♟️Strategic Management: Leadership (Just the Quotes)

"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)

"Do not confuse objectives with methods. When the nation becomes substantially united in favor of planning the broad objectives of civilization, then true leadership must unite thought behind definite methods." (Franklin D Roosevelt, 1937)

"No amount of study or learning will make a man a leader unless he has the natural qualities of one." (Archibald Wavell, "Generals and Generalship", 1941)

"Leadership is interpersonal influence, exercised in a situation, and directed, through the communication process, toward the attainment of a specified goal or goals." (Robert K Tanenbaum, "Leadership and Organization", 1961)

"The leadership and other processes of the organization must be such as to ensure a maximum probability that in all interactions and all interactions and all relationships with the organization each member will, in the light of his background, values, and expectations, view the experience as supportive and one which builds and maintains his sense of personal worth and importance." (Rensis Likert, "New patterns of management", 1961)

"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)

"A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world." (John Updike, "They Thought They Were Better", TIME magazine, 1980)

"Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned." (Harold Geneen & Alvin Moscow, "Managing", 1984)

"Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions [...]" (Harold Geneen & Alvin Moscow, "Managing", 1984)

"Leadership is the very heart and soul of business management." (Harold Geneen, "Managing", 1984)

"With the changes in technological complexity, especially in information technology, the leadership task has changed. Leadership in a networked organization is a fundamentally different thing from leadership in a traditional hierarchy." (Edgar Schein, "Organizational Culture and Leadership", 1985)

"A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice. (James Callaghan, The Harvard Business Review, 1986)

"The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It's got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet." (Theodore Hesburg, TIME magazine, 1987)

"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)

"All great leaders have understood that their number one responsibility is cultivating their own discipline and personal growth. Those who cannot lead themselves cannot lead others." (John C Maxwell, "Developing the Leader Within You", 1993)

"In effective personal leadership, visualization and affirmation techniques emerge naturally out of a foundation of well thought through purposes and principles that become the center of a person's life." (Stephen Covey, "Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People", 1994)

"The problem with most leaders today is they don't stand for anything. Leadership implies movement toward something, and convictions provide that direction. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." (Don Shula, "Everyone's a Coach: You Can Inspire Anyone to be a Winner", 1995)

"Leadership is knowing what to do next, knowing why that's important, and knowing how to bring the appropriate resources to bear on the need at hand." (Bobb Biehl. The on My Own Handbook, 1997)

"The basis of leadership is the capacity of the leader to change the mindset, the framework of the other person." (Warren Bennis, "Managing People is Like Herding Cats", 1997)

"Too many companies believe people are interchangeable. Truly gifted people never are. They have unique talents. Such people cannot be forced into roles they are not suited for, nor should they be. Effective leaders allow great people to do the work they were born to do." (Warren Bennis, "Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration", 1997)

"An effective leader leaves a legacy; they leave their footprints on the road for others to follow. A good leader develops themselves and they develop others. They bring people together rather than divide them." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Good leaders are ethical, responsible and effective. Ethical because leadership connects you to others through shared values. Responsible because leadership means self-development and not simply giving orders, however charismatically, to get others to do what you want. Effective because shared values and goals give the strongest motivation for getting tasks done. There are no guarantees, but this sort of leadership will bring you closer to people and give you the greatest chance of success." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Leadership comes from our natural striving to constantly reinvent ourselves. You do not need external permission to be a leader. Nor do you need any qualifications or position of authority. Leadership does not depend on what you do already. Many people in positions of authority are not leaders; they may have the title but not the substance. Others have the substance, but no title. Leadership comes from the reality of what you do and how you think, not from your title or nominal responsibilities. Leadership blooms when the soil and climate is right, but the seed comes from within." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Leadership has long been associated with authority - we tend to concentrate on the leader, to think of them as innately superior in some way, and take the followers for granted. But formal authority is only one possible part of leadership. Many leaders do not have it. In some cases, perhaps ‘companionship’ better describes the relationship between leader and followers." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Leadership is about inspiring people through a shared set of values." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens, people feel centered and that gives their work meaning." (Warren Bennis, "Managing People Is Like Herding Cats", 1999)

"Making good judgments when one has complete data, facts, and knowledge is not leadership - it's bookkeeping." (Dee Hock, "Birth of the Chaordic Age", 1999)

"The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born — that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born. And the way we become leaders is by learning about leadership through life and job experiences, not with university degrees. (Warren Bennis, "Managing People Is Like Herding Cats", 1999)

"The aim of leadership should be to improve the performance of man and machine, to improve quality, to increase output, and simultaneously to bring pride of workmanship to people. Put in a negative way, the aim of leadership is not merely to find and record failures of men, but to remove the causes of failure: to help people to do a better job with less effort." (W Edwards Deming, "Out of the Crisis", 2000)

"The higher you want to climb, the more you need leadership. The greater the impact you want to make, the greater your influence needs to be. Whatever you will accomplish is restricted by your ability to lead others." (John C. Maxwell, "Leadership 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know", 2002)

"The true measure of leadership is influence - nothing more, nothing less." (John C Maxwell, Leadership 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know, 2002)

"Leadership is seeing the possibilities in a situation while others are seeing the limitations." (John C Maxwell, "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership", 2007)

"Personal and organizational effectiveness is proportionate to the strength of leadership." (John C Maxwell, "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership", 2007)

"The ability to plan for what has not yet happened, for a future that has only been imagined, is one of the hallmarks of leadership." (Warren Bennis, "Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration", 2007)

"The most powerful demonstration of leadership is not a clenched fist of brute force but an open hand of humble assistance." (Mike Huckabee, "From Hope to Higher Ground", 2007)

"Leadership is the capacity to influence others through inspiration motivated by passion, generated by vision, produced by a conviction, ignited by a purpose." (Myles Munroe, "Charge: Finding the Leader Within You", 2008)

"Listening to the inner voice - trusting the inner voice - is one of the most important lessons of leadership." (Warren Bennis, "On Becoming a Leader", 2009)

"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)

"Hope without a strategy doesn't generate leadership. Leadership comes when your hope and your optimism are matched with a concrete vision of the future and a way to get there. People won't follow you if they don't believe you can get to where you say you're going." (Seth Godin, "Tribes: We need you to lead us", 2011)

"Leadership requires creating conditions that enable employees to do the kinds of experimentation that entrepreneurship requires." (Eric Ries, "The Lean Startup", 2011) 

"Restructuring is a favorite tactic of antisocials who have reached a senior position in an organization. The chaos that results is an ideal smokescreen for dysfunctional leadership. Failure at the top goes unnoticed, while the process of restructuring creates the illusion of a strong, creative hand on the helm." (Manfred F R Kets de Vries, "The Leader on the Couch", 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)

"Sustainable leadership does no harm to and actively improves the surrounding environment." (Andy Hargreaves, "Sustainable Leadership", 2012)

"The exercise of true leadership is inversely proportional to the exercise of power." (Stephen Covey, "The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness", 2013)

"The leader is one who mobilizes others toward a goal shared by leaders and followers. [...] Leaders, followers and goals make up the three equally necessary supports for leadership." (Garry Wills, "Certain Trumpets: The Nature of Leadership", 2013)

"Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It's about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others' success, and then standing back and letting them shine." (Chris Hadfield, "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth", 2013)

"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)

"Most leadership strategies are doomed to failure from the outset. As people have been noting for years, the majority of strategic initiatives that are driven from the top are marginally effective - at best." (Peter Senge, "The Dance of Change: The challenges to sustaining momentum in a learning organization", 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)

"The more intentional you are about your leadership growth, the greater your potential for becoming the leader you're capable of being. Never stop learning." (John C. Maxwell, "The Leadership Handbook", 2015)

"Leadership is not about being in charge. Leadership is about taking care of those in your charge." (Simon Sinek, "Together is Better: A Little Book of Inspiration", 2016)

"The traditional approach to leadership values decision-making conviction and consistency; good leaders 'stick to their guns'. By contrast, the emerging approach recognizes that in fast-changing environments, decisions often need to be reversed or adapted, and that changing course in response to new information is a strength, not a weakness. If this tension is not managed wisely, leaders run the risk of seeming too rigid, on the one hand, or too wishy-washy on the other." (Jennifer Jordan et al, "Every Leader Needs to Navigate These 7 Tensions", Harvard Business Review, 2020) [source]

"Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy." (Norman Schwarzkopf)

"Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality." (Warren Bennis)

"Leadership means that a group, large or small, is willing to entrust authority to a person who has shown judgement, wisdom, personal appeal, and proven competence." (Walt Disney)

"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality." (Max DePree)

♟️Strategic Management: Management (Just the Quotes)

"Management of many is the same as management of few. It is a matter of organization." (Sun Tzu, "The Art of War", cca. 5th century BC)

"And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new." (Nicolo Machiavelli, cca. 1505)

"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)

"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)

"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)

"There is some confusion today as to the meaning of scientific management. This concerns itself with the nature of such management itself, with the scope or field to which such management applies, and with the aims that it desires to attain. Scientific management is simply management that is based upon actual measurement. Its skillful application is an art that must be acquired, but its fundamental principles have the exactness of scientific laws which are open to study by everyone. We have here nothing hidden or occult or secret, like the working practices of an old-time craft; we have here a science that is the result of accurately recorded, exact investigation." (Frank B Gilbreth Sr., "Applied Motion Study", 1917)

"Failure to succeed greatly in management usually occurs not so much from lack of knowledge of the important principles of the science of management as from failure to apply them. Most of the principles of successful management are old, and many of them have received sufficient publicity to be well known, but managers are curiously prone to look upon managerial success as a personal attribute that is slightly dependent on principles or laws." (Allan C Haskell, "How to Make and Use Graphic Charts", 1919)

"For any manager to utilize graphic methods for visualizing the vital facts of his business, in the first place it must be impressed upon his that the method will produce the results for him and then he must know how to get up a chart correctly, and last, but far from least, he must know what the essential facts of his business are. Charts, in themselves, mean little and like many another force for the accomplishment of good, if misdirected, may result unprofitably." (Allan C Haskell, "How to Make and Use Graphic Charts", 1919)

"The concept of management as a specific body of knowledge and practice forming the basis of a specialised profession. […] Wherever human activities are carried out in an organised and co-operative form, there management must be found." (Lyndall Urwick, "The Making Of Scientific Management", 1945)

"Good management are rarely overcompensated to an extent that makes any significant difference with respect to the stockholder's position. Poor management are always overcompensated, because they are worth less than nothing to the owners." (Benjamin Graham, "The Intelligent Investor", 1949)

"[...] authority - the right by which superiors are able to require conformity of subordinates to decisions - is the basis for responsibility and the force that binds organization together. The process of organizing encompasses grouping of activities for purposes of management and specification of authority relationships between superiors and subordinates and horizontally between managers. Consequently, authority and responsibility relationships come into being in all associative undertakings where the superior-subordinate link exists. It is these relationships that create the basic character of the managerial job." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"If charts do not reflect actual organization and if the organization is intended to be as charted, it is the job of effective management to see that actual organization conforms with that desired. Organization charts cannot supplant good organizing, nor can a chart take the place of spelling out authority relationships clearly and completely, of outlining duties of managers and their subordinates, and of defining responsibilities." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"The essence of managership is the achievement of coordination among people. Coordination is a complex concept, including principles by which harmonious enterprise activity can be accomplished and the many techniques for achieving the greatest synchronized effort." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"Management tries to make the best use of the resources available." (Edith Penrose, "The Theory of the Growth of the Firm", 1959)

"Management is a distinct process consisting of planning, organising, actuating and controlling; utilising in each both science and art, and followed in order to accomplish pre-determined objectives." (George R Terry, "Principles of Management", 1960)

"The key question for top management is what are your assumptions (implicit as well as explicit) about the most effective way to manage people?" (Douglas McGregor, "The Human Side of Enterprise", 1960)

"[System dynamics] is an approach that should help in important top-management problems [...] The solutions to small problems yield small rewards. Very often the most important problems are but little more difficult to handle than the unimportant. Many [people] predetermine mediocre results by setting initial goals too low. The attitude must be one of enterprise design. The expectation should be for major improvement [...] The attitude that the goal is to explain behavior; which is fairly common in academic circles, is not sufficient. The goal should be to find management policies and organizational structures that lead to greater success." (Jay W Forrester, "Industrial Dynamics", 1961)

"We have endeavored to stress the appropriateness of each system to its own specific set of conditions. Equally, we desire to avoid the suggestion that either system is superior under all circumstances to the other. In particular, nothing in our experience justifies the assumption that mechanistic systems should be superseded by organic in conditions of stability. The beginning of administrative wisdom is the awareness that there is no one optimum type of management system". (Tom Burns, "The Management of Innovation", 1961)

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

"Management is defined here as the accomplishment of desired objectives by establishing an environment favorable to performance by people operating in organized groups." (Harold Koontz, "Principles of Management", 1968)

"Management as an activity has always existed to make people’s desires through organized effort. Management facilitates the efforts of people in organized groups and arises when people seek to cooperate to achieve goals." (Daniel A Wren, "The evolution of management thought", 1972)

"[Management] has authority only as long as it performs." (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)

"There is a point of complexity beyond which a business is no longer manageable." (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)

"The models of management which individuals and organizations use come from a variety of sources. Sometimes the model comes from a theory. The theory may emerge from someone's thoughts about the desired characteristics of a manager, or about the characteristics of competent managers. Sometimes the model comes from a panel. A group of people, possibly in the job or at levels above the job within the organization, generates a model through discussion of what is needed to perform a management job competently." (Richard Boyatzis, "Competent Manager", 1982)

"Management manages by making decisions and by seeing that those decisions are implemented."  (Harold Geneen, "Managing", 1984)

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

"Management skills are only part of what it takes. [...] Managers must also be corporate warriors or leaders. These unique individuals are the problem identifiers. They possess a strong sense of vision; view firefighting as an opportunity to do things differently and smarter; and are business strategists who help identify key corporate growth issues." (John W Aldridge, Management Review, December 1987)

"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 future prospects of management science will be much enhanced if (a) the diversity of issues confronting managers is accepted, (b) work on developing a rich variety of problem-solving methodologies is undertaken, and (c) we continually ask the question: 'What kind of issue can be managed with which sort of methodology?'." (Robert L Flood & Michael C Jackson, "Creative Problem Solving: Total Systems Intervention", 1991)

"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." (Stanford Beer, "Decision and Control", 1994)

"Management is a set of processes that can keep a complicated system of people and technology running smoothly. The most important aspects of management include planning, budgeting, organizing, staffing, controlling, and problem solving." (John P Kotter, "Leading Change", 1996) 

"Management keeps existing systems running smoothly. It is a skill; leadership more an identity issue. Leaders innovate, they change or modify existing procedures, and they focus on transformation. Leaders motivate people through their beliefs and values, pushing the edges of the current organizational culture; management accepts the current organizational culture and makes it work. Management gets people to do things and leaders get people to want to do things. Management works within boundaries and leaders work with boundaries (not without boundaries!) Managers are people who do things right. Leaders are people who do the right thing." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Managers sometimes justify the stick by pointing to better results, with the assumption that the threats caused the improvements. Alas, this is unlikely. One event coming before another does not automatically mean that the first is the cause of the second; the rooster does not make the sun rise every morning, although it may think it does. Bad results are much more likely to improve than get worse due to the simple law of statistics known as regression: results average out over time. Poor performance will eventually improve even when left to itself." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"Managing [...] used to be about planning and control. Top management decided what was to be done, middle management worked out how to do it and everyone else did as they were told. This model assumed, of course, that top management knew what needed to be done, that the orders had time to percolate their way down and that, like a good army, the lower ranks would obey." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

♟️Strategic Management: Decision Trees (Just the Quotes)

"A decision tree does not give management the answer to an investment problem; rather, it helps management determine which alternative at any particular choice point will yield the greatest expected monetary gain, given the information and alternatives pertinent to the decision."  (John F Magee, "Decision Trees for Decision Making", Harvard Business Review, 1964) [source]

"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) [source]

"The unique feature of the decision tree is that it allows management to combine analytical techniques such as discounted cash flow and present value methods with a clear portrayal of the impact of future decision alternatives and events. Using the decision tree, management can consider various courses of action with greater ease and clarity. The interactions between present decision alternatives, uncertain events, and future choices and their results become more visible." (John F Magee, "Decision Trees for Decision Making", Harvard Business Review, 1964) [source]

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

"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)

"One advantage that decision tree modeling has over other pattern recognition techniques lies in the interpretability of the decision model. Due to this interpretability, information relating to the identification of important features and interclass relationships can be used to support the design of future experiments and data analysis." (S D Brown, A J Myles, in Comprehensive Chemometrics, 2009)

"Decision trees are an important tool for decision making and risk analysis, and are usually represented in the form of a graph or list of rules. One of the most important features of decision trees is the ease of their application. Being visual in nature, they are readily comprehensible and applicable. Even if users are not familiar with the way that a decision tree is constructed, they can still successfully implement it. Most often decision trees are used to predict future scenarios, based on previous experience, and to support rational decision making." (Jelena Djuris et al, "Neural computing in pharmaceutical products and process development", Computer-Aided Applications in Pharmaceutical Technology, 2013)

"Decision trees (DTs) are the simplest modeling techniques and are most appropriate for modeling interventions in which the relevant events occur over a short time period. The main limitation of decision trees is their inflexibility to model decision problems, which involve recurring events and are ongoing over time. " (H Haji Ali Afzali & J Karnon, "Specification and Implementation of Decision Analytic Model Structures for Economic Evaluation of Health Care Technologies", Encyclopedia of Health Economics, 2014)

"Decision trees are considered a good predictive model to start with, and have many advantages. Interpretability, variable selection, variable interaction, and the flexibility to choose the level of complexity for a decision tree all come into play." (Ralph Winters, "Practical Predictive Analytics", 2017)

"Decision trees show the breakdown of the data by one variable then another in a very intuitive way, though they are generally just diagrams that don’t actually encode data visually." (Robert Grant, "Data Visualization: Charts, Maps and Interactive Graphics", 2019)

"Random forests are essentially an ensemble of trees. They use many short trees, fitted to multiple samples of the data, and the predictions are averaged for each observation. This helps to get around a problem that trees, and many other machine learning techniques, are not guaranteed to find optimal models, in the way that linear regression is. They do a very challenging job of fitting non-linear predictions over many variables, even sometimes when there are more variables than there are observations. To do that, they have to employ 'greedy algorithms', which find a reasonably good model but not necessarily the very best model possible." (Robert Grant, "Data Visualization: Charts, Maps and Interactive Graphics", 2019)

♟️Strategic Management: Leadership vs. Management (Just the Quotes)

"And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new."  (Nicolo Machiavelli, cca. 1505)

"No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings." (Peter Drucker, "Big business: a study of the political problems of American capitalism", 1947)

"The concept of leadership has an ambiguous status in organizational practice, as it does in organizational theory. In practice, management appears to be of two minds about the exercise of leadership. Many jobs are so specified in content and method that within very broad limits differences among individuals become irrelevant, and acts of leadership are regarded as gratuitous at best, and at worst insubordinate." (Daniel Katz & Robert L Kahn, "The Social Psychology of Organizations", 1966)

"Organizational cultures are created by leaders, and one of the decisive functions of leadership may well be the creation, the management, and - if and when that may become necessary - the destruction of culture." (Edgar Schein, "Organizational Culture and Leadership", 1985)

"Management skills are only part of what it takes. [...] Managers must also be corporate warriors or leaders. These unique individuals are the problem identifiers. They possess a strong sense of vision; view firefighting as an opportunity to do things differently and smarter; and are business strategists who help identify key corporate growth issues." (John W Aldridge, Management Review, December 1987)

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." (Stephen R Covey & Warren Bennis, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", 1989)

"The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it." (Warren Bennis, 1989)

"Management is clearly different from leadership. Leadership is primarily a high-powered, right-brain activity. It's more of an art it's based on a philosophy. You have to ask the ultimate questions of life when you're dealing with personal leadership issues. (Stephen Covey, "Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People", 1994)

"The importance of top management commitment to organizational change is so well accepted that it is almost cliché to repeat the fact. We would therefore expect managerial values to be just as important in this area as in others that require strategic direction and leadership" (Thomas A Kochan,"The Mutual Gains Enterprise", 1994) 

"Management is a set of processes that can keep a complicated system of people and technology running smoothly. The most important aspects of management include planning, budgeting, organizing, staffing, controlling, and problem solving. Leadership is a set of processes that creates organizations in the first place or adapts them to significantly changing circumstances. Leadership defines what the future should look like, aligns people with that vision, and inspires them to make it happen despite the obstacles." (John P Kotter, "Leading Change", 1996) 

"You can manage what you do not understand, but you cannot lead it." (Myron Tribus,"You Cannot Lead What You Do Not Understand - You Do Not Understand What You Haven't Done", Journal of Innovative Management, 1996)

"Management keeps existing systems running smoothly. It is a skill; leadership more an identity issue. Leaders innovate, they change or modify existing procedures, and they focus on transformation. Leaders motivate people through their beliefs and values, pushing the edges of the current organizational culture; management accepts the current organizational culture and makes it work. Management gets people to do things and leaders get people to want to do things. Management works within boundaries and leaders work with boundaries (not without boundaries!) Managers are people who do things right. Leaders are people who do the right thing." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"If great managers are catalysts, speeding up the reaction between the individual's talents and the company's goals, then great leaders are alchemists. Somehow they are able to transform our fear of the unknown into confidence in the future." (Marcus Buckingham,"The One Thing You Need to Know", 2005) 

"Real leaders ask hard questions and knock people out of their comfort zones and then manage the resulting distress." (Alan Hirsch, "The Faith of Leap", 2011)

"Management is a business skill; you can study it and learn about it. Leadership is a human skill; to become a better leader you need to learn more about humans, starting with yourself." (Kent Thiry, 2013)

"Stress and anxiety at work have less to do with the work we do and more to do with weak management and leadership." (Simon Sinek, "Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't", 2014)

"Because management deals mostly with the status quo and leadership deals mostly with change, in the next century we are going to have to try to become much more skilled at creating leaders." (John P Kotter)

"Control is not leadership; management is not leadership; leadership is leadership. If you seek to lead, invest at least 50% of your time in leading yourself–your own purpose, ethics, principles, motivation, conduct. Invest at least 20% leading those with authority over you and 15% leading your peers." (Dee Hock)

"Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out." (Stephen Covey)

"Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall." (Stephen R Covey)

"Management works in the system; Leadership works on the system." (Stephen R. Covey)

♟️Strategic Management: Managers (Just the Quotes)

"The manager must never be lacking in knowledge of the special profession which is characteristic of the undertaking: the technical profession in industry, commercial in commerce, political in the State, military in the Army, religious in the Church, medical in the hospital, teaching in the school, etc. The technical function has long been given the degree of importance which is its due, and of which we must not deprive it, but the technical function by itself cannot endure the successful running of a business; it needs the help of the other essential functions and particularly of that of administration. This fact is so important from the point of view of the organization and management of a business that I do not mind how often I repeat it in order that it may be fully realized." (Henri Fayol, "Industrial and General Administration", 1916)

"Managers today come up against a few more communication barriers. One is the pressure of time. Listening carefully takes time, and managers have little of that to spare. In today’s business culture especially, with its emphasis on speed, already pressed managers may give short shrift to the slower art of one-on-one communication." (Carl Rogers & Fritz Roethlisberger, "Barriers and gateways to communication", Harvard Business Review, 1952)

"Managers are the basic and scarcest resource of any business enterprise." (Peter F Drucker, "The Practice of Management", 1954)

"[...] authority - the right by which superiors are able to require conformity of subordinates to decisions - is the basis for responsibility and the force that binds organization together. The process of organizing encompasses grouping of activities for purposes of management and specification of authority relationships between superiors and subordinates and horizontally between managers. Consequently, authority and responsibility relationships come into being in all associative undertakings where the superior-subordinate link exists. It is these relationships that create the basic character of the managerial job." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"Authority delegations from a superior to a subordinate may be made in large or small degree. The tendency to delegate much authority through the echelons of an organization structure is referred to as decentralization of authority. On the other hand, authority is said to be centralized wherever a manager tends not to delegate authority to his subordinates." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"Responsibility cannot be delegated. While a manager may delegate to a subordinate authority to accomplish a service and the subordinate in turn delegate a portion of the authority received, none of these superiors delegates any of his responsibility. Responsibility, being an obligation to perform, is owed to one's superior, and no subordinate reduces his responsibility by assigning the duty to another. Authority may be delegated, but responsibility is created by the subordinate's acceptance of his assignment." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"It is highly important for managers to be honest and clear in describing what authority they are keeping and what role they are asking their subordinates to assume." (Robert Tannenbaum & Warren H Schmidt, Harvard Business Review, 1958)

"We have overwhelming evidence that available information plus analysis does not lead to knowledge. The management science team can properly analyse a situation and present recommendations to the manager, but no change occurs. The situation is so familiar to those of us who try to practice management science that I hardly need to describe the cases." (C West Churchman, "Managerial acceptance of scientific recommendations", California Management Review Vol 7, 1964)

"The successful manager must be a good diagnostician and must value a spirit of inquiry." (Edgar H Schein, "Organizational Psychology", 1965)

"Managers need all the information they want. Most MIS designers 'determine' what information is needed by asking managers what information they would like to have. This is based on the assumption that managers know what information they need and want." (Russell L Ackoff, "Management Misinformation Systems", 1967)

"Most MIS [Management Information Systems] designers 'determine' what information is needed by asking managers what information they would like to have. This is based on the (often erroneous) assumption that managers know that information they need and want it." (Russell L Ackoff, Management Science, 1967)

"Targets set by individual managers are relevant to the company's goals because the entire management group is involved in the total planning process." (Walter S Wilkstrom, "Managing by-and-with Objectives", 1968)

"[Management by objectives is] a process whereby the superior and the subordinate managers of an enterprise jointly identify its common goals, define each individual's major areas of responsibility in terms of the results expected of him, and use these measures as guides for operating the unit and assessing the contribution of each of its members." (Robert House, "Administrative Science Quarterly", 1971)

"The myth of efficiency lies in the assumption that the most efficient manager is ipso facto the most effective; actually the most efficient manager working on the wrong task will not be effective." (R Alec Mackenzie, "The Time Trap", 1972)

"It is more important for the manager to get his information quickly and efficiently than to get it formally." (Henry Mintzberg, "The Nature of Managerial Work", 1973)

"The manager does not handle decisions one at a time; he juggles a host of them, dealing with each intermittently, all the while attempting to develop some integration among them." (Henry Mintzberg, "The Nature of Managerial Work", 1973)

"The manager faces the real danger of becoming a major obstruction in the flow of decisions and information." (Henry Mintzberg, "The Nature of Managerial Work, 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 prime occupational hazard of the manager is superficiality." (Henry Mintzberg, "The Nature of Managerial Work", 1973)

"A manager [...] sets objectives [...] organizes [...] motivates and communicates [...] measure[s] [...] develops people. Every manager does these thingsknowingly or not. A manager may do them well, or may do them wretchedly, but always does them." (Peter F Drucker, "People and Performance", 1977)

"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)

"[...] 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)

"Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. I call such situations messes. Problems are extracted from messes by analysis. Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes." (Russell L Ackoff, "The future of operational research is past", 1979)

"Managers construct, rearrange, single out, and demolish many objective features of their surroundings. When people act they unrandomize variables, insert vestiges of orderliness, and literally create their own constraints." (Karl E Weick, "Social Psychology of Organizing", 1979)

"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)

"The performance of profit center managers is [usually] measured over a moderate time span. The penalty for unsatisfactory absolute performance over the short-term is severe. The proper balance between known performance and potential future benefits is never clear." (Bruce Henderson, "Henderson on Corporate Strategy", 1979)

"A competent manager can usually explain necessary planning changes in terms of specific facts which have contributed to the change. The existing fear, or attitude of failure, which results from missed completion dates should be replaced by a more constructive fear of failing to keep a plan updated." (Philip F Gehring Jr. & Udo W Pooch, "Advances in Computer Programming Management", 1980)

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

"Knowledge specialists may ascribe a degree of certainty to their models of the world that baffles and offends managers. Often the complexity of the world cannot be reduced to mathematical abstractions that make sense to a manager. Managers who expect complete, one-to-one correspondence between the real world and each element in a model are disappointed and skeptical." (Dale E Zand, "Information, Organization, and Power", 1981)

"In management, there are few things as dangerous as a comprehensive, accurate answer to the wrong question. This is pseudo-knowledge. It easily misleads management into erroneous actions. Pseudo-knowledge has mushroomed with the advent of computers, which have made available masses of data that answer questions managers found too costly to ask before. In too many instances, however, the data are collected but not used because they answer irrelevant questions." (Dale E. Zand, "Information, Organization, and Power", 1981)

"Knowledge-based organizations require managers to be problem-centered rather than territory-centered." (Dale E Zand, "Information, Organization, and Power", 1981)

"Managers often try to give others the feeling that they are participating in the decision process. When a manager involves people in a problem for which he has adequate information and clear criteria for making an acceptable decision, he is engaging in pseudoconsultation. When he involves others in lengthy discussions of trivial problems, he is engaging in pseudoparticipation. Most people recognize these ceremonies as a waste of time." (Dale E Zand, "Information, Organization, and Power", 1981)

"Managing upward relies on informal relationships, timing, exploiting ambiguity, and implicit communication. And the irony of it all is that these most subtle skills must be learned and mastered by younger managers who not only lack education and directed experience in benign guerilla warfare but are further misguided by management myths which contribute to false expectations and a misleading perception of reality." (Richard T Pascale & Anthony G Athos, "The Art of Japanese Management", 1981)

"At the core of every manager’s job is the requirement to make things happen toward a goal or consistent with a plan. Managers need to set goals and initiate actions to achieve them." (Richard Boyatzis, "Competent Manager", 1982)

"Coaching subordinates isn't an addition to a manager's job; it's an integral part of it." (George S Odiorne, "How Managers Make Things Happen", 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)

"Because the importance of training is so commonly underestimated, the manager who wants to make a dramatic improvement in organizational effectiveness without challenging the status quo will find a training program a good way to start." (Theodore Caplow, "Managing an Organization", 1983)

"Effective managers live in the present but concentrate on the future." (James L Hayes, "Memos for Management: Leadership", 1983)

"If managers are careless about basic things telling the truth, respecting moral codes, proper professional conductwho can believe them on other issues?" (James L Hayes, "Memos for Management: Leadership", 1983)

"Individual contributors who gather and disseminate know-how and information should also be seen as middle managers, because they exert great power within the organization." (Andrew S Grove, "High Output Management", 1983)

"Leadership is a manager's ability to get subordinates to develop their capabilities by inspiring them to achieve." (John A Reinecke & William F Schoell, "Introduction to Business", 1983)

"Managers have an awareness that they are the direct representatives of the employees." (Takashi Ishihara, "Cherry Blossoms and Robotics", 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)

"There is an especially efficient way to get information, much neglected by most managers. That is to visit a particular place in the company and observe what's going on there." (Andrew S Grove, "High Output Management", 1983)

"We try to make management decisions that, if everything goes right, will preclude future problems. But everything does not always go right, and managers therefore must be problem solvers as well as decision makers." (James L Hayes, "Memos for Management: Leadership", 1983)

"By assuming sole responsibility for their departments, managers produce the very narrowness and self-interest they deplore in subordinates. When subordinates are relegated to their narrow specialties, they tend to promote their own practical interests, which then forces other subordinates into counter-advocacy. The manager is thereby thrust into the roles of arbitrator, judge, and referee. Not only do priorities become distorted, but decisions become loaded with win/lose dynamics. So, try as the manager might, decisions inevitably lead to disgruntlement and plotting for the next battle." (David L Bradford & Allan R Cohen, "Managing for Excellence", 1984)

"Most managers are reluctant to comment on ineffective or inappropriate interpersonal behavior. But these areas are often crucial for professional task success. This hesitancy is doubly felt when there is a poor relationship between the two. [...] Too few managers have any experience in how to confront others effectively; generally they can more easily give feedback on inadequate task performance than on issues dealing with another's personal style." (David L Bradford & Allan R Cohen, "Managing for Excellence", 1984)

"Most managers are rewarded if their unit operates efficiently and effectively. A highly creative unit, in contrast, might appear ineffective and uneven, and rather crazy to an outside or inside observer." (William G Dyer, "Strategies for Managing Change", 1984)

"One of the most important tasks of a manager is to eliminate his people's excuses for failure." (Robert Townsend, "Further Up the Organization", 1984)

"It seems to me that we too often focus on the inside aspects of the job of management, failing to give proper attention to the requirement for a good manager to maintain those relationships between his organization and the environment in which it must operate which permits it to move ahead and get the job done." (Breene Kerr, Giants in Management, 1985)

"The key mission of contemporary management is to transcend the old models which limited the manager's role to that of controller, expert or morale booster. These roles do not produce the desired result of aligning the goals of the employees and the corporation. [...] These older models, vestiges of a bygone era, have served their function and must be replaced with a model of the manager as a developer of human resources." (Michael Durst, "Small Systems World", 1985)

"A real challenge for some organizations is to build more qualitative information into their formal systems. One method used in some companies is to request a written narrative with each submission of statistics from the field. Another method is to hold periodic, indepth discussions involving several managers from different levels so that each can contribute whatever qualitative data are available to him." (Larry E Greiner et al, "Human Relations", 1986)

"[In a crisis:] Resist the pressure to take premature action. Talk to your people individually to find the crisis heroes, the handful of managers who have a clear understanding of the situation, see it the way you do, and can deal with any ambiguity involved. After you find them, tell them what you expect and lean on them hard." (Gerald C Meyers, "When It Hits the Fan", 1986)

"[Management science techniques] have had little impact on areas of decision-making where the management problems do not lend themselves to explicit formulation, where there are ambiguous or overlapping criteria for action, and where the manager operates through intuition." (James L McKenney & Peter G W Keen, Harvard Business Review on  Human Relations, 1986)

"Managers who are skilled communicators may also be good at covering up real problems." (Chris Argyris, Harvard Business Review, 1986)

"Most managers, most of the time, treat the happenings of the past as if they were the permanent or given nature of things, rather than simply things that occurred in the past." (Kenneth and Linda Schatz, "Management By Influence" 1986)

"Operating managers should in no way ignore short-term performance imperatives [when implementing productivity improvement programs.] The pressures arise from many sources and must be dealt with. Moreover, unless managers know that the day-to-day job is under control and improvements are being made, they will not have the time, the perspective, the self-confidence, or the good working relationships that are essential for creative, realistic strategic thinking and decision making." (Robert H Schaefer, Harvard Business Review, 1986)

"The inherent conflict between managers and professionals results basically from a clash of cultures: the corporate culture, which captures the commitment of managers, and the professional culture, which socializes professionals." (Joseph A Raelin, Harvard Business School, 1986)

"The practice of declaring codes of ethics and teaching them to managers is not enough to deter unethical conduct." (Saul W Gellerman, Harvard Business Review, 1986)

"The 'management by objectives' school [...] suggests that detailed objectives be spelled out at all levels in the corporation. This method is feasible at lower levels of management, but it becomes unworkable at the upper levels. The top manager must think out objectives in detail, but ordinarily some of the objectives must be withheld, or at least communicated to the organization in modest doses. A conditioning process that may stretch over months or years is necessary in order to prepare the organization for radical departures from what it is currently striving to attain." (H Edward Wrapp, Harvard Business Review on Human Relations, 1986)

"Top managers are currently inundated with reams of information concerning the organizational units under their supervision. Behind this information explosion lies a seemingly logical assumption made by information specialists and frequently accepted by line managers: if top management can be supplied with more 'objective' and 'accurate' quantified information, they will make 'better' judgments about the performance of their operating units. [...] A research study we have recently completed indicates that quantified performance information may have a more limited role than is currently assumed or envisioned; in fact, managers rely more on subjective information than they do on so called 'objective' statistics in assessing the overall performance of lower-level units." (Larry E. Greiner et al, Harvard Business Review on Human Relations, 1986)

"[Computer and other technical managers] must become business managers or risk landing on the technological rubbish heap." (Jim Leeke, PC Week, 1987)

"How you measure the performance of your managers directly affects the way they act." (John Dearden, Harvard Business Review, 1987)

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

"Management skills are only part of what it takes. [...] Managers must also be corporate warriors or leaders. These unique individuals are the problem identifiers. They possess a strong sense of vision; view firefighting as an opportunity to do things differently and smarter; and are business strategists who help identify key corporate growth issues." (John W Aldridge, Management Review, December 1987)

"Managers exist to plan, direct and control the project. Part of the way they control is to listen to and weigh advice. Once a decision is made, that's the way things should proceed until a new decision is reached. Erosion of management decisions by [support] people who always 'know better' undermines managers' credibility and can bring a project to grief." (Philip W Metzger, "Managing Programming People", 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 managers are not capable of making decisions involving complex technological matters without helplots of it. [...] The finest technical people on the job should have a dual role: doing technical work and advising management." (Philip W Metzger, "Managing Programming People", 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)

"People in the corporate world play to a higher audience that equates action with results. The constant pressure is to demonstrate that you are a tough manager capable of making tough decisions." (Charles J Bodenstab, Inc. Magazine, 1987)

[...] quality assurance is the job of the managers responsible for the product. A separate group can't 'assure' much if the responsible managers have not done their jobs properly. [...] Managers should be held responsible for quality and not allowed to slough off part of their responsibility to a group whose name sounds right but which cannot be guaranteed quality if the responsible managers have not been able to do so." (Philip W. Metzger, "Managing Programming People", 1987)

"Setting and communicating the right expectations is the most important tool a manager has for imparting that elusive drive to the people he supervises." (Andrew S. Grove, "One-On-One With Andy Grove", 1987)

"Setting goals can be the difference between success and failure. [...] Goals must not be defined so broadly that they cannot be quantified. Having quantifiable goals is an essential starting point if managers are to measure the results of their organization's activities. [...] Too often people mistake being busy for achieving goals." (Philip D Harvey & James D Snyder, Harvard Business Review, 1987)

"Telling a manager he's got to reach 25% growth isn't particularly relevant if his market isn't growing at all." (Ian A Cole, Business Week, 1987)

"The manager must decide what type of group is wanted. If cooperation, teamwork, and synergy really matter, then one aims for high task interdependence. One structures the jobs of group members so that they have to interact frequently [...] to get their jobs done. Important outcomes are made dependent on group performance. The outcomes are distributed equally. If frenzied, independent activity is the goal, then one aims for low task interdependence and large rewards are distributed competitively and unequally." (Gregory P Shea & Richard A Guzzo, Sloan Management Review, 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 successful managers are those that can quickly grasp how their bosses think." (Amy Bermar, PC Week, 1987)

"The way to get higher productivity is to train better managers and have fewer of them." (William Woodside, "Thriving on Chaos", 1987)

"When they [managers] can't manage because of too much oversight, it permeates the entire organization." (Frank C Carlucci, "Frank Carlucci on Management in Government", 1987)

"There's a burnout problem among programmers just as there is in any group. You can't expect a programmer to sit for weeks, months, years, doing the same type of programming, and not slack off. [...] Preventing stagnation is the manager's job. [...] Get them totally away from their current jobs." (Philip W Metzger, "Managing Programming People", 1987)

"To be effective, a manager must accept a decreasing degree of direct control." (Eric G Flamholtz & Yvonne Randal, "The Inner Game of Management", 1987)

"[Well-managed modern organizations] treat everyone as a source of creative input. What's most interesting is that they cannot be described as either democratically or autocratically managed. Their managers define the boundaries, and their people figure out the best way to do the job within those boundaries. The management style is an astonishing combination of direction and empowerment. They give up tight control in order to gain control over what counts: results." (Robert H Waterman, "The Renewal Factor", 1987)

"Rather than allowing them [subordinates] the autonomy to get involved and do the work in their own ways, what happens all too often is the manager wants the workers to do it the manager's way." (Edward L Deci, Nation's Business, 1988)

"Some people are excited about learning a new piece of software. Other people get very depressed. Good managers anticipate both situations they involve the persons to be affected in the process of selecting a particular program, and they provide time and resources for training. Training is the key in both cases." (Jonathan P Siegel, "Communications", 1988)

"The future prospects of management science will be much enhanced if (a) the diversity of issues confronting managers is accepted, (b) work on developing a rich variety of problem-solving methodologies is undertaken, and (c) we continually ask the question: 'What kind of issue can be managed with which sort of methodology?'." (Robert L Flood & Michael C Jackson, "Creative Problem Solving: Total Systems Intervention", 1991)

"A manager of people needs to understand that all people are different. This is not ranking people. He needs to understand that the performance of anyone is governed largely by the system that he works in, the responsibility of management." (W Edwards Deming, "The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education", 1993)

"Pressure can also make managers act out of character. Degrees of panic will cause a normally good manager to lose self-confidence and focus. Under stress, even a good plan can be abandoned." (Wheeler L Baker, "Crisis Management: A Model for Managers", 1993)

"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'." (Stanford 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." (Stanford Beer, "Decision and Control", 1994)

"Experience is the consequence of activity. The manager literally wades into the swarm of 'events' that surround him and actively tries to unrandomize them and impose some order: The manager acts physically in the environment, attends to some of it, ignores most of it, talks to other people about what they see and are doing."  (Karl E Weick, "Sensemaking in Organizations", 1995)

"Managers are incurably susceptible to panacea peddlers. They are rooted in the belief that there are simple, if not simple-minded, solutions to even the most complex of problems. And they do not learn from bad experiences. Managers fail to diagnose the failures of the fads they adopt; they do not understand them. […] Those at the top feel obliged to pretend to omniscience, and therefore refuse to learn anything new even if the cost of doing so is success." (Russell L Ackoff, "A Lifetime Of Systems Thinking", Systems Thinker, 1999)

"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)

"The whole way of thinking focuses attention, for most, on the designed system, but it never proves sufficient, and they [the managers] have to 'get things done anyway', almost despite the system. What they are not encouraged to do, by this very way of thinking itself, is to pay attention to the detailed interactions between them, through which they "get things done." [This] is a thoroughly stressful daily experience for people." (Ralph D. Stacey et al, "Complexity and Management: Fad or Radical Challenge to Systems Thinking?", 2000)

"Managers cannot learn from doing things right, only from doing them wrong." (Russell L Ackoff, "A Little Book of F-laws: 13 common sins of management", 2006)

"The less sure managers are of their opinions, the more vigorously they defend them. Managers do not waste their time defending beliefs they hold strongly – they just assert them. Nor do they bother to refute what they strongly believe is false." (Russell L Ackoff, "A Little Book of F-laws: 13 common sins of management", 2006)

"The lower the rank of managers, the more they know about fewer things. The higher the rank of managers, the less they know about many things." (Russell L Ackoff, "A Little Book of F-laws: 13 common sins of management", 2006)

"The other element of systems thinking is learning to influence 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)

"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." (John Gall, "The Systems Bible: The Beginner's Guide to Systems Large and Small"[Systematics 3^rd Ed.], 2011)

♟️Strategic Management: Strategic Thinking (Just the Quotes)

"The function of knowledge in the decision-making process is to determine which consequences follow upon which of the alternative strategies." (Herbert A Simon, "Public Administration", 1950) 

"Most of our beliefs about complex organizations follow from one or the other of two distinct strategies. The closed-system strategy seeks certainty by incorporating only those variables positively associated with goal achievement and subjecting them to a monolithic control network. The open-system strategy shifts attention from goal achievement to survival and incorporates uncertainty by recognizing organizational interdependence with environment. A newer tradition enables us to conceive of the organization as an open system, indeterminate and faced with uncertainty, but subject to criteria of rationality and hence needing certainty." (James D Thompson, "Organizations in Action", 1967)

"The strategies that managers employ are at least as important as the facilities at their disposal." (Anthony S Beer, "Management Science", 1968)

"Analysis is the critical starting point of strategic thinking. Faced with problems, trends, events, or situations that appear to constitute a harmonious whole or come packaged as a whole by common sense of the day, the strategic thinker dissects them into their constituent parts. Then, having discovered the significance of these constituents, he reassembles them in a way calculated to maximize his advantage." (Kenichi Ohmae, "The Mind Of The Strategist", 1982) 

"In strategic thinking, one first seeks a clear understanding of the particular character of each element of a situation and then makes the fullest possible use of human brainpower to restructure the elements in the most advantageous way. Phenomena and events in the real word do not always fit a linear model. Hence the most reliable means of dissecting a situation into its constituent parts and reassembling then in the desired pattern is not a step-by-step methodology such as systems analysis. Rather, it is that ultimate nonlinear thinking tool, the human brain. True strategic thinking thus contrasts sharply with the conventional mechanical systems approach based on linear thinking. But it also contrasts with the approach that stakes everything on intuition, reaching conclusions without any real breakdown or analysis." (Kenichi Ohmae, "The Mind Of The Strategist", 1982) 

"No matter how difficult or unprecedented the problem, a breakthrough to the best possible solution can come only from a combination of rational analysis, based on the real nature of things, and imaginative reintegration of all the different items into a new pattern, using nonlinear brainpower. This is always the most effective approach to devising strategies for dealing successfully with challenges and opportunities, in the market arena as on the battlefield." (Kenichi Ohmae, "The Mind Of The Strategist", 1982)

"Operating managers should in no way ignore short-term performance imperatives [when implementing productivity improvement programs.] The pressures arise from many sources and must be dealt with. Moreover, unless managers know that the day-to-day job is under control and improvements are being made, they will not have the time, the perspective, the self-confidence, or the good working relationships that are essential for creative, realistic strategic thinking and decision making." (Robert H Schaefer, Harvard Business Review, 1986)

"View thinking as a strategy. Thinking is the best way to resolve difficulties. Maintain faith in your ability to think your way out of problems. Recognize the difference between worrying and thinking. The former is repeated, needless problem analysis while the latter is solution generation." (Timothy W Firnstahl, Harvard Business Review, 1986)

"Strategy means abstract thinking and planning, as opposed to tactics, which are the individual operations used to implement strategy. Tactics are specific; strategy is general. Tactics tend to be immediate, strategy long-term." (Bruce Pandolfini, "Weapons of Chess: An omnibus of chess strategy", 1989)

"It is possible to learn strategic flexibility [...] however, that it is difficult to teach it. It is not a matter of learning a few readily grasped general principles, but of learning a lot of small, 'local' rules, each of which is applicable in a limited area. The point is not to learn how to drive a steamroller with which one can flatten all problems in the same way, but to learn the adroitness of a puppeteer, who at one time holds many strings in his hands and who is able to adapt his movements to the given circumstances in the most sophisticated ways." (Dietrich Dörner, "The Logic of Failure", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (B), 1990)

"The key to strategy is the ability to think forward and reason backward. We imagine where the future will take us and then build a pathway back to today. The problem lies in not knowing which of many possible futures will unfold. A Decision Tree allows you to visualize these futures and evaluate their potential impact from the future, rather than from today." (Terry Richey, "The Marketer's Visual Tool Kit", 1994)

"[…] 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] 

"The thinking that underpins strategic planning is a legacy of more stable times when the environment was changing sufficiently slowly for an effective corporate response to emerge from methodical organisational routines." (Max Boisot, "Information Space", 1995)

"You can’t judge the significance of strategic inflection points by the quality of the first version. You need to draw on your experience [...] you must discipline yourself to think things through and separate the quality of the early versions from the longer-term potential and significance of a new product or technology." (Andy Grove, 1996)

"Strategic planning and strategic change management are really 'strategic thinking'. It’s about clarity and simplicity, meaning and purpose, and focus and direction." (Stephen G Haines, "The Systems Thinking Approach to Strategic Planning and Management", 2000)

"Strategy in complex systems must resemble strategy in board games. You develop a small and useful tree of options that is continuously revised based on the arrangement of pieces and the actions of your opponent. It is critical to keep the number of options open. It is important to develop a theory of what kinds of options you want to have open." (John H Holland, [presentation] 2000)

"Strategic thinking starts with your basic skills and considers how best to use them. Knowing the law, you must decide the strategy for defending your client. Knowing how well your football team can pass or run and how well the other team can defend against each choice, your decision as the coach is whether to pass or to run. Sometimes, as in the case of nuclear brinkmanship, strategic thinking also means knowing when not to play." (Avinash K Dixit & Barry J Nalebuff, "The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist's Guide to Success in Business and Life", 2008)

"The process of developing superior strategies is part planning, part trail and error, until you hit upon something that works." (Constantinos C Markides, "Competitive strategy research's impact on practice", 2012) 

"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)

"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) 

"Strategy is a style of thinking, a conscious and deliberate process, an intensive implementation system, the science of insuring future success." (Pete Johnson)

"Strategy requires thought, tactics require observation." (Max Euwe)

♟️Strategic Management: Complexity (Just the Quotes)

"The essence of managership is the achievement of coordination among people. Coordination is a complex concept, including principles by which harmonious enterprise activity can be accomplished and the many techniques for achieving the greatest synchronized effort." (Harold Koontz & Cyril O Donnell, "Principles of Management", 1955)

"Many individuals and organization units contribute to every large decision, and the very problem of centralization and decentralization is a problem of arranging the complex system into an effective scheme." (Herbert A. Simon, "Administrative Behavior", 1957)  

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

"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)

"Knowledge specialists may ascribe a degree of certainty to their models of the world that baffles and offends managers. Often the complexity of the world cannot be reduced to mathematical abstractions that make sense to a manager. Managers who expect complete, one-to-one correspondence between the real world and each element in a model are disappointed and skeptical." (Dale E Zand, "Information, Organization, and Power", 1981)

"Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them." (Laurence J Peter, Peter's Almanac, 1982) 

"Because the art and science of forecasting is so complex, you might be tempted to give all forecasting responsibility to a single manager who can be made accountable for it. But this usually does not work very well. What works better is to ask both the manufacturing and the sales departments to prepare a forecast, so that people are responsible for performing against their own predictions." (Andrew S Grove, "High Output Management", 1983)

"Linear programming is viewed as a revolutionary development giving man the ability to state general objectives and to find, by means of the simplex method, optimal policy decisions for a broad class of practical decision problems of great complexity. In the real world, planning tends to be ad hoc because of the many special-interest groups with their multiple objectives." (George B Dantzig, "Mathematical Programming: The state of the art", 1983)

"Organizations are complex and paradoxical phenomena that can be understood in many different ways. Many of our taken-for-granted ideas about organizations are metaphorical, even though we may not recognize them as such. For example, we frequently talk about organizations as if they were machines designed to achieve predetermined goals and objectives, and which should operate smoothly and efficiently. And as a result of this kind of thinking, we often attempt to organize and manage them in a mechanistic way, forcing their human qualities into a background role. By using different metaphors to understand the complex and paradoxical character of organizational life, we are able to manage and design organizations in ways that we may not have thought possible before." (Gareth Morgan, "Images of Organization", 1986)

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

"In complex situations, we may rely too heavily on planning and forecasting and underestimate the importance of random factors in the environment. That reliance can also lead to delusions of control." (Hillel J Einhorn & Robin M. Hogarth, Harvard Business Review, 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)

"Most managers are not capable of making decisions involving complex technological matters without helplots of it. [...] The finest technical people on the job should have dual role: doing technical work and advising management." (Philip W Metzger & John Boddie, "Managing a Programming Project: People and Processes", 1996)

"Managers are incurably susceptible to panacea peddlers. They are rooted in the belief that there are simple, if not simple-minded, solutions to even the most complex of problems. And they do not learn from bad experiences. Managers fail to diagnose the failures of the fads they adopt; they do not understand them. […] Those at the top feel obliged to pretend to omniscience, and therefore refuse to learn anything new even if the cost of doing so is success." (Russell L Ackoff, "A Lifetime Of Systems Thinking", Systems Thinker, 1999)

"Faced with the overwhelming complexity of the real world, time pressure, and limited cognitive capabilities, we are forced to fall back on rote procedures, habits, rules of thumb, and simple mental models to make decisions. Though we sometimes strive to make the best decisions we can, bounded rationality means we often systematically fall short, limiting our ability to learn from experience." (John D Sterman, "Business Dynamics: Systems thinking and modeling for a complex world", 2000)

"The most basic issue for organizational success is correctly matching a system’s complexity to its environment. When we want to accomplish a task, the complexity of the system performing that task must match the complexity of the task. In order to perform the matching correctly, one must recognize that each person has a limited level of complexity. Therefore, tasks become difficult because the complexity of a person is not large enough to handle the complexity of the task. The trick then is to distribute the complexity of the task among many individuals." (Yaneer Bar-Yam, "Making Things Work: Solving Complex Problems in a Complex World", 2004)

"Organizations are not systems but the ongoing patterning of interactions between people. Patterns of human interaction produce further patterns of interaction, not some thing outside of the interaction. We call this perspective complex responsive processes of relating." (Ralph Stacey, 2005)

"Today’s big companies do very little to enhance the productivity of their professionals. In fact, their vertically oriented organization structures, retrofitted with ad hoc and matrix overlays, nearly always make professional work more complex and inefficient." (Lowell L Bryan & Claudia Joyce, "The 21st century organization", 2005)

"One way of managing complexity is to constrain the freedom of the parts: to hold some of those nonlinear interactions still. Businesses accomplish this with tight rules, processes, hierarchies, policies, and rigid strategies. Gathering people together under a corporate roof reduces complexity by constraining individual autonomy. The upside, of course, is collaboration, alignment of goals, and faster exchange of information." (Paul Gibbons, "The Science of Successful Organizational Change",  2015)

"The passage of time and the action of entropy bring about ever-greater complexity - a branching, blossoming tree of possibilities. Blossoming disorder (things getting worse), now unfolding within the constraints of the physics of our universe, creates novel opportunities for spontaneous ordered complexity to arise." (D J MacLennan, "Frozen to Life", 2015)