failure doesn’t make them loyal to you; you have to set them up for success. Each time you give trust in advance of demonstrated performance, you flirt with danger. If you’re risk-averse, you won’t do it. And that’s a shame, because the most effective way to gain the trust and loyalty of those beneath you is to give the same in equal measure." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"There is no such thing as 'healthy' competition within a knowledge organization; all internal competition is destructive. The nature of our work is that it cannot be done by any single person in isolation. Knowledge work is by definition collaborative. The necessary collaboration is not limited to the insides of lowest-level teams; there has to be collaboration as well between teams and between and among the organizations the teams belong to." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"When a schedule is not met, those inclined to pass out blame are quick to point at the lowest-level workers; they reason that performance is the domain entirely of those who perform the work. They ask plaintively, 'Why can’t these guys ever meet their schedules?' The answer that the schedule might have been wrong in the first place only befuddles them. It’s as though they believe there is no such thing as a bad schedule, only bad performances that resulted in missing the scheduled date. There is such a thing as a bad schedule. A bad schedule is one that sets a date that is subsequently missed. That’s it. That’s the beginning and the end of how a schedule should be judged. If the date is missed, the schedule was wrong. It doesn’t matter why the date was missed. The purpose of the schedule was planning, not goal-setting. Work that is not performed according to a plan invalidates the plan. The missed schedule indicts the planners, not the workers." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"When communication happens only over the hierarchy lines, that’s a priori evidence that the managers are trying to hold on to all control. This is not only inefficient but an insult to the people underneath." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"When managers are overworked, they’re doing something other than management; the more they allow themselves to be overworked, the less real management gets done." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Whether this person is a designer, product manager, programmer, writer, consultant, or whatever, he/she comes with (1) a set of skills and (2) some explicit knowledge of the area in which skills are to be deployed. The skills alone aren’t enough. Domain knowledge is also required. The more important that domain knowledge is, the less fungible the people are. That means you can’t divide them up into pieces, but it also means that you can’t easily replace them with other people when they leave." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"If you've been in the software business for any time at all, you know that there are certain common problems that plague one project after another. Missed schedules and creeping requirements are not things that just happen to you once and then go away, never to appear again. Rather, they are part of the territory. We all know that. What's odd is that we don't plan our projects as if we knew it. Instead, we plan as if our past problems are locked in the past and will never rear their ugly heads again. Of course, you know that isn't a reasonable expectation." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects", 2003)

"Risks and benefits always go hand in hand. The reason that a project is full of risk is that it leads you into uncharted waters. It stretches your capability, which means that if you pull it off successfully, it's going to drive your competition batty. The ultimate coup is to stretch your own capability to a point beyond the competition's ability to respond. This is what gives you competitive advantage and helps you build a distinct brand in the market." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects", 2003)

"The business of believing only what you have a right to believe is called risk management." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects", 2003)

"The pathology of setting a deadline to the earliest articulable date essentially guarantees that the schedule will be missed." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects", 2003)

"There is probably no job on earth for which an ability to believe six impossible things before breakfast is more of a requirement than software project management."  (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects", 2003)

🖌️Richard Rumelt - Collected Quotes

"A leader’s most important job is creating and constantly adjusting this strategic bridge between goals and objectives." (Richard Rumelt, "Good Strategy/Bad Strategy", 2011)

"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)

"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)

"Good strategy requires leaders who are willing and able to say no to a wide variety of actions and interests. Strategy is at least as much about what an organization does not do as it is about what it does." (Richard Rumelt, "Good Strategy/Bad Strategy", 2011)

"Having conflicting goals, dedicating resources to unconnected targets, and accommodating incompatible interests are the luxuries of the rich and powerful, but they make for bad strategy. Despite this, most organizations will not create focused strategies. Instead, they will generate laundry lists of desirable outcomes and, at the same time, ignore the need for genuine competence in coordinating and focusing their resources. Good strategy requires leaders who are willing and able to say no to a wide variety of actions and interests. Strategy is at least as much about what an organization does not do as it is about what it does." (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)

"When organizations are unable to make new strategies - when people evade the work of choosing among different paths in the future - then you get vague mom-and-apple-pie goals everyone can agree on. Such goals are direct evidence of leadership's insufficient will or political power to make or enforce hard choices." (Richard Rumelt, "Good Strategy/Bad Strategy", 2011)

🖌️Margaret J Wheatley - Collected Quotes

"Openness to the environment over time spawns a stronger system, one that is less susceptible to externally induced change. [...] Because it partners with its environment, the system develops increasing autonomy from the environment and also develops new capacities that make it increasingly resourceful." (Margaret J Wheatley, "Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World", 1992)

"The things we fear most in organizations - fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances - need not be signs ofan impending disorder that will destroy us. Instead, fluctuations are the primary source of creativity." (Margaret J Wheatley, "Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World", 1992)

"Leadership is always dependent upon the context, but the context is established by the relationships." (Margaret J Wheatley, "Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World", 1992)

"We have created trouble for ourselves in organizations by confusing control with order. This is no surprise, given that for most of its written history, leadership has been defined in terms of its control functions." (Margaret J Wheatley, "Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World", 1992)

"In a complex system, there is no such thing as simple cause and effect." (Margaret J Wheatley, "It's An Interconnected World", 2002)

🖌️Frederick W Taylor - Collected Quotes

"The art of management has been defined, 'As knowing exactly what you want men to do, and then seeing that they do it in the best and cheapest way.' No concise definition can fully describe an art, but the relations between employers and men form without question the most important part of this art. In considering the subject, therefore, until this part of the problem has been fully discussed, the remainder of the art may be left in the background." (Frederick W Taylor, "Shop Management", 1903)

"The writer feels that management is also destined to become more of an art, and that many of the, elements which are now believed to be outside the field of exact knowledge will soon be standardized tabulated, accepted, and used, as are now many of the elements of engineering." (Frederick W Taylor, "Shop Management", 1903)

"It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and enforcing this cooperation rests with management alone." (Frederick W Taylor, "Principles of Scientific Management", 1911)

"The principal object of management should be to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employee." (Frederick W Taylor, "Principles of Scientific Management", 1911)

🖌️Richard L Daft - Collected Quotes

"A mental model can be thought of as an internal picture that affects a leader's actions and relationships with others. Mental models are theories people hold about specific systems in the world and their expected behavior." (Richard Daft, "The Leadership Experience" , 2002)

"Organizations are (1) social entities that (2) are goal-directed, (3) are designed as deliberately structured and coordinated activity systems, and (4) are linked to the external environment." (Richard Daft, "The Leadership Experience" , 2002)

"The key element of an organization is not a building or a set of policies and procedures; organizations are made up of people and their relationships with one another. An organization exists when people interact with one another to perform essential functions that help attain goals." (Richard Daft, "The Leadership Experience" , 2002)

"Systems thinking means the ability to see the synergy of the whole rather than just the separate elements of a system and to learn to reinforce or change whole system patterns. Many people have been trained to solve problems by breaking a complex system, such as an organization, into discrete parts and working to make each part perform as well as possible. However, the success of each piece does not add up to the success of the whole. to the success of the whole. In fact, sometimes changing one part to make it better actually makes the whole system function less effectively." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience", 2002)

"Systems thinking is a mental discipline and framework for seeing patterns and interrelationships. It is important to see organizational systems as a whole because of their complexity. Complexity can overwhelm managers, undermining confidence. When leaders can see the structures that underlie complex situations, they can facilitate improvement. But doing that requires a focus on the big picture." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience", 2002)

"Data are raw facts and figures that by themselves may be useless. To be useful, data must be processed into finished information, that is, data converted into a meaningful and useful context for specific users. An increasing challenge for managers is being able to identify and access useful information." (Richard L Daft & Dorothy Marcic, "Understanding Management" 5th Ed., 2006)

"Decision making is the process of identifying problems and opportunities and then resolving them. Decision making involves effort before and after the actual choice." (Richard L Daft & Dorothy Marcic, "Understanding Management" 5th Ed., 2006)

"A paradigm is a shared mindset that represents a fundamental way of thinking about, perceiving, and understanding the world." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)

"Leaders should be aware of how their mental models affect their thinking and may cause 'blind spots' that limit understanding. Becoming aware of assumptions is a first step toward shifting one’s mental model and being able to see the world in new and different ways. Four key issues important to expanding and developing a leader’s mind are independent thinking, open-mindedness, systems thinking, and personal mastery." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)

"Management can be defined as the attainment of organizational goals in an effective and efficient manner through planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling organizational resources." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 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)

"Synergy is the combined action that occurs when people work together to create new alternatives and solutions. In addition, the greatest opportunity for synergy occurs when people have different viewpoints, because the differences present new opportunities. The essence of synergy is to value and respect differences and take advantage of them to build on strengths and compensate for weaknesses." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)

"Synergy occurs when organizational parts interact to produce a joint effect that is greater than the sum of the parts acting alone. As a result the organization may attain a special advantage with respect to cost, market power, technology, or employee." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)

"The other element of systems thinking is learning to infl uence the system with reinforcing feedback as an engine for growth or decline. [...] Without this kind of understanding, managers will hit blockages in the form of seeming limits to growth and resistance to change because the large complex system will appear impossible to manage. Systems thinking is a significant solution." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)

"An organization’s culture is the underlying set of key values, beliefs, understandings, and norms shared by employees. These underlying values and norms may pertain to ethical behavior, commitment to employees, efficiency, or customer service, and they provide the glue to hold organization members together. An organization’s culture is unwritten but can be observed in its stories, slogans, ceremonies, dress, and office layout." (Richard L Daft, "Organization Theory and Design", 3rd Ed., 2010)

"Efficiency refers to the amount of resources used to achieve the organization’s goals. It is based on the quantity of raw materials, money, and employees necessary to produce a given level of output. Effectiveness is a broader term, meaning the degree to which an organization achieves its goals." (Richard L Daft, "Organization Theory and Design", 3rd Ed., 2010)

"Organization theory focuses on the organizational level of analysis but with concern for groups and the environment. To explain the organization, one should look not only at its characteristics but also at the characteristics of the environment and of the departments and groups that make up the organization." (Richard L Daft, "Organization Theory and Design", 3rd Ed., 2010)

"The organization’s goals and strategy define the purpose and competitive techniques that set it apart from other organizations. Goals are often written down as an enduring statement of company intent. A strategy is the plan of action that describes resource allocation and activities for dealing with the environment and for reaching the organization’s goals. Goals and strategies define the scope of operations and the relationship with employees, customers, and competitors." (Richard L Daft, "Organization Theory and Design", 3rd Ed., 2010)

🖌️Boris Yavitz - Collected Quotes

"A second general way to deal with uncertainty is limiting potential losses. If we are unsure what will happen, we then try to maintain a position in which we can bear the adverse results if unpredictable events turn out badly for us. [...] Contingency plans are a device for limiting losses. They provide a fallback alternative if the main goal is unattainable." (Boris Yavitz & William H Newman, "Strategy in Action", 1982)

"An essential feature of all strategic planning is a forecast of the world ahead - or, at best, a forecast of those parts of the environment that will have significant impact on the company's successes and failures. Of course, there will be a variety of uncertainties, and our strategic planning will have to deal with them. Nevertheless, forecast we must if we are to grasp full advantage of the changes that lie ahead." (Boris Yavitz & William H Newman, "Strategy in Action", 1982)

"Managers are being confronted by a wider range of external pressures that must be taken into account in their major decisions [...] includ[ing] environmental protection, employment opportunities for minorities and all sorts of disadvantaged, shielding the consumer, and conforming to increasing government regulations." (Boris Yavitz & William H Newman, "Strategy in Action", 1982)

"One important function of strategy is to counteract a tendency of professional managers to become too conservative and bureaucratic." (Boris Yavitz & William H Newman, "Strategy in Action", 1982)

"[...] strategic change is likely to call for different management techniques than continuous running of well-established business-units. [...] If effectively done, strategic management can have even greater payoffs in rough seas than in clear sailing." (Boris Yavitz & William H Newman, "Strategy in Action", 1982)

"Strategy is not a functional plan, not even a long-run one - such as a five-year marketing plan or a seven-year production plan. Rather, strategy involves the integration of all these functional plans into a balanced overall scheme. In some circumstances one function may drive the others - product development, say, may determine marketing efforts or vice versa. Nevertheless, it is company strategy that sets the priorities and weighs or minimizes the risks. An overall viewpoint is essential."  (Boris Yavitz & William H Newman, "Strategy in Action", 1982)

"Strategy is not a rationalization of what we did last year or of what appears in next year's budget. With a bit of imagination and artful wording, a statement that looks like a strategy can be written around almost any set of activities of a going concern. An actual strategy, in contrast, is a longer-term plan that sets the direction and tone of the shorter-range plans. Unless the strategy provides underlying guidance, its preparation is mere window dressing."  (Boris Yavitz & William H Newman, "Strategy in Action", 1982)

"Strategy is not a response to short-term fluctuations in operations or the environment, nor is it the response to the frequent short-term reports on, for example, sales, labor turnover, weekly output, or competitors' prices that every manager receives. Instead, strategy deals with the predetermined direction toward which these quick responses are pointed. It is concerned with the longer-term course that the ship is steering, not with the waves." (Boris Yavitz & William H Newman, "Strategy in Action", 1982)

"Strategy is not a statement of pious intentions or optimistic wishes. Merely envisioning a future world and selecting an attractive position in that world is not a strategic plan. Instead, a strategy must be feasible in terms of resources that will be mobilized, and it must identify ways by which at least some form of superiority over competitors is to be achieved."  (Boris Yavitz & William H Newman, "Strategy in Action", 1982)

🖌️Chester I Barnard - Collected Quotes

"A formal and orderly conception of the whole is rarely present, perhaps even rarely possible, except to a few men of exceptional genius." (Chester I Barnard, "The Functions of the Executive", 1938)

"A low morality will not sustain leadership long, its influence quickly vanishes, it cannot produce its own succession." (Chester I Barnard, "The Functions of the Executive", 1938)

"A person can and will accept a communication as authoritative only when four conditions simultaneously obtain: (a) he can and does understand the communication; (b) at the time of his decision he believes that it is not inconsistent with the purpose of the organization; (c) at the time of his decision, he believes it to be compatible with his personal interest as a whole; and (d) he is able mentally and physically to comply with it." (Chester I Barnard, "The Functions of the Executive", 1938)

"Effectiveness relates to the accomplishment of the cooperative purpose which is social and non-personal in character. Efficiency relates to the satisfaction of individual motives and is personal in character." (Chester I Barnard, "The Functions of the Executive", 1938)

"Executive work is not that of the organization, but the specialized work of maintaining the organization." (Chester I Barnard, The Functions of the Executive, 1938)

"Organizations endure, however, in proportion to the breadth of the morality by which they are governed. Thus the endurance of organization depends upon the quality of leadership; and that quality derives from the breadth of the morality upon which it rests." (Chester I Barnard, "The Functions of the Executive", 1938)

"Planning is one of the many catchwords whose present popularity is roughly proportionate to the obscurity of its definition." (Chester I Barnard, "The Functions of the Executive", 1938)

"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)

"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)

"The executive is primarily concerned with decisions which facilitate or hinder other decisions." (Chester I Barnard, "Organization and Management: Selected Papers", 1948)

"When a condition of honesty and sincerity is recognized to exist, errors of judgment, defects of ability, are sympathetically endured. They are expected. Employees don't ascribe infallibility to leaders or management. What does disturb them is insincerity and the appearance of insincerity when the facts are not in their possession." (Chester I Barnard, "Organization and Management: Selected Papers", 1948)

🖌️Simon Sinek - Collected Quotes

"For values or guiding principles to be truly effective they have to be verbs. It's not 'integrity'," it's 'always do the right thing'. It's not 'innovation', it's 'look at the problem from a different angle'. Articulating our values as verbs gives us a clear idea - we have a clear idea of how to act in any situation." (Simon Sinek, "Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action", 2009)

"Great companies don't hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them. People are either motivated or they are not. Unless you give motivated people something to believe in, something bigger than their job to work toward, they will motivate themselves to find a new job and you'll be stuck with whoever's left." (Simon Sinek, "Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action", 2009)

"There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it." (Simon Sinek, "Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action", 2009)

"There are leaders and there are those who lead. Leaders hold a position of power or influence. Those who lead inspire us." (Simon Sinek, "Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action", 2009)

"When we are selective about doing business only with those who believe in our WHY, trust emerges." (Simon Sinek, "Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action", 2009) 

"And when a leader embraces their responsibility to care for people instead of caring for numbers, then people will follow, solve problems and see to it that that leader's vision comes to life the right way, a stable way and not the expedient way." (Simon Sinek, "Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't", 2014)

"Truly human leadership protects an organization from the internal rivalries that can shatter a culture. When we have to protect ourselves from each other, the whole organization suffers. But when trust and cooperation thrive internally, we pull together and the organization grows stronger as a result." (Simon Sinek, "Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't", 2014)

🖌️Peter F Drucker - Collected Quotes

"What the worker needs is to see the plant as if he were a manager. Only thus can he see his part, from his part he can reach the whole. This ‘seeing’ is not a matter of information, training courses, conducted plant tours, or similar devices. What is needed is the actual experience of the whole in and through the individual's work." (Peter F Drucker, "The New Society", 1950)

"A manager sets objectives - A manager organizes - A manager motivates and communicates - A manager, by establishing yardsticks, measures." (Peter F Drucker, "The Practice of Management", 1954)

"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 cust Au omer. 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." (Peter F Drucker, "Managing for Results: Economic Tasks and Risk-taking Decisions", 1964)

"But waste is often hard to find. The costs of not-doing tend to be hidden in the figures. […] Waste runs high in any business. Man, after all, is not very efficient. Special efforts to find waste are therefore always necessary." (Peter F Drucker, "Managing for Results: Economic Tasks and Risk-taking Decisions", 1964)

"Costs - their identification, measurement, and control - are the most thoroughly worked, if not overworked, business area. […] Altogether focusing resources on results is the best and most effective cost control. Cost, after all, does not exist by itself. It is always incurred - in intent at least - for the sake of a result. What matters therefore is not the absolute cost level but the ratio between efforts and their results." (Peter F Drucker, "Managing for Results: Economic Tasks and Risk-taking Decisions", 1964)

"Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems. [...] Resources, to produce results, must be allocated to opportunities rather than to problems." (Peter F Drucker, "Managing for Results: Economic Tasks and Risk-taking Decisions", 1964)

"The best way to come to grips with one’s own business knowledge is to look at the things the business has done well, and the things it apparently does poorly. […] Knowledge is a perishable commodity. It has to be reaffirmed, relearned, repracticed all the time. One has to work constantly at regaining one’s specific excellence. […] The right knowledge is the knowledge needed to exploit the market opportunities." (Peter F Drucker, "Managing for Results: Economic Tasks and Risk-taking Decisions", 1964)

"There are three different dimensions to the economic task: (1) The present business must be made effective; (2) its potential must be identified and realized; (3) it must be made into a different business for a different future. Each task requires a distinct approach. Each asks different questions. Each comes out with different conclusions. Yet they are inseparable. All three have to be done at the same time: today." (Peter F Drucker, "Managing for Results: Economic Tasks and Risk-taking Decisions", 1964)

"To be able to control costs, a business therefore needs a cost analysis which: Identifies the cost centers - that is, the areas where the significant costs are, and where effective cost reduction can really produce results. Finds what the important cost points are in each major cost center. Looks at the entire business as one cost stream. Defines ‘cost’ as what the customer pays rather than as what the legal or tax unit of accounting incurs. Classifies costs according to their basic characteristics and thus produces a cost diagnosis." (Peter F Drucker, "Managing for Results: Economic Tasks and Risk-taking Decisions", 1964)

"Modern organization makes demands on the individual to learn something he has never been able to do before: to use organization intelligently, purposefully, deliberately, responsibly [...] to manage organization [...] to make [...] his job in it serve his ends, his values, his desire to achieve." (Peter F Drucker, The Age of Discontinuity, 1968)

"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." (Peter Drucker, "Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Challenges", 1973)

"Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations." (Peter Drucker, "Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Challenges", 1973)

"[Management] has authority only as long as it performs." (Peter F Drucker, "Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices", 1973)

"Managers, therefore, need to be skilled in making decisions with long futurity on a systematic basis. Management has no choice but to anticipate the future, to attempt to mold it, and to balance short-range and long-range goals.[…] 'Short range' and 'long range' are not determined by any given time span. A decision is not short range because it takes only a few months to carry it out. What matters is the time span over which it is effective. […] The skill we need is not long-range planning. It is strategic decision-making, or perhaps strategic planning." (Peter F Drucker, "Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices", 1973)

"Organizationally what is required - and evolving - is systems management." (Peter F Drucker, "Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices", 1973)

"[…] strategic planning […] is the continuous process of making present entrepreneurial (risk-taking) decisions systematically and with the greatest knowledge of their futurity; organizing systematically the efforts needed to carry out these decisions; and measuring the results of these decisions against the expectations through organized, systematic feedback." (Peter F Drucker, "Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices", 1973)

"Strategic planning is not the 'application of scientific methods to business decision' […] . It is the application of thought, analysis, imagination, and judgment. It is responsibility, rather than technique. […] Strategy planning is not forecasting. […] Strategic planning is necessary precisely because we cannot forecast. […] Strategic planning does nor deal with future decisions. It deals with the futurity of present decisions. […] Strategic planning is not an attempt to eliminate risk. It is not even an attempt to minimize risk." (Peter F Drucker, "Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices", 1973)

"'Structure follows strategy' is one of the fundamental insights we have acquired in the last twenty years. Without understanding the mission, the objectives, and the strategy of the enterprise, managers cannot be managed, organizations cannot be designed, managerial jobs cannot be made productive. [...] Strategy determines what the key activities are in a given business. And strategy requires knowing 'what our business is and what it should be'." (Peter F Drucker, "Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices", 1973)

"There is a point of complexity beyond which a business is no longer manageable." (Peter F Drucker, "Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices", 1973)

"The manager is a servant. His master is the institution he manages and his first responsibility must therefore be to it." (Peter F Drucker, "Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices", 1973)

"The worker's effectiveness is determined largely by the way he is being managed. (Peter F Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices", 1973)

"Above all, innovation is not invention. It is a term of economics rather than of technology. [...] The measure of innovation is the impact on the environment. [...] To manage innovation, a manager has to be at least literate with respect to the dynamics of innovation." (Peter F Drucker, "People and Performance", 1977)

"'Management' means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for authority of rank. (Peter F Drucker, "People and Performance", 1977)

"Objectives are not fate; they are direction. They are not commands; they are commitments. They do not determine the future; they are means to mobilize the resources and energies of the business for the making of the future." (Peter F Drucker, "People and Performance", 1977)

"[...] the first criterion in identifying those people within an organization who have management responsibility is not command over people. It is responsibility for contribution. Function rather than power has to be the distinctive criterion and the organizing principle." (Peter F Drucker, "People and Performance", 1977)

"[...] when a variety of tasks have all to be performed in cooperation, syncronization, 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)

"Knowledge work, unlike manual work, cannot be replaced by capital investment. On the contrary, capital investment creates the need for more knowledge work." (Peter F Drucker, "Management in Turbulent Times", 1980)

"The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager." (Peter F Drucker, "Management in Turbulent Times", 1980)

"Top management work is work for a team rather than one man." (Peter F Drucker, "Memos for Management: Leadership", 1983)

"No other area offers richer opportunities for successful innovation than the unexpected success." (Peter Drucker, "Innovation and Entrepreneurship", 1985)

"You cannot prevent a major catastrophe, but you can build an organization that is battle-ready, where people trust one another. In military training, the first rule is to instill soldiers with trust in their officers - because without trust, they won't fight." (Peter Drucker, "Managing the Non-Profit Organization", 1990)

"Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes." (Peter F Drucker) 

"So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work." (Peter F Drucker)

🖌️John Naisbitt - Collected Quotes

"The acceleration of technological progress has created an urgent need for a counter ballast - for high-touch experience." (John Naisbitt, "Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives", 1982)

"We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge." (John Naisbitt, "Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives", 1982)

"We created the hierarchical, pyramidal, managerial system because we needed to keep track of people and the things people did; with the computer to keep track, we can restructure our institutions horizontally." (John Naisbitt, "Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives", 1982)

"We lose all intelligence by averaging." (John Naisbitt, "Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives", 1982)

"In an information society, education is no mere amenity; it is the prime tool for growing people and profits." (John Naisbitt, "Re-Inventing the Corporation", 1985) 

"Intuition becomes increasingly valuable in the new information society precisely because there is so much data." (John Naisbitt, "Re-Inventing the Corporation", 1985) 

"The most important skill to acquire now is learning how to learn." (John Naisbitt, "Re-Inventing the Corporation", 1985) 

"It is in the nature of human beings to bend information in the direction of desired conclusions." (John Naisbitt, "Mind Set!: Reset Your Thinking and See the Future", 2006) 

🖌️Henry Mintzberg - Collected Quotes

"Five coordinating mechanisms seem to explain the fundamental ways in which organizations coordinate their work: mutual adjustment, direct supervision, standardization of work processes, standardization of work outputs, and standardization of worker skills." (Henry Mintzberg, "The Structuring of Organizations", 1979)

"We find that the manager, particularly at senior levels, is overburdened with work. With the increasing complexity of modern organizations and their problems, he is destined to become more so. He is driven to brevity, fragmentation, and superficiality in his tasks, yet he cannot easily delegate them because of the nature of his information. And he can do little to increase his available time or significantly enhance his power to manage. Furthermore, he is driven to focus on that which is current and tangible in his work, even though the complex problems facing many organizations call for reflection and a far-sighted perspective." (Henry Mintzberg, "The Structuring of Organizations", 1979)

"[…] the most successful strategies are visions, not plans. Strategic planning isn’t strategic thinking. One is analysis, and the other is synthesis." (Henry Mintzberg, "The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning", Harvard Business Review, 1994) [source] 

"Sometimes strategies must be left as broad visions, not precisely articulated, to adapt to a changing environment." (Henry Mintzberg, "The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning", Harvard Business Review, 1994) [source] 

"Strategy making needs to function beyond the boxes to encourage the informal learning that produces new perspectives and new combinations. […] Once managers understand this, they can avoid other costly misadventures caused by applying formal techniques, without judgement and intuition, to problem solving." (Henry Mintzberg, 1994)

"Strategy-making is an immensely complex process involving the most sophisticated, subtle, and at times subconscious of human cognitive and social processes." (Henry Mintzberg, "Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour Through The Wilds of Strategic Mangement", 2005)

"Theory is a dirty word in some managerial quarters. That is rather curious, because all of us, managers especially, can no more get along without theories than libraries can get along without catalogs - and for the same reason: theories help us make sense of incoming information." (Henry Mintzberg," Managers Not MBAs", 2005) 

"The real challenge in crafting strategy lies in detecting subtle discontinuities that may undermine a business in the future. And for that there is no technique, no program, just a sharp mind in touch with the situation." (Henry Mintzberg, "Tracking Strategies: Toward a General Theory", 2007)

"Strategic planning is not strategic thinking. Indeed, strategic planning often spoils strategic thinking, causing managers to confuse real vision with the manipulation of numbers." (Henry Mintzberg)

🖌️Ernest Dale - Collected Quotes

"Every company has beloved projects on which if prices had held up, if the contractors had finished on time (or finished at all), if the plans hadn't been altered, if the thing had actually worked, the planned return would have been earned. But since some or all of these calamities [things that don't go as expected] usually happen, any manager who neglects to allow for them is not planning - merely thinking wishfully. Desire for the project has, as usual, overtaken desire for profit." (Ernest Dale, "Planning and developing the company organization structure", 1952)

"Organization planning is the process of defining and grouping the activities of the enterprise so that they may be most logically assigned and effectively executed. It is concerned with the establishment of relationships among the units so as to further the objectives of the enterprise." (Ernest Dale, "Planning and developing the company organization structure", 1952)

"Management policies and the quality of leadership have a lot to do with individual performance." (Ernest Dale, "The Great Organizers", 1960)

"An organization that is based on pure rationality ignores many facets of human nature." (Ernest Dale, "Management: Theory and practice", 1965)

"Centralized controls are designed to ensure that the chief executive can find out how well the delegated authority and responsibility are being exercised." (Ernest Dale, "Management: Theory and practice", 1965)

"One difficulty in developing a good [accounting] control system is that quantitative results will differ according to the accounting principles used, and accounting principles may change." (Ernest Dale, "Readings in Management", 1970)

🖌️John Doerr - Collected Quotes

"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)

"An effective goal management system - an OKR system - links goals to a team’s broader mission. It respects targets and deadlines while adapting to circumstances. It promotes feedback and celebrates wins, large and small. Most important, it expands our limits. It moves us to strive for what might seem beyond our reach." (John Doerr, "Measure what Matters", 2018)

"Goals may cause systematic problems in organizations due to narrowed focus, unethical behavior, increased risk taking, decreased cooperation, and decreased motivation. Use care when applying goals in your organization." (John Doerr, "Measure what Matters", 2018)

"Ideas are easy. Execution is everything." (John Doerr, "Measure what Matters", 2018)

"Key results are the levers you pull, the marks you hit to achieve the goal. If an objective is well framed, three to five KRs will usually be adequate to reach it. Too many can dilute focus and obscure progress. Besides, each key result should be a challenge in its own right. If you’re certain you’re going to nail it, you’re probably not pushing hard enough. [...] Key results should be succinct, specific, and measurable. A mix of outputs and inputs is helpful. Finally, completion of all key results must result in attainment of the objective. If not, it’s not an OKR." (John Doerr, "Measure what Matters", 2018)

"KEY RESULTS benchmark and monitor HOW we get to the objective. Effective KRs are specific and time-bound, aggressive yet realistic. Most of all, they are measurable and verifiable. […] You either meet a key result’s requirements or you don’t; there is no gray area, no room for doubt." (John Doerr, "Measure what Matters", 2018)

"[OKRs (Objectives and Key Results): are a] management methodology that helps to ensure that the company focuses efforts on the same important issues throughout the organization." (John Doerr, "Measure what Matters", 2018)

"OKRs have such enormous potential because they are so adaptable. There is no dogma, no one right way to use them. Different organizations have fluctuating needs at various phases of their life cycle. For some, the simple act of making goals open and transparent is a big leap forward. For others, a quarterly planning cadence will change the game.." (John Doerr, "Measure what Matters", 2018)

"To succeed, a stretch goal cannot seem like a long march to nowhere. Nor can it be imposed from on high without regard to realities on the ground. Stretch your team too fast and too far, and it may snap. In pursuing high-effort, high- risk goals, employee commitment is essential. Leaders must convey two things: the importance of the outcome, and the belief that it’s attainable." (John Doerr, "Measure what Matters", 2018)

🖌️A Stafford Beer - Collected Quotes

"[…] cybernetics studies the flow of information round a system, and the way in which this information is used by the system as a means of controlling itself: it does this for animate and inanimate systems indifferently. For cybernetics is an interdisciplinary science, owing as much to biology as to physics, as much to the study of the brain as to the study of computers, and owing also a great deal to the formal languages of science for providing tools with which the behaviour of all these systems can be objectively described." (A Stafford Beer, 1966)

"If cybernetics is the science of control, management is the profession of control." (A Stafford Beer, "Decision and Control", 1966)

"According to the science of cybernetics, which deals with the topic of control in every kind of system (mechanical, electronic, biological, human, economic, and so on), there is a natural law that governs the capacity of a control system to work. It says that the control must be capable of generating as much 'variety' as the situation to be controlled." (A Stafford Beer, "Management Science", 1968)

"Policy-making, decision-taking, and control: These are the three functions of management that have intellectual content." (A Stafford Beer, "Management Science" , 1968)

"Management is not founded on observation and experiment, but on a drive towards a set of outcomes. These aims are not altogether explicit; at one extreme they may amount to no more than an intention to preserve the status quo, at the other extreme they may embody an obsessional demand for power, profit or prestige. But the scientist's quest for insight, for understanding, for wanting to know what makes the system tick, rarely figures in the manager's motivation. Secondly, and therefore, management is not, even in intention, separable from its own intentions and desires: its policies express them. Thirdly, management is not normally aware of the conventional nature of its intellectual processes and control procedures. It is accustomed to confuse its conventions for recording information with truths-about-the-business, its subjective institutional languages for discussing the business with an objective language of fact and its models of reality with reality itself." (A Stafford Beer, "Decision and Control", 1994)

"Industrial managers faced with a problem in production control invariably expect a solution to be devised that is simple and unidimensional. They seek the variable in the situation whose control will achieve control of the whole system: tons of throughput, for example. Business managers seek to do the same thing in controlling a company; they hope they have found the measure of the entire system when they say 'everything can be reduced to monetary terms'." (A Stafford Beer, "Decision and Control", 1994)

"The trouble is that no manager can really handle the full-scale isomorph of his enterprise unless he is the only employee. To delegate is to embark on a series of one-many transformations. The manager can at best settle for a homomorph consisting of all the ones." (A Stafford Beer, "Decision and Control", 1994)